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This embroidered snail nestles amidst the formal scrolling design on the gauntlet of a man's glove from the middle of the seventeenth century. Animals, insects and birds were as popular as flowers or fruit in Jacobean needlework, often very realistic, although sometimes delightfully out of scale. Our snail has been sewn in coiled stitches in metal thread over padding, against a pink silk satin ground. The rest of the gauntlet is completely covered in sumptuous metal thread embroidery with vandyked silver gilt bobbin lace as an edging.

Gloves were frequently presented as lavish courtly or civic gifts, decorated with highly and expensively embroidered gauntlets or cuffs, and not intended for wear. Queen Elizabeth and King James l were both given many pairs of gloves on their tours around the kingdom, usually as presents from loyal subjects and civic bodies anxious to impress or to solicit favours. These gloves are part of the Filmer Collection, and although they are from the reign of Charles l, they are still made in an earlier Elizabethan embroidery tradition.

Full item descriptions:

"gloves" [2003.70/2]

Related Themes:

Filmer Collection
Embroidery
Gloves