Following on: Quilt

[bunnyjadwiga]

I had no idea that a "quilt" was once a term for a padded dressing as well as padded bedcovers, armor lining, etc. The OED gives:

Med. A pad or dressing, spread with a medicinal substance, and applied to the skin. Obs.
1583 P. BARROUGH Methode of Phisicke 32 Make a twilt with iij. sheetes of graie paper, & bast upon it cotton woll. 1601 P. HOLLAND tr. Pliny Hist. World II. XXVIII. xix. 339 The same rennet applied as a cataplasme upon a quilt of wooll [Fr. appliqué en cataplasme, sur de laine; L. in uellere adpositum]. 1626 BACON Sylva Sylvarum §56 The Quilts of Roses, Spices,..&c. are nothing so helpfull as to take a Cake of New bread. 1684 tr. T. Bonet Guide Pract. Physician III. 68 Concerning Quilts and Caps..such as are made of very strong scented things do affect the Head.

So, would the quilted cap filled with lavender mentioned in Banckes' Herbal (1525) also be a quilt? what kind of cap would it be? A skull cap? a bonnet?

Comments

[strawberrykaren.livejournal.com]

There's a description of a coif -- I forget now whether it was in Blackwork or Embroidery 1600-1700 at the Burrell Collection -- that the museum thought had been quilted with ... was it rosemary? I'll see if I can find the reference. (I think it was that the design featured a rosemary pattern, and that there was some thought that it had been quilted, with rosemary in the stuffing, but that any actual physical evidence of such quilting was no longer present on the actual item.)

An equivalent cap for men, I think, would be a nightcap.

[vox8.livejournal.com]

In Classic Garden Design I have made a note on a quote from William Turner (1551)“I judge that the flowers of Lavender quilted in a cap and dayly worne are good for all diseases of the head that come of a cold cause and that they comfort the braine very well."

Which might give a little more of a hint in that it is something that is worn about during the day, which I think reinforces the coif idea.