Victoria Cartlidge create’s personalised gifts for “special occasions”.

All our gifts are handmade in our Nottingham workshop, using Nottingham lace exclusively created by Victoria Cartlidge. Many of our Wedding Gifts, Anniversary Gifts, Christening Gifts, New Baby Gifts and Birthday Gifts can be personalised to your specification.

Why not give a special gift that is truly unique.

In our range of Personalised gifts you can find a selection of Personalised Cushions, Personalised Teddy Bears and Personalised gifts for Special Occasions.

Queen Victoria’s wedding dress was trimmed with lace. The neck and sleeve frills, a flounce forming the front panel, and the veil were all made of lace. The order for this lace was placed with Miss Jane Bidney of Beer in 1839. The work was carried out over six months from May until November 1839 by over one hundred lace-workers and the final cost was £1000. The flounce of the dress measured 4ft 6 ins by 2ft 6ins. Once the work was completed, the designs were destroyed so ensuring that the design would not be copied.

This order came at a time when the hand-made lace industry was in decline owing to the development of machine-made lace in the early 19th century.

Miss Bidney had never left Devon before this commission and while waiting to be received by the Queen in London she fainted from nerves!

Miss Bidney herself was commanded by Her Majesty to attend the wedding, while the lace-makers were sent £10 by the Queen to celebrate the wedding on Feb 10th, 1840, which they did in the New Inn!

The flounce was temporarily returned to Beer and exhibited in St Michael’s Church in 1982 as part of the Axe Valley Maritime 82 Exhibition.

Queen Victoria later ordered a black shawl from the lace-makers at Beer.

Anniversary celebrations began in medieval times when people celebrated 25 and 50 years of marriage.  A husband would crown his wife with a wreath of silver for 25 years and of gold for 50. The tradition of gold and silver wedding anniversaries has stuck, but there is now a long list of other named anniversaries to accompany them.

Look at my web site for anniversary ideas and don’t forget the 13th anniversary is Lace.

Romantic lace is often associated with weddings. The veil made for Queen Elizabeth’s 1923 wedding to George VI required 12,000 hours of work and 12million stitches.

Lace started as a hand-crafted decorative textile and its origins can be traced back to ancient Egypt. By the 16th Century, handmade lace was produced widely across Europe and was manufactured by an estimated 120,000 workers across the continent. The foremost type of handmade lace was known as Bobbin Lace where threads attached to hand-held bobbins were twisted together around pins on a cushion to form the various intricate patterned lacework.

In 1685, the Reverend William Lee of Nottingham invented a knitting machine, reputedly after seeing how difficult and time-consuming it was for his wife to make stockings by hand. This initial invention started a textile revolution where the then developing stocking industry had its machines developed by local men and eventually by 1808, John Heathcoat invented a lace knitting machine which started the Nottingham machine lace industry. By 1813, John Leavers invented the world-famous Leavers Lace making machine which was the foundation of the modern lace-making industry worldwide and led to the Nottingham Lace industry expanding through the 19th Century until, by 1865 there were 130 large lace factories located in the central area of Nottingham which is still known as the Lace Market.

Similar to all textiles, lace is dependant on fashion and has had peaks and troughs of popularity. A good example is, during the prolonged mourning of Queen Victoria after the death of her husband, black lace became very popular. However by the 1920’s the Nottingham Lace industry declined due to world economic conditions and only revived after 1945, however there has been a shift away from the use of lace in outerwear to it being predominantly used for underwear and many lace making companies have also moved away from central Nottingham with many of the biggest moving production to countries with cheaper manufacturing costs.

However, at the top end of the market there are still some high quality Nottingham based manufacturers, producing Nottingham Lace and lace products for the bridal, lingerie and gift sectors. I use some of these suppliers to provide me with the lace I use in my designs.

Hi, I thought I would tell you a bit about myself and how I started designing lace and textile products in the 1980s . I was born and brought up in the famous lace and textile City of Nottingham and my father worked in the textile industry and my mother, who is very creative, also worked in textiles before she retired . As I grew up I spent my spare time sewing, embroidering and creating all sorts of things, from clothes through soft toys to jewellery with the help and guidance of my mother, who was an inspiration to me. She still is.

After I got marrried, we moved away from Nottingham for a time and although I had a full-time job, my creative roots wouldn’t leave me and I dabbled in painting, but eventually textiles called and I started creating extravagant satin and lace cushions embellished with ribbon weaving.  When my husband’s job moved us again, I decided to use my skills to start a business based upon my original designs.  Eventually, in 1996 I turned the business into the company it is now, Victoria Cartlidge Creations Ltd and shortly after this I was able to return my home City, Nottingham, where I can now call upon the skills and resources of the people of this great City to assist me in producing ranges of gifts founded upon it’s lace heritage.

Situated right at the centre of the country, Nottingham is a dynamic city that welcomes the challenges of the 21st century. Its infrastructure and economy are changing rapidly, yet it has kept its balance between old and new. Nottingham is rated as one of the best English shopping centre outside London.  Nottingham has the “most vibrant” city centre in the UK, according to the Department of the Environment. There are café-bars on every corner, many serving customers outside on pretty, pedestrianised streets. After dark, Nottingham nightlife revolves around clubs that attract revellers from around the region.

The city has an innovative business community where networks and partnerships thrive. The public and private sectors are collaborating closely on many major projects. Around £600 million of construction work is taking place around the city centre, including a new £200 million canal quarter. Nottingham has two of the country’s most popular universities, with four more within 30 miles. The area’s research assets are among Europe’s finest, independent consultants have concluded. Hi-tech growth sectors include software, biotechnology and medical technology. The city’s financial services sector is growing three times faster than the national average. Coutts and the Bank of England have regional offices in Nottingham, and the American bank Capital One, one of the world’s top credit card issuers, chose the city for its European HQ.

Nottingham has around 400 practising artists, more per square foot than any other European city. It has a reputation for contemporary arts, while its design graduates decide the shape of clothes to come in the world’s fashion houses. The city stages NOW arts festival showcases installation, performance and dance. The Nottingham Playhouse has an international reputation, staging innovative productions with world stars of serious theatre. The city has been home to three of the most significant writers of the 19th and 20th centuries - Lord Byron, D.H. Lawrence and Alan Sillitoe. All were rebels who challenged the conventions of contemporary society.

The city’s heritage includes Wollaton Hall, an Elizabethan stately home complete with a 500 acre deer park, and the Galleries of Justice, a law museum housed in a gaol that dates back to 1375. Victorian lace barons built the ornate warehouses of the Lace Market, now Nottingham’s new cultural quarter. Nottingham also owns Byron’s ancestral home Newstead Abbey. William the Conqueror built Nottingham Castle; it later became the military base of Richard III, and saw the start of the English Civil War. Every autumn it echoes to the war cries of medieval knights as Robin outwits the evil Sheriff. For Nottingham is, of course, the home of Robin Hood. His spirit of social justice lives on in many of the city’s cherished policies.

If you walk around Nottingham’s Lace market area it is possible to trace how it developed from a Saxon settlement to an industrial quarter. The rectangular pattern of streets, covering just three acres, have survived from medieval times. You can find an ancient church, (St.Mary’s still fully functionable today.) the old Town Hall, a theatre, early schools and charitable institutions. The Town Gaol and house of correction. Nottingham became known as the ‘Queen of the midlands’ because of her stragetically positioned location when lace started to overtake the hosiery trade as an industrial money spinner in the late 17th/early 18th centuries. Because of the previous success of the hosiery trade many noble families had built large mansions in The Park and on High Pavement( many of these mansions still survive today including the classical Shire Hall, now the ‘Galleries of Justice’ museum.)part of the Lace Market area. The lace industry was dependant on thousands of hands to do millions of repetetive actions. The workforce was already in place. The infrastructure, roads, canals and turnpikes that enabled fast delivery to the docks and London, where the major markets were accessable, were of vital importance to any would be Lace manufacturers.

The explosion of the industry started after the invention of Heathcotes industrial machines in 1808. Because the authorities refused to allow building on common land large scale industrial expansion was crammed into Nottingham tight boundaries turning a previously pleasant market town into an overcrowded sweat shop bursting at the seams with poorly paid, overworked and frequently abused lace workers. Some were as young as five or six and worked a ten or twelve hour shift. Mothers would take to babes in arms to work with them drugging them with laudanum to keep them quiet while they continued to work. They were paid peace-rates, which means that the more you do the more you earn. The towns first railway opened in 1839 causing the trade to move closer to London road and away from Castle Gate and Hounds Gate. This is when the area started to be known as The Lace Market. There was an explosion of factory building about this time as The Enclosure Act finally released common land. Most of the grand houses were destroyed to be replaced by five and six story factories and warehouses,. also the increasing use of steam to power the new machines required ever larger areas to work in. These Lace buildings were often Grandiose in order to impress would be Lace buyers im much the same way todays financial centres are often extravagantly designed to make you feel comfortable to leave your money in their hands.

If you walk through the streets of the lace market today you will still get the feeling of walking through canyons of brick and tiles, instead of the constant whir of machinery you will probably hear the clink of glasses or the beat of todays pop music, as there are many wine bars, restaurants and nightclubs on the ground floors with offices taking over the upper floors. The famous Adams building has in,1999, been converted into Nottinghams newest university retaining its faboulous Entrance Hall. If you take a stroll down Broadway, although it is only 100 yards long, you will see many quality buildings which were usually the headquarters of major lace concerns built by famous architects of the day such as T.C.Hine and Watson Fothergill, and it was here that the more skilled work and selling was done.

At the peak of Nottinghams Lace trade in 1914 the lace market boasted no fewer than 1548 warehouses. Alas the war seemed to sound the death Knell for the industry. Many Leavers lace firms went bust. It was a sign of the times when 56 High Pavement, a particularly fine 18th century house , became a public assistance office. Most of the Huge warehouses were sublet to small textile firms who paid low rents and spent little or nothing on maintenance. The Lace Market deteriated into a decaying warren for dry good electrical companies, printers and, finally, the demolition men.

But time heals all and now The lace Market is undergoing major refurbishments with many top class residences being allowed in converted warehouses with upmarket eateries. 56 High Pavement home to a large group of the legal profession. The Lace Market Centre is open , just beyond the Galleries of Justice further down High Pavement where you can see Nottingham Lace being made just as it used to be. Victoria Cartlidge Creations is a company that can help you design and produce almost anything to do with Nottingham Lace.