Blackborne Collection

One of the trunks in which the Blackborne collection of lace was transported to the Bowes Museum. One of the trunks in which the Blackborne collection of lace was transported to the Bowes Museum.

The Blackborne collection is a major assemblage of lace, dating from the sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries. It includes some 7000 items, from the remaining stock and study collection of the Victorian-era lace dealers, A. Blackborne and Company of London. This was a father and son business that operated out of London from the 1850's onwards.

In 2006, descendants of the Blackbornes donated the collection of lace to the Bowes Museum in Durham, UK. The collection at the Bowes Museum includes a man’s needle lace collar that was possibly owned by the English King Charles 1 (1600-1649). Part of the original Blackborne collection is also housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (USA), which raised USD 20000 in 1909 to purchase six hundred pieces from the Blackbornes.

Source: VALENTINER, Wilhelm R. (1909). 'The Blackborne collection of lace,' The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Vol. 4, No. 5 (May, 1909), pp. 82-84. Available here (retrieved 25th May 2016)

Digital source (retrieved 16th April 2016).

Digital source of illustration (retrieved 25th May 2016).

SA

Last modified on Monday, 10 July 2017 19:48