Gold, and Silver gilt,
in very many more, wrought after the smith’s cunning into little star-like flowers—broader, bigger, and more craftily fashioned than our modern spangles—are to be found sewed upon the silks or amid the embroidery in the specimens before us, particularly those from Venice and its main-land provinces in Italy, and from Southern Germany. At [No. 8274], pp. 168-9, we have a part of an orphrey embroidered on parchment, and having along with its coral, gold beads, and seed pearls, small bosses and ornaments in gilded silver stars; it is Venetian, and of the second half of the twelfth century. [No. 8307], pp. 185-6 is a linen amice, the silken apparel of which has sewed to it large spangle-like plates in gilded silver struck with a variety of patterns, showing how the goldsmith’s hand had been sought by the Germans of the fifteenth century to give beauty to this silken stuff. The fine piece of ruby-tinted Genoa velvet, which was once the apparel for the lower hem of an alb, is sprinkled somewhat thickly with six-rayed stars of gold and silver; but those made of the latter metal have turned almost black: here we have a sample of Lombard taste in this matter, of the ending of the fifteenth century. Silver-gilt spangles wrought to figure six-petalled flowers on a fine example of gold tissue, under [No. 8588], pp. 222-3, present us with a German craftsman’s work, in the fourteenth century. [No. 8612], p. 233, is not without its value in reference to Italian taste. All over, this curious now fragmental piece of silk damask, has at one time been thickly strewed with trefoils cut out of gilt metal, but very thin, and not sewed but glued on to the silk: many of these leaves have fallen off, and those remaining turned black.
From among these examples a few will show the reader how the goldsmith had been tasked to work upon them as jeweller also, and gem the liturgical garments to which these shreds belong, with real or imitated precious stones. In the orphrey upon the back of that very rich fine crimson velvet chasuble, [No. 1375], pp. 81-2, the crossed nimb about our Lord’s head is gemmed with stones set in silver gilt; and the sockets still left on the piece of crimson velvet, [No. 8334], p. 199, unmistakably speak for themselves.
Besides precious stones, coral, and seed-pearls,