Jacket

The tablet-woven braid that runs diagonally from the upper left towards the lower right of this sleeve is quite astonishing. It is made from many colours of silk thread forming fine stripes and its lower part has been embroidered with metal thread across the width to form more complex patterns. The diagonal opening it decorates is on the under part of the wrist and would not always have been visible, but attention to detail was evidently important. Metal threads decorate the rest of the jacket but they appear unremarkable compared with the exquisite beauty of the short length of embroidery on each cuff.

When it was acquired by the Museum this jacket was thought to have been made in North Africa but it was re-catalogued as Albanian when further research indicated that it was remarkably similar to a jacket and waistcoat purchased by the English poet Lord Byron in Tepalene, Albania in 1809.