third, if it is wanted, so as to be able to give a more brilliant polish with a burnisher.
“You can, if you wish, apply the leaf on a ceiling or a wall; in the same manner, over a lining of tinfoil. If you have neither gold nor silver, you will use tinfoil, which you will apply thus....”[15]
[15] Theophili Presbyteri et Monachi, Libri 3 seu Diversarum artium schedula. Chapter 24.
Until the middle of the seventeenth century, hangings, and even carpets, of decorated leather formed an important item in those inventories of princely possessions which are such a reliable and inexhaustible source of information for the historian of the sumptuary arts.[16] Princes and other great personages depended largely on decorated leather and tapestries, when moving from place to place, to supplement the often hastily improvised decoration of their temporary apartments.
[16] Dictionnaire de l’Ameublement et de la Décoration depuis le 13me Siècle jusqu’à nos Jours, by Henry Havard.
The enumeration of all the different processes by which the leather was ornamented would carry us beyond the limits of this appendix, and we will confine ourselves to tracing in outline the development of the art of working in leather as applied to hangings and furniture during the last few centuries.
First in order of time we find skins covered with hair, sewn together for carpets or hangings; different kinds being placed side by side, either irregularly, or alternately to form a pattern. We are not, however, here concerned with anything but leather proper, that is to say, skins with the hair removed, and this was first decorated by means of a hot tool. The addition of colour speedily followed. Dark coloured leathers were also sewn as borders on lighter ones, and polished metal ornaments were added to brighten the leather groundwork, a fashion borrowed from the method of joining and strengthening the accoutrements of war.
Little by little, as the custom spread of reproducing the human figure and animals, attempts were made to carry out whole pictures on panels made of leather sewn together with the seams hammered flat. But painted leather was still generally of comparatively small dimensions, and it would seem that these pictures were designed chiefly for the ornamentation of chests. The leather was first stretched over wooden panels, several panels being sometimes placed side by side. A special paste was used, the object of which was to cause the leather to shrink when dry, so as to make the panels adhere more closely together. The following description by the Monk Theophilus of the paste used in his time for this sort of work may interest the reader:—
“Panels for altars or doors are made thus:—First join some boards carefully one by one with the help of the joining tool used by coopers or joiners. They must be fastened together with cheese paste made in the following manner:—Some soft cow’s-milk cheese is cut very thin and washed with hot water in a mortar with a pestle, changing the water until it comes out clear. The cheese after being pressed in the hand is put into cold water until it hardens. It is then well crushed with a piece of wood on a smooth wooden table. In this condition it is put back into the mortar to be carefully pounded with the pestle, after having added water mixed with quicklime till it becomes thick like a sediment. Panels put together with this paste when dry, stick so fast that neither damp nor heat can separate them. They must then be made even with a special tool for this purpose. This tool, curved and sharp on the inside, has two handles, so that it may be used with both hands. It is used to level panels, doors and shields until they are perfectly smooth. They are then covered with untanned mule-skin or ox-hide, after it has been wetted and the hairs scraped off. The water is partly squeezed out, and while still damp it is stuck on with the cheese paste.”[17]