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The Christian Catholic Church venerates hundreds of saints, many of whom have become officially recognised as patron saints of various groups, guilds, occupations, and so forth.

A sari is a woman’s garment made out of a long length of cloth. It is particularly associated with Hindu women living in the Indian subcontinent and among the Indian diaspora. A sari can vary in length from 4 – 9 metres and may be between 60-120 cm wide. This variation is due to regional differences in form, as well as differing methods in how it is worn (depending on the social group of the wearer, daily or ceremonial occasions, dance, etc).

The House of Worth was a French fashion house that specialized in haute couture. It was founded in 1858 by Charles Frederick Worth (1825-1895). The fashion house was based at Rue de la Paix 17, Paris (France). Charles Worth was an English designer who used to work for various dry-good shops in London before moving to the dry-good and dress making firm of Gagelin et Opigez (Paris) in 1846.

The Arts and Crafts Movement is a late nineteenth century artistic style that took its name from the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society (London), which was founded in 1887. The movement was inspired by the theories of the architect Augustus Pugin (1812-1852) and the art writer John Ruskin (1819-1900). The artist/craftsman William Morris (1834-1896) was also involved in its creation and propagation of the views of its members.

Powdering is a term used to describe the ornamentation of a piece of cloth or other material by scattering and then stitching individual bracteates, jewels, small embroidered motifs, etc. This meaning of the verb ‘to powder’ dates back to the late medieval period in England. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary gives a meaning of "to sprinkle or to spangle (a surface) with ...."

Lady Curzon’s Peacock Dress is an elaborately embroidered garment dating from the early twentieth century. It was worn by Lady Mary Curzon (1870-1906) at the Coronation Ball of the Delhi durbar of 1903. The dress is currently kept at Kedleston Hall (Derbyshire, England), the ancestral home of the Curzon family (National Trust Inventory Number 107881).

A Choice of Emblemes and Other Devises by Geoffrey Whitney is an English/Dutch emblem book, which was used as a source of inspiration for emblem embroidery in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The book was dedicated to the Earl of Leicester, who at the time was the Lord Lieutenant of the English forces fighting against the Spanish who were occupying the Low Countries.

Geoffrey Whitney (c. 1548 – c. 1601) was an English scholar and compiler of an emblem book published in Leiden, The Netherlands in 1586. Whitney was born near Nantwich (Cheshire, England). His father is believed to be Sir Robert Whitney. Geoffrey Whitney went to Magdalene College, Cambridge University and later Oxford University.

Isaac Watts was an English theologian who in 1715 published Divine Songs Attempted in Easy Language for Children. The book was widely used in English schools in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and eventually there were over one thousand editions published.

Skanny is a fifteenth and sixteenth century Russian term for a type of metal thread made from spun gold.