Daily and general garments and textiles

Daily and general garments and textiles

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London houses a woman's marriage coat from Siberia, which is made of sewn salmon skins. It was acquired by the museum in 1905, and information was added that it was a Gilyak coat from the lower Amur river region, near Vladivostok, from a tribe that was "dying out".

The British Museum in London houses a woman's apron from among the Sarakatsani (originally a nomadic group) in northern Greece. Locally called a podia, this example is 36 cm long and made of wool with cross stitch, cotton-thread embroidery, rik-rak and metal thread decoration. The apron is dated to sometime between 1925 and 1950.

In AD 1613, six pairs of pearl embroidered gloves (perhaps comparable to the pearl-embroidered English glove illustrated here) were sent by the Dutch government to the Ottoman sultan, Ahmed I (r: 1590-1617) in Istanbul. In May of the same year, the Dutch ambassador, Cornelis Haga, oversaw the ceremonial presentation of these gloves, plus a vast array of other precious goods, to the Turkish ruler on behalf of the Staten-Generaal of the Netherlands.

In the Blackborne collection of the Bowes Museum (UK), there is a needle lace collar (79 x 21.5 cm), which is believed to date to the 1630's. It may even have been worn by the British king, Charles I (1600-1649). During the late nineteenth century the collar was the property of the London based lace dealers, Blackborne & Co.

The Textile Research Centre (TRC), Leiden, houses an elaborately decorated face veil from the northern parts of the Sinai, Egypt. It measures 36 x 32 cm; the bead tassels are about 50 cm long. Locally called a burqa, the veil is made of cotton cloth and decorated with cotton thread, metal coins and glass beads.

The Sistine Chapel Embroidery is a miniature replica of Michelangelo’s ceiling in the Sistine Chapel, Vatican, executed in cross stitch embroidery, worked between 1996 and 2004 by the Canadian, Joanna Lopianowski-Roberts (from San Francisco, USA)

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London houses a woman's skirt and top designed by the Indian designer, Manish Arora. The garments date to 2014-2015. They are heavily decorated with appliqué, embroidery, and crystal beads and sequins.

Smock is an obsolete English term for a garment now known as a shift or chemise. The word derives from the Old English smoc, cognate to Old German smoccho and Old Norse smokkr. In western Europe, from about the tenth to the sixteenth centuries, a smock was the undermost garment worn by women and many men. It was a loose T-shaped garment with a gathering thread or tape at the neck and at the sleeve edges.

The collection of the Textile Research Centre (TRC), Leiden, includes a typical woman's faceveil from the southern Sinai. Measuring 74 x 54 cm and locally called a burqa, it has a yellow head band decorated with beading.

A stomacher is a triangular panel covering a U- or V-shaped gap in a doublet or gown. A stomacher may be boned, part of a corset or cover the corset. Stomachers were normally very ornamental. During the latter half of the fifteenth century, many European urban men and women started to wear stomachers (which were then called a ‘placard’ or a ‘placket’) with open fronted doublets (men) and gowns (women).

A stomacher was a triangular woman's garment that covered the area between the decolleté and the waistline. These garments were generally decorated, often with embroidery. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam houses such a garment (called a devant-de-gorge or borststuk), dating to c. 1750-1775, with an unknown origin. It measures 40 x 25.6 cm.

The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio, has in its collection a woman's coat (chyrpy) that originates from the Tekke Turkmen in northeastern Iran / Turkmenistan, and approximately dates to the late nineteenth, early twentieth century. It measures 119 x 75 cm and is made of a silk ground material embroidered with stylised tulips worked in chain stitch. This type of coat has false sleeves and was worn over the head.

The Lennox point tresse is a small example of point tresse (hair lace) said to be made by Lady Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox (1515-1578) from her own hair. She was the mother of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, the second husband of Mary, Queen of Scots.

The Plimoth jacket is a recreated seventeenth century embroidered woman’s jacket. It was modelled on two such jackets now in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. The jacket reflects fashionable items of clothing that were popular in the early seventeenth century and worn by noble and wealthy women.

A tippet is a garment worn over the shoulders and around the neck. It is normally made out of a long, narrow piece of cloth, fur or similar material. It has been one of the religious garments in the Western world since at least the medieval period, but is also worn in secular situations.

The British Museum in London houses a man's coat from among the former German population in Transylvania, now in Romania. The coat dates to the period 1880-1920. It measures 125 x 59 cm. The coat is made of sheepskin, and decorated with cut leather appliqué and embroidery.

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London holds a pair of cotton, silk embroidered trousers that date to the mid-nineteenth century and originate from the Zoroastrian community in Iran, and allegedly from the town of Yazd, which is still populated by a large group of adherents of the ancient faith of Zarathustra, also known in the West as Zoroaster.

The Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin houses an embroidered children's bib from among the Ensari Turkmen in Afghanistan. It measures 40 x 37 cm and is made of cotton with silk thread embroidery.

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London holds a relatively old Turkmen chyrpy, a long robe traditionally worn by Tekke Turkmen women over the head and shoulders, with false, decorative sleeves. The robe is made of yellow silk with embroidery in red silk, with small floral motifs. The robe measures 118 x 74 cm.

A white, embroidered woman's robe from the (Tekke) Turkmens in Central Asia is held in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. It has a white ground material, which denotes it was made for an elderly woman or widow. It dates to the first half of the twentieth century. It is made of cotton with silk embroidery. The garment (locally called a chyrpy) is worn over the head and shoulders. The sleeves are purely decorative.

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