A glove story

A glove story

by Pompi Parry

When we were examining a pair of Gauntlet gloves from the mid 1600s from the collection, we made a surprising and exciting discovery. The gloves are made from cream leather and are beautifully decorated with silver metal fringe and embroidery. The edges of the fingers are also accentuated with a line of silver chain stitch.

But it was inside the gloves that we made the discovery. When we looked inside we found they were lined with a document. Beautiful clear Latin script on what - we weren’t sure?

Sadly, I don’t read Latin. My mind raced – was this subversive religious text or just 1600s up-cycling? We were lucky enough that a specialist from the Cathedral team kindly agreed to have a closer look at them. She told us they were lined with very early paper, possibly from around 1530 or even a bit earlier than that. We are still hoping to translate the document but the pieces of paper are not whole so we may never know what the document says.
 
We have not found another pair of gloves lined with a document, do get in touch if you know of any! Please drop us a line via email!