The particular copes I have selected today are one's which stood out to me for reason of the nobility of their design, as well as the particular beauty of their colour palette. What you will obviously see here is that I tend to favour the more subtle, pastel palette of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The reason for this is simply that, by contrast with later nineteenth century examples which tended toward a darker, Victorian palette, the colours you will see here are both more subtle (so as not to overwhelm the senses), they pair better with the white silk ground they are found upon, and finally, they simply feel more 'festal' somehow. "De gustibus" as they say, but over the years, I continue to come back to this same conclusion.
Here are some examples of the type of thing to which I refer.
If this route seems the 'lesser' of the two paths somehow, perhaps it would help to point out that while embroidery is perhaps the more highly valued art today, historically embroidery would have been considered the lesser of these two options -- a short-cut or workaround to speak in the absence of a fully loomed silk design. If that surprises you, one must keep in mind that the perceived value of something is often tied to the time and difficulty put into obtaining it, and while in earlier centuries most anyone could sit down with a needle and thread and start to impart a design onto something, investing in and obtaining fully loomed silks designs was a substantially more difficult and time-consuming investment. So, in short, it's all a matter of perspective. Both options are equally noble and pleasing so long as the quality and nobility of materials is there.
