“Quantities of silk handkerchiefs and bands are manufactured at Reus, Manresa, and Barcelona. Reus had five hundred looms, Manresa six hundred, and annually made sixty thousand dozen handkerchiefs; Barcelona, a much larger quantity.

“At Barcelona is a very considerable manufacture of white, coloured, plain, and figured gauzes.

“The art of silk-throwsting tends greatly to improve the silk manufactures in Spain. Machines invented in other countries have been adopted here, and in many places profitable changes and corrections have taken place in the trade. Silk is principally thrown at Priego, Toledo in Andalusia, at Murcia in the kingdom of the same name, at Cervera near Talavera de la Reina in New Castile, at Valencia, at Milanesa near that city, at Gandia, San Felipe, and Carcagente in the kingdom of Valencia. The silk-throwsters, who work at their own houses, and are paid in the great, that is, according to the quantity of work they perform, are very numerous in Murcia; but they perform the business there in a very slovenly way. In the city of Murcia a factory is established, where silk is thrown in an excellent manner by means of an ingenious machine, which has been already described. The establishment at La Milanesa is a very important one, and well administered. At Cervera are a dozen silk-mills, each having four large dividers, and six machines for doubling and twisting, by which seven thousand and seventy-two threads are divided, doubled, and twisted at the same time.”

Footnotes:

[13] Don Martin de Ulloa, Discurso sobre las fábricas de seda de Sevilla.

[14] In former times, linens and cottons painted, stencilled, or stamped with decorative patterns from an iron or boxwood matrix, were considered to be luxurious fabrics, and are denounced as such in the sumptuary pragmatic (quoted by Miquel y Badía) issued by Jayme the Conqueror in a.d. 1234: “Item statuimos quod nos nec aliquis subditus noster non portet vestes incisas, listatas, vel trepatas.”

Latterly, these kind of stuffs were made in great quantities at Barcelona, and exported to other Spanish provinces, as well as to America. “Several manufactures of printed linens are established here,” wrote Swinburne, in 1775, “but have not yet arrived at any great elegance of design or liveliness of colour.” The manuscript (dated about a.d. 1810) attached to my copy of Pigal's plates of Spanish costume, says that the pañoleta or fichu (neckerchief) of the women of Cartagena in their gala-dress was at that time of “mousseline blanche, quelquefois brodé, et três souvent n'est qu'un mouchoir d'indienne des fabriques de Barcelonne, avec une brodure en fleurs rouges, le fond blanc et parsemé de petits bouquets.” The same manuscript describes the dress of a cook at Granada:—“Le jupon (refajo), qui est toujours três court, est en hiver de laine avec une garniture au bas: en été il est en indienne. Cette indienne est une sorte de percale ou toile de coton peinte, dont il y a plusieurs fabriques en Catalogne. On en exportait autrefois une quantité, immense que l'on portait dans les Amériques Espagnoles; c'est ce qui lui a fait donner le nom d'indienne.”

From the same source we learn respecting another cotton fabric, which might easily be thought by the unwary reader of to-day to have been of Spanish manufacture, that “l'habitant de Mahon fait en été un grand usage de l'étoffe des Indes appelée nankin. Cette étoffe n'est connue dans plusieurs parties de l'Espagne que sous le nom de Mahon.”

[15] In 1799 the Marquis of Monte-Fuerte declared the silk of Seville to be of as fine a quality as that of Valencia and Carmona. (Discurso sobre el plantío de moreras en Sevilla y sus inmediaciones.)

[16] Granada was especially renowned for her velvets (Plate [vi].), grounded or relieved, in the oriental manner, with gold or silver.