902.
Cut-Work for furniture purposes; ground, yellow silk; design, vases of flowers formed in green velvet; the flowers in places embroidered in white and light blue floss-silk. French, 17th century. 9 feet 9 inches by 1 foot 9 inches.
This specimen well shows the way in which such strips for pilasters were wrought. At first the green velvet seems the ground, which, however, is of amber yellow silk, but the velvet is so cut out and sewed on as to give the vases and their flowers the right form, and sometimes is made to come in as foliage. The flowers, mostly fleurs-de-lis and tulips, are well finished in white silk, shaded either by light blue in the first, or pink in the second instance, where, however, there are only five instead of six petals; and the whole is edged in its design with yellow silk cord.
910.
An Altar Frontal, silk and thread; ground, yellow; design, vases and conventional artichokes, amid floriations, all in crimson silk, and trimmed at the lower side with cut-work, in a flower pattern, of various-coloured silks, edged with yellow cord. Italian, early 17th century. 6 feet by 2 feet 8½ inches.
The silk in this stuff is small in comparison with the thread, which, however, is so well covered as to be kept quite out of sight in the pattern. The fringe, six inches in depth, is left quite open.
911.