This hood is an example of blackwork, a style of needlework popular in England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. It was worked with a single colour of silk, usually black, as on this hood, but also blue, red or green on linen. Like other examples of blackwork in black silk, the embroidery threads are disintegrating. This is because iron was used as a mordant or fixative for the black dye. It eventually oxidises, causing the silk thread to crumble.
Although a few finely worked linen hoods survive in museum collections, they are very rarely seen in portraits of the late 16th and early 17th century. It is possible that they were outdoor and/or middle-class accessories and so seldom appear in Tudor and Jacobean portraiture which emphasises the formal dress of the aristocracy. So far, only one surviving brass memorial and a rubbing of a lost brass showing women wearing hoods, have been found.