Fig. 226.—Scene in a fullery: inspection of cloth; carding; bleaching frame.
The next scene ([Fig. 226]) is threefold. In the foreground at the left sits a richly dressed lady, to whom a girl brings a garment that has been cleaned; that the woman is not one of those employed in the fullery is evident from her elaborate headdress, necklace, and bracelets. In the background a workman dressed in a tunic is carding a large piece of cloth. Near by another workman carries on his shoulders a bleaching frame, over which garments were spread to receive the fumes of the sulphur; he holds in his left hand the pot in which the brimstone was burned. An owl, symbol of Minerva, who was worshipped by fullers as their patron divinity, sits upon the frame; and the man underneath has on his head a wreath of leaves from the olive tree, which was sacred to the same goddess.
In the third picture a young man hands a garment to a girl; at the right a woman is cleaning a carding tool. The fourth ([Fig. 227]) gives an excellent representation of a fuller's press, worked by two upright screws; it is so much like our modern presses as to need no explanation. The festoons with which it is adorned are of olive leaves.
Fig. 227.—A fuller's press.
With these pictures before us, it will be easy to understand the plan of the fullery on the west side of Stabian Street, opposite the house of Caecilius Jucundus ([Fig. 228]). It was excavated in 1875. The building was not originally designed for a fuller's establishment, but for a private house, and part of the rooms were retained for domestic use, as the well preserved kitchen (d), and some of the other rooms opening off from the atrium (b). The furniture of the atrium—a table in front of the impluvium, with a pedestal for a fountain figure, and a marble basin to receive the jet—is like that of the house the interior of which is shown in [Plate VII].
The fuller's appliances are found in the shop next to the entrance (21), and in the peristyle (q). In the former are the foundations of three treading vats, and on the opposite side an oblong depression in which the press was placed. The peristyle contains three large basins of masonry for soaking and rinsing the clothes. A jet of water fell into the one next the rear wall (3), from which it ran into the other two through holes in the sides. Along the wall is a raised walk (4) on a level with the top of the basins, into which the workmen descended by means of steps. At the ends of this walk are places for seven treading vats, five in one group, two in the other. The wall above is decorated with a long sketchy painting, in which the fullers are seen engaged in the celebration of a festival,—doubtless the Quinquatrus, the feast of Minerva; the celebration is followed by a scene before a magistrate, resulting from a fight engaged in by the celebrants. A mass of fuller's earth was found in the passage at m.