1336.
Silk Damask; ground and pattern in rich crimson; design, eight-cusped ovals, each cusp tipped not with a flower, but tendrils; the ovals enclose a conventional artichoke purfled with flowers; and the spaces between the ovals are filled in with small artichokes in bloom. Spanish, 15th century. 20 inches by 14¾ inches.
This is a fine specimen both for the richness of its silk and the warm and mellow tint of its ground, upon which the pattern comes out in a duller tone. Further on we shall meet with another stuff, [No. 1345], which must have proceeded from the same loom, and shows in its design many elements of the one in this. Either Granada or Almeria produced this fine piece, which affords us, in the brilliancy of its colour, an apt sample of our old poet Chaucer’s dress for one of his characters, of whom he tells us,—
“In sanguin and in perse he clad was alle;”
and helps us to understand Spenser’s allusion to the young maiden’s blushes:—
“How the red roses flush up in her cheekes
... with goodly vermill stayne,
Like crimson dyde in grayne.”