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

In Woven Stuffs there are Styles nicely defined, and Epochs easily discernible.

Hitherto no attempt has been anywhere made to distribute olden silken textiles into various schools, and as the present is the first and only collection which has in any country been thrown open as yet to the public, the occasion seems a fitting one to warrant such an endeavour of classification.

With no other than the specimens here before us, we think we see them fall into these several groups—Chinese, Persian, Byzantine, Oriental or Indian, Syrian, Saracenic, Moresco-Spanish, Sicilian, Italian, Flemish, British, and French.

Chinese examples here are very few; but what they are, whether plain or figured, they are beautiful in their own way. From all that we know of the people, we are led to believe their own way two thousand years ago is precisely theirs still, so that the web wrought by them this year or two hundred years ago, like [No. 1368], p. 75, would not differ hardly in a line from their textiles two thousand years gone by, when Dionysius Periegetes wrote that, the “Seres make precious figured garments, resembling in colour the flowers of the field, and rivalling in fineness the work of spiders.” In the stuffs, warp and woof are of silk, and both of the best kinds.

Persian textiles, even as we see them in this collection, must have been for many centuries just as they were ever figured, and may be, even now, described by the words of Quintus Curtius, with some little allowance for those influences exercised upon the mind of the weaver by his peculiar religious belief, which would not let the lowliest workman forget the “homa,” or tree of life. When Marco Polo travelled through those parts, in the thirteenth century, and our countryman, Sir John Mandeville, a hundred years later, the old love for hunting wild beasts still lived, and the princes of the country were as fond as ever of training the cheetah, a kind of small lion or leopard, for the chase, as we have noticed, [p. 178].

When the design is made up of various kinds of beasts and birds, real or imaginary, with the sporting cheetah nicely spotted among them; and the “homa” conspicuously set forth above all; sure may we be that the web was wrought by Persians, and on most occasions the textile will be found in all its parts to be woven from the richest materials.

As an illustration of the Persian type of style, [No. 8233], p. 154, may be taken as a specimen.

For trade purposes, and to make the textile pass in the European market as from Persia, the manner of its loom was often copied by the Jewish and the Christian weavers in Syria, as we shall have to notice just now.

The Byzantine Greeks, for their textiles from the time when in the sixth century they began to weave home-grown silk, made for themselves a school of design which kept up in their drawing not a little of the beauty, breadth, and flowing outline which had outlived among them the days of heathenish art. Along with this a strong feeling of their Christianity showed itself as well in many of the subjects which they took out of holy writ, as in the smaller elements of ornamentation. Figures, whether of the human form or of beasts, are given in a much larger and bolder size than on any other ancient stuffs. Though there be very few known specimens from the old looms of Constantinople, the one here, [No. 7036], p. 122, showing Samson wrestling with a lion, may serve as a type. In the year 1295 old St. Paul’s Cathedral, here in London, would seem to have possessed several splendid vestments made of Byzantine silk, as we note in the samples to be named infra under the head of Damask.

The way in which those Greeks gave a pattern to the stuff intended more especially for liturgical purposes is pointed out while speaking about “Stauracin” and the “Gammadion,” a form of the cross with which they powdered their silks; [p. lii.]

The world-wide fame of the Byzantine purple tint is attested by our Gerald Barry, whose words we quote further on. As a sample of the Byzantine loom in “diaspron,” or diapering, we would refer to [No. 1239], p. 26.

The specimens here from the Byzantine, and later Greek loom, are not to be taken as by any means appropriate samples of its general production. They are poor in both respects—material and, when figured, design—as may be seen at pp. [27], [28], [33], [36], [123], [124], [126], [219], &c.

Oriental ancient silks and textiles have their own distinctive marks.

From Marco Polo, who wandered much over the far east, some time during the thirteenth century, we learn that the weaving there was done by women who wrought in silk and gold, after a noble manner, beasts and birds upon their webs:—“Le loro donne lavorano tutte cose a seta e ad oro e a uccelli e a bestie nobilmente e lavorano di cortine ed altre cose molto ricamente.”[223]

Out of the several specimens here from Tartary and India, during our mediæval period, we pick one or two which show well the meaning of those words uttered by that great Venetian traveller, while speaking about the textiles he saw in those countries. The dark purple piece of silk, figured in gold with birds and beasts, of the thirteenth century, [No. 7086], p. 137, is good; but better still for our purpose is the shred, [No. 7087], p. 138, of blue damask, with its birds, its animals, and flowers wrought in gold, and different coloured silks.

What India is, it has ever been, famous for its cloud-like transparent muslins, which since Marco Polo’s days have kept till now even that oriental name, through being better than elsewhere woven at Mosul.

[223] I Viaggi di Marco Polo, ed. A. Bartoli, Firenze, 1865, p. 345.

The Syrian school is well represented here by several fine pieces.

The whole sea-board of that part of Asia Minor, as well as far inland, was inhabited by a mixture of Jews, Christians, and Saracens; and each of these people were workers in silk. The reputation of the neighbouring Persia had of old stood high for the beauty and durability of her silken textiles, which made them to be sought for by the European traders. Persia’s outlet to the west for her goods, lay through the great commercial ports on the coast of Syria. Setting, like Persia used to do, as it were, her own peculiar seal upon her figured webs, by mingling in her designs the mystic “homa,” to the European mind this part of the pattern became, at first, a sort of assurance that those goods had been thrown off by Persian looms. By one of those tricks of imitation followed then, as well as now, the Syrian designers for the loom threw this “homa” into their patterns. This symbol of “the tree of life,” had no doubt been a borrow by Zoroaster from Holy Writ.[224] Neither to the Christian’s eye, nor to the Jew’s, nor Moslem’s, was there in it anything objectionable; all three, therefore, took it and made it a leading portion of design in the patterns of their silks; and hence is it that we meet it so often. Though done with perhaps a fraudulent intention of palming on the world Syrian for real Persian silks, those Syrians usually put into their own designs a something which spoke of their peculiar selves and their workmanship. Though there be seen the “homa,” the “cheetah,” and other elements of Persian patterns, still the discordant two-handled vase, the badly imitated Arabic sentence, betray the textile to be not Persian, but Syrian. [No. 8359], p. 213, will readily exemplify our meaning. Furthermore, perhaps quite innocent of any knowledge about Persia’s first belief, and her use of the “homa” in her old religious services, the Christian weavers of Syria, along with the Zorasterian symbol, put the sign of the cross by the side of that “tree of life,” as we find upon the piece of silk, [No. 7094], p. 140. Another remarkable specimen of the Syrian loom is [No. 7034], p. 122, whereon the Nineveh lions come forth so conspicuously. As a good example of well-wrought “diaspron” or diaper, [No. 8233], p. 154, may be mentioned, along with [No. 7052], p. 127.

[224] Genesis ii. 9.

Saracenic weaving, as shown by the design upon the web, is exemplified in several specimens before us.

However much against what looks like a heedlessness of the Koran’s teachings, certain it is that the Saracens, those of the upper classes in particular, felt no difficulty in wearing robes upon which animals and the likenesses of other created things were woven; with the strictest of their princes, a double-headed eagle was a royal heraldic device, as we have shown, [p. lxiii]. Stuffs, then, figured with birds and beasts, with trees and flowers, were not the less of Saracenic workmanship, and meant for Moslem wear. What, however, may be looked for upon real Saracenic textures is a pattern consisting of longitudinal stripes of blue, red, green, and other colour; some of them charged with animals, small in form, other some written, in large Arabic letters, with a word or sentence, often a proverb, often a good wish or some wise saw.

As examples we would point to [No. 8288], p. 178, and [7051], p. 127. For a fair specimen of diapering, [No. 7050], p. 127, while [No. 8639], p. 243, presents us with a design having in it, besides the crescent moon, a proof that architectural forms were not forgotten by the weaver-draughtsman, in his sketches for the loom.

Later, in our chapter on Tapestry, we shall have occasion to speak about another sort of Saracenic work or tapestry, of the kind called abroad, from the position of its frame, of the basse lisse.

Moresco-Spanish, or Saracenic textiles, wrought in Spain, though partaking of the striped pattern, and bearing words in real or imitated Arabic, had some distinctions of their own. The designs shown upon these stuffs are almost always drawn out of strap-work, reticulations, or some combination or another of geometrical lines, amid which are occasionally to be found different forms of conventional flowers. Specimens are to be seen here at pp. [51], [55], [121], [124], [125], [186], [240], &c. Sometimes, but very rarely, the crescent moon is figured as in the curious piece, [No. 8639], p. 243. The colours of these silks are usually either a fine crimson, or a deep blue with almost always a fine toned yellow as a ground. But one remarkable feature in these Moresco-Spanish textiles is the presence, when gold is brought in, of an ingenious though fraudulent imitation of the precious metal, for which shreds of gilded parchment cut up into narrow flat strips are substituted, and woven with the silk. This, when fresh, must have looked very bright, and have given the web all the appearance of those favourite stuffs called here in England “tissues,” of which we have already spoken, [p. xxiii].

We are not aware that this trick has ever been found out before, and it was only by the use of a highly magnifying glass that we penetrated the secret. Our suspicion was awakened by so often observing that the gold had become quite black. Examples of this gilt vellum may be seen here, at Nos. [7095], p. 140; [8590], p. 224; [8639], p. 244; &c.

When the Christian Spanish weavers lived beyond Saracenic control, they filled their designs with beasts, birds, and flowers; but even then the old Spanish fine tone of crimson is rather striking in their webs, as is evidenced in the beautiful piece of diaper, [No. 1336], p. 64.

Spanish velvets—and they were mostly wrought in Andalusia—are remarkably fine and conspicuous both for their deep soft pile, and their glowing ruby tones; but when woven after the manner of velvet upon velvet, are very precious: a good specimen of rich texture, and mellow colouring is furnished by the chasuble at [No. 1375], p. 81.

The Sicilian school strongly marked the wide differences between itself and all the others which had lived before; and the history of its loom is as interesting as it is varied.

The first to teach the natives of Sicily the use of cotton for their garments, and how to rear the silkworm and spin its silk, were, as it would seem, the Mahomedans, who, in coming over from Africa, brought along with them, besides the art of weaving silken textiles, a knowledge of the fauna of that vast continent—its giraffes, its antelopes, its gazelles, its lions, its elephants. These Mussulmans told them, too, of the parrots of India and the hunting sort of lion,—the cheetahs, that were found in Asia; and when the stuff had to be wrought for European wear, imaged both beast and bird upon the web, at the same time that they wove a word in Arabic, of greeting to be read among the flowers. Like all other Saracens, those in Sicily loved to mingle gold in their tissues; and, to spare the silk, cotton thread was not unfrequently worked up in the warp. When, therefore, we meet with beasts taken from the fauna of Africa, such, especially, as the giraffe, and the several classes of the antelope family—in particular the gazelle—with, somewhere about, an Arabic motto—and part of the pattern wrought in gold, which, at first poor and thin, is now become black, as well as cotton in the warp, we may fairly take the specimen as a piece of Sicily’s work in its first period of weaving, all so Saracenic to the eye. Even when that Moslem nation had been driven out by the Normans, if many of its people did not stay as workmen in silk at Palermo, yet they left their teachings in weaving and design behind them, and their practices were, years afterwards, still followed.

Now we reach Sicily’s second epoch.

While at war with the Byzantines, in the twelfth century, Roger, King of Sicily, took Corinth, Thebes, and Athens, from each of which cities he led away captives all the men and women he could find who knew how to weave silks, and carried them to Palermo. To the Norman tiraz there, these Grecian new comers brought fresh designs, which were adopted sometimes wholly, at others but in part and mixed up with the older Saracenic style, for silks wrought under the Normano-Sicilian dynasty. In this second period of the island’s loom we discover what traces the Byzantine school had impressed upon Sicilian silks, and helped so much to alter the type of their design. On one silk, a grotesque mask amid the graceful twinings of luxuriant foliage, such as might have been then found by them upon many a fragment of old Greek sculpture, was the pattern, as we witness, at [No. 8241], p. 158; on another, a sovereign on horseback wearing the royal crown, and carrying as he rides a hawk upon his wrist—token both of the love for lordly sports at the period, and the feudalism all over Italy and Christendom, shown in the piece, [No. 8589], p. 223; on a third, [No. 8234], p. 154, is the Greek cross, along with a pattern much like the old netted or “de fundato” kind which we have described, [p. liii].

But Sicily’s third is quite her own peculiar style. At the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth century, she struck out of herself into quite an unknown path for design. Without throwing aside the old elements employed till then especially, all over the east, and among the rest, by the Mahomedans, Sicily put along with them the emblem of Christianity, the cross, in various forms, on some occasions with the letter V. four times repeated, and so placed together as to fall into the shape of this symbol, like what we find at [No. 1245], p. 28; in other instances the cross is floriated, as at [No. 1293], p. 47.

From the far east to the uttermost western borders of the Mediterranean the weavers of every country had been in the habit of figuring upon their silks those beasts and birds they saw around them: the Tartar, the Indian, and the Persian gave us the parrot and the cheetah; the men of Africa the giraffe and the gazelle; the people of each continent the lions, the elephants, the eagles, and the other birds common to both. From the poetry and sculpture of the Greeks and Romans could the Sicilians have easily learned about the fabled griffin and the centaur; but it was left for their own wild imaginings to figure as they have, such an odd compound in one being as the animal—half elephant, half griffin—which we see in [No. 1288], p. 45. Their daring flights of fancy in coupling the difficult with the beautiful, are curious; in one place, [No. 1302], p. 50, large eagles are perched in pairs with a radiating sun between them, and beneath dogs, in pairs, running with heads turned back, &c.; in another, [No. 1304], p. 51, running harts have caught one of their hind legs in a cord tied to their collar, and an eagle swoops down upon them; and the same animal, in another place, on the same piece has switched its tail into the last link of a chain fastened to its neck; on a third sample, [No. 8588], p. 222, we behold figured, harts, the letter M floriated, winged lions, crosses floriated, crosses sprouting out on two sides with fleurs-de-lis, four-legged monsters, some like winged lions, some biting their tails. Exeter Cathedral had a cloth of gold purple cope, figured with “draconibus volantibus ac tenentibus caudas proprias in ore,”[225] doves in pairs upholding a cross, &c. Hardly elsewhere to be found are certain elements peculiar to the patterns upon silks from mediæval Sicily; such, for instance, as harts, and demi-dogs with very large wings, both animals having remarkably long manes streaming far behind them, [No. 1279], p. 41; harts again, but lodged beneath green trees, in a park with paling about it, as in [No. 1283], p. 43, and [No. 8710], p. 269; that oft-recurring sun shedding its beams with eagles pecking at them, or gazing undazzled at the luminary, pp. [48], [50], [137], but sometimes stags, as at pp. [54], [239], carrying their well attired heads upturned to a large pencil of those sunbeams as they dart down upon them amid a shower of rain-drops. Of birds, the hawk, the eagle, double and single headed, the parrot, may be found on stuffs all over the east; not so, however, with the swan, yet this majestic creature was a favourite with Sicilians, and may be seen here often drawn with great gracefulness, as at Nos. [1277], p. 41; [1299], p. 49; [8264], p. 166; [8610], p. 232, &c.

[225] Oliver, p. 345.

The Sicilians showed their strong affection for certain plants and flowers. On a great many of the silks in this collection, from Palermitan looms, we see figured upon a tawny-coloured grounding, beautifully drawn foliage in green; which, on a nearer inspection, bears the likeness of parsley, so curled, crispy and serrated are its leaves. Besides their cherished parsley along with the vine-leaf for foliage, they had their especial favourite among flowers; and it is the centaurea cyanus, our corn blue-bottle, shown among others in No. [1283], &c. p. 43, No. [1291], p. 47, No. [1308], p. 53.

Another peculiarity of theirs is the introduction of the letter U, repeated so as at times to mark the feathering upon the tails of birds; at others, to fall into the shape of an O, as we pointed out at pp. [40], [225], [227], [228].

Whether it was that, like our own Richard I., crusaders in after times often made Sicily the halting spot on their way to the Holy Land, or that knights crowded there for other purposes, and thus dazzled the eyes of the islanders with the bravery of their armorial bearings, figured on their cyclases and pennons, their flags and shields, certain is it that these Sicilians were particularly given to introduce a deal of heraldic charges—wyverns, eagles, lions rampant, and griffins—into their designs; and the very numerous occasions in which such elements of blazoning come in, are very noticeable, so that one of the features belonging to the Sicilian loom in its third period, is that, bating tinctures, it is so decidedly heraldic.

Not the last among the peculiarities of the third period in the Sicilian school is the use, for many of its stuffs, of two certain colours—murrey, for the ground, and a bright green for the pattern. When the fawn-coloured ground is gracefully sprinkled with parsley leaves, and nicely trailed with branches of the vine, and shows beasts and birds disporting themselves between the boughs of lively joyous green; the effect is cheerful, as may be witnessed in those specimens No. [8594], p. 226, No. [8602], p. 229, No. [8607], p. 231, Nos. [8609], [8610], p. 232, all of which so admirably exemplify the style.

All their beauty and happiness of invention, set forth by bold, free, spirited drawing, were bestowed, if not thrown away, too often upon stuffs of a very poor inferior quality, in which the gold, if not actually base, was always scanty, and a good deal of cotton was sure to be found wrought up along with the silk.

Though Palermo was, without doubt, the great workshop for weaving Sicilian silks, that trade used to be carried on not only in other cities of the island, but reached towns like Reggio and other such in Magna Græcia, northward up to Naples. We think that, as far as the two Sicilies are concerned, the growth of the cotton plant always went along with the rearing of the silkworm. Of the main-land loom we would specify No. [8256], p. 163, No. [8634], p. 242, No. [8638], p. 243.

Till within a few years the royal manufactory at Sta. Leucia, near Naples, produced silks of remarkable richness; and the piece, likely from that city itself, No. [721], p. 13, does credit to its loom, as it wove in the seventeenth century. Northern Italy was not idle; and the looms which she set up in several of her great cities, in Lucca, Florence, Genoa, Venice and Milan, earned apart for themselves a good repute in some particulars, and a wide trade for their gold and silver tissues, their velvets, and their figured silken textiles. Yet, like as each of these free states had its own accent and provincialisms in speech, so too had it a something often thrown into its designs and style of drawing which told of the place and province whence the textiles came.

Lucca at an early period made herself known in Europe for her textiles; but her draughtsmen, like those of Sicily, seem to have thought themselves bound to follow the style hitherto in use, brought by the Saracens, of figuring parrots and peacocks, gazelles, and even cheetahs, as we behold in the specimens here No. [8258], p. 163, and No. [8616], p. 234. But, at the same time, along with these eastern animals, she mixed up emblems of her own, such as angels clothed in white, like in the example the last mentioned. She soon dropped what was oriental from her patterns, which she began to draw in a larger, bolder manner, as we observe, under No. [8637], p. 243, No. [8640], p. 244, and showing an inclination for light blue, as a colour.

As in other places abroad, so at Lucca, cloths of gold and of silver were often wrought, and the Lucchese cloths of this costly sort were, here in England, during the fourteenth century, in particular request. In all likelihood they were, both of them, not of the deadened but sparkling kind, afterwards especially known as “tissue.” Exeter Cathedral, A.D. 1327, had a cope of silver tissue, or cloth of Lucca:—“una capa alba de panno de Luk.”[226] At a later date, belonging to the same church, were two fine chasubles—one purple, the other red—of the same glittering stuff, “casula de purpyll panno,” &c.,[227] where we find it specified that not only was the textile of gold, but of that especial sort called tissue. York cathedral was particularly furnished with a great many copes of tissue shot with every colour required by its ritual, and among them were—“a reade cope of clothe of tishewe with orphry of pearl, a cope with orphrey, a cope of raised clothe of goulde,”[228] making a distinction between tissue and the ordinary cloth of gold. But at the court of our Edward II. its favour would seem to have been the highest. In the Wardrobe Accounts of that king, we see the golden tissue, or Lucca cloth, several times mentioned. Whether the ceremony happened to be sad or gay, this glistening web was used; palls made of Lucca cloth were, at masses for the dead, strewed over the corpse; at marriages the care-cloth was made of the same stuff; thus when Richard de Arundell and Isabella, Hugh le Despenser’s daughter, had been wedded at the door of the royal chapel, the veil held spread out over their heads as they knelt inside the chancel during the nuptial mass, for the blessing, was of Lucca cloth.[229] Richard II.’s fondness for this cloth of gold was lately noticed, p. [xxx].

Just about Edward II.’s time was it that velvet became known, and got into use amongst our churchmen for vestments, and our nobles for personal wear, and the likelihood is that Lucca was among the first places in Europe to weave it. The specimens here of this fine textile from Lucchese looms, though in comparison with those from Genoa, they be few and mostly after one manner—the raised or cut—still have now a certain historical value for the English workman: No. [1357], p. 72, with its olive green plain silken ground, and trailed all over with flowers and leaves in a somewhat deeper tone, and the earlier example, No. [8322], p. 192, with its ovals and feathering stopped with graceful cusps and artichokes, afford us good instances of what Lucca could produce in the way of artistic velvets.

[226] Oliver, p. 315.

[227] P. 344.

[228] York Fabric Rolls, p. 308.

Genoa, though in far off mediæval times not so conspicuous as she afterwards became for her textile industry, still must have from a remote period, encouraged within her walls, and over her narrow territory, the weaving of silken webs. Of these the earliest mention we anywhere find, is to be seen in the inventory of those costly vestments once belonging to our own St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, in the year 1295: besides a cope of Genoa cloth, that church had, from the same place, a hanging patterned with wheels and two-headed birds.[230] Though this first description be scant, we read in it quite enough to gather that these Genoese cloths must have entirely resembled the textiles wrought at Lucca, but, in particular, in Sicily. Perhaps they had been carried by trade from Palermo to the north-west shores of Italy, whence they were brought in the same way to England, so that they may be deemed to have reached us not so much from the looms themselves of Genoa, as those of some other place, but through her then great port.

Of Genoa’s own weaving of beautiful velvets there can be no doubt, a reputation she keeps to the present day as far as plain velvet is concerned.

In this collection we have samples in every kind of Genoese velvets, from those with a smooth unbroken surface to the elaborately patterned ones—art-wrought velvets in fact—showing, together with wonderful skill in the weaving, much beauty of design. Among the plain velvets in which we have nothing but great softness and depth of pile, along with clear bright luminous tones of colour, No. [540], p. 3, is a very fair specimen for its delicious richness of pile; and No. [8334], p. 199, not merely for this property, but as well for its lightsome mellow deep tint of crimson.

Getting to what may be truly called art-velvets, we come to several specimens here. Some are raised or cut, the design being done in a pile standing well up by itself from out of a flat ground of silk, sometimes of the same, sometimes of another colour, and not unfrequently wrought in gold, as at pp. [18], [90], [107], [110], [263]. Then we have at No. [7795], p. 145, an example of that precious kind—velvet upon velvet—in which the ground is velvet, and again of velvet is the pattern itself, but raised one pile higher and well above the other, so as to show its form and shape distinctly. Last of all we here find samples, as in No. [8323], p. 192, how the design was done in various coloured velvet. Such was a favourite in England, and called motley; in his will, A.D. 1415, Henry Lord Scrope bequeathed two vestments, one, motley velvet rubeo de auro; the other, motley velvet nigro, rubeo et viridi, &c.[231]

[229] Archæologia, t. xxvi. pp. 337, 344.

[230] Hist. of St. Paul’s, ed. Dugdale, pp. 318, 329.

[231] Rymer’s Fœdera, t. 9, p. 274.

Venice does not seem to have been at any time, like Sicily and Lucca, smitten with the taste of imitating in her looms at home the patterns which she saw abroad upon textile fabrics, but appears to have borrowed from the Orientals only one kind of weaving cloth of gold: the yellow chasuble at Exeter Cathedral, A.D. 1327, figured with beasts, cum bestiis crocei coloris,[232] is the solitary instance we know, upon which she wove, like the east, animals upon silks. She, however, set up for herself a new branch of textiles, and wrought for church use certain square webs of a crimson ground on which she figured, in gold, or on yellow silk, subjects taken from the New Testament, or the persons of saints and angels. These square pieces were as they yet are, employed, when sewed together in squares as frontals to altars, but when longwise much more generally as orphreys to chasubles, copes and other vestments. Of such stuffs must have been those large orphreys upon a dalmatic and tunicle, at St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, A.D. 1295. [233]

Though not of so early a date as the thirteenth century, there are in this collection specimens of this Venetian web belonging to the sixteenth, which are very fine, No. [5900], p. 112, represents the resurrection of our Lord; so does No. [8976], p. 271, while No. [8978], p. 272, presents us with the coronation of the Virgin, and No. [8976], the Virgin and the Child, as also No. [1335], p. 71. Far below in worth are the same kind of webs wrought at Cologne, as will be noticed just now.

Any one that has ever looked upon the woodcuts done at Venice in the sixteenth century, such as illustrate, for instance, the Roman Pontifical, published by Giunta, the “Rosario della G. V. Maria,” by Varisco, and other such religious books from the Venetian press, will, at a glance, find on the webs before us from that state, the self-same style and manner in drawing, the same broad, nay, majestic fold and fall of drapery, and in the human form the same plumpness, and not unfrequently with the facial line almost straight; and there, but more especially about the hands and feet, a somewhat naturalistic shape; so near is the likeness in design that one is led to think that the men who cut the blocks for the printers also worked for the weavers of Venice, and sketched out the drawings for their looms.

By the fifteenth century Venice knew how to produce good damasks in silk and gold, and of an historiated kind: if we had nothing more than the specimen, No. [1311], p. 54, where St. Mary of Egypt is so well represented, it would be quite enough for her to claim for herself such a distinction. That like her neighbours, Venice wrought in velvet, there can be little or no doubt, and if she it was who made those deep piled stuffs, sometimes raised, sometimes pile upon pile, in which her painters loved to dress the personages, men especially, in their pictures, then, of a truth, Venetian velvets were beautiful. Of this, any one may satisfy himself by one visit to our National Gallery. There, in the “Adoration of the Magi,” painted by Paulo Veronese, A.D. 1573, the second of the wise men is clad in a robe all made of crimson velvet, cut or raised after a design quite in keeping with the style of the period.

No insignificant article of Venetian textile workmanship was her laces wrought in every variety—in gold, in silk, in thread. The portrait of a Doge usually shows us that dignitary clothed in his dress of state. His wide mantle, having such large golden buttons, is made of some rich dull silver cloth; and upon his head is that curiously Phrygian-shaped ducal cap bound round with broad gold lace diapered after some nice pattern, as we see in the bust portrait of Doge Loredano, painted by John Bellini, and now in our National Gallery. Not only was the gold in the thread particularly good, but the lace itself in great favour at our court during one time, where it used to be bought, not by yard measure, but by weight; a pounde and a half of gold of Venys was employed “aboutes the making of a lace and botons for the king’s mantell of the garter.” [234] “Frenge of Venys gold,” appears twice, pp. 136, 163, in the wardrobe accounts of Edward IV.

Laces in worsted or in linen thread wrought by the bobbin at Venice; but more especially her point laces, or such as were done with the needle, always had, as indeed they still have, a great reputation: sewed to table-covers, two specimens are found in this collection, described at p. [141].

Venetian linens, for fine towelling and napery in general, at one time were in favourite use in France during a part of the fifteenth century. In the “Ducs de Bourgogne,” by Le Comte de Laborde,[235] more than once we meet with such an entry, as “une pièce de nappes, ouvraige de Venise,” &c.

[232] Oliver, p. 313.

[233] Ed. Dugdale, p. 321.

[234] Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York, p. 8.

[235] T. ii. Preuves, p. 107.

Florence, always so industrious and art-loving, got for its loom, about the middle of the fourteenth century, a place in the foremost rank amid the weavers of northern Italy. Specimens of her earliest handicraft are yet few—only two—here; but one sample of the able way in which she knew how to diaper, well shows her ability: No. [8563], p. 215, woven in the fifteenth century, will prove this with reference to her secular silks. The pieces described at pp. [202], [264], witness the boldness of her design during the sixteenth century. In her webs, expressly woven for church-use, is it that she displays her great taste in design, and wonderful power—at least for that time, the fourteenth century—in gearing the loom: the violet silk damask, No. [1265], p. 36, and another like piece, No. [7072], p. 133, figured with angels swinging thuribles, or bearing crowns of thorns in the hands, or holding a cross, will warrant our remarks. The style of doing the face and hands in white of those otherwise yellow angels, is a peculiarity of the Tuscan loom.

The orphrey-webs of Florence are equally conspicuous for drawing and skill in weaving as her vestment textiles, and in beauty come up to those done at Venice, and far surpass anything of the kind ever wrought at Cologne; specimens of this sort of Florentine work may be seen at Nos. [4059], p. 89; [7080], p. 136; [7674], p. 142; [7791], p. 143; [197], p. 291. Along with these may be classed the hood of a cope, described at No. [8692], p. 260, as well as the apparels to the dalmatic and tunicle, p. [143], where the cherubic heads have white faces.

But it was of her velvets that Florence might be so warrantably proud. Our Henry VII. in his will, “Testamenta Vetusta,”[236] bequeathed “to God and St. Peter, and to the abbot and prior and convent of our monastery of Westminster, the whole suit of vestments to be made at Florence in Italy.” Gorgeous and artistically designed was this textile, as we may yet see in one of these Westminster Abbey copes still in existence, and belonging to Stonyhurst college. The golden ground is trailed all over with leaf-bearing boughs of a bold type, in raised or cut ruby-toned velvet of a rich soft pile, which is freckled with gold thread sprouting up like loops. Though nothing so rich in material, nor so beauteous in pattern, there are here, pp. [144], [145], two specimens of Florentine cut, crimson velvet on a golden ground, quite like in sort to the royal vestments, and having too that strong peculiarity upon them—the little gold thread loop shooting out of the velvet pile. Though a full century later than the splendid cope at Stonyhurst, and the two pieces Nos. [7792], [7799], these illustrate the peculiar style of Tuscan velvets.

Among the truly prince-like gifts of vestments to Lincoln Cathedral, by John of Gaunt and his duchess, are many made of the richest crimson velvet of both sorts, that is, plain, and cut or raised to a pattern upon a ground of gold, as for instance:—two red copes, of the which one is red velvet set with white harts lying in colours, full of these letters S. S., with pendents silver and gilt, the harts having crowns upon their necks with chains silver and gilt; and the other cope is of crimson velvet of precious cloth of gold, with images in the orphrey, &c. [237]

That peculiar sort of ornamentation—the little loop of gold thread standing well up, and in single spots—upon some velvets, seems at times to have been replaced, perhaps with the needle, by small dots of solid metal, gold or silver gilt, upon the pile; of the gift of one of its bishops, John Grandisson, Exeter cathedral had a crimson velvet cope, the purple velvet orphrey to which was so wrought:—De purpyll velvete operata cum pynsheds de puro auro.[238]

[236] Ed. Nicolas, t. i. p. 33.

[237] Mon. Anglic. viii. 1281.

[238] Oliver, p. 345.

Milan, though now-a-days she stands in such high repute for the richness and beauty of her silks of all sorts, was not, we believe, at any period during mediæval times, as famous for her velvets, her brocades, or cloths of gold, as for her well wrought admirably fashioned armour, so strong and trustworthy for the field—so furbished and exquisitely damascened for courtly service. Still, in the sixteenth century she earned a name for her rich cut velvets, as we may see in the specimen, No. [698], p. 7; her silken net-work, No. [8336], p. 200, which may have led the way to weaving silk stockings; and her laces of the open tinsel kind once in such vogue for liturgical, as well as secular attire, as we have in No. [8331], p. 197.

Britain, from her earliest period, had textile fabrics varying in design and material; of the colours in the woollen garments worn by each of the three several classes into which our Bardic order was apportioned. Of the checkered pattern in Boadicea’s cloak we have spoken just now, [p. xii].

Of the beauty and wide repute of English needlework, we shall have to speak when, a little further on, we reach the subject of embroidery.

From John Garland’s words, which we gave at [p. xxii], it would seem that all the lighter and more tasteful webs wrought here came from women’s hands; and the loom, one of which must have been in almost every English nunnery and homestead, was of the simplest make.

In olden times, the Egyptians wove in an upright loom, and beginning at top so as to weave downwards, sat at their work. In Palestine the weaver had an upright loom too, but beginning at bottom and working upwards, was obliged to stand. During the mediæval period the loom, here at least, was horizontal, as is shown by the one figured in that gorgeously illuminated Bedford Book of Hours, fol. 32, at which the Blessed Virgin Mary is seated weaving curtains for the temple.

As samples of one of the several kinds of work wrought by our nuns and mynchens, as well as English ladies, we refer to Nos. [1233], p. 24, [1256], p. 33, [1270], p. 38, demonstrating the ability of their handicraft as well as elegance in design during the thirteenth century. For specimens of the commoner sorts of silken textiles and of wider breadth, which began to be woven in this country under Edward III., it would be as hard as hazardous to direct the reader. Very recent examples of all sorts—velvets among the rest—may be found in the Brooke collection. To some students the piece of Old English printed chintz, No. [1622], p. 84, will not be without an interest.

For the finer sort of linen napery, Eylisham or Ailesham in Lincolnshire was famous during the fourteenth century. Exeter cathedral, A.D. 1327, had “unum manutergium de Eylisham”—a hand towel of Ailesham cloth.[239]

Our coarser native textiles in wool, in thread or in both, woven together, forming a stuff called “burel,” made of which St. Paul’s London, A.D. 1295, had a light blue chasuble;[240] and Exeter cathedral, A.D. 1277, a long pall;[241] all sorts, in fine, of heavier work, were wrought in our monasteries for men. By their rule the Benedictine monks, and all their offsets, were bound to give a certain number of hours every week-day to hand work, either at home or in the field. [242]

Weeping over the wars and strife in England during the year 1265 and the woes of the people, our Matthew of Westminster sums up, among our losses, the fall in our trade of woollen stuffs, with which we used to supply the world. O Anglia olim gloriosa ... licet maris angustata littoribus ... tibi tamen per orbem benedixerunt omnium latera nationum de tuis ovium velleribus calefacta.[243]

The weaving in this country of woollen cloth, as a staple branch of trade, is older than some are willing to believe. Of the monks at Bath abbey we are told by a late writer, “the shuttle and the loom employed their attention, (about the middle of the fourteenth century,) and under their active auspices the weaving of woollen cloth (which made its appearance in England about the year 1330, and received the sanction of an Act of Parliament in 1337) was introduced, established, and brought to such perfection at Bath as rendered this city one of the most considerable in the west of England for this manufacture.”[244] Worcester cloth, which was of a fine quality, was so good, that by a chapter of the Benedictine Order, held A.D. 1422, at Westminster Abbey, it was forbidden to be worn by the monks, and declared smart enough for military men.[245] Norwich, too, wove stuffs that were in demand for costly household furniture, for, A.D. 1394, Sir John Cobham bequeathed to his friends “a bed of Norwich stuff embroidered with butterflies.”[246] In one of the chapels at Durham Priory there were four blue cushions of Norwich work.[247] Worsted, a town in Norfolk, by a new method of its own for the carding of the wool with combs of iron well heated, and then twisting the thread harder than usual in the spinning, enabled our weavers to produce a woollen stuff of a fine peculiar quality, to which the name itself of worsted was immediately given. Unto such a high repute did the new web grow that liturgical raiment and domestic furniture of the choicest sorts were made out of it; Exeter cathedral, among its chasubles, had several “de nigro worsted” in cloth of gold. Elizabeth de Bohun, A.D. 1356, bequeathed to her daughter the Countess of Arundel “a bed of red worsted embroidered;”[248] and Joane Lady Bergavenny leaves to John of Ormond “a bed of cloth of gold with lebardes, with those cushions and tapettes of my best red worsted,”[249] &c. Of the sixteen standards of worsted entailed with the bear and a chain which floated aloft in the ship of Beauchamp Earl of Warwick, we have spoken before (p. xliii.) In the “Fabric Rolls of York Minster” vestments made of worsted—there variously spelt “worsett,”[250] and “woryst”[251]—are enumerated.

[239] Oliver, p. 314.

[240] Dugdale’s St. Paul’s, p. 323.

[241] Oliver, p. 298.

[242] Reg. S. Ben. c. xlviii. De Opere Manuum quotidiano, p. 129; c. lvii. De Artificibus Monasterii, p. 131; ed. Brockie, t. i. “Lena” is the mediæval Latin for a bed coverlet.

[243] Flores Histor. p. 396. Frankfort, A.D. 1601.

[244] Monasticon Anglicanum, t. ii. p. 259.

[245] Benedict. in Anglia, ed. Reyner, App. p. 165.

[246] Testamenta Vetusta, ed. Nicolas, t. i. p. 136.

[247] Hist. Dunelm. Scriptores Tres. Append. p. cclxxxvi.

[248] Testamenta Vetusta, i. 61.

[249] Ibid. p. 227.

[250] Pp. 301, 305.

[251] P. 302.

Irish cloth, white and red, in the reign of John, A.D. 1213, was much used in England; and in the household expenses of Swinford, bishop of Hereford, A.D. 1290, an item occurs of Irish cloth for lining. [252]

But our weavers knew how to throw off from their looms, artistically designed and well-figured webs; in the “Wardrobe Accounts” of our Edward II. we read this item: “to a mercer of London for a green hanging of wool wove with figures of kings and earls upon it, for the king’s service in his hall on solemn feasts at London.”[253] Such “salles,” as they were called in France, and “hullings,” or rather “hallings,” the name they went under here, were much valued abroad, and in common use at home: under the head of “Salles d’Angleterre,” among the articles of costly furniture belonging to Charles V. of France, A.D. 1364, who began his reign some forty years after our Edward II.’s death, one set of such hangings is thus put down: “une salle d’Angleterre vermeille brodée d’azur, et est la bordeure à vignettes et le dedens de lyons, d’aigles et de lyepars,” quoted from the MS. No. [8356], in the Imperial Library, Paris, by Michel;[254] while here in England, Richard Earl of Arundel, A.D. 1392, willed to his dear wife “the hangings of the hall which was lately made in London, of blue tapestry with red roses with the arms of my sons,”[255] &c.; and Lady Bergavenny, after bequeathing her hullying of black, red, and green, to one friend, to another left her best stained hall.[256]

[252] Ed. Web. for the Camden Society, p. 193, t. i.

[253] Archæologia, t. xxvi. p. 344.

[254] Tom. i. p. 49.

[255] Test. Vetust. t. i. p. 130.

[256] Ibid. pp. 228, 229.

Flemish textiles, at least of the less ambitious kinds, such as napery and woollens, were much esteemed centuries ago, and our countryman, Matthew of Westminster, says of Flanders, that from the material—perhaps wool—which we sent her, she sent us back those precious garments she wove.[257]

Though industrious everywhere within her limits, some of her towns stood foremost for certain kinds of stuff, and Bruges became in the latter end of the fifteenth century conspicuous for its silken textiles. Here in England, the satins of Bruges were in great use for church garments; in Haconbie church, A.D. 1566, was “one white vestmente of Bridges satten repte in peces and a clothe made thereof to hange before our pulpitt;”[258] and, A.D. 1520, York cathedral had “a vestment of balkyn (baudekin) with a crosse of green satten in bryges.”[259]

Her damask silks were equally in demand; and the specimens here will interest the reader. Nos. [8318], p. 190, [8332], p. 197, show the ability of the Bruges loom, while the then favourite pattern with the pomegranate in it, betrays the likings of the Spaniards, at that time the rulers of the country, for this token of their beloved Isabella’s reconquered Granada. No. [8319], p. 191, is another sample of Flemish weaving, rich in its gold, and full of beauty in design.

In her velvets, Flanders had no need to fear a comparison with anything of the kind that Italy ever threw off from her looms, whether at Venice, Florence, or Genoa, as the samples we have here under Nos. [8673], p. 254, [8674], p. 255, [8704], p. 264, will prove. Nay, this last specimen, with its cloth of gold ground, and its pattern in a dark blue deep-piled velvet, is not surpassed in gorgeousness even by that splendid stuff from Florence yet to be seen in one of the copes for Westminster Abbey given it by Henry VII.

Block-printed linen was, toward the end of the fourteenth century, another production of Flanders, of which pieces may be seen at Nos. [7022], p. 118, [7027], p. 120, [8303], p. 184, [8615], p. 234. Though to the eyes of many, these may look so poor, so mean; to men like the cotton-printers of Lancashire and other places they will have a strong attraction; to the scholar they will be deeply interesting as suggestive of the art of printing. Such specimens are rare, but it is likely that England can show, in the chapter library at Durham, the earliest sample of the kind as yet known, in a fine sheet wrapped about the body of some old bishop discovered, along with several pieces of ancient silks, and still more ancient English embroidery, in a grave opened by Mr. Raine, A.D. 1827, within that grand northern cathedral.

What Bruges was in silks and velvets Yprès, in the sixteenth century, became for linen, and for many years Flemish linens had been in favourite use throughout England. Hardly a church of any size, scarcely a gentleman’s house in this country, but used a quantity of towels and other napery that was made in Flanders, especially at Yprès.[260] Of this textile instances may be seen at pp. [34], [73], [75], [124], [203], [205], [255], [263].

[257] Hist. p. 396, Frankfort, A.D. 1601.

[258] Church Furniture, ed. Peacock, p. 94.

[259] Fabric Rolls, p. 302.

[260] Oliver’s Exeter, p. 356.

French silks, now in such extensive use, were until the end of the sixteenth century not much cared for in France itself, and seldom heard of abroad. The reader, then, must not be astonished at finding so few examples of the French loom, in a collection of ancient silken textiles.

France, as England, used of old to behold her women, old and young, rich and poor, while filling up their leisure hours in-doors, at work on a small loom, and weaving certain narrow webs, often of gold, and diapered with coloured silks, as we mentioned before (p. [xxii].) Of such French wrought stuffs belonging to the thirteenth century, some samples are described at pp. [29], [130], [131].

In damasks, her earliest productions are of the sixteenth century, and are described at pp. [13], [205], [206]; and the last is a favourable example of what the loom then was in France; everything later is of that type so well known to everybody. In several of her textiles a leaning towards classicism in design is discernible.

Though so few, her cloths of gold, pp. [9], [15], are good, more especially the fine one at p. [104].

Her velvets, too, pp. [14], [89], [106], are satisfactory.

Satins from France are not many here.

The curious and elaborately ornamented gloves, p. [105], which got into fashion, especially for ladies, at the end of the sixteenth century, will be a welcome object for such as are curious in the history of women’s dress, in France and England.

Quilting, too, on coverlets, shown at pp. [13], [104], displays the taste of our neighbours in such stitchery, so much in use among them and ourselves from the sixteenth century.

Like Flanders, France knew how to weave fine linen, which here in England was much in use for ecclesiastical as well as household purposes. Three new cloths of Rains (Rennes in Brittany) were, A.D. 1327, in use for the high altar in Exeter cathedral,[261] and many altar-cloths of Paris linen. In the poem of the “Squier of Low Degree,” the lady is told

Your blankettes shal be of fustyane,

Your shetes shal be of cloths of rayne;

and, A.D. 1434, Joane Lady Bergavenny devises in her will, “two pair sheets of Raynes, a pair of fustians,” &c.[262] For her Easter “Sepulchre” Exeter had a pair of this Rennes sheeting; “par linthiaminum de Raynys pro sepulchro.”[263]

[261] Oliver, p. 314.

[262] Test. Vet. i. 227.

[263] Oliver, p. 340.

Cologne, the queen of the Rhine, became famous during the whole of the fifteenth and part of the sixteenth century for a certain kind of ecclesiastical textile which, from the very general use to which it has been applied, we have named “orphrey web.” Since by far the greater part of this collection, as it now exists, had been made in Germany, beginning with Cologne, it is, as might be expected, well supplied with specimens of a sort of stuff, if not peculiar, at least abounding in that country. Those same liturgical ornaments which Venice and Florence wove with such artistic taste for Italian church use, Cologne succeeded in doing for Germany. Her productions, however, are every way far below in beauty Italy’s like works. The Italian orphrey-webs are generally done in gold or yellow silk, upon a crimson ground of silk. Florence’s are often distinguished from those of Venice by the introduction of white for the faces; Cologne’s vary from both by introducing blue, while the material is almost always very poor, and the weaving coarse.

The earliest specimen here of this Cologne orphrey-web is No. [8279], p. 174; but it is far surpassed by many others, such as are, for instance, to be found at pp. [61], [62], [63], [64], [69], [80], [82], [116], [117], [118], [119], [174], [175], [252], [253]. Among these some have noticeable peculiarities; No. [1329], p. 61, a good specimen, has the persons of the saints so woven that the heads, hands, and emblems are wrought with the needle; the same, too, in Nos. [7023], p. 118, and [8667], p. 252; in No. [1373], though the golden ground looks very fresh and brilliant, the gilding process, as on wood, has been employed. Here in England this orphrey web was in church use and called “rebayn de Colayn.”[264]

The piece of German napery at No. [8317], p. 190, of the beginning of the fifteenth century will be to those curious about household linen, an acceptable specimen.

If by hazard while reading some old inventory of church vestments the reader should stumble upon some entry mentioning a chasuble made of cloth of Cologne, let him understand it to mean not a certain broad textile woven there, but merely a vestment composed of several pieces of this kind of web sewed together, just as was the frontal made out of pieces of woven Venice orphreys at No. [8976], p. 271.

[264] Testamenta Eborac, iii. 13.

The countries whence silks came to us are numerous; with confidence, however, we may say, that till the middle of the fifteenth century, when we began to weave some of them for ourselves, the whole geography of silken textiles lay within the basin of the Mediterranean to the west, and the continent of Asia to the east.

Though mention is often made of tissues coming from various places, those cities are always to be found upon the map we have just marked out. Among those spoken of Antioch, Tarsus, Alexandria, Damascus, Byzantium, Cyprus, Trip or Tripoli, and Bagdad, are easily recognized, as well as the later centres of trade and manufacture, Venice, Genoa and Lucca. To fix the localities of a few others would be but guess-work.

At the beginning of the fourteenth century is mentioned occasionally a silk called “Acca,” and, from the description of it, it must have been a cloth of gold shot with coloured silk, figured with animals: William de Clinton, Earl of Huntingdon, gave to St. Alban’s monastery a whole vestment of cloth of gold shot with sky-blue, and called cloth of Acca; “unum vestimentum ... de panno quem Accam dicimus; cujus campus est aerius. In reliquis vero partibus resultat auri fulgor.”[265] To some it would look as if this stuff took its name from having been brought to us through the port of Acre. We lean towards this belief on finding, on the authority of Macri, in his valuable Hierolexicon, Venice, 1735, pp. 5, 542, that so used to be written the name of the ancient Ptolemais in Syria.

What in one age, and at a particular place, happened to be so well made, and hence became so eagerly sought for, at a later period, and in another place, got to be much better wrought and at a lower price. Time, indeed, changed the name of the market, but did not alter in any great degree either the quality of the material, or the style of the design wrought upon it. All over the kingdom of the Byzantine Greeks the loom had to change its gearing very little. The Saracenic loom, whether in Asia, Africa, or Spain, was always Arabic, though Persia could not forget her olden Zoroasterian traditions about the “hom” or tree of life separating lions, and having all about lion-hunting cheetahs, and birds of various sorts.

With regard to the whole of Asia, we learn that its many peoples, from the earliest times, knew how not only to weave cloth of gold, but figure it too with birds and beasts. Almost two thousand years afterwards, Marco Polo, in the thirteenth century, found exactly the very same kinds of textile known in the days of Darius still everywhere, from the shores of the Mediterranean to far Cathay, in demand and woven. What he says of Bagdad, he repeats in fewer words about many other cities.[266]

In finding their way to England these fabrics had given them not so often the names of the places where they had been wrought, but, if not in all, at least in most instances, the names of the seaports in the Mediterranean where they had been shipped.

[265] Mon. Anglic. ii. 221.

[266] I Viaggi di Marco Polo, ed. A. Bartoli, Firenze, 1863.

For beautifully wrought and figured silk, of the few terms that still outlive the mediæval period, one is Damask.

China, no doubt, was the first country to ornament its silken webs with a pattern. India, Persia and Syria, then Byzantine Greece, followed, but at long intervals between, in China’s footsteps. Stuffs so figured brought with them to the west the name “diaspron” or diaper, bestowed upon them at Constantinople. But about the twelfth century, so very far did the city of Damascus, even then long celebrated for its looms, outstrip all other places for beauty of design, that her silken textiles were eagerly sought for everywhere, and thus, as often happens, traders fastened the name of Damascen or Damask upon every silken fabric richly wrought and curiously designed, no matter whether it came or not from Damascus. After having been for ages the epithet betokening all that was rich and good in silk, “Samit” had to be forgotten, and Diaper, from being the very word significant of pattern, became a secondary term descriptive of merely a part in the elaborate design on Damask.

Baudekin, that sort of costly cloth of gold spoken of so much during so many years in English literature, took, as we said before, its famous name from Bagdad.

Many are the specimens in this collection furnishing proofs of the ancient weavers’ dexterity in their management of the loom, but especially of the artists’ taste in setting out so many of their intricate and beautiful designs.

What to some will be happily curious is that we have this very day before our eyes pieces, in all likelihood, from the self-same web which furnished the material, centuries ago, for vestments and ornaments used of old in the cathedrals of England. Let any one turn to p. [122], and, after looking at number [7036], compare that silk with this item in the inventory of St. Paul’s, London, A.D. 1225: “Item, Baudekynus rubeus cum Sampsone constringente ora leonum,” &c.[267] See also number [8589], and number [8235].

An identification between very many samples, brought together here, of ancient textiles in silk, and the descriptions of such stuffs afforded us in those valuable records—our old church inventories—might be carried on, if necessary, to a very lengthened extent.

[267] Dugdale’s St. Paul’s, p. 328.

Dorneck was the name given to an inferior kind of damask wrought of silk, wool, linen thread and gold, in Flanders. Towards the end of the fifteenth century, mostly at Tournay, which city, in Flemish, was often called Dorneck—a word variously spelt as Darnec, Darnak, Darnick, and sometimes even Darness.

The gild of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Boston had a care cloth of silke dornex and church furniture.[268] The “care cloth” was a sort of canopy held over the bride and bridegroom as they knelt for the nuptial blessing, according to the Salisbury rite, at the marriage mass. At Exeter it was used in chasubles for orphreys.[269] A specimen of Dornex may be seen, No. [7058], p. 129. See also York Fabric Rolls, pp. 291, 297, 298, 300, 305.

[268] Peacock, p. 204.

[269] Oliver, pp. 359, 365.

Buckram, a cotton textile, has a history and a reputation somewhat varied.

In our oldest inventories mention is often made of a “panus Tartaricus” or Tartary cloth, which was, if not always, at least often purple. Asia, especially in its eastern borders, became famous for the fine textiles it wove out of cotton, and dyed in every colour. Cities got for themselves a reputation for some especial excellence in their looms, and as Mosul had the name of Muslin from that place given to the fine and delicate cotton webs it wrought, so the term of buckram for another sort of cotton textile came from the city of Bokhara in Tartary where this cloth was made. All along the middle ages buckram was much esteemed for being costly and very fine, and consequently fit for use in church vestments, and for secular personal wear. John Grandison, consecrated bishop of Exeter, A.D. 1327, gave to his cathedral flags of white and red buckram;[270] and among the five very rich veils for covering the moveable lectern in that church, three were lined with blue “bokeram.”[271] As late as the beginning of the sixteenth century this stuff was held good enough for lining to a black velvet gown for a queen, Elizabeth of York.[272] The coarse thick fabric which now goes by the name was anything but the olden production known as “bokeram.”

[270] Ib. p. 319.

[271] Ib. p. 329.

[272] Her Privy Purse Expenses, ed. Nicolas, p. 22, &c.

Burdalisaunder, Bordalisaunder, Bourde de Elisandre, with other varieties in spelling, is a term often to be met with in old wills and church inventories. In the year 1327 Exeter had a chasuble of Bourde de Elisandre of divers colours.[273] It was wide enough for half a piece to form the adornment of a high altar.[274]

The difficulty of understanding what this textile was will vanish when we remember that in Arabic “bord” to this day means a striped cloth; and we know, both from travellers and the importation of the textile itself, that many tribes in North and Eastern Africa weave stuffs for personal wear of a pattern consisting of white and black longitudinal stripes. St. Augustin too, living in North Africa near the modern Algiers, speaks of a stuff for clothing called “burda,” in the end of the fourth and beginning of the fifth century. Burdalisaunder was a silken web in different coloured stripes, and specimens of this, at one time known as “stragulata” may be found here at pp. [21], [27], [33], [56], [57], [161], [225], [226], &c. Though made in so many places round the Mediterranean, this silk took its name, at least in England, from Alexandria, because it was to be had in that Egyptian city, always celebrated for its silks, either better made or at a much lower price than elsewhere.

In all likelihood the curtains for the tabernacle, as well as the girdles for Aaron and his sons, of fine linen and violet and purple, and scarlet twice dyed, were wrought with this very pattern, so that in the “stragulata” or “burd Aliscaunder” we behold the oldest known design for any textile.

[273] Oliver, p. 312.

[274] Yorkshire Wills. Part i. p. 174.

Fustian, of which two of its forms we still have in velveteen and corduroy, was originally wove at Fustat, on the Nile, with a warp of linen thread and a woof of thick cotton, which was so twilled and cut that it showed on one side a thick but low pile; and the web so managed took its name of Fustian from that Egyptian city. At what period it was invented we do not rightly know, but we are well aware it must have been brought to this country before the Normans coming hither, for our Anglo-Saxon countryman, St. Stephen Harding, when a Cistercian abbot and an old man, circ. A.D. 1114, forbade chasubles in his church to be made of anything but fustian or plain linen: “neque casulas nisi de fustaneo vel lino sine pallio aureo vel argenteo,” &c.[275] The austerity of his rule reached even the ornament of the church. From such a prohibition we are not to draw as a conclusion that fustian was at the time a mean material; quite the contrary, it was a seemly textile. Years afterwards, in the fourteenth century, Chaucer tells us of his knight:—

Of fustian he wered a gepon.[276]

Fustian, so near akin to velvet, is more especially noticed along with what is said upon that fine textile.

In the fifteenth century Naples had a repute for weaving fustians, but our English churchwardens, not being learned in geography, made some laughable bad spelling of this, like some other continental stuffs: “Fuschan in appules,” for fustian from Naples, is droll; yet droller still is “mustyrd devells,” for a cloth made in France at a town called Mustrevilliers.

[275] Mon. Anglic. ed. Dugdale, v. 225.

[276] The Prologue, Poems, ed. Nicolas, ii. 3.

Muslin, as it is now throughout the world, so from the earliest antiquity has been everywhere in Asia in favourite use, both as an article of dress and as furniture. Its cloud-like thinness, its lightness, were, as they still are to some Asiatics, not the only charms belonging to this stuff: it was esteemed equally as much for the taste in which stripes of gold had been woven in its warp. As we learn from the travels of Marco Polo, the further all wayfarers in Asia wandered among its eastern nations, the higher they found the point of excellence which had been reached by those people in weaving silk and gold into splendid fabrics. If the silkworm lived, nay, thrived there, the cotton plant was in its home, its birth-place, in those regions. Where stood Nineveh Mosul stands now.

Like many cities of Middle Asia, Mosul had earned for itself a reputation of old for the beauty of its gold-wrought silken textiles. Cotton grew all around in plenty; the inhabitants, especially the women, being gifted with such quick feeling of finger, could spin thread from this cotton of more than hair-like fineness. Cotton then took with them, on many occasions, the place of silk in the loom; but gold was not forgotten in the texture. This new fabric, not only because it was so much cheaper, but from its own peculiar beauty and comeliness, won for itself a high place in common estimation. At once, and by the world’s accord, on it was bestowed as its distinctive name, the name of the place where it was wrought in such perfection. Hence, whether wove with or without gold, we call to this day this cotton web Muslin, from the Asiatic city of Mosul.

Cloth of Areste is another of those terms for woven stuffs which students of textiles had never heard of were it not to be found in our old English deeds and inventories. The first time we meet it is in an order given, A.D. 1244, by Henry III. for finding two of these cloths of Areste with which two copes had to be made for royal chapels: “Duos pannos del Areste ad duas capas faciendas,” &c.[277] Again it comes a few years later at St. Paul’s, which cathedral, A.D. 1295, had, besides a dalmatic and tunicle of this silk—“de serico albo diasperato de Arest,”[278]—as many as thirty and more hangings of this same texture.[279]

From the description of these pieces we gather that this so-called cloth of Areste must have been as beautiful as it was rich, being for the most part cloth of gold figured elaborately, some with lions and double-headed eagles, others, for example, with the death and burial of our Lord—“campus aureus cum leonibus et aquilis bicapitibus de aurifilo contextis—campus rubeus cum historia Passionis Domini et sepulturæ ejusdem.” These designs speak of the looms at work in the middle ages on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, and we are much strengthened in this thought by beholding how the death and burial of our Lord, like the sample here, number [8278], p. 170-1, are shown on a crimson ground, as we shall have to instance further on under Symbolism, § VII.

That this sort of stuff, wove of silk and gold, was of any kind of Arras, or made in that town, to our seeming is a very unhappy guess. Arras had not won for itself a reputation for its tapestry before the fourteenth century. Tapestry itself is too thick and heavy for use in vestments; yet this cloth of Areste was light enough for tunicles, and when worn out was sometimes condemned at St. Paul’s to be put aside for lining other ritual garments—“ad armaturam faciendam.”[280] The term “Areste” has little or nothing in it common to the word “Arras,” as written either in French, or under its Latin appellation “Atrebatum.”

Among the three meanings for the mediæval “Aresta,” one is, any kind of covering. To us, then, it seems as if these cloths of Areste took their name not from the place whereat they had been wove, but from the use to which, if not always, for the most part, we put them—that of hangings about our churches, since in the St. Paul’s inventory they are usually spoken of as such—“culcitræ pendules, panni penduli.”[281] Moreover, tapestry, or Arras work, being thick and heavy, could never have been employed for such light use as that of apparels, nor would it have been diapered like silk, yet we find it to have been so fashioned and so used—“maniculariis apparatis quodam panno rubeo diasperato de Laret, &c.”[282]

[277] Excerpta Historica, p. 404.

[278] St. Paul’s Cathedral, ed. Dugdale, p. 322.

[279] Ibid. p. 329.

[280] St. Paul’s Cathedral, ed. Dugdale, p. 329.

[281] Ibid. p. 329.

[282] Ibid. p. 335.

For not a few it would be hard to understand some at least among those epithets meant in by-gone days to tell how