The patternings of woven brocades, damasks and other textiles afford an interest quite apart from mere utility, or the purpose for which they were intended to serve as an ornamental adjunct to dress, since by their means we are able to trace the great ornamental traditions to their original source in the East.
The history of the art of weaving in China is lost in obscurity, but we may reasonably infer from our knowledge of the character of its people that neither their methods nor the character of the ornamentation have materially changed during a period of as much as two thousand years. Dionysius Periegetes informs us that the Seres "make precious figured garments resembling in colour the flowers of the field, and rivalling in fineness the work of spiders."
It is certain that the Egyptians practised the art of weaving from very early times, although the earliest ornamental fabrics found in Egypt are of the sixth century A.D. In later times, however, their woven fabrics were exceedingly sumptuous. Shakespeare's description of the barge of Cleopatra will be familiar to all—
"The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne
Burned on the water:
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them; she did lie
In her pavilion—cloth of gold, of tissue," &c.
The Sicilian brocades of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were the finest in the world. The character of their ornamentation betrays their Eastern origin, and we may trace in them the various influences which were brought to bear upon them by their successive conquerors, and which left a lasting mark upon their art. The earliest ornamental influence was that of Byzantium, which followed upon the conquest of the island by Belisarius in 535. The patternings are made up of grotesque animals, birds, griffins, chimeras, &c., intertwined with conventional foliage or ornament of a purely abstract character. After the Saracen conquest, resultant upon the preaching of Muhammad, we find Arabic inscriptions freely introduced as part of the general decorative motive. Gold thread is lavishly used, and, together with an admixture of colour, usually forms the pattern, upon a coloured ground, dark or light, as the case may be.
DAMASK IN SILK AND GOLD (SARACENIC, ELEVENTH TO THIRTEENTH CENTURY).
The tradition spread to the mainland of Italy, and looms were set up in Lucca, Florence, Venice, Genoa, and elsewhere; the character of the ornamentation gradually changing, however, as the Renascence influence began to make itself felt. Even the most cursory study of Italian painting will serve to give an idea of the splendour of the dresses of the Italian Gothic and Renascence periods.