Two playful monkeys gather fruit from a palm tree beneath the pocket of this 1780s waistcoat. They are embroidered in coloured silks on an ivory ribbed silk. The design for this image, known as Les Macaques can be found in a pattern book of embroidery designs for waistcoats in the Musée Historique des Tissus, in Lyon, France, executed in watercolours. There are no instructions for the floral design worked on the waistcoat’s front edges or the pockets; the embroiderer has invented one inspired by the watercolour, using palm fronds, sprays of grass and floral sprigs.

In addition to floral patterns, figurative and pictorial designs, such as tigers, dogs and scenes from the opera, were popular and appear on other embroidered waistcoats of this period. The Lyon pattern books contain lions, air balloons, architectural ruins and pastoral scenes among their wealth of designs.