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Oes or owes were metallic "O" shaped rings or eyelets sewn on to clothes and furnishing textiles for decorative effect in England and at the Elizabethan and Jacobean court. They were smaller than modern sequins.

Making and metals

Robert Sharp obtained a patent to make gold oes and spangles (another early variety of sequin) in 1575. They were also made from silver and copper. Oes were made either from rings of wire wound around a dowel, or by punching flat rings out of a sheet of metal.

Policy makers worried about the supply of precious metal bullion and restricted the making of gold and silver oes and similar products by patent to the Company of Wire Drawers. In July 1624 their manufacture was forbidden for a time.

Some London hat band makers were prosecuted and fined in 1631 for the fraud of using gilt copper oes and claiming their wares employed only gold oes and thread. Imitation silver or gold oes sold openly were called "counterfeit oes" or "Alchemy oes", and appear as "Olcamee oes" in the 1643 inventory of a Worcestershire mercer Thomas Cowcher. Thomas Knyvett sent his wife and Aunt Bell 12 ounces of counterfeit oes and oes of "right silver" in paper wraps in 1623. He offered to buy oes of a different size if required. There were three kinds of oes available. A paper of oes contained 40 oes weighing 2 ounces.

Use

Oes were used to decorate hairnets called "crespines" or "crippins", an item of clothing worn by women of the Tudor court and Elizabeth I. An inventory of 1626 mentions a white satin crippin embroidered with gold oes and a green satin crippin with silver oes. As a New Year Day's gift in January 1600 Dorothy Speckard and her husband gave Queen Elizabeth a head veil of striped network, flourished with carnation silk and embroidered with oes.

Edmund Palmer embroidered a purple satin suit for Prince Henry with silk thread, silver thread, and silver oes. Oes were stitched by embroiderers to form patterns. The Earl of Northampton owned a sweet bag embroidered with knots of silver oes and burning hearts.

Oes were used in masque costume. In 1610 the embroiderer Christopher Shawe worked on the skirts for the dancers in the masque ''Tethys' Festival'', sewing on silver "oes", and embroidering gold "oes" on tiffany fabric. The grass-green and sea-green costumes made for this masque and ''Love Freed from Ignorance and Folly'' match the advice of Francis Bacon, who wrote "colours that show best by candlelight are white, carnation, and a kind of sea-water green; and oes and spangs as they are of no great cost, so they are of most glory".

In February 1613, the character of Honor in Chapman's ''The Memorable Masque of the Middle Temple and Lincoln's Inn'' wore a "vaile of net lawne, embrodered with Oos and Spangl'd". In literature, oes and spangles could be associated with vain luxury and the glittering stars of the night sky. Henry Hawkins wrote of the sky "beset with siluer-oes" and the stars as "siluer Oes, al powdred heer and there, or spangles sprinckled ouer the purple Mantle or night-gowne of the heauens".

Purchases of oes are recorded in the household book of Lord William Howard of Naworth Castle. He ordered silver and gold oes from London in 1620 for Mistress Marie, copper oes for his children's clothes in 1621, and gold oes in March 1634 for the tailor making clothes for his wife Elizabeth Dacre.

Used on furnishing fabrics, oes sometimes appear in inventories. At Westmorland House in London in the 1620s, a London home of Francis Fane, 1st Earl of Westmorland and Mary Mildmay Fane, Countess of Westmorland, there was a couch in the best withdrawing room set in a canopy with curtains, embellished with embroidered slips and gold oes. Old inventories describe "oes" decorating the surviving "Spangled bed" at Knole.

In French, the equivalents of spangles and oes were known as ''paillettes'' or ''papillottes''. Mary, Queen of Scots, had gold and silver ''papillottes'' for her masques costumes as a girl in France. She requested silver ''papillottes'' for her embroidery from the diplomat Mothe Fénélon in 1574, as delicate and beautiful as he could find. 18th-century furnishing bills include references to functional "oes", round eyelets used to guide curtain cords.Annabel Westman, ''Fringe, Frog & Tassel: The Art of the Trimmings-Maker'' (London, 2019), pp. 111, 243.

References

External links

Spangles, Sequins, and Spangs: Fashion Historian

{{Historical clothing
16th-century fashion
17th-century fashion
Beadwork