Not only does Beauti-Vue have an amazing selection of New Old Stock (NOS) materials to make retro woven wood blinds and shades, their stockpile of vintage NOS brightly colored decorative edge trim to go with — or to buy separately for your own window treatment projects — was amazing. Yowza — it was a virtual rainbow of options! In fact, there is so much of this trim that I’m not even sure of how many styles and colors there are!
To give you an idea of the volume of trim we are talking about here, the top three rows of this massive metal shelving unit in the back of Beauti-Vue’s workshop are filled with decorative trim…
… and so is most of this neighboring shelving unit. They’ve tried to keep it organized by color, so if you are interested in finding a specific color of trim, it should be fairly easy for them to determine (1) if they have it, and (2) how much is available.
Kristin and Joy were kind enough to yank a few samples of the trim — in several styles and colors — out of the storage shelves for me to photograph. As you can see, they have a variety of vivid colors — olive green, red, harvest gold, bright yellow, blue, hot pink and emerald green just to name a few.
Above: As an idea of what may be lurking in Beauti-Vue’s storage shelves, I spotted four styles of fringe in an array of colors within the pages of their vintage catalog. As you can see from my sample shots, they still have fringe style “X” and “L” in several colors, and perhaps there may be some of the other two styles remaining in their stash as well — just call and ask!
The trim itself is just gorgeous — such beautiful saturated colors!
Personally, I contemplated just buying a length of trim in every color so I could ogle them, but I somehow resisted the urge. However, now that I am thinking about it, I am highly tempted to order some trim to add to the cafe curtains in my kitchen.
When combined with the company’s stock of NOS retro woven wood blinds, this trim becomes even more fantastic — but it could also be used for many other applications including: gluing onto the tracks of their NOS plastic lollipop bead curtains, attaching it to fabric cafe curtains in a vintage style kitchen, decorating lampshades, and — what other uses can you think of?
Buy this trim:
- To be used on your custom shade or blind order.
- Or by the yard for your own products.
- Pricing will depends on the style and color chosen — contact the Beauti-Vue Products Corp. to check color and style availability and pricing.
These trims are also good for upholstery projects such as sofas and chairs. Many of these trims were used on Hollywood Regency style or 1940’s era sofas.
Yes, I agree!
And those of us who think matchy-matchy is a good thing could have coordinated blinds and lampshades!
I wonder if they still have pompom trim style “P” available in no. 7 green…? My husband and I are restoring a 1975 Silver Cross pram in two-tone green and need replacement trim for the hood. (The original ribbon was falling apart, so we thought we’d do something a little different.) Baby is due in 9 weeks and the pram isn’t finished yet…! I’d give them a call, but we’re currently living in England! Any chance someone could ask for us?
(Love this webpage, by the way! It’s a good thing we’re not back home in the ‘States yet. we’d go broke outfitting everything 70’s style!)
Here’s an email that I found on their website retailinfo@beautivue.com (click here to send e-mail to us)
guilty conscience!!!! Our 1965 ranch had cafe curtains in the kitchen that had white pompom fringe. But it was so dusty and yellowed that I got rid of them and replaced them with red and white checked cafes.
Eliza, it isn’t too late. You can add some red pompoms for those curtains even now. No reason to feel guilty for throwing out stuff that is dirty and can’t be cleaned.
My heart has been fluttering all week because of this discovery, and since I’m in Minneapolis, just a days drive away, I am going to propose that my husband and I make this our destination in celebration of our 15 year wedding anniversary! It’s only a couple weeks away, and I can see that I’m going to need to visit this slice of heaven in person to make the best choices! The traditional gift for 15 years is Crystal, which I will transcribe to BLING, which, I’m quite sure, is the same as Fancy Tassels!
🙂 Make sure you call first, it’s not a showroom …
OK, so these blinds/window treatments have been driving me insane since Tuesday (when you started the series), trying to remember where I’ve seen them. And not just in a movie or on the blog before, but seen them, as in petted them (like Kate did) in my childhood (I’m 34). The house I grew up in was built in 82 and is pretty much a time capsule still, so I know it wasn’t there, so I sent this series to my mom to pick her brain. Lo and behold, she had ordered these style of shades for her first apartment out of college in dark wood with blues and greens (think dark avocados and dark aquas for mid-70s) and because they were custom, she couldn’t just throw them out or leave them behind, so she STILL HAS THEM! So now I know where I’ve seen them. Next to the Christmas tree in the attic. I told her they’re mine now and I will claim them when I move into my forever home and will utilize them in the basement office… or something.
Thanks for this series. It has been great and I love the colors and catalog design ideas, and meeting the people who still bring them to us.
Great story! Your mother also must be very amused!
Yes, she has been. She likes when I email her blog posts from the 60s and 70s and she tells me little stories. Thanks for all you do!
You should share some of the best stories 🙂
Very nice! They look like modern ones you find today.
Love all these trims. They are so bright and beautiful. I wanna make a throw pillow for each one. 🙂
No, it is actually «valance» or «pelmet». The «valence» (miss)pelling is for posh people -like me- 🙂
tee hee
This has come up before. I previously also spelled it valence — and was corrected. English is such a delightful language when it comes to spelling. Not.
It doesn’t help that standard American English spelling didn’t even begin until Webster’s first dictiionary in 1828. Before that, one spelled things pretty much however one wished, including common words and names.
British spelling isn’t much better. Is there a crying icon? TT.TT <–clear enough.
Hello, I don’t mean to be obnoxious but isn’t it supposed to be «Valence» like the city in France?