“In a robe right royall bowne,
Of a red ciclatoune,
Be her fader’s syde;
A coronall on her hede sett,
Her clothes with byrdes of gold were bette
All about for pryde.”
[211] In St. Paul’s in London there was formerly an amice adorned with the figures of two bishops and a king, hammered out of silver, and gilt. Dugdale, ed. 1818, p. 318. See also Rock, pp. xxix-xxxii.
[212] Museum at Berne.
[213] A piece of Venetian work to be seen at the South Kensington Museum is an altar frontal, worked in coral, gold beads, seed pearls, and spangles. All jewellers’ work, including enamel, was much admired and introduced into their embroideries. (See Rock’s Introduction to Catalogue of the Kensington Museum, pp. civ-cviii, ed. 1870.)
[214] On this gorgeous piece of Italian art there are added a number of buttons (for we can give them no other name), with crosses and hearts under crystal, which seem to have belonged to another period and workmanship, or else are to be attributed to a superstitious feeling on the part of the maker, who placed these Christian signs, perhaps, surreptitiously, and for the good of his own soul.
[215] The Museum of National Art at Munich has a fine collection of gold and silver, spangled, and black bead head-dresses, now mostly antiquated, though in peasant dress it yet survives.
[216] It is embroidered in gold, with red silk and gems; and I have elsewhere said that it probably issued from the Hotel de Tiraz at Messina.
[217] Terry, in his “Voyage to the East Indies,” speaks of the rich carpets (p. 128): “The ground of some of these is silver or gold, about which such arabesques in flowers and figures as I have before named are most excellently disposed.”
[218] These of late years have been the most gorgeous objects at exhibitions of old needlework, and the ambition and despair of collectors.
[219] Gold thread was also made of gilt paper, equally by the Moors and the Japanese.