Piece of Silk Damask; ground, blue and yellow; pattern, a large conventional flower, with heraldic shields, helmets, and crests. Italian, late 16th century. 1 foot 8½ inches by 13 inches.
The shields show a pale; the helmets are given sidewise with the beaver closed; and the crests, a demi-wyvern segeant, but with no wreath under it, doubtless to show the armorial bearings of the esquire or gentleman of blood, as, according to the readings of English blasonry, he could have been of no higher degree, for whom this stuff had been woven.
8345.
Fragment of an Ecclesiastical Vestment; ground, cloth of gold, diapered with an elaborate flower-pattern. French, middle of the 16th century. 2 feet 1¼ inches by 1 foot 9 inches.
This valuable specimen of cloth of gold is figured, in small red lines, with a free and well-designed pattern, and shows us how much above modern French and Italian toca and lama d’oro were those fine old cloth of gold stuffs which, in the 16th century, became so variously employed for secular purposes. Let the reader imagine a vast round royal tent of such a textile with the banner of a king fluttering over it, and then he may well conceive why the meadow upon which it stood was called “the field of the cloth of gold.”
8346.
Piece of Silk and Linen Damask, green and yellow; pattern, a small conventional flower, probably a furniture stuff. Italian, late 16th century. 10 inches by 7½ inches.