These are cyan prints. You put a piece of lace on a treated paper and then place it in the sun to make them. They are a primitive form of photography, but not, I think terribly expensive in the era to which you refer. Kids still make these sun prints in science class and summer camp often of leaves and ferns. I had blue prints like these from my lace teacher in the 1970s when photocopying was still in its infancy. I think that it was still quite a common way to provide an image at that time. Lace was a popular subject for early "photogenic" drawings, or contact prints. In the Metropolitan Museum of Art there is a book of contact prints of lace called Merletto o Pizzo created in 1839 by William Henry Fox Talbot. It is interesting to see these prints that were made in 1839 because you know that the lace involved could not have been made in the late 19th or early 20th century. http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/289215?rpp=20&pg =2&ao=on&ft=lace&deptids=19&pos=21 Here is a nice one also from 1839 in the Ashmolean. http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/features/ephotos/ephoto2.htm#photo Devon
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