Textile Fabrics / A Descriptive Catalogue of the Collection of Church-vestments, Dresses, Silk Stuffs, Needlework and Tapestries, forming that Section of the Museum

by Daniel Rock

1247.

Narrow Web for Orphreys; ground, a broad stripe of crimson silk between two narrow ones of green; design, a succession of oblong six-sided spaces in gold, filled in with a sort of floriated cross having sprouting from both ends of the upright beam, stalks bending inwards and ending in a fleur-de-lis, all in red silk. French, 13th century. 3¾ inches by 1-⅞ inches.

Of this kind of textile, wrought by women in a small loom, we have before us in this collection several specimens; and what was done by poor females at the time in England and France, it is likely was performed by industrious women elsewhere. The fleur-de-lis upon this fragment leads us to think of France; but Dr. Bock informs us that laces much like this in pattern were observed upon the royal robes in which two princes of the imperial house of the Hohenstaufen were clad for their burial, when their graves were opened in the cathedral of Palermo.