The Rise And Fall Of Doilies
A common feature on furniture for much of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, doilies were an open form of lace or cotton with intricate designs, the more intricate the better, demonstrating wealth and inventive craftsmanship. Whether used to dull the clanking of whisky tumblers, to soften the landing of a hot teapot, or to quieten the push of a heavy crystal ashtray, there were ever more recherche protocols to be followed in their use.
For Good Housekeeping in 1905, doilies were placed beneath toast, rolls, or muffins, fitting inside the rim of a plate without hanging over the sides. The New York Times in 1909 advised its readers that “for less formal use the finger bowl is set upon a doily on the dessert plate and is removed with its doily and set at one side of the plate until needed. It is bad form to pass a finger bowl without a plate and doily under it. The latter should never be omitted, though it is sometimes done ignorantly.”
In The Etiquette and Service of the Table (1916) readers were advised that when discarding the use of a tablecloth, individual doilies were to be set upon the table for each article. Everyman’s Encyclopaedia of Etiquette in 1920 was advising that “service plate must be laid upon a doily of suitable size which in its turn rests upon an asbestos pad. The water glass also stands on a small doily toward the centre and at the right of the service plate, and on a slightly larger doily at the left stands the bread-and-butter plate with a small silver knife lying flat across it.”
The name doily is thought to be a reference to a 16th century London cloth merchant by the name of Doiley, sometimes spelt Doyley, who sold openwork textiles, probably bobbin lace. By 1711 his name had been associated with a fancy type of napkin known as the “doily napkin”. Over time the napkin element fell out of use.
The gamechanger for the fortunes of the doily came about with the development of the mercerization process for cotton thread, invented in 1844, which made the thread stronger and the growing practice of crochet which by then had broken out of the confines of convents.
Nuns taught impoverished women during the Irish Famine of 1846 to crochet, enabling them to produce small crocheted textiles relatively quickly and the resulting openwork pieces, often worked in cotton, were touted as a kind of inexpensive lace, often making the difference between starving and having something to eat. Well-born young ladies were also taught to make doilies as they were expected to have a supply in their hope chests.
With the rise of a relatively well-off middle class, Victorian rooms began to be overpopulated with furniture, pottery, and specialised serving dishes. Doilies were used to not only protect the surfaces but to give a pleasing decorative contrast with the dark of the wood. The white material from which doilies were made also proved to be durable and could withstand being boiled and washed vigorously many times. Towards the end of the 19th century women’s magazines regularly printed patterns for creating doilies using a variety of methods and techniques including crochet, knitting, tatting, cutwork, and embroidery.
Even as late as 1951 the American Thread Company was publishing its 87th edition of doily patterns entitled Doilies, Doilies, Doilies, but by then the doily had had its day. A combination of more streamlined design of furniture and a move to more informal dining hastened by the arrival of frozen and convenience foods meant that doilies were more of an encumbrance than a boon. If someone want to add a bit of formality to their dining experience, there was always paper doilies.
Doilies faded out of use and where they were seen, there was more than a whiff of the old fashioned about them, a relic of a time long gone.
