This is my reproduction 16th century Elizabethan coif. The reproduction is based on a coif in a book by Seligman. Full attribution is found in the bibliography section of the paper.
Unfortunately for web readers, a lot of my source material is personal photos taken in museum collections that I cannot post online in addition to photos found in Janet Arnold’s Patterns of Fashion 4.
The first time I displayed this coif was for the Interbaronial A&S Champions Competition at Atlantian Kingdom Arts & Sciences Festival in February 2011.
Starter Kit for Coif Research
| Book Title | Coifs & Forehead Cloths | |
| 1 | Upstairs Downstairs Plain & FancyBritish Samplers and Historic Embroideries 1590-1880
Whitney Antiques 1999 |
Coif & forehead cloth, pg 4. No date but probably 1600-1620. |
| 2 | A Golden Age: Rate and Historic Embroideries From the 16th and 17th CenturiesWhitney Antiques 2008 | Plate 5 – Polychrome linen coif, c. 1600. Says matching forehead cloth in V&A T-76-1911
Plate 6 – Linen coif in silver & silk c. 1600 |
| 3 | English Embroideries by Mary M BrooksAshmolean Handbooks, Ashmolean Museum 2004
Jonathan Horne Publications, London |
2 coifs & 1 forehead cloth pg 73, 75 |
| 4 | English Embroidery from the Metropolitan Museum of Art1580-1700 Twixt Art & Nature | Polychrome coif, item# 64.101.1258 pg 47Coif (Aimee’s reproduction based on this coif) pg 172
Coif item# 64.101.1242, pg 178 Forehead cloth item# 64.101.1243 |
| 5 | Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’dJanet Arnold, 1988 | Coif, Royal Museum of Scotland pg 205Coif & forehead cloth 1600-10, Lord Middleton Collection, Museum of Costume & Textiles Nottingham pg 49 |
| 6 | Patterns of Fashion 4, c. 1540-1660Janet Arnold, 2008 | Pg 46 coifs:item# 1965-722 National Museum of Scotland
item# 29/130 Burrell Collection item# 29/131 Burrell Collection (no #) Coif, Lord Middleton Collection, Museum of Costume & Textiles Nottingham item# 34.226 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston item# 979.296.8 Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto item# 29.22 Burrell Collection
Pg 48 coif: item# 1956-1198 National Museum of Scotland |
| 7 | Domestic EmbroideryG. Saville Seligman & Talbot Hughes
London – Country Life (This book is very old, 1925 I think.) |
Plate 8 – Pear pattern |
| 8 | Catalogue of English Domestic Embroidery of the 16th & 17th CenturiesJohn L. Nevinson
(This book is old.) |
Plate LXIIPlate LXI
Plate LX (2) Burrell Collection |
16th Century German Costuming 