An embroidered linen coverlet
Early 18th century English
The central oval, borders, and square and quadrant sections finely worked in pale golden-yellow silk in chain stitch, long and short stitch, stem stitch and back stitch with exotic flowers, chinoiserie and turquerie motifs, including crowned and turbaned figures in chariots pulled by butterflies and stags, ho-ho birds, squirrels and a musketeer, over a diaper patterned ground, these applied together with smaller cut-out motifs to an unworked linen panel on which the ink drawn design remains visible. Edged with a yellow silk fringe and backed with linen.
Provenance: Sandford Orcas Manor House. This Dorset house was built by Edward Knoyle in the middle of the 16th century, but after the family’s Catholic and Royalist sympathies told against them over the course of the 17th century it was bought by John Hutchings, the lawyer who had been instructed to handle its sale in 1736. It was held in his family, passing to a cousin, Sir Hubert Medlycott of Ven House, the 6th Baronet, in 1914, until being eventually sold again in 2021. Some of the contents had been at Sandford Orcas throughout, and others previously at Ven, and it is not clear from which of the two houses the coverlet originally derived.
206cm (81”) x 170cm (67”).
