Overcoat (mente) - from the wardrobe of Count Pál Esterházy

Straight cut, flaring at the hip. It has upright collar and the sleeves are longer than the arm, reaching to the bottom of the dress. The textile used to be flesh-coloured, but is now yellowish silk cloth, with a bizarre pattern of shells, volutes, motifs of clouds and a horn of plenty. The sleeve of a woman's dress found in a grave at Gyulafehervar was made of similar material. The front, the neck, the bottom and the sides — on the front up to the waist, on the back on a shorter part — are framed with a "guipure" made of silver and gold thread, without ground net. Similar Spanish laces can be found — among others — in a Lyon collection. Under the collar is a button band woven from gilt thread and there are seven woven loops. From the segmented trimming buttons sewed with gold thread only one has remained. The lining is yellow silk with a miniature pattern: bending volutes, scattered palmettes brocaded with metal wire. A similar textile fragment from the 17th century is in the collection of the National Museum of Cracow. The description of the 1725 inventory of the Frakno treasury of the Esterhazy family runs: —"A summer mente made of flesh-coloured flowered brocade, with gold lace, and seven gold buttons". (Inventarium Thesauri Fraknensis Anno 1725. Almarium Sub. Nris. 79 et 80. Nro. 6. — Inventory of Museum of Applied Arts 236 / 1957. ).