Maria Margaret Pollen

Maria Margaret La Primaudaye Pollen (10 April 1838 – c. 1919), known as Minnie, was a decorative arts collector. As Mrs John Hungerford Pollen, she became known during the early-twentieth century as an authority on the history of textiles, publishing Seven Centuries of Lace in 1908.

Life Maria Margaret La Primaudaye was born into a Huguenot family on 10 April 1838, the third child of the Revd Charles John La Primaudaye, a descendant of Pierre de La Primaudaye.

The Pollens had ten children, among them the Jesuit historian and archivist, John Hungerford Pollen, and the journalist, inventor, and businessman, Arthur Hungerford Pollen. The church architect, Francis Pollen, was a great-grandson.

During the 1870s and 1880s, the Pollens rented Newbuildings Place in Shipley, Sussex from Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, a childhood friend of the La Primaudaye family. Relations between the two families, which had been unusually intimate, broke down in 1888 when Lady Anne Blunt accused Arthur Pollen of over-familiarity towards her daughter, Judith. Pollen's collections were exhibited during her lifetime at the South Kensington Museum, where her husband was from 1863 Assistant Keeper; the 1908 Franco-British Exhibition; and the 1910 Japan-British Exhibition. Based on the study of illuminated manuscripts, Italian fresco paintings, and original research into other examples of old lace in private and ecclesiastical collections, the work was notable for arguing that lace, previously thought to have been an invention of the sixteenth century, could be traced back to antiquity through the ornamentation of linen liturgical vestments.

Works

Seven Centuries of Lace, with a preface by Alan S. Cole (London: W. Heinemann, 1908) "Lace" in The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 8 (New York, 1910), pp. 729–32 "Early Design in Lace" in The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 19:98 (May 1911) "Ancient Lace in the Royal Museums, Brussels" in The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 21:114 (September 1912) "Ancient Linen Garments" in The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 25:136 (July 1914) Preface to Anne Pollen, John Hungerford Pollen, 1820-1902 (London: John Murray, 1919)