---
title: "Mended, Made Up, Made Over: The Lace Dealers"
description: "Victorian dealers had old lace mended, rearranged and remounted; look at the bars, the ground and the joins to tell old, repaired and composite pieces apart."
type: Story
url: https://teazle.art/stories/antique-lace-dealers-mended-composite-how-to-tell
published: 2026-10-19
updated: 2026-10-19
author: "The Teazle editors"
image: https://cdn.sanity.io/images/jvxyxtrt/production/b9f70c1c81c3267ee49fd9b2b40b09dec863532f-1961x1094.jpg?w=1600&fit=max&q=78&auto=format
image_license: CC0
---

# Mended, Made Up, Made Over: The Lace Dealers

*How can you tell if antique lace is old, mended or composite? Victorian dealers bought old lace, and restorers mended, rearranged and remounted it for sale. A guide to the trade, the signs and the questions to ask.*

![A wide, curved collar of cream needle lace on a gray ground: raised scrolling stems with leaves and flowers, tiny loops along the stems, and a narrow flat band of openwork along the inner neck edge.](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/jvxyxtrt/production/b9f70c1c81c3267ee49fd9b2b40b09dec863532f-1961x1094.jpg?w=1280&fit=max&q=78&auto=format)
*Collar, late 17th and late 19th century elements. Linen, needle lace (point de neige), 22.5 × 37.9 cm. The Met, 08.180.701. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. CC0*

Old lace is rarely only old. Victorian dealers such as A. Blackborne & Company of London bought antique pieces, and restorers mended, rearranged and remounted them for sale, so a single collar can carry two centuries of work. You can read the difference in the bars, the ground and the joins, and you can ask a seller what was done.

![A wide, curved collar of cream needle lace on a gray ground: raised scrolling stems with leaves and flowers, tiny loops along the stems, and a narrow flat band of openwork along the inner neck edge.](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/jvxyxtrt/production/b9f70c1c81c3267ee49fd9b2b40b09dec863532f-1961x1094.jpg?w=1280&fit=max&q=78&auto=format)
*Collar, late 17th and late 19th century elements. Linen, needle lace (point de neige), 22.5 × 37.9 cm. The Met, 08.180.701. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. CC0*

## Why was so much old lace for sale in the nineteenth century?

Because lace fell out of fashion, then came back. Mrs. Bury Palliser wrote in her *History of Lace* that, whether from the French Revolution or from the caprice of fashion, lace sank so low that collections of great value were handed to waiting maids as rubbish, and ladies remembered dressing their dolls in the finest [Alençon](https://teazle.art/glossary/alencon-lace.md). When taste returned, a stock was waiting to be found.

Palliser says where it turned up: in country farmhouses, kept as keepsakes by old family servants; in theatrical wardrobes and masquerade shops; and in churches that, in Italy, Spain and Germany, parted gladly with lace of small value to them in return for what amateurs paid. Wearers did not always know what they had. She notes that fashionable women covered their dresses with odds and ends of every kind of lace, and that "That lace was old seemed sufficient to satisfy all parties."

The neglect was still a memory in 1909. A. Penderel Moody, whose handbook *Lace Making and Collecting* has a chapter on restoration, wrote that valuable lace had found its way into rag-bags and into small antique shops, where much of it could be bought for a few shillings if it was out of repair or out of shape.

## Who were the lace dealers, and who was Blackborne?

Dealers were the link between those hoards and the collectors. The best documented in Britain is A. Blackborne & Company of 35 South Audley Street, London, whose stock is now at The Bowes Museum. The Textile Research Centre in Leiden describes the name as the trade name of a father, Anthony (1824–1878), and a son, Arthur (1856–1952), who began work about 1850.

The firm held a royal warrant from 1863 to 1912, first from Alexandra, Princess of Wales. According to Leiden it sold modern lace but also bought antique lace to resell and to study techniques and patterns. The Victoria and Albert Museum, describing its 1870 purchase, calls Blackborne "the leading London lace dealer at this time."

First names are not settled. The Metropolitan Museum's *Bulletin* of May 1909 says the collection was begun in 1850 by Thomas Blackborne and augmented by his son Arthur, and the V&A's record names the 1870 seller as Arthur Blackborne, although Leiden dates Arthur's birth to 1856. The surname, the address and the trade agree across the sources.

The firm sat inside the scholarship, not outside it. The revisers of Palliser's book, in the 1902 edition, thank Mr. Arthur Blackborne for help with information or lace to illustrate it, and several illustrations are captioned as his property. Margaret Jourdain's 1908 handbook for collectors prints an extract from a letter of 1875 addressed to "Mr A. Blackborne" about Burano lace.

| Date | What happened | Source |
| --- | --- | --- |
| About 1850 | The Blackborne business begins in London | Leiden; Met Bulletin 1909 |
| 1863–1912 | Royal warrant, first from Alexandra, Princess of Wales | Leiden |
| 1870 | The V&A buys a set of lace vestments for £100, described as probably sixteenth-century Spanish | V&A record 743-1870 |
| 1874 and 1882 | Part of the collection is exhibited in London and in Paris | Met Bulletin 1909 |
| 1909 | The Met acquires over 600 specimens by subscription | Met Bulletin 1909; Met record 09.68.1–.689 |
| 2006 | Descendants give the remaining stock, study collection and documents to The Bowes Museum | Leiden; The Bowes Museum |
| 14 Nov 2026 – 11 Apr 2027 | *Lace and Legacy* at The Bowes Museum | The Bowes Museum |

## How did one dealer's stock reach three museums?

By sale, subscription and gift, across 136 years. The V&A bought a set of vestments in 1870. In 1909 the Met took on a large group, and in 2006 the family gave what remained to The Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle, a collection Leiden counts at some 7,000 pieces, gathered in unsorted trunks.

The 1909 purchase was quick. The Met's *Bulletin* says it was possible to acquire the collection "in so short a time" after a subscription list opened, that sixty-two contributors took part, and that they "purchased the collection from Mr. Vitall Benginat" (the spelling in the printed Bulletin) and presented it to the trustees. The Bulletin counts "over six hundred specimens", and the Met's accession range, 09.68.1–.689, runs to 689 numbers. Leiden says instead that the museum raised $20,000 to buy about 600 pieces from the Blackbornes, so the sources differ on who the seller was.

The Bowes gift included the firm's remaining stock, its study collection and its documents. A curator wrote in 2011 that much of the shop stock was still in its original trunks and was "a real mixture of lace of different shapes, sizes, ages, and origins." The Bowes also says the Blackborne collection builds on lace that Joséphine Bowes acquired in the nineteenth century. Our profile, [Joséphine Bowes: The Actress Who Built a Museum](/people/josephine-bowes-actress-collector-museum), covers what is and is not known about her buying.

## What did restorers do to old lace before it was sold?

They mended it, rearranged it and remounted it. Palliser reported in 1865 that the "splendid mantles, tunics, and flounces" in the windows of London's great lace dealers were mostly "concocted from old fragments" by Devonshire lace-workers. They cut the designs out of the old pieces, sewed them on a paper pattern of the shape wanted, restored the fancy stitches, supplied any flower that was missing, and joined the whole on the pillow.

Mrs. F. Nevill Jackson repeated the account in 1900, largely in Palliser's words, and called it a regular branch of the Devonshire industry. Moody's chapter adds more. A flounce too short to sell might be cut into narrow strips, joined and given a new edge. A shawl of Flemish lace could be unpicked from its old ground and re-joined as a collar. In Paris, Moody writes, a fashion arose for collars and blouses that were "an ingenious patchwork of incongruous oddments", which to the connoisseur "appears to be the height of vandalism."

The V&A's record for its 1870 purchase shows what this looks like in a museum. The raised [needle lace](https://teazle.art/glossary/needle-lace.md) chasuble is dated 1670–95 and described as Italian. The curators say the lace was probably mounted on its red silk shortly before the museum bought it, that the seventeenth-century lace "was modified, repaired and augmented slightly then," and that the narrow outer edging is probably nineteenth century. Lace of this date that passed through the "very active collectors' lace market" of the mid and later nineteenth century, they add, was typically tidied up, with motifs and linking bars realigned and mended.

![A sleeveless priest's chasuble seen flat against a gray backdrop: cream needle lace of scrolling flowers laid over bright red fabric, with a wide central vertical band of finer pattern between two broader side panels.](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/jvxyxtrt/production/1c51c4452dad8fe2c809ebd94b916cbad5c907b7-3142x4000.jpg?w=1280&fit=max&q=78&auto=format)
*Chasuble of needle lace, second half of 17th century. Needle lace, gros point lace, silk lining, H. 99.1 cm. The Met, 10.186.1. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. CC0*

The Met's chasuble above is shown for the format: bands of raised needle lace laid over red. Its record does not name a dealer, and none is claimed here.

| Alteration | Who describes it | What the source says |
| --- | --- | --- |
| New ground under old motifs | Jackson 1900; Moody 1909 | Motifs unpicked from a worn ground and reapplied. On a needle-made ground, Jackson says much of the value is lost if it is remounted on machine net |
| Replaced bars | Jourdain 1908 | Bars are missing, or details are forced to touch where bars should be |
| Rearranged motifs | Palliser 1865; Jourdain 1908 | Scrolls broken and re-aimed; detached flowers sewn in without a stalk |
| Strips joined | Moody 1909 | A seam along the length and a new edge that frays |
| Remounted, new edging | V&A record 743-1870 | A narrow edging that matches the rest of a set and is later than the lace |
| Reshaped for a new fashion | Moody 1909 | A shawl re-joined as a collar, with the same stitch and a new outline |

## Is mended or made-up lace a fake?

Not by the standards of the people who did it. Moody offered a rule: think of a faked lace "as pretending to be other than it really is." On that account, Point de Gaze remounted on machine net becomes a real lace of another class, while Italian flounces whose Milanese ground was replaced by needle ground count as faked, as do scraps joined with crochet or needle bars that "so often pass muster as Flemish."

Contemporary writers disagreed about how much deception there was. Jourdain wrote in 1908 that the making up of flowers from Italian rose point was "the only 'faking' which is possible in lace," and that it was only a re-arrangement of genuine old pieces. She called the replacement of bars by menders "a legitimate branch of lace-mending," and said machine imitations are practically never described or sold as real lace in a dealer's shop. The 1902 edition of Palliser says that dealers in Paris pass Saxon needle lace made in imitation of old [Brussels](https://teazle.art/glossary/brussels-lace.md) and [Chantilly](https://teazle.art/glossary/chantilly-lace.md) types off as old. Moody warned of gummed lace and of names stretched to cover anything.

Both can be true: a trade that openly repaired and rearranged lace, and sellers who described the result generously. The useful question is not "is it real?" but "which parts are what age, and was the buyer told?" A museum answers in its date line. The Met catalogs a collar of linen needle lace in the point de neige style as having "late 17th and late 19th century elements." What would mislead is a single date for the whole.

## How do you tell old, mended and composite lace apart?

Look at the bars, the scroll, the flowers and the way the piece lies. Jourdain's 1908 tests were written for Italian [rose point](https://teazle.art/glossary/rose-point.md), the lace she singled out as made up, and they apply to raised needle lace in which separate motifs are held by thread [bars](https://teazle.art/glossary/bride-lace.md).

In that lace the bars are more liable to be destroyed than the thick, solid ornament. A mender replaces them, and Jourdain says that is legitimate. But for the most part, she writes, a piece without bars should be looked on with suspicion, although a few exceptional pieces were made with none. A scroll that was free and linked by bars may have been "wrenched and bent" so that its details touch. Her signs: overlapping and encroaching details, a design that loses continuity, a scroll that wrinkles and will not lie flat, detached flowers hanging in open spaces without a stalk, and some areas thicker and heavier than others, because the flowers came from pieces of different design and quality.

![Close view of one side of the collar: raised scrolls, leaves and small flowers joined by fine bars with tiny loops, and a narrow band of straight-edged openwork along the neck edge at upper right.](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/jvxyxtrt/production/2971f02c232834e690ffcbddde9c34cce92098dc-2000x1487.jpg?w=1280&fit=max&q=78&auto=format)
*Detail of the same collar, 08.180.701. The Met's record does not say which parts are the later elements. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. CC0*

Apply the tests to the Met's collar. Its photograph shows raised scrolling stems with tiny loops, and along the neck edge a narrow band of flat openwork that looks different from the scrolls. The Met catalogs the lace as [point de neige](https://teazle.art/glossary/point-de-neige.md), which Jourdain dates to about 1650–1720. But the record says only that some elements are late seventeenth century and some late nineteenth, and does not say which, and a photograph cannot settle it. To go further you would need the piece in hand: turn it over, follow the threads, compare the bars.

Here is the short list to carry:

- Do the bars look the same everywhere, or does their thickness, stitch or decoration change?
- Does each scroll run on through a join, or stop and restart?
- Is any flower floating, attached to nothing?
- Does the piece lie flat, or does it wrinkle?
- Is one area heavier or denser than the rest?
- Is the ground the same make as the motifs, and was it replaced?
- Does the edging match the main lace?
For handmade against machine-made lace, a different question, see [Handmade or Machine? How to Read a Piece of Lace](/techniques/handmade-or-machine-how-to-read-lace).

![A long, narrow strip of cream needle lace mounted on red cloth: round and flower-like medallions alternate with sprays of leaves along the whole length, with a straight, finely toothed edge.](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/jvxyxtrt/production/5a91fd09ec8e17d06ce4178aaeef031083a6ddc4-3913x1161.jpg?w=1280&fit=max&q=78&auto=format)
*Border of needle lace, early 17th century. Linen needle lace, 102.2 × 10.8 cm. The Met, 33.90.29. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. CC0*

The Met's border above shows a regular repeat in a photograph: round medallions alternating with leaf sprays along the whole length. That is a visual comparison only, and the Met's record does not say whether the piece has been altered.

## What should you ask before buying antique lace today?

Ask what has been done to it. Mending was ordinary trade practice, so the question is how much, and where. Moody's 1909 advice still holds: lace mended with a needle-made imitation of the ground is "reduced in value" and "cannot be classed among the perfect specimens," and a flounce cut into strips and joined, unless the design is complete and the ground or bars perfect, is "likely to prove a bad bargain."

Other warnings are practical. Treat names as claims: "Italian," Moody wrote, is "a nice capacious name that will safely envelop a great many varieties." Look at the back for the connecting stitches, because Moody's test for gummed lace, motifs stuck to a net instead of sewn, is to look there. For the finer needle laces Moody says the net can be reproduced so exactly as to be "practically invisible," so for those a photograph proves little, and you should ask to see the piece.

Care has changed too. Jackson's 1900 manual told readers to darn and rebuild. The V&A's current guidance for vintage veils says torn or fragile ones "should not be darned, but must be supported from behind with net fabric," that ironing is likely to damage antique lace, and that silk veils belong with a textile conservator. That advice is for veils, not a museum policy for every lace. It does show the shift: a Victorian restorer replaced what was missing, and a conservator's advice for a veil is to support what remains.

An altered piece is not worthless. Museums hold such pieces, the Met's collar among them, and the V&A bought its chasuble with its alterations. What a good record gives you is dates for the parts, not one date for the whole.

## What should you know before you go to Lace and Legacy?

The Bowes Museum shows *Lace and Legacy: Fashion Treasures from the Blackborne Collection* from 14 November 2026 to 11 April 2027, marking twenty years since *Fine & Fashionable*, the 2006–07 show of more than 200 pieces. The museum says the new exhibition looks at the antique lace trade through the Blackborne family business and includes newly studied works and items not seen before, alongside student work from an AHRC-funded research partnership. We have not seen it, and this is not a review.

What this article offers is a way to read labels. When one carries a single date, ask whether it covers the whole piece. The Bowes calls a cloak band of 1635 "a very rare survivor, thought to be the only example of this style that is genuine and unaltered," and describes a man's cravat of 1670–1690, in raised Venetian needle lace, as "tied with added linen and silk ribbon." Those words show a museum saying which of its pieces it believes were left alone, and what was added to another.

The questions in this piece are ones a visitor can bring to the cases: which parts are what age, what was replaced, and who knew.


## Sources

1. [The Blackborne Collection of Laces (note, p. 87) and the article on the collection, Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, vol. 4, no. 5 (May 1909)](https://archive.org/details/sim_metropolitan-museum-of-art-new-york-bulletin_1909-05_4_5). Archive.org scan (Serials in Microfilm)
2. [Chasuble, 743-1870 (museum record)](https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O86338/). Victoria and Albert Museum
3. [History of Lace (1865), Mrs. Bury Palliser](https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_viEMAAAAYAAJ). Archive.org scan of the first edition
4. [History of Lace, 4th edition (1902), Palliser, revised by Alice Dryden and Margaret Jourdain](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/57009). Project Gutenberg, ebook 57009
5. [A History of Hand-Made Lace (1900), Mrs. F. Nevill Jackson](https://archive.org/details/historyofhandmad00jackrich). Archive.org scan
6. [Old Lace: A Handbook for Collectors (1908), Margaret Jourdain](https://archive.org/details/oldlacehacol00jourdain). Archive.org scan
7. [Lace Making and Collecting: An Elementary Handbook (1909), A. Penderel Moody](https://archive.org/details/cu31924050710718). Archive.org scan
8. [Collar, late 17th and late 19th century elements, 08.180.701](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/215050). The Metropolitan Museum of Art
9. [Chasuble of needle lace, 10.186.1](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/218985). The Metropolitan Museum of Art
10. [Border of needle lace, 33.90.29](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/197360). The Metropolitan Museum of Art
11. [Collection of lace, 09.68.1-.689 (Purchase by subscription, 1909)](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/830281). The Metropolitan Museum of Art
12. [A. Blackborne & Company](https://www.trc-leiden.nl/trc-needles/organisations-and-movements/companies/a-blackborne-company). Textile Research Centre, Leiden (TRC Needles)
13. [Blackborne Collection](https://trc-leiden.nl/trc-needles/collections/europe/blackborne-collection). Textile Research Centre, Leiden (TRC Needles)
14. [Lace and Legacy: Fashion Treasures from The Blackborne Collection](https://thebowesmuseum.org.uk/exhibitions/lace-and-legacy-fashion-treasures-from-the-blackborne-collection/). The Bowes Museum
15. [The Blackborne Lace Collection](https://thebowesmuseum.org.uk/collections/blackborne-lace-collection/). The Bowes Museum
16. [Discovery and Documentation: The Blackborne Lace Collection (blog, 11 Nov 2011), Annabel Talbot](https://thebowesmuseum.org.uk/discovery-and-documentation-the-blackborne-lace-collection/). The Bowes Museum
17. [Fine and Fashionable: Lace from the Blackborne Collection (exhibition page)](https://fashionexhibitionmaking.arts.ac.uk/fine-and-fashionable-lace-lace-from-the-blackborne-collection/). Fashion Exhibition Making, University of the Arts London
18. [Caring for vintage wedding dresses & veils (last updated 17 April 2024)](https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/caring-for-vintage-wedding-dresses-veils). Victoria and Albert Museum

## Glossary

- [Rose point](https://teazle.art/glossary/rose-point.md): Rose point is Venetian needle lace worked in high relief, with rounded, lobed scrolls and flowers joined by a ground of decorated bars.
- [Point de neige](https://teazle.art/glossary/point-de-neige.md): Point de neige is Venetian raised needle lace, in vogue from about 1650 to 1720, with small detached sprays on a ground of decorated bars.
- [Bride (lace)](https://teazle.art/glossary/bride-lace.md): A bride is a small thread bar that links the motifs of a lace; in needle lace it is usually overcast with buttonhole stitches, often with tiny picots.
- [Needle lace](https://teazle.art/glossary/needle-lace.md): Needle lace is lace built up stitch by stitch with a needle and a single thread, usually over a design laid down on parchment or fabric.
- [Alençon lace](https://teazle.art/glossary/alencon-lace.md): Alençon lace is a French needle lace, made in the town of Alençon in Normandy, with motifs outlined in a raised thread on a fine net ground.
- [Brussels lace](https://teazle.art/glossary/brussels-lace.md): Brussels lace is a family of laces made in and around Brussels, including fine bobbin laces whose motifs were made separately and joined to a ground.
- [Chantilly lace](https://teazle.art/glossary/chantilly-lace.md): Chantilly lace is a fine bobbin lace, usually black silk, with floral designs outlined in a thicker thread on a delicate net ground.

Canonical: https://teazle.art/stories/antique-lace-dealers-mended-composite-how-to-tell