Cap

A woollen cap with two overlapping half-brims from the 16th century. It was knitted in the round in stocking stitch on 4 or 5 needles, then fulled (washed, beaten and felted) and napped (raising and trimming the pile) to produce a stiff, hardwearing fabric. Knitted caps were worn by men in London's business and working communities in Tudor times. They were designed to be warm and waterproof. A range of styles and qualities were available to suit the taste and pocket of the customer.

There were as many as 15-20 successive stages involved in making one cap and they are products of highly-skilled, professional workers. Bright colours such as blue or red were common, as were black and dark brown. Most of the caps are now shades of brown from long immersion in damp earth and would need dyed analysis to discover their original colour.

The piece was bought from the artist (John) Seymour Lucas in 1913 and may have formed part of his set of studio costumes and props used in historical genre paintings. No further find details are known. Workman in the early 20th century digging deep foundations for new buildings around the City of London found many pieces of clothing and textiles buried in the earth. Many are in a good state of preservation and may have been lost from wearers’ heads or discarded when they became unfashionable (from around 1570), thrown into the City ditch and cesspits. Unfortunately, because these were not formal archaeological excavations, any strata details or contextual material such as pottery that would help date the caps more closely were lost.

These caps are sometimes called ‘apprentice’ or ‘statute’ caps. In 1571 a statue was passed ordering every man over the age of six, except those of high rank, to wear a knitted woollen cap made in England on Sundays and holidays.

Some caps were trimmed with ribbons to imitate more expensive versions in silk. Wealthy Londoners wore headgear influenced by European fashions, and the bonnets (a cloth cap) from Milan, ornamented with ostrich feather plumes, aglets (metal tags) and brooches, were much in vogue.

TECHNICAL INFORMATION

The cap, including crown and brims, is knitted in the round in one continuous working, using random decreases on the crown to achieve the round shape without spiral patterns of counted decreases. The fulling has made it very stiff, with no elasticity or ‘give’ at all. The feel is more like crisp felt than soft knitting. The woollen yarn has a hard twist to it, much more tightly spun than modern yarns. This gives the density of fibres that creates the very fine, dense, velvety nap remaining on some caps. This cap has a lot of surviving pile which entirely obscures the knit loops underneath. The fulling can also make it difficult to determine the yarn spin direction.

Ahe cap has an oval shape similar to cap 24779
Yarn - z spun, 2 ply. 8.5 stitches per inch.15 rows per inch. Munsell Colour Value 2.5YR 2.5/2 (very dusky red). Weight: 121 grams.
Fine velvety pile present. The ground yarn is paler than the pile, suggesting the cap was dyed after construction. Average width of crown 8.5 inches; circumference 19 inches; brim width 1.75 inches; overbrim width 1.5 inches