Object Type
Cushions were important domestic furnishings. In an age when fixed upholstery did not exist, they made hard wooden seats more comfortable, as well as adding decoration and colour. Chairs were then unusual, but the cushions could be used on wooden stools and benches, on window seats and chapel stalls. They might be made of tapestry or other woven fabrics, or embroidered canvas, silk or velvet. Many embroidered cushions survive in historic houses and are therefore more familiar, but a small number of tapestry cushions are also known.

People
Conspicuous display of social and economic standing, once the privilege only of the aristocracy, was an important result of the increasing wealth of Elizabethan society. More and more people could afford luxury items which could be displayed inside their house, and some made use of coats of arms, names or initials on the fabric of the building itself. This cushion cover is modest and relatively simple in style. It shows the arms of a once influential provincial family, although it is not entirely certain which of them was the cushion’s first owner. There were several men in different branches of the family called Henry Sacheverell – represented by the H and S – to whom this cushion, and its twin in the Burrell Collection in Glasgow, might have belonged.