Volume 12 of Medieval Clothing and Textiles ranges through art, artifacts, documentary text, and poetry, with new research addressing both functional applications and symbolic representations of dress and textiles.

John Block Friedman breaks new ground for this journal with his article on real and imagined clothing for royal pets and other animals. Grzegorz Pac compares depictions of sacred and royal female dress in three significant manuscripts—Carolingian, Anglo-Saxon, and Ottonian—and evaluates attempts to link them together. Jonathan C. Cooper describes the clothing worn by scholars in Scotland's three pre-Reformation universities and the effects of the Reformation on academic dress. Camilla Luise Dahl, in a double-size article, analyzes descriptions and valuations of women's garments itemized in Danish probate inventories and explains what these references can tell us about changing fashions in the early modern period.

Turning to textiles, Frances Pritchard examines the iconography, heraldry, and inscriptions on a worn and repaired set of embroidered fifteenth-century orphreys to show that they must have been commissioned in London by an Italian merchant family. Megan Cavell focuses on the rhetorical treatment of textiles associated with the Holy of Holies in Old English biblical poetry. Thomas M. Izbicki's chapter summarizes documentary evidence for the choice of white linen for the altar and the responsibilities of a priest for keeping it clean and in good repair.

Frances Pritchard is stepping down from our editorial board after this volume. She has been with us since volume 1, and we thank her for her expertise, which has been applied to submissions to Medieval Clothing and Textiles on many occasions. Our thanks go to all our board members as well as the many other scholars who have generously agreed to review article submissions and consult with authors.

We continue to consider for publication in this journal both independent submissions and papers read at sessions sponsored by DISTAFF (Discussion, Interpretation, and Study of Textile Arts, Fabrics, and Fashion) at the international congresses held annually in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and Leeds, England. Proposals from potential conference speakers should be sent to [email protected] (for Kalamazoo) or gale. [email protected] (for Leeds). Potential authors for Medieval Clothing and Textiles should read the guidelines at http://www.distaff.org/MCTguidelines.pdf, and send a 300-word synopsis to Professor Gale R. Owen-Crocker, 181 Chester Road, Hazel Grove, Stockport SK7 6EN, UK; email [email protected].