The cloak upon the recumbent bronze figure of Richard II. in Westminster Abbey has a pattern of foliage with couchant harts and rayed stars, and was most probably copied from the original silk made for Richard at Lucca or Palermo.
The beautiful materials and designs of Indian textile fabrics are indicative of the love of nature and the splendour of colour of a remote antiquity. Though influenced at various times by Greek, Persian and Arabian traditions, India still preserved an indigenous ornamental art of remarkable freshness and vitality, the designers choosing their own flora and fauna with rare selective power and adaptive qualities. With an instinctive feeling for ornamental art, aided by the splendid colourings of the native dyes, they produced textile fabrics of silks, brocades, and gold and silver lace remarkable for richness and perfection of material, beauty of design and harmony of colour. The Indian pine is a familiar form of enrichment differentiated from the cypress of Persia (fig. 1, [plate 22]), by the spiral at the apex. This typical pine is treated with a wonderful diversity of detail (figs. 4, 5 and 6, [plate 23]). The splendid carpets of India were doubtless influenced by the Persian tradition and they follow the same methods and ornamental arrangements, adapting, conventionalizing and emphasising plants, flowers and seeds, and rendering them with a fine feeling for form and colour. Block printing was largely used for silks and cottons, and many splendid examples are now treasured in our museums; an illustration of a printed cotton Palampore from South Kensington is given here, showing the beautiful floral treatment, diversity of detail, and contrast of line and mass. The gold and silver Brocades or “Kincobs” of Ahmedabad and Benares, with patterns of animals, flowers and foliage richly spangled; the delicate muslins of Dacca, the gold and silver primed muslins of Jaipur, and the woollen
shawls of Kashmir, with the well-known pine pattern, are splendid examples of richness of material, delicacy and skilfulness of technic, and beauty and appropriateness of ornamentation.
The Pile carpets of Persia, especially those of Kurdistan, Khorassan, Kirman, and Ferahan, are the finest in the world, being magnificent in colour and having bold conventional patterns of their beautiful flora, with birds and animals interspersed with the ornament, giving a largeness of mass and interest and vitality of detail. The illustration on the opposite page is from a fine 16th century Persian carpet, and is a good example of their methods and traditions. The hyacinth, tulip, iris and the pink, are frequently introduced, together with the hom or tree of life. An illustration is given (fig. 2, [plate 22]) of a Genoa fabric but of Persian design, showing the typical “pink” with its simplicity and beauty of line. This traditional art of Persia had a most marked influence upon the textile fabrics of Europe from the 12th to the 17th centuries. This was no doubt due to many causes, but the perfect adaptability to the process of weaving, the interest, inventiveness and beauty of the ornament, and the singular frank treatment of form and colour, doubtless appealed to the craftsmen of Europe, and hence we find many Persian designs produced in Sicily, Spain, Italy, France and Flanders.
The finest silk velvets and damasks produced from the looms of Florence show a distinct Persian influence in their bold artichoke and pomegranate patterns of the 16th and 17th centuries. In Genoa, similar patterns in many coloured velvets were produced, and it is singular how largely this persistency of type prevails in all countries.
