Attractive engraved Victorian trade billhead or invoice heading for Curling & Co., British & Foreign Lace Mender & Cleaner, of 20 Woodstock Street, Bond Street, London.

The heading advertises a range of specialist luxury textile services including:

• Brussels and other flowers appliquée
• Blond and Court lace cleaning
• Chantilly veil repair
• Clear-starching
• Lace mending
• Dress cleaning and dyeing
• Cleaning of shawls, cashmeres and embroideries
• Gauffering, crimping and pinking

The billhead is headed:

BY APPOINTMENT TO THE QUEEN & H.R.H. THE DUCHESS OF KENT

and appears to have been trimmed from a larger commercial invoice or bill, with traces of a manuscript date surviving at lower right, possibly indicating a date in the 1840s-1860s period.

Historical Background

Research identifies the firm with Lydia Amelia Curling, recorded in the 1843 London Directory as Lace Cleaner & Clear Starcher to the Queen at the same Woodstock Street address.

The business occupied a highly specialised niche within the Victorian luxury trades, cleaning, repairing and restoring valuable lace, veils, shawls, embroideries and fashionable dress accessories for elite clientele.

Textile historian Kay Staniland, in In Royal Fashion: The Clothes of Princess Charlotte of Wales & Queen Victoria, records that Curling & Co. served Queen Victoria throughout her reign. Staniland notes that lace removed from the Queen’s dresses was sent to the firm for cleaning before reuse and cites a 1835 advertisement for Curling & Co. offering the cleaning of embroideries, muslins and shawls together with dyeing, fluting, gauffering, crimping and pinking, closely matching the services advertised on this surviving billhead.

Evidence suggests a long-running family business. A directory entry of 1843 records Lydia Amelia Curling at 20 Woodstock Street, while later records show the concern trading as Mrs Curling & Daughter and subsequently as Curling & Lawrence, Court Lace Cleaners and Menders of neighbouring Woodstock Street premises, by appointment to the Queen and Royal Family.

This surviving billhead therefore represents not merely a Victorian trade advertisement, but a documented London firm associated with the care and maintenance of royal and aristocratic lace and luxury textiles during the reign of Queen Victoria.

Trimmed from a larger bill or invoice.

Provenance: 

From the collection of a long established Richmond-upon-Thames resident, focusing on 17th to 19th century trade ephemera, theatre handbills and Acts of Parliament.