Saturday, January 22, 2022

Man's cap (18th-century Italy)

Detail of a "man's night cap" at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, no,38.1281.

The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has in their collection what is described as a "man's night cap of natural linen knit in lace pattern," being a "conical cap with knitted ornament on top."  ("Ornament" is rather grand for the fairly-typical modest "tail" at the top of this cap, but there it is.)

The MFA is quite strict about usage of their photographs of objects in their collection, and so I have included only a small cropped part in order to show the lace stitch; it is well worth a visit even virtually to see the shape of this interesting cap, and to ponder whether it would be much use as a cap for sleeping in, or if perhaps "night cap" is a more general term for informal wear.

The cap looks, by the way, to have been knitted from the bottom up, possibly switching from right-side to wrong-side so that both the brim and the head sections show right-side-out.

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