Lace Making Machine Types: How Machine Lace Is Actually Made
Lace made by machine is produced on equipment that forms a net ground and a decorative pattern in the same pass, and the machines doing that work in production mills today sit in the warp knitting family rather than in the bobbin-carriage frames the phrase still evokes. That mismatch between the historical meaning of the term and what a mill actually specifies is why this search is so frustrating.
This page sorts the families out: where the historic machines came from, what each one could and could not do, and where the modern selection question actually lives. Specification numbers are deliberately left to our machine-specific guides rather than restated here from memory.
Why this search returns two kinds of page and no answer
Look at what currently ranks for the phrase and it splits cleanly into two camps that never meet. One camp is history: encyclopedia entries on the Nottingham lace curtain machine and on the pusher machine, a museum comparison of machine lace against hand lace, and a lace guild history of the craft. The other camp is wholesale directory listings that show the category name and an enquiry form.
The first camp answers a question about the nineteenth century. The second answers no question at all. Nobody in the middle explains which categories of lace machine exist now, or how a production buyer picks between them. The search intent is informational, but the results are either a museum label or a quotation request, so the reader bounces.
Where machine lace came from, and why the vocabulary stuck
The ancestor of every lace machine is the stocking frame of 1589, a knitting frame carrying a row of hooked needles. Two later modifications turned it into a lace producer: Jeremiah Strutt reworked the frame in 1759, and Hammond added the tickler stick in 1764, which made stitch transfer possible. Once loops could be moved sideways, an open patterned ground could be built mechanically instead of by hand.
From there the machines specialised. The pusher machine, invented by Samuel Clark and James Mart in 1812, was built on the bobbinet principle and could form the pattern and the net ground together. Every bobbin and carriage ran from its own pusher, which is why pattern freedom on that machine was close to unlimited. The Nottingham lace curtain machine followed, invented by John Livesey at Nottingham in 1846, and it was aimed squarely at curtain-weight lace rather than at dress goods.
By 1870 a machine imitation existed for very nearly every hand lace type in circulation. That is the fact worth carrying into a modern buying conversation: the industry crossed the point where pattern capability stopped being the constraint a long time ago. What remains a constraint is speed, width, changeover cost and how much of the pattern a machine can hold before it becomes uneconomic.
The historic families, side by side
The table below compares only what the sourced record supports. It is a map of the vocabulary you will meet in old catalogues and museum captions, not a specification sheet.
| Machine family | Origin | What it was for | The trade-off it carried |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stocking frame lineage | Frame dates from 1589, adapted through 1759 and 1764 | The first mechanical route to an open, patterned ground | Everything later machines do began here as a workaround, not as a design |
| Pusher machine | Clark and Mart, 1812, from the bobbinet principle | Pattern and net ground formed together, pattern almost unrestricted | Slow, mechanically delicate, expensive, and limited to short pieces of roughly two yards by four yards |
| Nottingham lace curtain machine | Livesey, at Nottingham, 1846 | Curtain lace as a dedicated product class | Specialised by design, so a curtain machine is not a general lace machine |
Two practical things fall out of that table. First, the pusher machine is the cleanest historical illustration of the trade every lace machine still makes: buy more pattern freedom and you pay for it in speed, fragility and piece width. Second, the curtain machine shows that lace machinery specialised by end product very early, which is exactly why a single answer to the question of what machine makes lace has never existed.
What a buyer is actually choosing between now
In current production the question is not pusher versus curtain machine. It is which warp knitting route suits the fabric: a raschel lace machine, or a jacquard lace machine and the patterning system that goes with it. Those are the two families a mill genuinely compares, and both of them deserve their own page rather than a paragraph here.
We keep the selection detail where it belongs. Gauge, guide bar count and machine type for the raschel route are covered in How to Choose a Raschel Lace Machine: Gauge, Bars and Types. The patterning decision, including the fall plate route, is covered in Jacquard Lace Machine: Jacquardtronic, Textronic or Fall Plate?. If you are still working out where lace machinery sits inside warp knitting generally, start with Warp Knitting Machine Types: Tricot, Raschel and Needle Beds.
A terminology trap catches buyers here constantly. In supplier catalogues and directory listings, the phrase lace making machine almost always means a warp knitting machine configured for lace, not one of the historic bobbin machines. If you send an enquiry using the historical term and a warp knitting quotation comes back, nothing has gone wrong; the vocabulary simply carries two meanings and the trade uses the newer one.
If you are specifying a lace machine now
If your product is curtain or panel lace in long runs, then the decision is dominated by working width and repeat length, and the historic curtain-machine literature is background reading only. If your product is apparel lace, lingerie or narrow trim, then the patterning system is the decision, and the raschel and jacquard comparisons linked above are the right starting point. If you are restoring or documenting an antique machine, then this page and the museum sources behind it are useful, but none of it will help you order tooling.
This conclusion does not apply in one common case: if you are sourcing lace as a finished fabric rather than buying machinery, the machine family is the wrong axis entirely. Specify the fabric construction and let the mill choose the route it runs.
One deliberate exclusion: we have not quoted gauge ranges, bar counts or model designations on this page. Those belong to a specific machine in a specific configuration, and repeating them without the machine in front of you is how buyers end up specifying something that does not exist. Our machine pages carry them, this overview does not.
What to do next
Write down the fabric first, then the run length, then the pattern repeat you need to hold. With those three lines settled, the choice between the raschel route and the jacquard route usually makes itself, and the historical vocabulary stops getting in the way. Our warp knitting and lace machine range is at grandstarcn.com, and if you want a second opinion on a specification before you commit, send us the fabric and the repeat and we will tell you which route we would run it on.
Frequently Asked Questions
What machine is used to make lace?
In production today, lace is made on warp knitting machines configured for lace work, most commonly a raschel lace machine or a jacquard lace machine. The historic pusher and curtain machines that share the name are no longer what mills order, although the vocabulary from that era is still used in catalogues.
Is machine lace the same as raschel lace?
Raschel lace is one kind of machine lace, not the whole category. Machine lace covers everything mechanically produced with a net ground and a pattern, and the raschel route is the family most widely used for it now. Our raschel selection guide sets out how that route is specified.
What is a pusher machine?
A pusher machine is a historic lace machine invented by Samuel Clark and James Mart in 1812, based on the bobbinet principle. Each bobbin and carriage was driven by its own pusher, which gave it almost unrestricted pattern freedom. It paid for that with low speed, mechanical fragility, high cost and very short piece widths.
Can a machine make handmade lace patterns?
Broadly yes, and it has been true for a long time. By 1870 a machine imitation existed for nearly every hand lace type then in circulation. What separates machines today is not whether a pattern is possible but how economically it can be held and repeated.
Which lace machine suits curtain fabric?
Curtain lace has been a specialised product class since the Nottingham lace curtain machine appeared in 1846, and the same logic holds now: working width and repeat length dominate the decision rather than patterning subtlety. Send us the panel width and the repeat and we will point you at the right configuration.
Hey, I’m Vincent!
Solving complex challenges with precision and creativity in the warp knitting industry. Passionate about advancing textile engineering and turning innovative ideas into reality. Shaping the future of warp knitting.
