| Notes on Costume terms: |
| Purfiled, purfled, purfylled, purfold |
| The word is found in the 14th, 15th and 16th Centuries and has three related meanings: 1. Edged with fur or (later) edged with contrasting fabric 2. Any decoration at the edge of a garment, especially the hem 3. (by 1530) the verb to purfle means to embroider |
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| In this detail of a portrait by Jean Hey of Madeleine of Burgundy Presented by Saint Mary Magdalene, painted around 1490, now in the Louvre in Paris, the Duchess's gown is purfiled at the sleeves and along the neck and center front edges. |
| Canturbury Tales, General Prologue: The Monk I seigh his sleves purfiled at the hond - With grys, [grey squirrel fur] and that the fyneste of a lond; (late 14th century) |
| Piers Plowman, 14 c poem Pasus 2 (description of Meed the Maid (or Lady Fee - perhaps we should translate her name as Lady Kickback) I loked on my left half as the Lady me taughte, And was war of a womman wonderliche yclothed -- Purfiled with pelure [purfiled with fur], the pureste on erthe, |
| Re: Coronation of Richard III 'My Lady of Richemond' was given from the Royal Wardrobe for the coronation ceremonies, ten yards of scarlet for her livery, a long gown made of 'vi yards of crymysyn velvet and purfiled with vi yards of white cloth of gold', and another long gown of blue velvet 'purfiled' with crimson cloth of gold. [from Antiquarian Repertory, i. 48, 55, |
| How knyghtis of the bath shulde be made, Then they shall doo up on them longe blewe gownis and it muste be prifild aboute with ermyn and a white lase of silke with golde in the toftis muste be pynid a pyn up on his lyfte schuldir and a hood of the same purfiled aboute of the shappe as becheloeris of lawe have and the hoode muste be caste aboute his nek and the hood and the tipet pynnid to gedir up on the lyfte schuldir and then theyt schall goo alle to gedir un to the kyng . . |
| The Floure and the Leafe, poem c. 1460-1480 ediy Derek Pearsall 325 That came roming out of the field wide, Hond in hond, a knight and a lady; The ladies all in surcotes, that richely Purfiled were with many a rich stone; And every knight of greene ware mantels on, |
| Richard III society Purfle, - Ent. 9, 50 - A kind of border, hem, or rather, trimming of gowns. Palsgrave, in 1530, translates, "Purfyll a hemme of a gowne" by "bort." In the 37th Edw. III. esquires and gentles below the rank of knights who had not lands of the value of 100 l. a-year, and their wives, daughters, and children were forbidden to wear "ascun revers ou purfil." -- Rot. Parl. 278, 281. Eleanor Lady Walsyngham bequeathed her daughter "a purfle of sable" in 1506. Purfle, in Ent. #50, is used as a verb, and there means to embroider, crule being twisted yarn. In the inventory of the effects of Sir John Fastolfe is "j gowne of blewe felwett upon felwet longe furrid withe martyrs and perfold of the same, slevys sengle." -- Archaeologia, xxi. 252. |