Bedcover 1725–50 British While the Portuguese were undoubtedly the first importers and consumers of the Indian embroideries made for the western European market, at least a few examples of these textiles did appear in England by the late sixteenth century. The 1601 inventory of Bess of Hardwick, Countess of Shrewsbury (1527—1608), included two quilts that were almost certainly products of this trade: "a quilt of yellow India stuff embroidered with birds and beasts" and "a quilt of India stuff embroidered with beastes."¹ Indian quilts of the type produced for the Portuguese market appeared with

Bedcover 1725–50 British While the Portuguese were undoubtedly the first importers and consumers of the Indian embroideries made for the western European market, at least a few examples of these textiles did appear in England by the late sixteenth century. The 1601 inventory of Bess of Hardwick, Countess of Shrewsbury (1527—1608), included two quilts that were almost certainly products of this trade: "a quilt of yellow India stuff embroidered with birds and beasts" and "a quilt of India stuff embroidered with beastes."¹ Indian quilts of the type produced for the Portuguese market appeared with increasing frequency in London sales into the 1620s, when their value began to decline, perhaps because of diminishing novelty.²The taste for Indian-style embroidery remained, however, and it is interesting to note that the English maker of another bedcover in the Museum's collection (MMA ) used not only the Indian palette of golden yellow on white but also an imported Indian cotton as the foundation. The cover has rare seventeenth-century marks on the plain-weave cotton fabric: the initials (for the English East India Company's original name, The Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies) as well as three other stamps whose significance has not yet been deciphered.³ On that bedcover, the embroidered designs draw heavily on such exotic motifs as pineapple-like vegetation and serrated leaves, but contemporary European sensibilities are also evident in the strapwork connecting the floral elements. Additionally, the three-dimensionality of the embroidery and the use of stitches with long floats that create a shinier surface to contrast with the matte appearance of the cotton ground diverge from the Indian prototypes, whose flatter chain stitches are less glossy. English bedcovers were usually part of coordinated sets that could include bolsters, pillows, and matching valances.⁴In addition to the more common monochrome yellow-

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