Ipsden Church, Oxon: patchwork altar frontal, detail of dog rose (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

I embroidered this rose in the absolute certainty that it was a dog rose, Rosa canina, the wild rose that clambers around English hedgerows to such delightful effect during glorious June.

Nicholas Hilliard: Young Man among the Roses (Victoria & Albert Museum, London)

Nicholas Hilliard’s miniature painting, Young Man  among Roses (13.5 by 7.3 cm; watercolour on vellum, c.1587) comes into my mind when I think of little pink roses, but I knew the rose bower against which he leans so nonchalantly, is intertwined with eglantine roses (because the eglantine rose symbolises Queen Elizabeth I and the young man depicted so languidly is thought to be Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex and a particular favourite of the Virgin Queen).

Nicholas Hilliard’s Young Man among the Roses (Victoria and Albert Museum London) : detail of roses

But, looking again at the painting the roses seem much more like the paler dog rose than the rosy eglantine. To compare the two roses I turned to viewing images online but that made nothing clearer. Thoroughly confused, I’ve decided that either Hilliard’s watercolour has faded or that the particular eglantine he painted is as near to a dog rose as a rose can be. Curious.

To learn more about flowers the Elizabethans loved see the post on the flowers I embroidered on my Elizabethan jacket  here.

Ipsden Church, Oxon: patchwork altar frontal, detail of dog rose (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)