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

1325.

Part of an Altar-cloth; ground, linen; design, amid foliage sparingly heightened with yellow silk, birds, and beasts, and one end figured with the gammadion. German, 14th century. 6 feet 4½ inches by 2 feet 2½ inches.

This altar-cloth, now shortened and without one of its ends figured with the gammadion, is made up of two different pieces, of which one showing two large-headed pheasants, put one above the other, amid foliage plentifully flowered with the fleur-de-lis and roses, is quite perfect in its pattern; but the other, marked with alternate griffins and lions, has been cut in two so as to give us but the hinder half of each animal, amid a foliage of oak-leaves. The whole design, however, is boldly drawn and spiritedly executed.