Quilting, too, on coverlets, shown at pp. [13], [104], displays the taste of our neighbours in such stitchery, so much in use among them and ourselves from the sixteenth century.
Like Flanders, France knew how to weave fine linen, which here in England was much in use for ecclesiastical as well as household purposes. Three new cloths of Rains (Rennes in Brittany) were, A.D. 1327, in use for the high altar in Exeter cathedral,[261] and many altar-cloths of Paris linen. In the poem of the “Squier of Low Degree,” the lady is told
Your blankettes shal be of fustyane,
Your shetes shal be of cloths of rayne;
and, A.D. 1434, Joane Lady Bergavenny devises in her will, “two pair sheets of Raynes, a pair of fustians,” &c.[262] For her Easter “Sepulchre” Exeter had a pair of this Rennes sheeting; “par linthiaminum de Raynys pro sepulchro.”[263]
[261] Oliver, p. 314.
[262] Test. Vet. i. 227.
[263] Oliver, p. 340.
Cologne, the queen of the Rhine, became famous during the whole of the fifteenth and part of the sixteenth century for a certain kind of ecclesiastical textile which, from the very general use to which it has been applied, we have named “orphrey web.” Since by far the greater part of this collection, as it now exists, had been made in Germany, beginning with Cologne, it is, as might be expected, well supplied with specimens of a sort of stuff, if not peculiar, at least abounding in that country. Those same liturgical ornaments which Venice and Florence wove with such artistic taste for Italian church use, Cologne succeeded in doing for Germany. Her productions, however, are every way far below in beauty Italy’s like works. The Italian orphrey-webs are generally done in gold or yellow silk, upon a crimson ground of silk. Florence’s are often distinguished from those of Venice by the introduction of white for the faces; Cologne’s vary from both by introducing blue, while the material is almost always very poor, and the weaving coarse.
The earliest specimen here of this Cologne orphrey-web is No. [8279], p. 174; but it is far surpassed by many others, such as are, for instance, to be found at pp. [61], [62], [63], [64], [69], [80], [82], [116], [117], [118], [119], [174], [175], [252], [253]. Among these some have noticeable peculiarities; No. [1329], p. 61, a good specimen, has the persons of the saints so woven that the heads, hands, and emblems are wrought with the needle; the same, too, in Nos. [7023], p. 118, and [8667], p. 252; in No. [1373], though the golden ground looks very fresh and brilliant, the gilding process, as on wood, has been employed. Here in England this orphrey web was in church use and called “rebayn de Colayn.”[264]