Asset number
203768001
Description
A woman's waist-length chemise, or blouse, made of commercially woven, natural coloured, cotton cloth. (The lower band is made of a lighter weight fabric.) Gathered neckline, with long sleeves; hand stitched. 'V' neck opening, secured with a red and white plyed cotton drawstring. A line of linked crosses are embroidered on the small round collar, worked in red cotton thread. The front centre seam has red overstitching (along with most other seams). This is framed by four vertical embroidered panels: a line of floral motifs, red with blue, alternately green, centres (inner); a solid red panel; a line of 'S' / reverse 'S' shaped motifs (red/blue, red/green); a wider panel with a red zigzag in the centre, blue and green infill and red surround (outer). The sleeves have a rectangular embroidered panel of green and red zigzags and blue wool thread and small white plastic beads. Below this is a diamond pattern within a green 'ground' formed from running stitches. The rest of the outer sleeve has raised embroidery, mainly red, with some blue and green, worked on the diagonal. There is a narrow section of smocking beside the embroidered cuff. Two solid red vertical wool panels are worked on the back.
© The Trustees of the British Museum
Using this image
Commercial use
To license images for charged-for journals and publications, and other commercial uses, please contact British Museum Images.
Contact BM images
Non-commercial use
You are permitted to use images from the British Museum website subject to our terms of use.
The image will be released to you under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license. You can read more about the British Museum and Creative Commons here.
Download this image
New photography
If you cannot see an image that you want on the British Museum website, you can order new photography from us.
Order new image