Wedding gloves

It was customary among wealthy burghers of the seventeenth century for a future husband to present his fiancee with a pair of gloves upon their engagement. The bride would wear the gloves on her wedding day, only removing them when she gave her pledge, baring her hand for the bridegroom to hold. This luxuriously executed pair of gloves is made of thin white leather. The embroidery on the cuffs - the multicoloured silk, goldthread, pearls and spangles - is in the shape of various symbols associated with love and marriage.