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

8322.

Piece of Velvet, dark blue, figured with a pomegranate kind of pattern. Italian, end of the 15th century. 17¾ inches by 14½ inches.

Lucca seems to be the place where this specimen of a deep-piled and prettily designed velvet was produced; and a mediæval conventionality hung about the pencil of its designer, as we may observe in the scrolls or featherings stopped with graceful cusps which go round and shut in those modifications of the so-called pine, really an artichoke, and the pomegranate pattern.

Though equally employed for secular as well as sacred purposes, such velvets, in their latter use, are often found in the remains of copes, chasubles, &c. and altar-frontals.