A waistcoat in Historic Deerfield’s collection is just one of over 8,000 items that comprise the museum’s collection of textiles and historic fabrics. The waistcoat is made of a cream silk, decorated with Chinese embroidery of plants and a variety of birds. The designs on these incredibly fine embroideries were often inspired by real plants and animals, such as the Ring-necked Pheasant and the Persian silk tree. However, on the whole these flora and fauna are decorative, not scientific, and like their European painted counterparts they tend towards being composites of various plants or several species of bird at once.
