The Blackborne company sold modern lace, but also bought antique lace for re-sale (for example, a raised needle lace seventeenth century Italian chasuble was sold to the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1870 for GBP 100) and to study techniques and patterns.
In 2006 the descendants of Anthony and Arthur Blackborne gave the remaining stock, study collection and accompanying documents to the Bowes Museum (UK). Gathered in unsorted trunks, this collection amounted to some 7000 pieces of lace, including a man’s needle lace collar possibly worn by King Charles I of England.
The Bowes Museum put on display some two hundred pieces from the collection in an exhibition entitled Fine & Fashionable, which ran from September 2006 to April 2007. The collar was lent to the Royal Collection Trust as part of a prestigious exhibition, called In Fine Style: The Art of Tudor and Stuart Fashion, which was on display in The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace from 10 May 2013 until 6 October 2013. The collar was put on display next to the famous triple portrait of Charles I, painted by Anthony van Dyck. The painting shows three portraits of Charles I, each of whom is wearing a similar, needle lace collar.
Sources: HASHAGEN, Joanna and Santina M. Levey (2006). Fine & Fashionable: Lace from the Blackborne Collection, Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, Durham.
Digital sources:
- http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Lace+experts+will+network+at+Bowes.-a0160702899 (retrieved 21 March 2017).
- http://www.thebowesmuseum.org.uk (retrieved 21 March 2017).
- http://artdaily.com/news/62068/The-Bowes-Museum-lends-king-s-lace-collar-to-Royal-Collection-Trust-exhibition#.VjyaI9IvfDc (retrieved 21 March 2017).
Digital source of illustration (retrieved 21 March 2017).
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