The Bradford Carpet is a canvas work embroidery made in the early 17th century (ca. 1600–1615) that originally belonged to the Earl of Bradford at Castle Bromwich.<ref name="Digby">Digby 1964, p. 102, plates 46 and 47</ref>
The carpet measures Template:Convert. In the Victoria and Albert Museum it covers an entire wall. However, it was made neither for wall nor floor, but as a table covering. Its Template:Convert border was designed to hang down over the edges of a table, and it would have been removed or covered with a linen cloth when the table was used.<ref name="VA">V&A Museum, Life in Tudor and Stuart times</ref>
The carpet is worked with silk embroidery thread in tent stitch on a linen ground.<ref name="Digby"/><ref>Levey & King 1993, p. 23</ref> The stitching is very fine (400 stitches/inch, 62 stitches/cm<ref name="VA" />) and was worked in at least 23 different colours.<ref name="Digby" /> The tension of the tent stitches over time has distorted the shape of the carpet. It is characteristic of professional canvas work popular for furnishings in the Elizabethan era.<ref name="VA" /> The field design is a grape vine trellis. The border, thought to represent human progression from a wild state to civilisation,<ref>Levey & King 1993, p. 16</ref> depicts a variety of country pursuits set against a pastoral landscape, described as "perhaps the finest range of genre scenes to come down to us from Elizabethan times".<ref name="Digby" /> A manor house, shepherd, travelling vendor with his packhorse, lords and ladies, hunting scenes, milkmaids, millers, water mills and windmills are all shown.<ref name="Digby" /><ref name="VA" />
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