Section I.—TEXTILES.
Under its widest acceptation, the word “textile” means every kind of stuff, no matter its material, wrought in the loom. Hence, whether the threads be spun from the produce of the animal, vegetable, or the mineral kingdom—whether of sheep’s wool, goats’ hair, camels’ wool, or camels’ hair—whether of flax, hemp, mallow, Spanish broom, the filaments drawn out of the leaves of the yucca—Adam’s needle—and other plants of the lily and asphodel tribes of flowers, the fibrous coating about pods, or cotton; whether of the mineral amianthus, of gold, silver, or of any other metal, it signifies nothing, the webs from such materials are textiles. Unlike to these are other appliances for garment-making in many countries; and of such materials, not the least curious, if not odd to our ideas, is paper, which is so much employed for the purpose by the Japanese.
At the outset of our subject a word or two may be of good use, upon
The Geography of the Raw Materials.
one or other of which we shall always find wrought up in the textiles in this collection. We will then begin with
Wool.
After gleaning out of the writings of the ancients all they have said about the physical geography of the earth, as far as their knowledge of it went, and casting our eyes upon a map of the world as known of old, we shall see at once the materials which man had at hand, in every clime, for making his articles of dress.
In all the colder regions the well-furred skins of several families of beasts could, by the ready help of a thorn for a needle, and the animal’s own sinews for thread, be fashioned, after a manner, into the requisites of dress.
Throughout by far the longest length and the widest breadth of the earth, sheep, at an early period, were bred, not so much for food as for raiment. At first, the locks of wool torn away from the animal’s back by brambles, were gathered: afterwards shearing was thought of and followed in some countries, while in others the wool was not cut off, but plucked by the hand away from the living creature, as we learn from Pliny:[1] “Oves non ubique tondentur: durat quibusdam in locis vellendi mos.” Got in either method the fleeces were, from the earliest times, spun by women from the distaff. At last so wishful were the growers to improve the coats of their lambs that they clothed them in skins; a process which not only fined the staple of the wool, but kept it clean, and better fitted it for being washed and dyed, as we are told by many ancient writers, such as Horace and the great agricultural authority Varro. In uttering his wish for a sweet peaceful home in his old age, either at Tibur, or on the banks of the pleasant Gelæsus, thus sings the poet:
Dulce pellitis ovibus Gelæsi
Flumen.[2]
And what were these “oves pellitæ,” or “tectæ” and “molles,” as they were called, in contradistinction to “hirtæ,” we understand from Varro, who says, “oves pellitæ; quæ propter lanæ bonitatem, ut sunt Taren-tinæ et Atticæ, pellibus integuntur, ne lana inquinetur quo minus vel infici rectè possit, vel lavari ac parari.”[3]
This latter very ancient daily work followed by women of all degrees, spinning from off the distaff, was taught to our Anglo-Saxon sisters among all ranks of life, from the king’s daughter downwards. In his life of Eadward the elder, A.D. 901, Malmesbury writes: “Filias suas ita instituerat ut literis omnes in infantia maxime vacarent, mox etiam colum et acum exercere consuescerent, ut his artibus pudice impubem virginitatem transigerent.”[4] The same occupation is even now a female favourite in many countries on the Continent, particularly so all through Italy. Long ago it bestowed the name of spindle-tree on the Euonymus plant, on account of the good spindles which its wood affords, and originated the term “spinster,” yet to be found in our law-books as meaning an unmarried woman even of the gentlest blood, while every now and then from the graves that held the ashes of our sisters of the British and the Anglo-Saxon epochs, are picked up the elaborately ornamented leaden whorls which they fastened at the lower end of their spindles to give them a due weight and steadiness as they twirled them round.
Beginning with the British islands on the west, and going eastward on a line running through the Mediterranean sea, and stretching itself out far into Asia, we find that the peoples who dwelt to the north of such a boundary wrought several of their garments out of sheep’s wool, goats’ hair, and beavers’ fur, while those living to the south, including the inhabitants of North Africa, Arabia, and Persia, besides the above-named animal produce, employed for these purposes, as well as tent-making, the wool and hair which their camels gave them: the Baptist’s garment was of the very coarsest kind.
Of the use of woollen stuff, not woven but plaited, among the older stock of the Britons, a curious instance was very lately brought to light while cutting through an early Celtic grave-hill or barrow in Yorkshire: the dead body had been wrapped, as was shown by the few unrotted shreds still cleaving to its bones, in a woollen shroud of coarse and loose fabric wrought by the plaiting process without a loom.[5]
As time crept on, it brought along with it the loom, fashioned though it was after its simplest form, to the far west, and taught its use throughout the British islands. The art of dyeing very soon followed; and so beautiful were the tints which our Britons knew how to give to their wools, that strangers, while they wondered at, were not a little jealous of the splendour of those tones. From the heavy stress laid upon the rule which taught that the official colour in their dress assigned to each of the three ranks into which the bardic order was distinguished, must be of one simple unbroken shade, whether spotless white, symbolic of sun-light and holiness, for the druid or priest—whether sky-blue, emblem of peace, for the bard or poet—or green, the livery of the wood and field, for the Ovydd or teacher of natural history and leech-craft, yet at the same moment we know that party-coloured stuffs were woven here, and after two forms: the postulants asking leave to be admitted into bardism might be recognized by the robe barred with stripes of white, blue, and green, which they had to wear during all the term of their initiation. With regard to the bulk of our people, according to the Greek historian of Rome—Dion Cassius, born A.D. 155—the garments worn by them were made of a texture wrought in a square pattern of several colours; and speaking of our brave-hearted British queen, Boadicea, that same writer tells us that she usually had on, under her cloak, a motley tunic, χιτὼν παμποίκιλος, that is, checkered all over with many colours. This garment we are fairly warranted in deeming to have been a native stuff, woven of worsted after a pattern in tints and design exactly like one or other of the present Scotch plaids. Pliny, who seems to have gathered a great deal of his natural history from scraps of hearsay, most likely included these ancient sorts of British textiles along with those from Gaul, when he wrote:—“Plurimis vero liciis texere quæ polymita appellant, Alexandria instituit: scutullis dividere, Gallia.” But to weave with a good number of threads, so as to work the cloths called polymita, was first taught in Alexandria; to divide by checks, in Gaul.[6]
[1] Lib. viii. c. 47.
[2] Lyric. c. vi. vi.
[3] De Re Rustica, ii. 2.
[4] Gesta Regum Anglorum, t. 1. lib. ii. p. 198, ed. Hardy.
[5] Journal of the Archæological Institute, t. XXII. p. 254.
[6] Plin. lib. viii.
The native botanical home of
Cotton
is in the East. India almost everywhere throughout her wide-spread countries, and many kingdoms of old, arrayed, as she still arrays herself, in cotton, which she gathered from a plant of the mallow family, that had its wild growth there; and in this same vegetable produce the lower orders of the people dwelling still further to the east were fain to clothe themselves.
Hemp,
a plant of the nettle tribe, and called by botanists “cannabis sativa,” was of old well known in the far north of Germany, and all over the ancient Scandinavia. Full two thousand five hundred years ago, Herodotus[7] thus wrote of it: “Hemp grows in the country of the Scythians, which except in the thickness and height of the stalk, very much resembles flax; in the qualities mentioned, however, the hemp is much superior. It grows in a wild state, and is also cultivated. The Thracians make clothing of it very like linen cloth; nor could any person, without being very well acquainted with the substance, say whether this clothing is made of hemp or flax.” From “cannabis,” its name in Latin, have we taken our own word “canvas,” to mean any texture woven of hempen thread.
[7] Herod. book iv. 74.
Flax
now follows. Who that has ever seen growing a patch of beautiless, sad-looking hemp, and as he wandered a few steps further, came upon a field of flax all in flower, with its gracefully-drooped head, strewing the breeze, as it strayed over it, with its frail, light-blue petals, could at first have thought that both these plants were about to yield such kindred helps for man in his wide variety of wants? Yet so it is. Besides many other countries, all over this our native land flax is to be found growing wild. Though every summer its handsome bloom must have caught the eye of our Celtic British forefathers, they were not aware for ages of the use of this plant for clothing purposes, else had they left behind them some shred of linen in one or other of their many graves; since, following, as they did, the usage of being buried in the best of the garments they were accustomed to, or most loved when alive, their bodies would have been found arrayed in some small article of linen texture, had they ever worn such. That at length they became acquainted with its usefulness, and learned to prepare and spin it, is certain; and in all likelihood the very name “lin-white thread,” which those Celts gave it in its wrought shape, furnished the Greeks with their word λίνον, and the Latins their linum, for linen. The term “flax,” which we still keep, from the Anglo-Saxon tongue, for the plant itself and its raw material, and the Celtic “linen,” for the same vegetable produce when spun and woven into cloth, are words for things akin in our present language, which, as in many such like instances, show the footprints of those races that, one after another, have trod this land.
To the valley of the Nile must we go if we wish to learn the earliest history of the finest flaxen textiles. Time out of mind were the Egyptians famous as well for the growth of flax, as for the beautiful very fine linen they wove out of it, and which became to them a most profitable, because so widely sought for, article of commerce. Their own word, “byssus,” for the plant itself, became among the Greeks, and afterwards among the Latin nations, the term for linens wrought in Egyptian looms. Long before the oldest book in the world was written, the tillers of the ground all over Egypt had been heedful in sowing their flax, and anxious about its harvest. It was one of their staple crops, and hence was it that, in punishment of their hard-hearted Pharaoh, the hail plague which, at the bidding of Moses, showered down from heaven, hurt throughout the land the flax just as it was getting ripe.[8] Though the Jordan grew flax upon its banks, and all over the land that would soon belong to Abraham’s children, the women there, like Rahab, carefully dried it when pulled, and stacked it for future hackling upon the roofs of their houses;[9] still, it was from Egypt, as Solomon hints,[10] that the Jews had to draw their fine linen. At a later period, among the woes foretold to Egypt, the prophet Isaiah warns her that they shall be confounded who wrought (there) in combing and weaving fine linen.[11]
[8] Exodus ix. 31.
[9] Joshua ii. 6.
[10] Proverbs vii. 16.
[11] Isaiah xix. 9.
How far the reputation of Egyptian workmanship in the craft of the loom had spread abroad is shown us by the way in which, beside sacred, heathenish antiquity has spoken of it. Herodotus says:—“Amasis King of Egypt gave to the Minerva of Lindus, a linen corslet well worthy of inspection,”[12] and further on,[13] telling of another corslet which Amasis had sent the Lacedæmonians, observes that it was of linen, and had a vast number of figures of animals inwoven into its fabric, and was likewise embroidered with gold and tree-wool. What is more worthy of admiration in it is that each of the twists, although of fine texture, contains within it 360 threads, all of them clearly visible.[14] By these trustworthy evidences we clearly see that in those early times, Egypt was not only widely known for its delicately woven byssus, but it supplied all the neighbouring nations with the finest sort of linens.
[12] Herodotus, b. ii. c. 182, Rawlinson’s Translation, t. ii. p. 275.
[13] Ib. b. iii. c. 47.
[14] Herodotus, t. ii. pp. 442-43.
From written let us now go to material proofs at hand. During late years many mummies have been brought to this country from Egypt, and the narrow bandages with which they were found to have been so admirably, even according to our modern requirements of chirurgical fitness, so artistically swathed, have been unwrapped; and always have they been so fine in their texture as to fully verify the praises of old bestowed upon the beauty of the Egyptian loom-work. Moreover, from those who have taken a nearer and, so to say, a trade-like insight into such an article of manufacture, we learn that, “The finest piece of mummy-cloth, sent to England by Mr. Salt, and now in the British Museum, of linen, appears to be made of yarns of near 100 hanks in the pound, with 140 threads in an inch in the warp and about 64 in the woof.”[15] Another piece of linen which the same distinguished traveller obtained at Thebes, has 152 threads in the warp, and 71 in the woof.[16]
[15] “Ancient Egypt,” by Sir Gardiner Wilkinson, t. iii. p. 122.
[16] Ib. p. 125.
Here starts up a curious question. Though, from all antiquity upwards till within some few years back, the unbroken belief had been that such mummy-clothing was undoubtedly made of linen woven out of pure unmixed flax, some writers led, or rather misled, by a few stray words in Herodotus about tree-wool, while speaking of the corslet of Amasis, quoted just now, took at once the expression of that historian to mean wool, and then skipped to the conclusion that all Egyptian textiles wrought a thousand years before were mixed with cotton. When, however, it be borne in mind that even several hundred years after the Greek historian wrote, the common belief existed that, like cotton, silk also was the growth of a tree, as we are told by Virgil:
Quid nemora Æthiopum, molli canentia lana
Velleraque ut foliis depectant tenuia Seres?[17]
Soft wool from downy groves the Æthiop weaves,
And Seres comb their silken fleece from leaves—
the εἰρίοισι ἀπὸ ξυλοῦ of Herodotus may be understood to mean silk, just as well as cotton; nay, the rather so, as it seems very likely that, at the time when Amasis lived, silk, in the shape of thread, had found, through traders’ hands, its way to the markets of Egypt, and must have been thought a more fitting thing, from being a new as well as costly material, to grace a royal gift to a religious sanctuary of high repute, than the less precious and more common cotton. While this question was agitated, specimens of mummy-cloth were submitted to the judgment of several persons in the weaving trade deemed most competent to speak upon the matter. Helped only by the fingers’ feel and the naked eye, some among them agreed that such textures were really woven of cotton. This opinion was but shortlived. Other individuals, more philosophical, went to work on a better path. In the first place, they clearly learned, through the microscope, the exact and never-varying physical structure of both these vegetable substances. That of cotton they found in its ultimate fibre to be a transparent tube without joints, flattened so that its inward surfaces are in contact along its axis, and also twisted spirally round its axis; that of flax, a transparent tube, jointed like a cane, and not flattened or twisted spirally.[18] Examined in the same way, several old samples of byssus or mummy-bandages from Egypt in every one instance were ascertained to be of fine unmixed flaxen linen. Ages before French Flanders had dreamed of weaving fine lawns, ages before one of her industrial cities—Cambray—had so far taken the lead as to be allowed to bestow her own name, in the shape of “cambric,” on the finest kind that modern European ingenuity could produce, Egypt had known how to give to the world even a yet finer sort, and centuries after she had fallen away from her place among the kingdoms of the earth, her enthralled people still kept up their ancient superiority in spinning and weaving their fine, sometimes transparent, byssus, of which a specimen or two may be seen in this collection. [19]
[17] Georg. lib. ii. 120-121.
[18] Thomson in the Philosophical Magazine, 3rd series, t. v. num. 29, Nov. 1834.
[19] No. 152.
For many reasons the history of
Silk
is not only curious, but highly interesting. In the early ages, its very existence was quite unknown, and when found out, the knowledge of it stole forth from the far east, and straggled westward very very slowly. For all that lengthened period during which their remarkable civilization lasted, the older Egyptians never once beheld silk: neither they, nor the Israelites, nor any other of the most ancient kingdoms of the earth, knew of it in any shape, either as a simple twist, or as a woven stuff. Not the smallest shred of silk has hitherto been found in the tombs, or amid the ruins of the Pharaonic period.
No where does Holy Writ, old or new, tell anything of silk but in one single place, the Apocalypse, xviii. 12. True it is that, in the English authorized version, we read of “silk” as if spoken of by Ezekiel, xvi. 10, 13; and again, in Proverbs, xxxi. 22; yet there can be no doubt, but that in both these passages, the word silk is wrong through the translators misunderstanding the original Hebrew משי (meschi). Of this word, Parkhurst says: “As a noun, משי, according to our translation (is) silk, but not so rendered in any of the ancient versions. Silk would indeed well enough answer the ideal meaning of the Hebrew word, from its being drawn forth from the bowels of the silk-worm, and that to a degree of fineness, so as to form very slender threads. But I meet with no evidence that the Israelites in very early times (and to these Ezekiel refers) had any knowledge of silk, much less of the manner in which it was formed; משי, therefore, I think, means some kind of fine linen or cotton cloth, so denominated from the fineness with which the threads whereof it consisted were drawn out. The Vulgate, by rendering it in the former passage, ‘subtilibus’ fine, as opposed to coarse, has nearly preserved the true idea of the Hebrew.”[20] Braunius, too, no mean authority, after bestowing a great deal of study on the matter, gives it as his well-weighed judgment that, throughout the whole Hebrew Bible, no mention whatever can be found of silk, which was a material utterly unknown to the children of Israel.[21] Once only is silk spoken of in the New Testament, and then while St. John[22] is reckoning it up along with the gold, and silver, and precious stones, and pearls, and fine linen—byssus—and purple which, with many other costly freights merchants were wont to bring in ships to that mighty city which, in the Apostle’s days, ruled over the kings of the earth.
[20] Hebrew and English Lexicon. London, 1813, p. 415.
[21] De Vestitu Heb. Sac., lib. I. cap. viii. § 8.
[22] Apoc. xviii. 12.
Long after the days of Ezekiel was it that silk, in its raw form only, made up into hanks, first found its way to Egypt, western Asia, and eastern Europe.
To Aristotle do we owe the earliest notice, among the ancients, of the silk-worm, and although his account be incorrect, it has much value, since, along with his description, the celebrated Greek philosopher gives us information about the original importation of raw silk into the western world. Brought from China, through India, till it reached the Indus, the silk came by water across the Arabian Ocean, up the Red Sea, and thence over the Isthmus of Suez, or, perhaps, rather by the overland route, through Persia, to the small but commercial island of Cos (now Koss), lying off the coast of Asia Minor. Pamphile, daughter of Plates, is reported to have first woven it (silk) in Cos.[23] Here, by female hands, were wrought those light thin gauzes which became so fashionable among some high dames, but while so often spoken of by the poets of the Augustan period, were stigmatized by some among them, as well as by the heathen moralists of after ages, as anything but seemly for women’s wear. Thus Tibullus says of this sort of clothing:
Illa gerat vestes tenues, quas fœmina Coa
Texuit, auratas disposuitque vias.[24]
She may thin garments wear, which female Coan hands
Have woven, and in stripes disposed the golden bands.
Years afterwards, thus laments Seneca, the philosopher: “Video sericas vestes, si vestes vocandæ sunt, in quibus nihil est, quo defendi aut corpus aut denique pudor possit.” I behold silken garments, if garments they can be called, which are a protection neither for the body nor for shame.[25] And later still, and in the Christian era, an echo to the remarks of Seneca do we hear in the words of Solinus: “Hoc illud est sericum in quo ostentare potius corpora quàm vestire, primò feminis, nunc etiam viris persuasit luxuriæ libido.”[26] This is silk, in which at first women but now even men have been led, by their cravings after luxury, to show rather than to clothe their bodies.
[23] Hist. Anim. V. c. 19, p. 850, ed. Duval.
[24] Tibullus, l. ii. 6.
[25] De Beneficiis, l. vii. c.
[26] Solinus, c. 1.
While looking over some precious early mediæval MS., often do we yet find that its beautifully limned and richly gilt illuminations, to keep them from harm, or being hurt through the rubbings of the next leaf, have fastened beside them a covering of the thinnest gauze, just as we put in sheets of silver paper for that purpose over engravings. The likelihood is that some at least of these may be shreds from some of those thin translucent textiles which found such favour in the fashionable world for so long a time during the classic period. To some at least of our readers, the curious example of such gauzy interleafings in the manuscript of Theodulph, now at Puy en Velay, will occur.
Not only these transparent silken gauzes wrought in Cos, but far more tasty stuffs, and flowered too, from Chinese looms, found their way to Asia Minor and Italy. In telling of the barbarous nations then called the Seres, Dionysius Periegetes writes that they comb the variously coloured flowers of the desert land to make precious figured garments, resembling in colour the flowers of the meadow, and rivalling (in fineness) the work of spiders.[27]
As may be easily imagined, silken garments were brought, at an early period, to imperial Rome. Such, however, were the high prices asked for them, that few either would or could afford to buy these robes for their wives and daughters; since, at first, they were looked upon as quite unbecoming for men’s wear; hence, by a law of the Roman senate under Tiberius, it was enacted: “Ne vestis serica vicos fœdaret.” While noticing how womanish Caligula became in his dress, Suetonius remarks his silken attire: “Aliquando sericatus et cycladatus.”[28] An exception was made by some emperors for very great occasions, and both Titus and Vespasian wore dresses of silk when they celebrated at Rome their triumph over Judæa. Of the emperors who adopted whole silk for their clothing, Heliogabalus was the first, and so fond was he of the material, that, in the event of wishing to hang himself, he had got for the occasion a rope, one strand of which was silk, and the other two dyed with purple and scarlet: “Paraverat sunes, blatta et serico, et cocco intortos, quibus si necesse esset, laqueo vitam finiret.”[29]
The abnegation of another Roman Emperor, Aurelian, both in respect of himself and his empress, is, however, very remarkable: “Vestem holosericam neque ipse in vestiario suo habuit neque alteri utendam dedit. Et cum ab eo uxor sua peteret, ut unico pallio blatteo serico uteretur, ille respondit absit, ut auro fila pensentur. Libra enim auri tunc libra serici suit.”[30] Aurelian neither had himself in his wardrobe a garment wholly silk, nor gave one to be worn by another. When his own wife begged him to allow her to have a single mantle of purple silk, he replied, “Far be it from us to allow thread to be reckoned worth its weight in gold.” For then a pound of gold was the price of a pound of silk.
Here it ought to be mentioned that, for some time before this period a very broad distinction had been drawn, even in the sumptuary laws of the empire, between garments made wholly, and partially of silk; in the former, all the web, both woof and warp, is woven of nothing but silk; in the latter, the woof is of cotton or of thread, the warp only of silk. This difference in the texture is thus well set forth by Lampridius, in his life of Alexander Severus, of whom he says: he had few garments of silk—he never wore a tunic woven wholly of silk, and he never gave away cloth made of silk mixed with less valuable stuff. “Vestes sericas ipse raras habuit; holosericas nunquam induit subsericam nunquam donavit.”[31]
[27] Quoted by Yates, Textrinum Antiquorum, p. 181.
[28] Suetonius, c. 52.
[29] Lampridius, c. 26.
[30] Vopiscus, c. 45.
[31] Severus, c. 40.
Clothing made wholly or in part out of silk, became every year more and more sought for. So remunerative was the trade of weaving the raw material into its various forms, that, by the Justinian pandects, the revised code of laws for the Roman Empire, drawn up and published A.D. 533—a monopoly in it was given to the court, and looms worked by women were set up in the imperial palace. Thus Byzantium became, and long continued famous for the beauty of its silken stuffs. Still, the raw silk itself had to be brought thither from abroad; but a remedy was very near at hand. Two Greek monks, while spending many years among the Chinese, had well learned the whole process of rearing the worm. They came home, and brought back with them a goodly number of eggs hidden in their walking-staves, likely made of that hollow tough sort of reed or tall grass, the Arundo Donax; and, carrying them to Constantinople, they presented these eggs to the Emperor, who gladly received them. When hatched, the worms were distributed all over Greece and Asia Minor, and very soon the western world reared its own silk. Not long afterwards, Persia and India also became silk-growing countries. In some places, at least in Greece, the weaving not only of the finer kinds of cloth, but of silk, got at last into the hands of the Jews. Writing of his travels, A.D. 1161, Benjamin of Tudela tells us that the great city of Thebes contained about two thousand Jewish inhabitants. These are the most eminent manufacturers of silk and purple cloth in all Greece.[32]
Telling us how the fleet of our first Richard coasted the shores of Spain on its voyage to the Holy Land, Hoveden says of Almeria and its silk factory: “Deinde per nobilem civitatem quæ dicitur Almaria ubi fit nobile sericum et delicatum quod dicitur sericum de Almaria.”[33] So prized were these fine delicate textiles that they were paid as tribute to princes: “Insula de Maiore reddit ei (regi Arragoniæ) trecentos pannos sericos de Almaria per annum de tributo,” &c.[34]
[32] Early Travels in Palestine, ed. T. Wright, p. 71.
[33] Rog. Hoveden, Ann. ed. Savile, Rer. Ang. Script., p. 382.
[34] Ib. p. 382, b.
South Italy wrought rich silken stuffs by the end of the eleventh century; for we are told by our countryman, Ordericus Vitalis, who died in the first half of the twelfth century, that Mainerius, the abbot of his monastery of St. Evroul, at Uzey, in Normandy, on coming home, brought with him from Apulia several large pieces of silk, and gave to the Church four of the finest ones, with which four copes were made for the chanters: “De pallis quas ipse de Apulia detulerat quatuor de preciosioris S. Ebrulfo obtulit ex quibus quatuor cappæ cantorum in eadem factæ sunt ecclesia.”[35]
[35] Ordericus Vitalis, Ecc. Hist., l. v. p. 584.
From a feeling alive in every heart throughout the length and breadth of Christendom that the best of all things ought to be given for the service of its religious rites, the garments of its celebrating priesthood, from the far east to the uttermost west, were, if not always, at least very often wholly of silk—holosericus. To this fact we have pointed for the sake of remembering that were it not so, we had been, at this day, without the power of being able to see through the few but tattered shreds before us, what elegantly designed and gorgeous stuffs the foreign mediæval loom could weave, and what beautiful embroidery our own countrywomen knew so well how to work. These specimens help us also to rightly understand the description of those splendid vestments and ritual appliances enumerated with such exactness in the old inventories of our venerable cathedrals and parish churches as well as the early wardrobe accompts of our kings, the wills and bequests of our dignified ecclesiastics and nobility, to some of which documents we shall have to refer a little later.
In coming westward among us, all these so much coveted stuffs brought along with them their own several names by which they were commonly known throughout the east, whether Greece, Asia Minor, or Persia. Hence when we read of Samit, ciclatoun, cendal, baudekin, and other such terms quite unknown to trade now-a-day, we should bear in mind that notwithstanding the wide variety of spelling, or rather misspelling, each of these appellations has run through, we reach at last their true derivations, and so happily get to know in what country and by whose hands they were wrought.
As trade grew up, she brought these fine silken textiles to our markets, and articles of dress were made of silk for men’s as well as women’s wear among the wealthy. At what period the raw material came to be imported here, not so much for embroidery as to be wrought in the loom, we do not exactly know; but from several sides we learn that our countrywomen of all degrees busied themselves in weaving. Among the home occupations of maidens dedicated to God, St. Aldhelm, at the end of the seventh century, seems to number: “Cortinarum sive stragularum textura.”[36] In the council at Cloveshoo, under Archbishop Cuthbert, A.D. 747, nuns are exhorted to spend their time in reading or singing psalms rather than weaving and knitting vainglorious garments of many colours: “Magisque legendis libris vel canendis psalmis, quam texendis et plectendis vario colore inanis gloriæ vestibus studeant operam dare.”[37] By that curious old English book, the “Ancren Riwle,” written towards the end of the twelfth century, ankresses are forbidden to make purses to gain friends therewith, or blodbendes.[38] Were it not that the weaving especially of silk, was so generally followed in the cloister by English women, it had been useless to have so strongly discountenanced the practice.
[36] De Laudibus Virginitatis, Opp. ed. Giles, 15.
[37] Concil. Ecc. Brit. ed. Spelman, i. 256.
[38] P. 421.
Those “blodbendes,” or narrow strips for winding round the arm after bleeding, are curiously illustrative of an old national custom for health-sake kept up in the remembrance of some old folks still living, of periodical blood-letting. To his practices upon the heads and chins of people the barber at no remote period, added that of bleeding them; and the old English barber surgeons held a high position among the gilds of London. To show where he lived each member of that brotherhood had hanging out from the walls of his house a long thin pole painted spirally black and white, the white in token of the blodbende or bandage to be winded and kept about the patient’s arm.
But on silk weaving by our women in small hand-looms, a very important witness, especially about several curious specimens in this collection, is John Garland, born at the beginning of the thirteenth century in London, where his namesakes and likely of his stock, were and are known. First, a John Garland, A.D. 1170, held a prebend’s stall in St. Paul’s Cathedral.[39] Another, A.D. 1211, was sheriff, at a later period.[40] A third, a wealthy draper of London, gave freely towards the building of a church in Somersetshire.[41] A fourth, who died A.D. 1461, lies buried in St. Sythe’s;[42] and, at the present day, no fewer than twenty-two trades-men of that name, of whom six are merchants of high standing in the city, are mentioned in the London Post Office Directory for this year 1868. We give these instances as some have tried to rob us of John Garland by saying he was not an Englishman, though of himself he had said: “Anglia cui mater fuerat, cui gallia nutrix,” &c.
[39] Dugdale’s St. Paul’s, p. 264.
[40] Liber de Antiq. Legibus, pp. 3, 223.
[41] Leland’s Itinerary, t. 7, p. 99.
[42] Stowe’s Survey, B. iii. p. 31.
In a sort of very short dictionary, drawn up by that writer, and printed at the end of “Paris sous Philippe Le Bel,” edited by M. H. Geraud, our countryman says: “Textrices quæ texunt serica texta projiciunt fila aurata officio cavillarum et percuciunt subtemina cum linea (lignea?) spata: de textis vero fiunt cingula et crinalia divitum mulierum et stole sacerdotum.”[43] Though short, this passage is curious and valuable. From it we learn that, besides the usual homely textiles, those more costly cloth-of-gold webs were wrought by our women, and very likely, among their other productions—cingula—were those “blodbendes,” the weaving of which had been forbidden to ankresses and nuns; perhaps, too, of those narrow gold-wrought ribbons in this collection, pp. 24, 33, 38, 217, 218, 219, 221, &c., some may have been so employed by our high-born dames on occasion of their being bled, since as late as the sixteenth century some seasons were deemed fit, others quite unfitting for the operation. Hence, in his Richard II. act 1, scene i. Shakespeare makes the king to warn those wrath-kindled gentlemen, Bolingbroke and Norfolk:
Our doctors say this is no month to bleed.
[43] Ib. 607.
And our most popular books in olden time, one the Shepherd’s Kalendar, speaking about the signs of the zodiack, tell us which of the twelve months are either good, evil, or indifferent for blood-letting.
John Garland’s “cingula” may also mean those rich girdles or sashes worn by our women round the waist, and of which we have one in this collection, [No. 8571], p. 218. Of this sort, is that border—amber coloured silk and diapered—round a vestment found in a grave at Durham, and like “a thick lace, one inch and a quarter broad—evidently owing its origin, not to the needle, but to the loom,” &c.[44] For the artist wishful to be correct concerning the head-gear of ladies from Anglo-Saxon times till the end of the later Plantagenets, this collection can furnish examples of those bands in those narrow textiles spoken of by our John Garland. For an after-period those bands are shown on the statuary, and amid the limning in illuminated MSS. of the thirteenth century; as instances of the narrow girdle, may be viewed a lady’s effigy, in Romney church, Hants; and that of Ann of Bohemia, in Westminster Abbey; both to be found in Hollis’s Monumental Effigies of Great Britain; for the band about the head, the examples in the wood-cuts in Planchè’s British Costumes, p. 116.
[44] Raine’s St. Cuthbert, p. 196.
Of such head-bands we have one at number [8569], p. 217, and other three mentioned upon [p. 221]. They are, no doubt, the old snôd of the Anglo-Saxon period. For high-born dames they were wrought of silk and gold; those of lower degree wore them of simpler stuff. The silken snood, affected to the present hour by young unmarried women in Scotland, is a truthful witness to the fashion in vogue during Anglo-Saxon and later times in this country.
With regard to what John Garland says of stoles so made, there is one here, [No. 1233], p. 24, quite entire.
From what has been here brought forward, it will be seen that of silk, whence it came or what was its kind, nothing was truly understood, even by the learned, for many ages. While, then, we smile at Virgil and the other ancients for thinking that silk was a sort of herbaceous fleece growing upon trees, let us not forget that not so many years ago our own Royal Society printed a paper in which it is set forth that the yet-called Barnacle Goose comes from a mussel-like bivalve shell, known as the “Anatifa,” or Barnacle, an origin for the bird still believed in by some of our seafaring folks, and fostered after a manner by well-read people by the scientific nomenclature of the shell and the vernacular epithet for the goose. In the twelfth century, our countryman, Alexander Neckham, foster-brother to our Richard I., wrote of this marvel thus: “Ex lignis abiegnis salo diuturno tempore madefactis originem sumit avis quæ vulgo dicitur bernekke,” &c.[45] Such, however, was the Cirencester Augustinian friar’s knowledge of natural history, that, at least four hundred years ere the Royal Society had a being amongst us, he thus spurns the popular belief upon the subject:—
Ligna novas abiegna salo madefacta, jubente
Natura, volucres edere fama refert.
Id viscosus agit humor, quod publica fama
Afserit indignans philosophia negat.[46]
Of a truth the Record Commission is doing England good service by drawing out of darkness the works of our mediæval writers.
[45] De Natura Rerum, p. 99, published under the direction of the Master of the Rolls.
[46] Ib. p. 304.
The breeding of the worm and the manufacture of its silk both spread themselves with steady though slow steps over most of those countries which skirt the shores of the Mediterranean; so that, by the tenth century, those processes had reached from the far east to the uttermost western limits of that same sea. Even then, and a long time after, the natural history of the silkworm became known but to a very few. Our aforesaid countryman, Alexander Neckham, made Abbot of Cirencester, A.D. 1213, was, it is likely, the first who, while he had learned, tried in his popular work, “De Natura Rerum,” to help others to understand the habits of the insect: “Materiam vestium sericarum contexit vermis qui bombex dicitur. Foliis celsi, quæ vulgo morus dicitur, vescitur, et materiam serici digerit; postquam vero operari cœperit, escam renuit, labori delicioso diligentem operam impendens. Calathi parietes industrius textor circuit, lanam educens crocei coloris quæ nivei candoris efficitur per ablutionem, antequam tinctura artificialis superinduitur. Consummato autem opere nobilis textoris, thecam in opere proprio involutam centonis in modum subintrat jamque similis papilioni, &c.”[47]
[47] Ed. T. Wright, p. 272.
Of those several raw materials that have, from the earliest periods, been employed in weaving, though not in such frequency as silk, one is
Gold,
which, when judiciously brought in, brings with it, not a barbaric, but artistical richness.
The earliest written notice we have about the employment of this precious metal in the loom, or of the way in which it was wrought for such a purpose, we find set forth in the Pentateuch, where Moses tells us that he (Beseleel) made of violet and purple, scarlet and fine linen, the vestments for Aaron to wear when he ministered in the holy places. So he made an ephod of gold, violet, and purple, and scarlet twice dyed, and fine twisted linen, with embroidered work; and he cut thin plates of gold and drew them small into strips, that they might be twisted with the woof of the aforesaid colours.[48] Instead of “strip,” the authorized version says, “wire,” another translation reads “thread;” but neither can be right, for both of these English words mean a something round or twisted in the shape given to the gold before being wove, whereas the metal must have been worked in quite flat, as we learn from the text.
[48] Exodus xxxix. 1, 2, 3.
This brings us to a short notice of
Cloth of Gold, or Tissue.
The use of gold for weaving, both along with linen or quite by itself, existed, it is likely, among the Egyptians, long before the days of Moses. In either way of its being employed, the precious metal was at first wrought in a flattened, never in a round or wire shape. To this hour the Chinese and the people of India work the gold into their stuffs after the first and ancient form. In this fashion, to even now, the Italians love to weave their lama d’oro, or the more glistening toca—those cloths of gold which, to all Asiatic and many European eyes, do not glare with too much garishness, but shine with a glow that befits the raiment of personages in high station.
Among the nations of ancient Asia, garments made of webs dyed with the costly purple tint, and interwoven with gold, were on all grand occasions worn by kings and princes. So celebrated did the Medes and Persians become in such works of the loom, that cloths of extraordinary beauty got their several names from those peoples, and Medean, Lydian, and Persian textiles came to be everywhere sought for with eagerness.
Writing of the wars carried on in Asia and India by Alexander the Great, almost four centuries before the birth of Christ, Quintus Curtius often speaks about the purple and gold garments worn by the Persians and more eastern Asiatics. Among the many thousands of those who came forth from Damascus to the Greek general, Parmenio, many were so clad: “Vestes ... auro et purpura insignes induunt.”[49] All over India the same fashion was followed in dress. When an Indian king, with his two grown-up sons, came to Alexander, all three were so arrayed: “Vestis erat auro purpuraque distincta, &c.”[50] Princes and the high nobility, all over the East, are by Quintus Curtius called, “purpurati.”[51] Not only garments but hangings were made of the same costly fabric. When Alexander wished to afford some ambassadors a splendid reception, the golden couches upon which they lay to eat their meat were screened all about with cloths of gold and purple: “Centum aurei lecti modicis intervallis positi erant: lectis circumdederat (rex Alexander) ælæa purpura auroque fulgentia, &c.”[52] But these Indian guests themselves were not less gorgeously arrayed in their own national costume, as they came wearing linen (perhaps cotton) garments resplendent with gold and purple: “Lineæ vestes intexto auro purpuraque distinctæ, &c.”[53]
The dress worn by Darius, as he went forth to do battle, is thus described by the same historian: The waist part of the royal purple tunic was wove in white, and upon his mantle of cloth of gold were figured two golden hawks as if pecking at one another with their beaks: “Purpureæ tunicæ medium album intextum erat: pallam auro distinctam aurei accipitres, velut rostris inter se concurrerent, adornabant.”[54]
[49] Q. Curtii Rufi, lib. iii. cap. xiii. 34, p. 26, ed Foss.
[50] Ib. lib. ix. cap. i. p. 217.
[51] Ib. lib. iii. cap. ii. p. 4, cap. viii. p. 16.
[52] Ib. lib. ix. cap. vii. p. 233.
[53] Ib. cap. vii. p. 233.
[54] Ib. lib. iii. cap. iii. p. 7.
From the east this love for cloth of gold reached the southern end of Italy, called Magna Græcia, and thence soon got to Rome; where, even under its early kings and much later under its emperors, garments made of it were worn. Pliny, speaking of this rich textile, says:—Gold may be spun or woven like wool, without any wool being mixed with it. We are informed by Verrius, that Tarquinius Priscus rode in triumph in a tunic of gold; and we have seen Agrippina, the wife of the Emperor Claudius, when he exhibited the spectacle of a naval combat, sitting by him, covered with a robe made entirely of woven gold without any other material.[55] In fact, about the year 1840, the Marquis Campagna dug up, near Rome, two old graves, in one of which had been buried a Roman lady of high birth, inferred from the circumstance that all about her remains were found portions of such fine gold flat thread, once forming the burial garment with which she had been arrayed for her funeral: “Di due sepolcri Romani, del secolo di Augusto scoverti tra la via Latina e l’Appia, presso la tomba degli Scipioni.”
[55] Book XXXIII. c. 19. Dr. Bostock’s Translation.
Now we get to the Christian epoch. When Pope Paschal, A.D. 821, sought for the body of St. Cecily, who underwent martyrdom A.D. 230, the pontiff found, in the catacombs, the maiden bride whole, and dressed in a garment wrought all of gold, with some of her raiment drenched in blood lying at her feet: “Aureis illud (corpus) vestitum indumentis et linteamina martyris ipsius sanguine plena.”[56] In making the foundations for the new St. Peter’s at Rome, they came upon and looked into the marble sarcophagus in which had been buried Probus Anicius, prefect of the Pretorian, and his wife, Proba Faltonia, each of whose bodies was wrapped in a winding-sheet woven of pure gold strips.[57] Maria Stilicho’s daughter, was wedded to the Emperor Honorius, and died sometime about A.D. 400. When her grave was opened, A.D. 1544, the golden tissues in which her body had been shrouded were taken out and melted, when the yield of precious metal amounted to thirty-six pounds.[58] The late Father Marchi found, among the remains of St. Hyacinthus, martyr, several fragments of the same kind of golden web, winding sheets of which were often given by the opulent for wrapping up the dead body of some poor martyred Christian brother, as is shown by the example specified in Boldetti’s “Cimiteri de’ santi martiri di Roma.”[59]
[56] Liber Pontificalis, t. ii. p. 332, ed. Vignolio, Romæ, 1752; Hierurgia, 2nd ed. p. 275.
[57] Batelli, de Sarco. Marm. Probi Anicii et Probæ Faltoniæ in Temp. Vatic. Romæ. 1705.
[58] Cancellieri, De Secretariis Basil. Vatic. ii. 1000.
[59] T. II. p. 22.
Childeric, the second and perhaps the most renowned king of the Merovingean dynasty, died and was buried A.D. 485, at Tournai. In the year 1653 his grave was found out, and amid the earth about it so many remains of pure gold strips were turned up, that there is every reason for thinking that the Frankish king was wrapped in a mantle of such golden stuff for his burial.[60] That the strips of pure gold out of which the burial cloak of Childeric was woven were not anywise round, but quite flat, we are warranted in thinking, from the fact that, while digging in a Merovingean burial ground at Envermeu, A.D. 1855, the distinguished archæologist l’Abbe Cochet came upon the grave once filled, as it seemed, by a young lady whose head had been wreathed with a fillet of pure golden web, the tissue of which is thus described: “Ces fils aussi brillants et aussi frais que s’ils sortaient de la main de l’ouvrier, n’étaient ni étirés ni cordés. Ils étaient plats et se composaient tout semplement de petites lanières d’or d’un millimètre de largeur, coupée à même une feuille d’or épaisse de moins d’un dixième de millimètre. La longueur totale de quelques-uns atteignait parfois jusqu’à quinze ou dix-huit centimètres.”[61]
[60] Cochet, Le Tombeau de Childeric Ier, p. 174.
[61] Cochet, Le Tombeau de Childeric Ier p. 175.
Our own country can furnish an example of this kind of golden textile. At Chessel Down, in the Isle of Wight, when Mr. Hillier was making some researches in an old Anglo-Saxon place of burial, the diggers found pieces of golden strips, thin, and quite flat, which are figured in M. l’Abbé Cochet’s learned book just quoted.[62] Of such a rich texture must have been the vestment covered with precious stones, given to St. Peter’s Church, at Rome, by Charles of France, in the middle of the ninth century: “Carolus rex sancto Apostolo obtulit ex purissimo auro, et gemmis constructam vestem, &c.”[63]
In the working of such webs and embroidery for use in the Church, a high-born Anglo-Saxon lady, Ælthelswitha, with her waiting maids, spent her life near Ely, where, “aurifrixoriæ et texturis secretius cum puellulis vacabat, quæ de proprio sumptu, albam casulam suis manibus ipsa talis ingenii peritissima fecit,” &c.[64]
[62] Ib. p. 176.
[63] Liber Pontificalis, l. iii., p. 201, ed. Vignolia.
[64] Liber Eliensis, ed. Stewart, p. 208.
Such a weaving of pure gold was, here in England, followed certainly as late as the beginning of the tenth century; very likely much later. In the chapter library belonging to Durham Cathedral may be seen, along with several other very precious liturgical appliances, a stole and maniple, which happily, for more reasons than one, bear these inscriptions: “Ælfflaed Fieri Precepit. Pio Episcopo Fridestano.” Queen to Alfred’s son and successor, Edward the elder was our Ælfflaed who got this stole and maniple made for a gift to Fridestan, consecrated bishop of Winchester A.D. 905. With these webs under his eye, Mr. Raine, in his “Saint Cuthbert,”[65] writes thus: In the first, the ground work of the whole is woven exclusively with thread of gold. I do not mean by thread of gold, the silver-gilt wire frequently used in such matters, but real gold thread, if I may so term it, not round, but flat. This is the character of the whole web, with the exception of the figures, the undulating cloud-shaped pedestal upon which they stand, the inscriptions, and the foliage; for all of which, however surprising it may appear, vacant spaces have been left by the loom, and they themselves afterwards inserted with the needle. Further on, in his description of a girdle, the same writer tells us: Its breadth is exactly seven-eighths of an inch. It has evidently proceeded from the loom; and its two component parts are a flattish thread of pure gold, and a thread of scarlet silk, &c.[66] Let it be borne in mind that Winchester was then a royal city, and abounded, as it did afterwards, with able needle-women.
[65] P. 202.
The employment, till a late period, of flattened gold in silk textiles is well shown by those fraudulent imitations, and substitution in its stead of gilt parchment, which we have pointed out among the specimens in this collection, as may be seen at Nos. [7095], p. 140; [8590], p. 224; [8601], p. 229; [8639], p. 244, &c.
That these Durham cloth-of-gold stuffs for vestments were home made—we mean wrought in Anglo-Saxondom—is likely, and by our women’s hands, after the way we shall have to speak about further on.
This love for such glittering attire, not only for liturgical use but secular wear, lasted long in England. Such golden webs went here under different names; at first they were called “ciclatoun,” “siglaton,” or “siklatoun,” as the writer’s fancy led him to spell the common Persian word for them at the time throughout the east.
By the old English ritual, plain cloth of gold was allowed, as now, to be taken for white, and worn in the Church’s ceremonials as such, when that colour happened to be named for use by the rubric. Thus in the reign of Richard II., among the vestments at the Chapel of St. George, Windsor Castle, there was “unum vestimentum album bonum de panno adaurato pro principalibus festis B. Mariæ,” &c.[67]
St. Paul’s, London, had, at the end of the thirteenth century, two amices; one an old one, embroidered with solid gold wire: “Amictus breudatus de auro puro; amictus vetus breudatus cum auro puro.”[68]
[66] Mr. Raine, St. Cuthbert, p. 209.
[67] Dugdale’s Mon. Angl. t. viii., p. 1363.
[68] Dugdale, p. 318.
The use of golden stuffs not unlikely woven in England, but assuredly worn by royalty here, is curiously shown by the contrast between the living man clothed in woven gold, and the dead body, and its frightful state at burial, of Henry I., set forth by Roger Hoveden; who thus writes of that king: “vide ... quomodo regis potentissimi corpus cujus cervix diademite, auro et gemmis electissimis quasi divino splendore vernaverat ... cujus reliqua superficies auro textile tota rutilaverat,” &c.[69]
Often was this splendid web wrought so thick and strong, that each string, whether it happened to be of hemp or of silk, in the warp, had in it six threads, while the weft was of flat gold shreds. Hence such a texture was called “samit,” a word shortened from its first and old Byzantine name “exsamit,” as we shall have to notice further on. Among several other purchases for the wardrobe of Edward I., in the year 1300, we find this entry: “Pro samitis pannis ad aurum tam in canabo quam in serico,” &c.[70] And such was the quantity kept there of this costly cloth, that the nobles of that king were allowed to buy it out of the royal stores; for instance, four pieces at thirty shillings each were sold to the Lord Robert de Clifford, and another piece at the same price to Thomas de Cammill.[71] Not only Asia Minor, but the Island of Cyprus, the City of Lucca, and Moorish Spain, sent us these rich tissues. The cloth of gold from Spain is incidentally spoken of later in the Sherborn bequest, p. lvi. Along with other things left behind him at Haverford castle, by Richard II., were twenty-five cloths of gold of divers suits, of which four came from Cyprus, the others from Lucca: “xxv. draps d or de diverses suytes dount iiii. de Cipres les autres de Lukes.”[72] How Edward IV. liked cloth-of-gold for his personal wear, may be gathered from his “Wardrobe Accounts,” edited by Nicolas; and the lavish use of this stuff ordered by Richard III. for his own coronation, is recorded in the “Antiquarian Repertory.”[73] The robes to be worn by the unfortunate Edward V. at this same function were cloth of gold tissue. “Diverse peces of cloth of gold” were bought by Henry VII., “of Lombardes.”[74]
[69] Annalium, &c., p. 276, ed. Savile.
[70] Liber Quotidianus Garderobæ, p. 354.
[71] Ib., p. 6.
[72] Ancient Kalendars, &c., ed. Palgrave, t. iii., 358.
[73] I. p. 43, &c.
[74] Excerpta Historica, p. 90.
A “gowne of cloth-of-gold, furred with pawmpilyon, ayenst Corpus Xpi day,” was brought from London to Richmond, to Elizabeth of York, afterwards Henry VII.’s queen, for her to wear as she walked in the procession on that great festival.[75] The affection shown by Henry VIII., and all our nobility, men and women, of the time, for cloth of gold in their garments, was unmistakingly set forth in so many of their likenesses brought together in that very instructive Exhibition of National Portraits in the year, A.D. 1866, in the South Kensington Museum. This stuff seems to have been costly then, for Princess, afterwards Queen Mary, thirteen years before she came to the throne: “payed to Peycocke, of London, for xix yerds iii. qr̃t of clothe of golde at xxxviij.[~s] the yerde, xxxvijli. xs. vjd.”[76] And for “a yerde and dr qr̃t of clothe of siluer xls.”[77]
[75] Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York, p. 33, ed. Nicolas.
[76] Privy Purse Expenses of Princess Mary, ed. Madden, p. 87.
[77] Ib. p. 86.
Cloth of gold called
Tissue.
As between common silk and satin, there runs a broad difference, at least in look, one being dull, the other smooth and glossy, so there is a great distinction to be made among cloths of gold; some are, so to say, dead; others, brilliant and sparkling. When the gold is twisted into its silken filament, it takes the deadened look; when the flattened, filmy strip of metal is rolled about it so evenly as to bring its edges close to one another, it seems to be one unbroken wire of gold, sparkling and lustrous, like what is now known as “passing,” and, during the middle ages, went by the term of Cyprus gold; and rich samits woven with it, were called damasks of Cyprus.
The very self-same things get for themselves other denominations as time goes on: such happened to cloths of gold. What the thirteenth century called, first, “ciclatoun,” then “baudekin,” afterward “nak,” people, two hundred years later, chose to name “tissue,” or the bright shimmering golden textile affected so much by our kings and queens in their dress, for the more solemn occasions of stately grandeur, as was just now mentioned. Up to this time, the very thin smooth paper made at first on purpose to be, when this rich stuff lay by, put between its folds to hinder it from fraying or tarnish, yet goes, though its original use is forgotten, by the name of tissue-paper.
The gorgeous and entire set of vestments presented to the altar at St. Alban’s Abbey, by Margaret, Duchess of Clarence, A.D. 1429, and made of the cloth of gold commonly called “tyssewys,” must have been as remarkable for the abundance and purity of the gold in its texture, as for the splendour of the precious stones set on it, as well as the exquisite beauty of its embroideries: “Obtulit etiam unum vestimentum integrum cum tribus capis choralibus de panno Tyssewys vulgariter nuncupato in quibus auri pretiosa nobilitas, gemmarum pulchritudo et curiosa manus artificis stuporem quendam inspectantium oculis repræsentant.” [78] The large number of vestments made out of gold tissue, and of crimson, light blue, purple, green, and black, once belonging to York Cathedral, are all duly registered in the valuable “Fabric Rolls” of that Church lately published by the Surtees Society. [79]
[78] Mon. Anglic. II. 222.
[79] Pp. 229, &c.
Among those many rich and costly vestments in Lincoln Cathedral, some were made of this sparkling golden tissue contra-distinguished in its inventory, from the duller cloth of gold, thus: “Four good copes of blew tishew with orphreys of red cloth of gold, wrought with branches and leaves of velvet;”[80] “a chesable with two tunacles of blew tishew having a precious orphrey of cloth of gold.” [81]
To this day, in some countries the official robes of certain dignitaries are wrought of this rich textile. Even now, these Roman princes, and the senator whose place on great festivals when the Pope is present, is about the pontifical throne, are all arrayed in state garments made of cloth of gold.
[80] Monasticon Anglicanum, ed. Dugdale, t. viii. p. 1282.
[81] Ib.
Silken textures ornamented with designs in copper gilt thread, were brought into market and honestly sold for what they really were: of such inferior wares we find mention in the inventory of vestments at Winchester Cathedral, drawn up by order of Henry VIII. where we read of “twenty-eight copys of white bawdkyne, woven with copper gold.”[82] The substitution of gilt parchment for metal will be noticed further on, Section vi.
To imitate cloth of gold, the gilding of silk and fine canvas, like our gilding of wood and other substances, though not often, was sometimes resorted to for splendour’s sake on momentary occasions; such, for instance, as some stately procession, or a solemn burial service. Mr. Raine tells us he got from a grave at Durham, among other textiles, “a robe of thinnish silk; the ground colour of the whole is amber; and the ornamental parts were literally covered with leaf gold, of which there remained distinct and very numerous portions.”[83] In the churchyard of Cheam, Surrey, A.D. 1865, was found the skeleton of a priest buried there some time during the fourteenth century; around the waist was a flat girdle made of brown silk that had been gilt, and a shred of it now lies before the writer.
In the “Romaunt of the Rose,” translated by Chaucer, Dame Gladnesse is thus described:—
—in an over gilt samite
Clad she was.[84]
On a piece of German orphrey-web, in this collection, [No. 1373], p. 80, and likely done at Cologne, in the sixteenth century, the gold is put by the gilding process.
[82] Ib. t. i. p. 202, new ed.
[83] Saint Cuthbert, by J. Raine, p. 194.
[84] Poems, ed. Nicolas, t. iv. p. 27.
In the year 1295, St. Paul’s, London, had: “Casula de panno inaurato super serico,” a chasuble of gilded silk;[85] and it was lined with red cloth made at Ailesham,[86] or Elesham Priory in Lincolnshire. It had, too, another chasuble, and altar frontals of gilded canvas: “casula de panno inaurato in canabo, lineata carda Indici coloris cum panno consimili de Venetiis ad pendendum ante altare.”[87] Venice seems to have been the place where these gilded silks and canvases, like the leather and pretty paper of a later epoch, were wrought.
[85] Dugdale’s St. Paul’s, p. 335.
[86] Ib.
[87] Ib.
As gold, so too
Silver,
was hammered out into very thin sheets, which were cut into narrow long shreds to be woven, unmixed with anything else, into a web for garments fitting for the wear of kings. Of this we have a striking illustration in the “Acts,” where St. Luke, speaking of Herod Agrippa, tells us that he presented himself arrayed in kingly apparel, to the people, who to flatter him, shouted that his was the voice, not of a man, but of a god; and forthwith he was smitten by that loathsome disease—eaten up by worms—which shortly killed him.[88] This royal robe, as Josephus informs us, was a tunic all made of silver and wonderful in its texture. Appearing in this dress at break of day in the theatre, the silver, lit up by the rays of the early morning’s sun, gleamed so brightly as to startle the beholders in such a manner that some among them, by way of glozing, shouted out that the king before them was a god.[89]
[88] Acts. c. xii. vv. 21-23.
[89] Ant. l. xix. 8.
Intimately connected with the raw materials, and how they were wrought in the loom, is the question about the time when
Wire-Drawing
was found out. At what period, and among what people the art of working up pure gold, or gilded silver, into a long, round, hair-like thread—into what may be correctly called “wire”—began, is quite unknown. That with their mechanical ingenuity the ancient Egyptians bethought themselves of some method for the purpose, is not unlikely. From Sir Gardiner Wilkinson, we learn that at Thebes there was found the appearance of gold wire.[90] Of those remarkable pieces of Egyptian handicraft the corslets sent by King Amasis—one to Lindus, the second to Lacædemon—of which we have already spoken (p. xiv.), we may fairly presume that the work upon them done by the needle in gold, required by its minuteness that the precious metal should be not flat, but in the shape of a real wire. By the delicate management of female fingers, the usual narrow flat strips might have been pinched or doubled up, so that the two edges should meet, and then rubbed between men’s harder hands, or better still, between two pieces of smooth highly-polished granite, would produce a golden wire of any required fineness. Belonging to the writer is an Egyptian gold ring, which was taken from off the finger of a mummy by a friend. The hoop is a plain, somewhat thick wire. On each side of its small green-dyed ivory scarabee, to keep it in its place, are wound several rounds of rather fine wire. In Etruscan and Greek jewellery, wire is often to be found; but in all instances it is so well shaped and so even, that no hammer could have hardly wrought it, and it must have been fashioned by some rolling process. All through the mediæval times the filigree work is often very fine and delicate. Likely is it that the embroidery which we thus read of in the descriptions of the vestments belonging whilom to our old churches, for instance: “amictus breudatus cum auro puro”[91]—was worked with gold wire. To go back to Anglo-Saxon times in this country, such gold wire would seem to have been well known and employed, since in Peterborough minster there were two golden altar-cloths: “ii. gegylde ƿeofad sceatas;”[92] and at Ely Cathedral, among its old ritual ornaments, were, in the reign of William Rufus: “Duo cinguli, unus totus de auri filo, alter de pallio cujus pendentia” (the tassels) “sunt bene ornata de auri filo.”[93]
The first idea of a wire-drawing machine dawned upon a workman’s mind in the year 1360, at Nuremberg; and yet it was not until two hundred years after, A.D. 1560, that the method was brought to England. One sample of a stuff with pure wire in it may be seen, p. 220, [No. 8581], in this collection, as well as at [No. 8228], p. 150.
[90] Ancient Egyptians, iii. 130.
[91] Church of our Fathers, i. 469.
[92] Mon. Anglic. t. i. p. 382.
[93] Hist. Elien. lib. ii., c. 139, p. 283, ed. Steuart.
Equally interesting to our present subject is the process of twining long narrow strips of gold, or in its stead gilt silver, round a line of silk or flax, and thus producing
Gold Thread.
Probably its origin, as far as flax and not silk is concerned, as being the underlying substance, is much earlier than has been supposed; and when Attalus’s name was bestowed upon a new method of interweaving gold with wool or linen, it happened so not because that Pargamanean king had been the first to think of twisting gold about a far less costly material, and thus, in fact, making gold thread such as we now have, but through his having suggested to the weaver the long-known golden thread as a woof into the textiles from his loom. From this point of view, we may easily believe what Pliny says: “Aurum intexere in eadem Asia invenit Attalus rex; unde nomen Attalicis.”[94] In that same Asia King Attalus invented the method of using a woof of gold; from this circumstance the Attalic cloths got their name.
That, at least for working embroidery, ladies at an early Christian period used to spin their own gold thread, would seem from a passage in Claudian. Writing on the elevation to the consulate of the two brothers Probinus and Olybrius, at the end of the fourth century, the poet thus gracefully compliments their aged mother, Proba, who with her own hands had worked the purple and gold-embroidered robes, the “togæ pictæ,” or “trabeæ,” to be worn by her sons in their office:
Lætatur veneranda parens, et pollice docto
Jam parat auratas trabeas ...
Et longum tenues tractus producit in aurum
Filaque concreto cogit squalere metallo.[95]
The joyful mother plies her learned hands,
And works all o’er the trabea golden bands,
Draws the thin strips to all their length of gold,
To make the metal meaner threads enfold.
A consular figure, arrayed in the purple trabea, profusely embroidered in gold, is shown in “The Church of our Fathers.”[96]
[94] Lib. viii. c. 47.
[95] In Probini et Olybrii Consulatum, 177-182.
[96] T. ii. p. 131.
That, in the thirteenth century our own ladies, like the Roman Proba, themselves used to make the gold thread needed for their own embroidery is certain; and the process which they followed is set forth as one of the items among the other costs for that magnificent frontal wrought A.D. 1271, for the high altar at Westminster Abbey. As that bill itself, to be seen on the Chancellor’s Roll for the year 56 of Henry III., affords so many curious and available particulars about the whole subject in hand, we will give it here at full length for the sake of coming back hereafter to its several parts: “In xij. ulnis de canabo ad frontale magni altaris ecclesiæ (Westmonasterii) et cera ad eundem pannum ceranda, vs. vid. Et in vj marcis auri ad idem frontale, liij marcas. Et in operacione dicti auri, et sessura (scissura?) et filatura ejusdem, iiijl. xiijs. Et in ij libris serici albi et in duobus serici crocei ad idem opus, xxxvs. Et in perlis albis ponderis v marcarum, et dimidiæ ad idem opus lxxli. Et pro grossis perlis ad borduram ejusdem panni, ponderis ij marcarum, xiijli. dimidiam marcam. Et in una libra serici grossi, xs. Et in stipendio quatuor mulierum operancium in predicto panno per iij annos et iij partes unius anni, xxxvili. Et in Dccciijxx vi estmalles ponderis liiis. ad borduram predictam. Et pro lxxvj asmallis grossis ponderis lxvs. ad idem frontale iiijxxli. xvjs. Et pro Dl gernectis positis in predictis borduris, lxvis. Et in castoniis auri ad dictas gernectas imponendas ponderis xijs. vjd., cxijs. vjd. Et in pictura argenti posita subtus predicta asmalla, ij marcas. Et in vj ulnis cardonis de viridi, iijs.”[97] As the pound-weight now is widely different from the pound sterling, so then the mark-weight of gold cost nine marks of money. The “operacio auri” of the above document consisted in flattening out, by a broad-faced hammer like one such as our gold-beaters still use, the precious metal into a sheet thin as our thinnest paper. The “scissura” was the cutting of it afterwards into long narrow strips, the winding of which about the filaments of the yellow silk mentioned, is indicated by the word “filatura,” and thus was made the gold thread of that costly frontal fraught with seed-pearls and other some, of a much larger size, and garnets, or rather carbuncles, and enamels, and which took four women three years and three-quarters to work. At the back it was lined with green frieze or baize—“cardo de viridi.”
Such was the superior quality of some gold thread that it was known to the mediæval world under the name of the place wherein it had been made. Thus we find a mention at one time of Cyprus gold thread—“vestimentum embrowdatum cum aquilis de auro de Cipre;”[98] later, of Venice gold thread—“for frenge of gold of Venys at vjs. the ounce;”[99] “one cope of unwaterd camlet laid with strokes of Venis gold.”[100] What may have been their difference cannot now be pointed out: perhaps the Cyprian thread was so much esteemed because its somewhat broad shred of flat gold was wound about the hempen twist beneath it so nicely as to have the smooth unbroken look of gold wire; while the article from Venice showed everywhere the twisting of common thread.
[97] Rot. Cancel. 56 Henrici III. Compot. Will. de Glouc.
[98] Mon. Anglic. ii. 7.
[99] Wardrobe Accounts of King Edward IV. p. 117, ed. N. H. Nicolas.
[100] Mon. Anglic. ii. 167.
As now, so of old,