Pt.2

So, on failing to find a whole lot of embroidered coifs on Elizabethan heads, I ventured to see what I could find for any coif on any head.

First I looked for various paintings of women with very visible coifs and other close fitting head-dress and quickly came up with a few.

As you can see, I managed to find some of various society and types, some very obviously being coifs, other more interesting and those of Lady Mary likely not English anyway.

Some of these I have better/full description for which I might add at a later date, for now, I just wanted to show them together.

Now for women wearing close fitting head-dress under hats and other head-dress.

regardless of what they are wearing, with this type of ensemble, white seems to be the thing

Sadly, we are not getting to see a whole lot of middling classes in paintings, apart from very few examples, so prints were the next obvious option. Of course, with a high chance of finding middling class images, also decreases the chances of finding anything detailed, this is especially true with block-prints created for pamphlets and small books.

This is a melange of prints that show a more stylized form of coif, though sometimes hardly visible. The coifs might also be shown in conjunction with a forehead cloth, more commonly seen listes as cross-cloths (not to be confused with the cross-cloths meant for religious purposes). I also suspect a headkerchief may also be worn. One thing is for certain, is that coifs are not always mentioned with cross-clothes, nor are cross-clothes always mentioned with coifs.

""Many weare such crosse-clothes or forehead clothes as our women use when they are sicke."

Fynes Moryson, on travelling from England to Ireland, 1617

This is just but one form of head cover and it would be a waste to not try and represent the lower classes in this effort. The head-covers shown below may be a coif or simply a scarf tied, it is hard to tell, though they do mostly look to not be quite as close to the head, being fairly baggy in appearance.

Here we also seem to see the appearance of the chin-clout (or so I believe). An interesting thing to note, is the woman with the horn growing out of her head (yes, this is what is apparently happening here) has a coif with a round disk which has been described in one the coif links I provided earlier.