Cap

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

These felted knit caps are typical of sixteenth-century headwear in England. Cap knitting was an important domestic industry, restricted to professional guilds and protected by law. One such law, the Statute of Apparel, passed in 1571, specifically stated that all English citizens above the age of six, except nobility, "had on Sabbath and Holydays to wear caps of wool manufactured in England."

The Costume Institute

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Costume Institute's collection of more than thirty-three thousand objects represents seven centuries of fashionable dress and accessories for men, women, and children, from the fifteenth century to the present.

Metropolitan Museum of Art