The Arts and Crafts of Older Spain, Volume 2 (of 3)

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Arts and Crafts of Older Spain, Volume II (of 3), by Leonard Williams

SAINT FRANCIS
The World of Art Series
BY LEONARD WILLIAMS Corresponding Member of the Royal Spanish Academy, of the Royal Spanish Academy of History, and of the Royal Spanish Academy of Fine Arts; Author Of “The Land of the Dons”; “Toledo and Madrid”; “Granada,” etc. IN THREE VOLUMES, ILLUSTRATED VOLUME II
CHICAGO A. C. McCLURG & CO. EDINBURGH: T. N. FOULIS 1908 AMERICAN EDITION Published October 10, 1908

VOLUME TWO

This table also served to write upon, while in its neighbourhood would stand the massive sideboard, piled with gold and silver plate, and vessels of glass or ivory, wood or alabaster.
Owing to the oriental influence brought back from the Crusades, the furniture of Europe, not excluding Spain, grew ever more elaborate and costly, while further, in the case of this Peninsula, the native Moorish influence operated steadily and strongly from Toledo, Seville, Cordova, Valencia, and elsewhere. Tapestries of Eastern manufacture ( alcatifas ) were now in general use for decorating floors and walls. The bed grew more and more gigantic, and its clothes and curtains more extravagantly sumptuous, until the florid Gothic woodwork harmonized with canopies and curtains cut from priceless skins, or wrought in gold and silver thread on multicolor satin and brocade. And at the bed's head, like some jewel marvellously set, rested, in every noble home, the diptych or the triptych with its image of the Saviour or the Virgin Mary.