Sudpsuez Tudor Textiles

Words by Eleri Lynn

Tudor Textiles by Eleri Lynn covers the period from the accession of Henry VII in 1485 to the death of his granddaughter Elizabeth I in 1603. It covers textiles other than dress: textiles for interiors, tents, pageants, cloths of estate and (as the Tudors might say) textiles for sundry other uses. Lynn is curator of the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection at Historic Royal Palaces and has in her care some 10,000 items dating back to the 16th century. Among the collections at Hampton Court Palace are Henry VIII’s Abraham tapestries, woven with precious metals, and the Bacton Altar Cloth, a spectacular piece of ecclesiastical textile bling.

Working with the primary source material of one’s book should be a decided advantage. It certainly means Lynn is well placed to argue her opening premise: that textiles were at the heart of the Tudor court and were primary signifiers of wealth, prestige and power. Tudor textiles cost more, and were valued and collected more, than any other art form.

The book’s stated remit is to cover the wider role of textiles at court, rather than details of materials and techniques. The long century encompassed by the book means that a lot of the information presented is necessarily general. But Lynn’s story is by no means under-researched or lightly wrought. Her scholarship is evident not only in what she has included, but equally in what she has left out to ensure the book is fit for a non-specialist audience. The result is still full of detail and evidence that may not have been drawn together in a book before. Tudor Textiles is not comparable to the forensic dive that is a book like Janet Arnold’s Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d. Yet neither is it so light that will not have something to offer textile specialists.