# The Syon Cope > London embroiderers of the opus anglicanum trade, workshop unidentified - c. 1300-1320 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/opus-anglicanum-london-workshop/syon-cope-va/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-16 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** London embroiderers of the opus anglicanum trade, workshop unidentified - **Date:** c. 1300-1320 - **Medium:** Linen ground, embroidered with coloured silks, silver-gilt and silver thread, in split stitch, underside couching, laid-and-couched work, cross stitch and plait stitch - **Dimensions:** 150.5 x 305 x 0.5 cm (measured flat) - **Object type:** Textile - **Period:** English, early fourteenth century - **Current location:** Victoria and Albert Museum, London, on display in the Medieval and Renaissance galleries - **Attribution:** unknown ## Summary An English ecclesiastical vestment embroidered around 1300-1320, entirely covered in split-stitch figures and underside-couched silver-gilt thread on alternating red and green silk, one of the finest survivals of the London luxury embroidery trade known as opus anglicanum. It was made as a chasuble and only later cut down and reassembled into the cope shape it now has, decades before Syon Abbey, the Bridgettine house whose name it carries, was even founded in 1415.How the vestment reached the Bridgettine nuns is not documented, nor is the exact route it took through their sixteenth-century dissolution, continental exile and eventual return to England, beyond the consistent but hedged claim that it travelled with the community. What is documented is its passage through the Catholic revivalist circle around John Talbot, 16th Earl of Shrewsbury, and his chaplain Dr Daniel Rock, before the South Kensington Museum bought it in 1864 under the museum number, 83-1864, it still carries today.It remains on display at the V&A, the most complete single-object statement of a trade so admired across thirteenth-century Europe that a pope is recorded asking for more of it by name. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **c. 1300-c. 1320** Unknown original patron(s); orphrey heraldry points to gentry families connected to Thetford and Norfolk `[documented]` (origin, as a chasuble) Made as a chasuble, not a cope; the later conversion into cope form is separately documented and is not part of this origin event. - **undated** Unknown `[documented]` (conversion of the chasuble into a cope, with new orphrey, hood and morse added) Date and agent of the conversion are not given in any source consulted; only the fact of the conversion, and its effect on the surviving design, is documented. - **-1539** Bridgettine nuns of Syon Abbey, Isleworth `[documented]` (possession before the dissolution) The community's possession of the cope by the time of the 1539 dissolution is stated consistently across sources. How and when the vestment, made decades before the abbey's 1415 foundation, reached the community is not documented anywhere consulted for this record. - **1539** Bridgettine community in continental exile `[disputed]` (dissolution and exile) The community's expulsion and continental exile from 1539 is documented. That the cope specifically was hidden and carried into exile with the nuns, rather than separated from them at dissolution, is described in the secondary literature only as probable, not as a documented event. - **1594-1861** Bridgettine community, resident in Lisbon, Portugal `[unknown]` (continental residence) The community's own residence in Lisbon across this period is documented. No source consulted places the cope specifically in Lisbon during this span; its presence with the community there is an assumption of continuity, not a documented fact. - **-early 19th century (per sources 1 and 2)** John Talbot, 16th Earl of Shrewsbury `[disputed]` (gift from the exiled nuns) Two tertiary sources (the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica and the V&A's own summary provenance note) state the cope was given by the returning nuns to the Earl of Shrewsbury early in the nineteenth century. This sits awkwardly against the community's own documented return to England only in 1861, nine years after Talbot's death in 1852; the discrepancy is not resolved in any source consulted and is recorded as an open question. - **undated** Dr Daniel Rock `[documented]` (passed from the Earl of Shrewsbury's circle) Rock was Talbot's domestic chaplain from 1827, resident at Alton Towers until 1840, and later, in 1870, compiled the South Kensington Museum's own descriptive catalogue of its textile collection. The V&A's own provenance note places the cope in his hands after Talbot. - **-1864** James Brown, Bishop of Shrewsbury `[documented]` (passed from Rock) Brown was the first Roman Catholic Bishop of Shrewsbury, in office 1851-1881, a diocese covering Talbot's own Staffordshire territory. The V&A's own provenance note places the cope in his hands immediately before the museum's purchase. - **1864-present** South Kensington Museum, later the Victoria and Albert Museum, London `[documented]` (acquisition) Bought in 1864 under museum number 83-1864, which the object still carries. No source consulted records the price paid or names the immediate vendor with certainty. ## Open questions - How did the cope, made c. 1300-1320 for a patron connected to Thetford and Norfolk, come into the possession of Syon Abbey, which was not founded until 1415? No source consulted documents the gift, bequest or purchase that brought it to the Bridgettine community. - Does the heraldry on the orphrey date to the original chasuble's commission, or only to the later conversion into a cope, when the orphrey bands were added? The two events may not be contemporary, and no published account resolves which. - Did the cope travel to the continent with the nuns at the 1539 dissolution, as the secondary literature states with the hedge word 'probably', or was it separated from the community and reunited with them later? No contemporary document recording its removal from England has been identified. - Is the cope's presence documented at any point during the community's 1594-1861 residence in Lisbon, or does the assumption of unbroken ownership rest entirely on the fact that the nuns are recorded owning it again once back in England? - How can the cope's return to England and gift to the Earl of Shrewsbury 'early in the nineteenth century' (per the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica and the V&A's own summary provenance note) be reconciled with the Bridgettine community's own documented return from Lisbon only in 1861, nine years after Talbot's death in 1852? - What did the South Kensington Museum pay for the cope in 1864, and from whom precisely was it bought? The museum's own provenance note names Talbot, Rock and Bishop Brown as successive owners but no source consulted gives a transaction price or an immediate named vendor. - Who were the two kneeling clerical figures embroidered along the upper edge, their scrolls now blank? No documentary identification has been proposed in the literature consulted. ## Sources - [1] Victoria and Albert Museum, 'The Syon Cope' (museum article). - [2] V&A Collections, catalogue entry for 'The Syon Cope', object O93171, museum number 83-1864. - [3] Textile Research Centre, Leiden, 'Syon Cope' entry. - [4] 'Cope', Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th edition (1911), transcribed on Wikisource. A tertiary, pre-1929 source, flagged for replacement with a modern scholarly catalogue entry where its factual claims are not independently corroborated. - [5] Wikipedia, 'Syon Abbey', for the foundation, dissolution, continental exile itinerary and documented 1861 return to England. Flagged for replacement with a scholarly institutional history. - [6] Wikipedia, 'Opus Anglicanum', for the 1295 Vatican inventory, the Matthew Paris/Pope Innocent IV account, and the effect of the Black Death on the trade. Flagged for replacement with a scholarly monograph or the 2016 exhibition catalogue. - [7] Victoria and Albert Museum, 'An A-Z of Opus Anglicanum' (museum article), for underside couching and split stitch technique. - [8] Wikipedia, 'Butler-Bowdon Cope'. - [9] Wikipedia, 'John Talbot, 16th Earl of Shrewsbury'. - [10] Wikipedia, 'Daniel Rock', for his chaplaincy to the Earl of Shrewsbury and his 1870 catalogue of the South Kensington Museum's textile collection. - [11] Wikipedia, 'James Brown (bishop of Shrewsbury)'. - [12] Victoria and Albert Museum, 'The Butler-Bowdon Cope' (museum article), for the 1955 Metropolitan Museum bid and V&A acquisition. - [13] Victoria and Albert Museum, 'The Steeple Aston Cope' (museum article), for its parish ownership and loan to the V&A since 1905. - [14] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, catalogue record for the Chichester-Constable Chasuble, accession 27.162.1. - [15] Wikimedia Commons, File:Syon Cope detail.JPG, photograph by Aiwok, CC BY-SA 3.0. - [16] Wikimedia Commons, File:EB1911 Cope Fig. 2.-THE SYON COPE.jpg, public domain 1911 printed plate. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. 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