Doilies: What’s old can be new again!

Unusual Offerings buys doilies at auctions and estate sales, and has done so since its inception, because they’re small pieces of folk art. It’s easy to picture a woman carefully crocheting thin strands of thread while listening to her shows on the family’s console radio. (That was back when radios were pieces of furniture, too!)

Our aim is to offer an eclectic blend of old and new items that aren’t readily available at a mall. Framing the more elaborate doilies—trapping the wispy webs behind glass—can work artistically, even in homes with a modern sensibility.

Moreover, with the commercially manufactured tablecloths and runners from the 1970s, they can be part of fun craft projects, including treating them as stencils. Shabby chic and great-grandmother’s doilies go perfectly together, which is why we see so many vendors selling them at the Elephant’s Trunk Flea Market.

UO picked up the batch shown here at North Central Sales Auctions in Aniwa, Wisconsin, during a vacation in January. Who doesn’t like to visit Wisconsin when it’s 25 below (not counting the wind chill) at night? We’ve been buying doilies for decades and haven’t found so many gorgeous ones in one collection before, so we’ll enjoy placing them in new homes in the coming months at Elephant’s Trunk. [Unfortunately, we weren’t able to buy the dozens of mint-condition crocks in sizes up to 30 gallons, with no cracks and crisp markings. We were delighted to find that the people buying them intended to use them for brewing.]

Those of us of a certain age can remember visiting our grandparents and their friends, seeing crocheted doilies on the backs of couches and chairs—and sometimes on the bedroom pillows. Frequently, these homes also had plastic runners on the carpets to preserve the rugs, but the doilies seemed to serve no purpose. Wherever there was wood furniture, if a lamp or vase rested there, there would be a doily under it. Why was it there?

Simple: The doilies were there to protect the furniture. That’s it!

Doilies were named after a London cloth merchant with his shop in the Strand, who popularized this form of knitted or crocheted cloth for lightweight summer wear in the mid-1600s. Over time, it occurred to people that this pretty cloth could be used both as decoration and to protect wood furniture from being scratched by whatever was put on it, and doilies became a part of everyday life.

Related to both French and English laces, the crochet patterns used to make them range from extremely simple to incredibly elaborate. They can be made from any sort of thread: from fine silk, to cotton string of the same type used in the 19th Century for tying up parcels, to knitting wool. It is decorative handwork anyone could do, and women did, with doilies finding places in the hope chests of young women against the day they married.

The longer antimacassars we saw on the backs of furniture performed the same function, but one aimed at protecting the fabric from men’s hair. Really. A London barber named Alexander Rowland invented a hairdressing made of coconut oil and oils from fragrant flowers bought in the port of Makassar in what today is Indonesia. The stuff became known as “macassar oil,” after Rowland’s trademark. It certainly got the hair to lie flat and look slick and smooth, but it also soaked into the fabric of the stuffed furniture and discolored it. So, to protect the fabric from the hair oil, people bought or made doilies to go on the backs of the couches and chairs where a head was likely to rest, and those doilies were named “anti-macassars.”

Doilies may go in and out of fashion, but the purpose remains the same: to protect furniture. Until now, that is. One of the reasons we enjoy selling at Elephant’s Trunk is the creativity of our customers. They come up with craft ideas we never thought of, and we’re sure many of these doilies from yesteryear will become decorative pillow covers tomorrow!

#Doily #Doilies