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

1337.

Web for Orphreys; ground, crimson silk; design, in gold thread, a straight branch of a tree bearing pairs of boughs with flowers, alternating with other boughs with sprigs of leaves. German, early 16th century. 14½ inches by 2½ inches.

The warp of this web is thick linen thread, and where the woof of crimson silk is worn away, this thread, as if part of the design, shows itself; and, as the gold is poor and sparingly put on, the specimen now looks shabby. Like many other samples of the kind, woven, probably, at Cologne, this was intended as the narrow orphrey on liturgical garments.