1) In York, the stainers were probably working with cloth rather than with wood.
Inventories provide occasional information: in 1565, the Earl of Lennox had property at Temple Newsam which included two benkers stayned with armes
that is two coverings for a bench or chair which had his coat of arms ‘stained’ on them, perhaps to resemble tapestry. Similar items were imbrodered or had crewlez nedle worke. There were stainers in the city from the mid-fourteenth century, for Willelmus le steignour was enrolled as a York freeman in 1353. The stenours were a small group, linked with peyntourz, and goldbetours in the fifteenth century and, in 1421-2, they belonged to the guild of Payntours, Steynours, Pynners et Latoners. There were just six members of the steynourcrafte on that occasion but the numbers increased in the 1440s and 1450s by which time the by-name was in the process of becoming hereditary: 1443 Hugo Stenyour, stenyour, fil. Ricardi Stenyour. Subsequently the craft declined and it may have been absorbed into the painters’ guild: 1491 Thomas Gynderscale, payntour alias stenour.