Not having heard the word before, I'd assumed that a cope was a cape,
probably to go round the shoulders, but I just happened across the word
'cope' this morning, and the definition given is "priest's long cloaklike
vestment". So the pricking isn't for what I thought it was, but that doesn't
make it any less impressive.
Hi Jean:
Like you, I don't have a copy of "Romance of the Lace Pillow" so I can't comment on the photo. However, in Springett's book she only says that it is labelled 'Part of a Cope' *in Thomas Wright's book.* The word 'cope' does not seem to have been used by Miss Pope on the pricking, and she (and we) surely can't be bound by what an author chooses to say in his book! Christine Springett also says that in her opinion it is for a cape rather than a cope.
Looking at the pattern itself, the lace is 11" at its widest point and the inside edge, which Springett says is to be mounted onto net, seems to be about the right size to go around the shoulders of a smallish woman. I think that if this were made up, it would make into an elbow length cape, with the portion from the shoulder to the neck edge being made of the machine net, and the lace part hanging down from the edge of the shoulder to the elbow or so.
My Oxford Reference dictionary gives a second meaning of 'cope' as '(esp poetical) anything like a cope' and it would not surprise me to find that Wright was deliberately using poetic language, which was quite in vogue at the time he wrote his book.
Just my 2 cents.
Adele North Vancouver, BC (west coast of Canada)
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