The Tudor Revolution

While at Pennsic I had took a class from Mistress Amy Webb of the East Kingdom. She used a term I had not heard before - English monochrome embroidery. Mistress Amy went on to explain that this embroidery has a few characteristics: Stitches are worked in a single color of silk thread. Sometimes gold threads are used to create interest. Stitches used are varied including stem stitch, satin stitch, and double running stitch  Images were taken from English country gardens Stitches are not consistently reversible or counted We have several extant examples of women's coifs embellished with English monochrome embroidery in museums around the world, but very few are seen in the portraiture of the time. If you think about it critically, coifs are more personal (intimate) articles of clothing. Unless the sitter was being painted in a birthing bed, or another intimate setting, there probably wont be a painting of them wearing an elaborately embellished coif. Portraits were usually d...