Last time, we looked at the oldest pieces of goldwork embroidery produced in England, which eventually led to an early form of Opus Anglicanum dominated by gold and with sparse use of silk. This time, we dive into the world of the “classic” pieces of Opus Anglicanum. We will also briefly look at the period after this heyday, when English embroidery became influenced by practices on the Continent.

Although nowadays most pieces of Opus Anglicanum that survive are vestments, this embroidery was also used on secular objects. But as secular objects were often more intensively used or used as a kind of piggy bank for when the times were financially less rosy (take off the pearls and gemstones and burn the vestment to retrieve the gold), they did not survive so well. And although the Reformation and the rule of the Puritans must have destroyed many splendid pieces of embroidery (Monnas, 2016b), it also helped their survival. Recusant Catholics hid the vestments instead of using them. Whilst this prolonged their lifecycle, changes in fashion, especially in the shape of the chasuble in the late 16th century, meant that many older chasubles had been cut by the late 18th century (Morgan, 2016). In the case of the funeral palls, they were kept in the care of the brotherhoods they were made for. Sometimes, they were slightly modified by patching over Catholic imagery (funeral pall of the Worshipful Company of the Saddlers) and thus did survive to the present day (Hourihane, 2016).

Today, we are used to seeing specific liturgical colours at particular times in the liturgical calendar. For instance, white (gold, yellow or silver) is used for all solemnities (highest feast days) such as Christmas and Easter. Red is used on the name day of a martyr. However, the current unity in form and function of vestments is the result of a long and not-so-uniform process (Miller, 2014; Stolleis, 2001). The predominance of the survival of red vestments is probably due to the Sarum Rite determining the use of the colour red for ordinary Sundays (Baxter, 2008). Multi-coloured all-over ornamented vestments such as the Pienza cope (see below) could be used year-round.