Lady Curzon wearing her Peacock Dress, which was decorated with beetlewings.The TRC shop sells an assortment of textile related items, including books, magazines, garments, indigo cloth, beads, and embroidery and sewing tools. The shop also sells beetlewings. TRC Needles contains an entry about this spectacular material and its use for embroidery. Actually, it is not a wing, but the casement that covers the wings of a specific type of beetle that lives, among other places, in South and Southeast Asia. This shiny, translucent material has been used for hundreds of years to decorate clothing and other textiles.

Perhaps one of the most famous dresses decorated with beetlewings is the Peacock Dress, which was worn by Lady Curzon at the coronation ball of the Delhi durbar of 1903 (to celebrate the coronation of Edward VII). The dress is now housed at Keddlestone Hall, Derbyshire, England. 

A few days ago we received a photograph of a piece of (Russian) bobbin tape lace worked by Ria Heemskerk, in The Netherlands, who bought a handful of beetlewings in the TRC shop some time ago. She used it to great effect.

Piece of bobbin lace decorated with beetlewings, worked by Ria Heemskerk.