Two 14th century embroidered English copes, in the collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum:
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This cope illustrates the third of the three major decorative schemes found in English copes of the medieval period, which overlap chronologically. In the two other schemes the figures are arranged in horizontal rows, and thus are not ideally suited to the curved shape of the cope. In this example, however, the figures framed within Gothic arches are arranged in concentric rows so that they follow the curved edge and sit favorably in relation to the hem.
The red velvet ground of Italian origin is an ideal foil for the high quality English embroidery, which was sought after throughout Europe and bought by princes and Popes. The scenes show the Life of the Virgin; apostles and saints with crouching lions; lion masks; angels; and a pair of birds. The cope relates very closely to a chasuble now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, known as the Chichester-Constable chasuble, and they may have been designed to be used together.
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This cope... is now known as the Syon Cope and takes its name from the Bridgettine convent of Syon in Middlesex, which was founded by King Henry V in 1414-15. It is probable that the nuns took the cope with them when they went into exile during the reign of Elizabeth I and that it was returned when the Order was re-established in England in about 1810.
On the original vestment there would have been four rows (on the reconstituted cope there are three) of interlaced quatrefoil shaped compartments with scenes from the Life of the Virgin and the Life of Christ and the Apostles; the latter, seen in the fourth dismembered row, are not identifiable. Between the compartments are six winged seraphs and along the upper edge are the remains of angels holding crowns and the figures of two kneeling clerics, possibly representing the priest for whom the vestment was made. They hold scrolls with undecipherable Latin inscriptions.
Unique among surviving examples of opus anglicanum, the ground is entirely covered in red (now faded to brown) and green silk thread. The orphrey bands with heraldic shields around the circumference and along the top edge of the cope are made from pieces of contemporary vestments.
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