Embroidery in silk upon linen; pattern, men blue, women white, standing in a row hand in hand; the spaces filled up with lozenges in white. The women upon a green, the men upon a white ground. German, 16th century. 8¾ inches by 6½ inches.
So very worn away is the needlework, that it is very hard to see the design, which, when discovered, looks to be very stiff, poor, and angular.
7094.
Silk Damask; ground, straw-colour; pattern, net-work of lozenges and quatrefoils, filled in each with a cross pommée, amid which are large circles containing a pair of parrots, all in raised satin. Oriental, 13th century. 8¾ inches by 7¾ inches.
This fine textile was, in all likelihood, woven by Christian hands somewhere upon the Syrian coast, and while a religious character was given it both by the crosses and the emblematic parrots, a Persian influence by the use of the olden traditionary tree between the parrots, or the Persians’ sacred “hom,” was allowed to remain upon the designer’s mind without his own knowledge of its being there, or of its symbolic meaning in reference to Persia’s ancient heathen worship.
7095.
Blue Linen, wrought with gilt thin parchment; pattern, an oval, filled in with another oval, surrounded by six-petaled flowers, all in outline; this piece is put upon another of a different design, of which the pattern is an eagle on the wing. Spanish, 14th century. 7½ inches by 4-⅝ inches.