Kokoshnik headdress, green silk velvet embroidered with metal thread and spangles. Lined with naboika (block-printed cotton). Russian or Estonian, late 19th century.

Headdress, a green velvet round hat with a wide crown and no brim, embroidered with silver-gilt metallic thread and spangles in a design of leaves. Large blue silk bow attached to back of headdress. Lined with two different patterns of block-printed cotton (naboika) in shades of brown, yellow, and rust.

Given by Richard Seth-Smith

The group of garments (T.22 to 24-2017) came into the donor's family via his wife's great uncle, Wilfred di Glehn, RA (1870-1951, formerly Wilfried von Glehn). According to the donor, Glehn had family connectons to Tallinn, Estonia, and it is thought that this is where the garments were acquired originally.

Wilfried di Glehn's grandfather, Robert von Glehn, was a Russian merchant from a German family who had been born in Reval (now Tallinn) in 1801, and grew up there in a castle. After the Napoleonic wars ended in 1815, Robert von Glehn moved to London. The von/di Glehns were an illustrious family including many artists, engineers and scholars, alongside merchants such as Robert and Robert's son, Wilfred's father, Alexander von Glehn, who worked as an East India merchant. Wilfred himself was particularly known as a fine British Impressionist painter and he and his artist wife Jane Erin Emmett were close friends of Johh Singer Sargent. The von Glehns changed their name to the less Germanic "di Glehn" either during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, (Wilfrid's uncle Alfred, who was working in France as a locomotive engineer, became de Glehn), or in Wilfrid's case, during the First World War.

- Daniel Milford-Cottam (01/02/2017)

T.23-2017