Title: Textile Fabrics _ A Descriptive Catalogue of the Collection of Church-vestments, Dresses, Silk Stuffs, Needlework and Tapestries, forming that Section of the Museum
Author: Rock, Daniel
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.


*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Textile Fabrics _ A Descriptive Catalogue of the Collection of Church-vestments, Dresses, Silk Stuffs, Needlework and Tapestries, forming that Section of the Museum" ***


[Illustration]



TEXTILE FABRICS.

[Illustration]


[Illustration: 84.

HOOD OF A COPE

Embroidered by hand in silks & gold, with the Adoration of the Magi, &
bordered with green & yellow silk fringe.__Flemish 16th. century.]



_SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM._

[Illustration]

_TEXTILE FABRICS_;

A DESCRIPTIVE CATALOGUE

_Of the Collection of Church-vestments, Dresses, Silk Stuffs,
Needlework and Tapestries, forming that
Section of the Museum_.

BY THE VERY REV. DANIEL ROCK, D.D.

[Illustration]

_Published for the Science and Art Department of the
Committee of Council on Education._

LONDON:

CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.

1870.



[Illustration]



CONTENTS OF THE INTRODUCTION.


  SECTION I.--TEXTILES.


  _The Geography of the Raw Materials._

    Wool, x.
    Cotton, xiii.
    Hemp, xiii.
    Flax, xiii.
    Silk, xvi.
    Gold, xxv.
    Cloth of Gold, xxv.
    Tissue, xxxi.
    Silver, xxxiii.
    Wire-drawing, xxxiii.
    Gold thread, xxxiv.

  _Silks had various Names_:

    Holosericum, xxxvii.
    Subsericum, xxxvii.
    Examitum, xxxvii.
    Xamitum, xxxvii.
    Samit, xxxvii.
    Ciclatoun, xxxix.
    Cendal, xl.
    Taffeta, xli.
    Sarcenet, xlii.
    Satin, xlii.
    Cadas, xliii.
    Camoca, xliv.
    Cloth of Tars, xliv.
    Velvet, xlv.
    Diaper, xlvi.
    Chrysoclavus, xlix.
    Stauracin, l.
    Polystauron, l.
    Gammadion, l.
    De quadrapolo, li.
    De octapolo, li.
    De fundato, liii.
    Stragulatae, liv.
    Imperial, lv.
    Baudekin, lvi.
    Cloth of Pall, lviii.
    Lettered silks, lix.
    The Eagle, lxi.

  _Styles of Silks._

    Chinese, lxiii.
    Persian, lxiii.
    Byzantine, lxiv.
    Oriental, lxv.
    Syrian, lxv.
    Saracenic, lxvi.
    Moresco-Spanish, lxvi.

  _Places weaving Textiles._

    Sicily, lxvii.
    Lucca, lxxi.
    Genoa, lxxii.
    Venice, lxxiii.
    Florence, lxxv.
    Milan, lxxvi.
    Great Britain, lxxvi.
    Ireland, lxxix.
    Flanders, lxxix.
    France, lxxx.
    Cologne, lxxxi.
    Acca or Acre, lxxxiii.
    Buckram, lxxxv.
    Burdalisaunder, lxxxv.
    Fustian, lxxxvi.
    Muslin, lxxxvii.
    Cloth of Areste, lxxxvii.

  _Silks distinguished through their Colours and shades of Colour._

    Cloth of Tars, lxxxix.
    Indicus, or sky-blue, xc.
    Murrey, xc.
    Changeable, or shot, xci.
    Marble, xci.

  SECTION II.--EMBROIDERY.

    Of the Egyptians, xcii.
    Of the Israelites, xcii.
    Of the Greeks and Latins, or Phrygionic, xciii.
    Opus plumarium, or feather-stitch, xcv.
    Opus pulvinarium, or cushion-style, xcvi.
    Opus pectineum, or comb-drawn, xcvi.
    Opus Anglicum, or English work, xcviii.
    Opus consutum, or cut work, cii.
    Accessories of gold and silver, civ;
      glass, cv;
      enamel, cv.
    Diapering, cviii.
    Thread embroidery, cix.
    Quilting, cx.

  SECTION III.--TAPESTRY.

    Egyptian, cx.
    Asiatic, cxi.
    English, cxi.
    Flemish, cxii.
    Arras, cxii.
    Saracenic, cxii.
    Imitated Tapestry--“stayned cloth,”  cxiv.
    Carpets, cxv.

  SECTION IV.

  _Usefulness of the Collection_

    To the Historian, cxvi.
    The miscalled Bayeux Tapestry, cxvi.

  SECTION V.--LITURGY.

    Liturgical rarities, cxxiii.

  SECTION VI.

  _Usefulness of the Collection to_

    Artists, cxxx.
    Manufacturers, cxxx.

  SECTION VII.

    Symbolism, cxxxv.
    The Gammadion, cxxxvii.
    Vow of the Swan, the Peacock, &c., cxli.

  SECTION VIII.

  _Usefulness of the Collection_

    To Literature and Languages, clii.
    The Cyrillian alphabet, clii.

  SECTION IX.--HERALDRY.

    Armorial bearings worked upon vestments, cliii.
    The Scrope and Grosvenor claims for the bend _or_ on a field _azure_, cliii.
    Case of the Countess of Salisbury, clv.
    Case of the Earl of Surrey, clv.

  SECTION X.--BOTANY AND ZOOLOGY.

    The giraffe, clvi.
    The pheasant, clvi.
    The cheetah, clvi.
    The hom, clvii.
    The pine-apple, clix.
    The artichoke, clix.
    The passion-flower, clx.

[Illustration]



[Illustration]



INTRODUCTION.


Like every other specific collection of art labour among the several
such brought together within these splendid halls of the South
Kensington Museum, this extensive one made from woven stuffs, tapestry,
and needlework, is meant to have, like them, its own peculiar useful
purposes. Here, at a glance, may be read the history of the loom of
various times and in many lands. Here may be seen a proof of the
onward march of trade and its consequent civilizing influences. Here
we take a peep at the private female life in ages gone by, and learn
how women, high-born and lowly, spent or rather ennobled many a day
of life in needlework, not merely graceful but artistic. Here, in
fine, in strict accordance with the intended industrial purposes of
this public institution, artizans, designers, and workers in all kinds
of embroidery, may gather many an useful lesson for their respective
crafts, in the rare as well as beautiful samples set out before them.

The materials out of which the articles in this collection were woven,
are severally wool, hemp, flax, cotton, silk, gold, and silver. The
silken textures are in general wholly so; in many instances they
are wrought up along with either cotton, or with flax; hence, in
ancient documents, the distinction of “holosericum,” all silk, and
“subsericum,” not all silk, or the warp--that is, the longitudinal
threads--of cotton or flax, and the woof--that is the cross-threads
of silk. Very seldom is the gold or the gilt silver woven into these
textiles found upon them in a solid wire-drawn form, but almost always,
after being flattened very thin, the precious metal was wound about
a very small twist of cotton, or of flax, and thus became what we
call gold thread. As a substitute for this, the Moors of Granada, and
after them the Spaniards of that kingdom, employed strips of gilded
parchment, as we shall have to notice.



SECTION I.--TEXTILES.


Under its widest acceptation, the word “textile” means every kind of
stuff, no matter its material, wrought in the loom. Hence, whether
the threads be spun from the produce of the animal, vegetable, or the
mineral kingdom--whether of sheep’s wool, goats’ hair, camels’ wool,
or camels’ hair--whether of flax, hemp, mallow, Spanish broom, the
filaments drawn out of the leaves of the yucca--Adam’s needle--and
other plants of the lily and asphodel tribes of flowers, the fibrous
coating about pods, or cotton; whether of the mineral amianthus, of
gold, silver, or of any other metal, it signifies nothing, the webs
from such materials are textiles. Unlike to these are other appliances
for garment-making in many countries; and of such materials, not the
least curious, if not odd to our ideas, is paper, which is so much
employed for the purpose by the Japanese.

At the outset of our subject a word or two may be of good use, upon


_The Geography of the Raw Materials_.

one or other of which we shall always find wrought up in the textiles
in this collection. We will then begin with


WOOL.

After gleaning out of the writings of the ancients all they have said
about the physical geography of the earth, as far as their knowledge
of it went, and casting our eyes upon a map of the world as known of
old, we shall see at once the materials which man had at hand, in every
clime, for making his articles of dress.

In all the colder regions the well-furred skins of several families
of beasts could, by the ready help of a thorn for a needle, and the
animal’s own sinews for thread, be fashioned, after a manner, into the
requisites of dress.

Throughout by far the longest length and the widest breadth of the
earth, sheep, at an early period, were bred, not so much for food as
for raiment. At first, the locks of wool torn away from the animal’s
back by brambles, were gathered: afterwards shearing was thought of
and followed in some countries, while in others the wool was not cut
off, but plucked by the hand away from the living creature, as we
learn from Pliny:[1] “Oves non ubique tondentur: durat quibusdam in
locis vellendi mos.” Got in either method the fleeces were, from the
earliest times, spun by women from the distaff. At last so wishful
were the growers to improve the coats of their lambs that they clothed
them in skins; a process which not only fined the staple of the wool,
but kept it clean, and better fitted it for being washed and dyed,
as we are told by many ancient writers, such as Horace and the great
agricultural authority Varro. In uttering his wish for a sweet peaceful
home in his old age, either at Tibur, or on the banks of the pleasant
Gelæsus, thus sings the poet:

    Dulce pellitis ovibus Gelæsi
    Flumen.[2]

And what were these “oves pellitæ,” or “tectæ” and “molles,” as they
were called, in contradistinction to “hirtæ,” we understand from Varro,
who says, “oves pellitæ; quæ propter lanæ bonitatem, ut sunt Taren-tinæ
et Atticæ, pellibus integuntur, ne lana inquinetur quo minus vel infici
rectè possit, vel lavari ac parari.”[3]

This latter very ancient daily work followed by women of all degrees,
spinning from off the distaff, was taught to our Anglo-Saxon sisters
among all ranks of life, from the king’s daughter downwards. In his
life of Eadward the elder, A.D. 901, Malmesbury writes: “Filias suas
ita instituerat ut literis omnes in infantia maxime vacarent, mox etiam
colum et acum exercere consuescerent, ut his artibus pudice impubem
virginitatem transigerent.”[4] The same occupation is even now a female
favourite in many countries on the Continent, particularly so all
through Italy. Long ago it bestowed the name of spindle-tree on the
Euonymus plant, on account of the good spindles which its wood affords,
and originated the term “spinster,” yet to be found in our law-books
as meaning an unmarried woman even of the gentlest blood, while every
now and then from the graves that held the ashes of our sisters of
the British and the Anglo-Saxon epochs, are picked up the elaborately
ornamented leaden whorls which they fastened at the lower end of their
spindles to give them a due weight and steadiness as they twirled them
round.

Beginning with the British islands on the west, and going eastward on
a line running through the Mediterranean sea, and stretching itself
out far into Asia, we find that the peoples who dwelt to the north
of such a boundary wrought several of their garments out of sheep’s
wool, goats’ hair, and beavers’ fur, while those living to the south,
including the inhabitants of North Africa, Arabia, and Persia, besides
the above-named animal produce, employed for these purposes, as well
as tent-making, the wool and hair which their camels gave them: the
Baptist’s garment was of the very coarsest kind.

Of the use of woollen stuff, not woven but plaited, among the older
stock of the Britons, a curious instance was very lately brought to
light while cutting through an early Celtic grave-hill or barrow in
Yorkshire: the dead body had been wrapped, as was shown by the few
unrotted shreds still cleaving to its bones, in a woollen shroud of
coarse and loose fabric wrought by the plaiting process without a
loom.[5]

As time crept on, it brought along with it the loom, fashioned though
it was after its simplest form, to the far west, and taught its use
throughout the British islands. The art of dyeing very soon followed;
and so beautiful were the tints which our Britons knew how to give
to their wools, that strangers, while they wondered at, were not a
little jealous of the splendour of those tones. From the heavy stress
laid upon the rule which taught that the official colour in their
dress assigned to each of the three ranks into which the bardic order
was distinguished, must be of one simple unbroken shade, whether
spotless white, symbolic of sun-light and holiness, for the druid or
priest--whether sky-blue, emblem of peace, for the bard or poet--or
green, the livery of the wood and field, for the Ovydd or teacher
of natural history and leech-craft, yet at the same moment we know
that party-coloured stuffs were woven here, and after two forms: the
postulants asking leave to be admitted into bardism might be recognized
by the robe barred with stripes of white, blue, and green, which they
had to wear during all the term of their initiation. With regard to
the bulk of our people, according to the Greek historian of Rome--Dion
Cassius, born A.D. 155--the garments worn by them were made of a
texture wrought in a square pattern of several colours; and speaking
of our brave-hearted British queen, Boadicea, that same writer tells
us that she usually had on, under her cloak, a motley tunic, χιτὼν
παμποίκιλος, that is, checkered all over with many colours. This
garment we are fairly warranted in deeming to have been a native stuff,
woven of worsted after a pattern in tints and design exactly like
one or other of the present Scotch plaids. Pliny, who seems to have
gathered a great deal of his natural history from scraps of hearsay,
most likely included these ancient sorts of British textiles along
with those from Gaul, when he wrote:--“Plurimis vero liciis texere quæ
polymita appellant, Alexandria instituit: scutullis dividere, Gallia.”
But to weave with a good number of threads, so as to work the cloths
called polymita, was first taught in Alexandria; to divide by checks,
in Gaul.[6]

 [1] Lib. viii. c. 47.

 [2] Lyric. c. vi. vi.

 [3] De Re Rustica, ii. 2.

 [4] Gesta Regum Anglorum, t. 1. lib. ii. p. 198, ed. Hardy.

 [5] Journal of the Archæological Institute, t. XXII. p. 254.

 [6] Plin. lib. viii.

The native botanical home of


COTTON

is in the East. India almost everywhere throughout her wide-spread
countries, and many kingdoms of old, arrayed, as she still arrays
herself, in cotton, which she gathered from a plant of the mallow
family, that had its wild growth there; and in this same vegetable
produce the lower orders of the people dwelling still further to the
east were fain to clothe themselves.


HEMP,

a plant of the nettle tribe, and called by botanists “cannabis
sativa,” was of old well known in the far north of Germany, and all
over the ancient Scandinavia. Full two thousand five hundred years
ago, Herodotus[7] thus wrote of it: “Hemp grows in the country of the
Scythians, which except in the thickness and height of the stalk, very
much resembles flax; in the qualities mentioned, however, the hemp is
much superior. It grows in a wild state, and is also cultivated. The
Thracians make clothing of it very like linen cloth; nor could any
person, without being very well acquainted with the substance, say
whether this clothing is made of hemp or flax.” From “cannabis,” its
name in Latin, have we taken our own word “canvas,” to mean any texture
woven of hempen thread.

 [7] Herod. book iv. 74.


FLAX

now follows. Who that has ever seen growing a patch of beautiless,
sad-looking hemp, and as he wandered a few steps further, came upon a
field of flax all in flower, with its gracefully-drooped head, strewing
the breeze, as it strayed over it, with its frail, light-blue petals,
could at first have thought that both these plants were about to yield
such kindred helps for man in his wide variety of wants? Yet so it is.
Besides many other countries, all over this our native land flax is
to be found growing wild. Though every summer its handsome bloom must
have caught the eye of our Celtic British forefathers, they were not
aware for ages of the use of this plant for clothing purposes, else
had they left behind them some shred of linen in one or other of their
many graves; since, following, as they did, the usage of being buried
in the best of the garments they were accustomed to, or most loved when
alive, their bodies would have been found arrayed in some small article
of linen texture, had they ever worn such. That at length they became
acquainted with its usefulness, and learned to prepare and spin it,
is certain; and in all likelihood the very name “lin-white thread,”
which those Celts gave it in its wrought shape, furnished the Greeks
with their word λίνον, and the Latins their _linum_, for linen. The
term “flax,” which we still keep, from the Anglo-Saxon tongue, for the
plant itself and its raw material, and the Celtic “linen,” for the same
vegetable produce when spun and woven into cloth, are words for things
akin in our present language, which, as in many such like instances,
show the footprints of those races that, one after another, have trod
this land.

       *       *       *       *       *

To the valley of the Nile must we go if we wish to learn the earliest
history of the finest flaxen textiles. Time out of mind were the
Egyptians famous as well for the growth of flax, as for the beautiful
very fine linen they wove out of it, and which became to them a most
profitable, because so widely sought for, article of commerce. Their
own word, “byssus,” for the plant itself, became among the Greeks, and
afterwards among the Latin nations, the term for linens wrought in
Egyptian looms. Long before the oldest book in the world was written,
the tillers of the ground all over Egypt had been heedful in sowing
their flax, and anxious about its harvest. It was one of their staple
crops, and hence was it that, in punishment of their hard-hearted
Pharaoh, the hail plague which, at the bidding of Moses, showered down
from heaven, hurt throughout the land the flax just as it was getting
ripe.[8] Though the Jordan grew flax upon its banks, and all over the
land that would soon belong to Abraham’s children, the women there,
like Rahab, carefully dried it when pulled, and stacked it for future
hackling upon the roofs of their houses;[9] still, it was from Egypt,
as Solomon hints,[10] that the Jews had to draw their fine linen. At
a later period, among the woes foretold to Egypt, the prophet Isaiah
warns her that they shall be confounded who wrought (there) in combing
and weaving fine linen.[11]

 [8] Exodus ix. 31.

 [9] Joshua ii. 6.

 [10] Proverbs vii. 16.

 [11] Isaiah xix. 9.

How far the reputation of Egyptian workmanship in the craft of the
loom had spread abroad is shown us by the way in which, beside sacred,
heathenish antiquity has spoken of it. Herodotus says:--“Amasis King
of Egypt gave to the Minerva of Lindus, a linen corslet well worthy
of inspection,”[12] and further on,[13] telling of another corslet
which Amasis had sent the Lacedæmonians, observes that it was of
linen, and had a vast number of figures of animals inwoven into its
fabric, and was likewise embroidered with gold and tree-wool. What is
more worthy of admiration in it is that each of the twists, although
of fine texture, contains within it 360 threads, all of them clearly
visible.[14] By these trustworthy evidences we clearly see that in
those early times, Egypt was not only widely known for its delicately
woven byssus, but it supplied all the neighbouring nations with the
finest sort of linens.

 [12] Herodotus, b. ii. c. 182, Rawlinson’s Translation, t. ii. p. 275.

 [13] Ib. b. iii. c. 47.

 [14] Herodotus, t. ii. pp. 442-43.

From written let us now go to material proofs at hand. During late
years many mummies have been brought to this country from Egypt,
and the narrow bandages with which they were found to have been so
admirably, even according to our modern requirements of chirurgical
fitness, so artistically swathed, have been unwrapped; and always have
they been so fine in their texture as to fully verify the praises of
old bestowed upon the beauty of the Egyptian loom-work. Moreover, from
those who have taken a nearer and, so to say, a trade-like insight
into such an article of manufacture, we learn that, “The finest piece
of mummy-cloth, sent to England by Mr. Salt, and now in the British
Museum, of linen, appears to be made of yarns of near 100 hanks in
the pound, with 140 threads in an inch in the warp and about 64 in
the woof.”[15] Another piece of linen which the same distinguished
traveller obtained at Thebes, has 152 threads in the warp, and 71 in
the woof.[16]

 [15] “Ancient Egypt,” by Sir Gardiner Wilkinson, t. iii. p. 122.

 [16] Ib. p. 125.

Here starts up a curious question. Though, from all antiquity upwards
till within some few years back, the unbroken belief had been that
such mummy-clothing was undoubtedly made of linen woven out of pure
unmixed flax, some writers led, or rather misled, by a few stray words
in Herodotus about tree-wool, while speaking of the corslet of Amasis,
quoted just now, took at once the expression of that historian to mean
wool, and then skipped to the conclusion that all Egyptian textiles
wrought a thousand years before were mixed with cotton. When, however,
it be borne in mind that even several hundred years after the Greek
historian wrote, the common belief existed that, like cotton, silk also
was the growth of a tree, as we are told by Virgil:

    Quid nemora Æthiopum, molli canentia lana
    Velleraque ut foliis depectant tenuia Seres?[17]

    Soft wool from downy groves the Æthiop weaves,
    And Seres comb their silken fleece from leaves--

the εἰρίοισι ἀπὸ ξυλοῦ of Herodotus may be understood to mean silk,
just as well as cotton; nay, the rather so, as it seems very likely
that, at the time when Amasis lived, silk, in the shape of thread, had
found, through traders’ hands, its way to the markets of Egypt, and
must have been thought a more fitting thing, from being a new as well
as costly material, to grace a royal gift to a religious sanctuary of
high repute, than the less precious and more common cotton. While this
question was agitated, specimens of mummy-cloth were submitted to the
judgment of several persons in the weaving trade deemed most competent
to speak upon the matter. Helped only by the fingers’ feel and the
naked eye, some among them agreed that such textures were really woven
of cotton. This opinion was but shortlived. Other individuals, more
philosophical, went to work on a better path. In the first place, they
clearly learned, through the microscope, the exact and never-varying
physical structure of both these vegetable substances. That of cotton
they found in its ultimate fibre to be a transparent tube without
joints, flattened so that its inward surfaces are in contact along
its axis, and also twisted spirally round its axis; that of flax, a
transparent tube, jointed like a cane, and not flattened or twisted
spirally.[18] Examined in the same way, several old samples of byssus
or mummy-bandages from Egypt in every one instance were ascertained
to be of fine unmixed flaxen linen. Ages before French Flanders had
dreamed of weaving fine lawns, ages before one of her industrial
cities--Cambray--had so far taken the lead as to be allowed to bestow
her own name, in the shape of “cambric,” on the finest kind that modern
European ingenuity could produce, Egypt had known how to give to the
world even a yet finer sort, and centuries after she had fallen away
from her place among the kingdoms of the earth, her enthralled people
still kept up their ancient superiority in spinning and weaving their
fine, sometimes transparent, byssus, of which a specimen or two may be
seen in this collection.[19]

 [17] Georg. lib. ii. 120-121.

 [18] Thomson in the Philosophical Magazine, 3rd series, t. v. num. 29,
    Nov. 1834.

 [19] No. 152.

For many reasons the history of


SILK

is not only curious, but highly interesting. In the early ages, its
very existence was quite unknown, and when found out, the knowledge
of it stole forth from the far east, and straggled westward very very
slowly. For all that lengthened period during which their remarkable
civilization lasted, the older Egyptians never once beheld silk:
neither they, nor the Israelites, nor any other of the most ancient
kingdoms of the earth, knew of it in any shape, either as a simple
twist, or as a woven stuff. Not the smallest shred of silk has
hitherto been found in the tombs, or amid the ruins of the Pharaonic
period.

No where does Holy Writ, old or new, tell anything of silk but in
one single place, the Apocalypse, xviii. 12. True it is that, in the
English authorized version, we read of “silk” as if spoken of by
Ezekiel, xvi. 10, 13; and again, in Proverbs, xxxi. 22; yet there can
be no doubt, but that in both these passages, the word silk is wrong
through the translators misunderstanding the original Hebrew משי
(meschi). Of this word, Parkhurst says: “As a noun, משי, according to
our translation (is) silk, but not so rendered in any of the ancient
versions. _Silk_ would indeed well enough answer the ideal meaning of
the Hebrew word, from its being _drawn forth_ from the bowels of the
silk-worm, and that to a degree of fineness, so as to form very slender
threads. But I meet with no evidence that the Israelites in very early
times (and to these Ezekiel refers) had any knowledge of _silk_, much
less of the manner in which it was formed; משי, therefore, I think,
means some kind of _fine linen_ or _cotton cloth_, so denominated
from the _fineness_ with which the threads whereof it consisted were
_drawn out_. The Vulgate, by rendering it in the former passage,
‘subtilibus’ _fine_, as opposed to _coarse_, has nearly preserved
the true idea of the Hebrew.”[20] Braunius, too, no mean authority,
after bestowing a great deal of study on the matter, gives it as his
well-weighed judgment that, throughout the whole Hebrew Bible, no
mention whatever can be found of silk, which was a material utterly
unknown to the children of Israel.[21] Once only is silk spoken of
in the New Testament, and then while St. John[22] is reckoning it up
along with the gold, and silver, and precious stones, and pearls, and
fine linen--byssus--and purple which, with many other costly freights
merchants were wont to bring in ships to that mighty city which, in the
Apostle’s days, ruled over the kings of the earth.

 [20] Hebrew and English Lexicon. London, 1813, p. 415.

 [21] De Vestitu Heb. Sac., lib. I. cap. viii. § 8.

 [22] Apoc. xviii. 12.

Long after the days of Ezekiel was it that silk, in its raw form only,
made up into hanks, first found its way to Egypt, western Asia, and
eastern Europe.

To Aristotle do we owe the earliest notice, among the ancients, of the
silk-worm, and although his account be incorrect, it has much value,
since, along with his description, the celebrated Greek philosopher
gives us information about the original importation of raw silk into
the western world. Brought from China, through India, till it reached
the Indus, the silk came by water across the Arabian Ocean, up the Red
Sea, and thence over the Isthmus of Suez, or, perhaps, rather by the
overland route, through Persia, to the small but commercial island of
Cos (now Koss), lying off the coast of Asia Minor. Pamphile, daughter
of Plates, is reported to have first woven it (silk) in Cos.[23] Here,
by female hands, were wrought those light thin gauzes which became so
fashionable among some high dames, but while so often spoken of by the
poets of the Augustan period, were stigmatized by some among them, as
well as by the heathen moralists of after ages, as anything but seemly
for women’s wear. Thus Tibullus says of this sort of clothing:

        Illa gerat vestes tenues, quas fœmina Coa
        Texuit, auratas disposuitque vias.[24]

    She may thin garments wear, which female Coan hands
    Have woven, and in stripes disposed the golden bands.

Years afterwards, thus laments Seneca, the philosopher: “Video sericas
vestes, si vestes vocandæ sunt, in quibus nihil est, quo defendi aut
corpus aut denique pudor possit.” I behold silken garments, if garments
they can be called, which are a protection neither for the body nor for
shame.[25] And later still, and in the Christian era, an echo to the
remarks of Seneca do we hear in the words of Solinus: “Hoc illud est
sericum in quo ostentare potius corpora quàm vestire, primò feminis,
nunc etiam viris persuasit luxuriæ libido.”[26] This is silk, in which
at first women but now even men have been led, by their cravings after
luxury, to show rather than to clothe their bodies.

 [23] Hist. Anim. V. c. 19, p. 850, ed. Duval.

 [24] Tibullus, l. ii. 6.

 [25] De Beneficiis, l. vii. c.

 [26] Solinus, c. 1.

While looking over some precious early mediæval MS., often do we yet
find that its beautifully limned and richly gilt illuminations, to
keep them from harm, or being hurt through the rubbings of the next
leaf, have fastened beside them a covering of the thinnest gauze, just
as we put in sheets of silver paper for that purpose over engravings.
The likelihood is that some at least of these may be shreds from
some of those thin translucent textiles which found such favour in
the fashionable world for so long a time during the classic period.
To some at least of our readers, the curious example of such gauzy
interleafings in the manuscript of Theodulph, now at Puy en Velay, will
occur.

Not only these transparent silken gauzes wrought in Cos, but far more
tasty stuffs, and flowered too, from Chinese looms, found their way to
Asia Minor and Italy. In telling of the barbarous nations then called
the Seres, Dionysius Periegetes writes that they comb the variously
coloured flowers of the desert land to make precious figured garments,
resembling in colour the flowers of the meadow, and rivalling (in
fineness) the work of spiders.[27]

As may be easily imagined, silken garments were brought, at an early
period, to imperial Rome. Such, however, were the high prices asked
for them, that few either would or could afford to buy these robes for
their wives and daughters; since, at first, they were looked upon as
quite unbecoming for men’s wear; hence, by a law of the Roman senate
under Tiberius, it was enacted: “Ne vestis serica vicos fœdaret.”
While noticing how womanish Caligula became in his dress, Suetonius
remarks his silken attire: “Aliquando sericatus et cycladatus.”[28] An
exception was made by some emperors for very great occasions, and both
Titus and Vespasian wore dresses of silk when they celebrated at Rome
their triumph over Judæa. Of the emperors who adopted whole silk for
their clothing, Heliogabalus was the first, and so fond was he of the
material, that, in the event of wishing to hang himself, he had got for
the occasion a rope, one strand of which was silk, and the other two
dyed with purple and scarlet: “Paraverat sunes, blatta et serico, et
cocco intortos, quibus si necesse esset, laqueo vitam finiret.”[29]

The abnegation of another Roman Emperor, Aurelian, both in respect
of himself and his empress, is, however, very remarkable: “Vestem
holosericam neque ipse in vestiario suo habuit neque alteri utendam
dedit. Et cum ab eo uxor sua peteret, ut unico pallio blatteo serico
uteretur, ille respondit absit, ut auro fila pensentur. Libra enim
auri tunc libra serici suit.”[30] Aurelian neither had himself in his
wardrobe a garment wholly silk, nor gave one to be worn by another.
When his own wife begged him to allow her to have a single mantle of
purple silk, he replied, “Far be it from us to allow thread to be
reckoned worth its weight in gold.” For then a pound of gold was the
price of a pound of silk.

Here it ought to be mentioned that, for some time before this period
a very broad distinction had been drawn, even in the sumptuary laws
of the empire, between garments made wholly, and partially of silk;
in the former, all the web, both woof and warp, is woven of nothing
but silk; in the latter, the woof is of cotton or of thread, the warp
only of silk. This difference in the texture is thus well set forth
by Lampridius, in his life of Alexander Severus, of whom he says: he
had few garments of silk--he never wore a tunic woven wholly of silk,
and he never gave away cloth made of silk mixed with less valuable
stuff. “Vestes sericas ipse raras habuit; holosericas nunquam induit
subsericam nunquam donavit.”[31]

 [27] Quoted by Yates, Textrinum Antiquorum, p. 181.

 [28] Suetonius, c. 52.

 [29] Lampridius, c. 26.

 [30] Vopiscus, c. 45.

 [31] Severus, c. 40.

Clothing made wholly or in part out of silk, became every year more
and more sought for. So remunerative was the trade of weaving the raw
material into its various forms, that, by the Justinian pandects, the
revised code of laws for the Roman Empire, drawn up and published A.D.
533--a monopoly in it was given to the court, and looms worked by women
were set up in the imperial palace. Thus Byzantium became, and long
continued famous for the beauty of its silken stuffs. Still, the raw
silk itself had to be brought thither from abroad; but a remedy was
very near at hand. Two Greek monks, while spending many years among the
Chinese, had well learned the whole process of rearing the worm. They
came home, and brought back with them a goodly number of eggs hidden
in their walking-staves, likely made of that hollow tough sort of reed
or tall grass, the Arundo Donax; and, carrying them to Constantinople,
they presented these eggs to the Emperor, who gladly received them.
When hatched, the worms were distributed all over Greece and Asia
Minor, and very soon the western world reared its own silk. Not long
afterwards, Persia and India also became silk-growing countries. In
some places, at least in Greece, the weaving not only of the finer
kinds of cloth, but of silk, got at last into the hands of the Jews.
Writing of his travels, A.D. 1161, Benjamin of Tudela tells us that the
great city of Thebes contained about two thousand Jewish inhabitants.
These are the most eminent manufacturers of silk and purple cloth in
all Greece.[32]

Telling us how the fleet of our first Richard coasted the shores of
Spain on its voyage to the Holy Land, Hoveden says of Almeria and its
silk factory: “Deinde per nobilem civitatem quæ dicitur Almaria ubi fit
nobile sericum et delicatum quod dicitur sericum de Almaria.”[33] So
prized were these fine delicate textiles that they were paid as tribute
to princes: “Insula de Maiore reddit ei (regi Arragoniæ) trecentos
pannos sericos de Almaria per annum de tributo,” &c.[34]

 [32] Early Travels in Palestine, ed. T. Wright, p. 71.

 [33] Rog. Hoveden, Ann. ed. Savile, Rer. Ang. Script., p. 382.

 [34] Ib. p. 382, b.

South Italy wrought rich silken stuffs by the end of the eleventh
century; for we are told by our countryman, Ordericus Vitalis, who died
in the first half of the twelfth century, that Mainerius, the abbot
of his monastery of St. Evroul, at Uzey, in Normandy, on coming home,
brought with him from Apulia several large pieces of silk, and gave to
the Church four of the finest ones, with which four copes were made
for the chanters: “De pallis quas ipse de Apulia detulerat quatuor de
preciosioris S. Ebrulfo obtulit ex quibus quatuor cappæ cantorum in
eadem factæ sunt ecclesia.”[35]

 [35] Ordericus Vitalis, Ecc. Hist., l. v. p. 584.

From a feeling alive in every heart throughout the length and breadth
of Christendom that the best of all things ought to be given for
the service of its religious rites, the garments of its celebrating
priesthood, from the far east to the uttermost west, were, if not
always, at least very often wholly of silk--holosericus. To this fact
we have pointed for the sake of remembering that were it not so, we had
been, at this day, without the power of being able to see through the
few but tattered shreds before us, what elegantly designed and gorgeous
stuffs the foreign mediæval loom could weave, and what beautiful
embroidery our own countrywomen knew so well how to work. These
specimens help us also to rightly understand the description of those
splendid vestments and ritual appliances enumerated with such exactness
in the old inventories of our venerable cathedrals and parish churches
as well as the early wardrobe accompts of our kings, the wills and
bequests of our dignified ecclesiastics and nobility, to some of which
documents we shall have to refer a little later.

In coming westward among us, all these so much coveted stuffs brought
along with them their own several names by which they were commonly
known throughout the east, whether Greece, Asia Minor, or Persia. Hence
when we read of Samit, ciclatoun, cendal, baudekin, and other such
terms quite unknown to trade now-a-day, we should bear in mind that
notwithstanding the wide variety of spelling, or rather misspelling,
each of these appellations has run through, we reach at last their true
derivations, and so happily get to know in what country and by whose
hands they were wrought.

As trade grew up, she brought these fine silken textiles to our
markets, and articles of dress were made of silk for men’s as well as
women’s wear among the wealthy. At what period the raw material came to
be imported here, not so much for embroidery as to be wrought in the
loom, we do not exactly know; but from several sides we learn that our
countrywomen of all degrees busied themselves in weaving. Among the
home occupations of maidens dedicated to God, St. Aldhelm, at the end
of the seventh century, seems to number: “Cortinarum sive stragularum
textura.”[36] In the council at Cloveshoo, under Archbishop Cuthbert,
A.D. 747, nuns are exhorted to spend their time in reading or singing
psalms rather than weaving and knitting vainglorious garments of
many colours: “Magisque legendis libris vel canendis psalmis, quam
texendis et plectendis vario colore inanis gloriæ vestibus studeant
operam dare.”[37] By that curious old English book, the “Ancren Riwle,”
written towards the end of the twelfth century, ankresses are forbidden
to make purses to gain friends therewith, or blodbendes.[38] Were it
not that the weaving especially of silk, was so generally followed in
the cloister by English women, it had been useless to have so strongly
discountenanced the practice.

 [36] De Laudibus Virginitatis, Opp. ed. Giles, 15.

 [37] Concil. Ecc. Brit. ed. Spelman, i. 256.

 [38] P. 421.

Those “blodbendes,” or narrow strips for winding round the arm after
bleeding, are curiously illustrative of an old national custom for
health-sake kept up in the remembrance of some old folks still living,
of periodical blood-letting. To his practices upon the heads and chins
of people the barber at no remote period, added that of bleeding them;
and the old English barber surgeons held a high position among the
gilds of London. To show where he lived each member of that brotherhood
had hanging out from the walls of his house a long thin pole painted
spirally black and white, the white in token of the blodbende or
bandage to be winded and kept about the patient’s arm.

But on silk weaving by our women in small hand-looms, a very important
witness, especially about several curious specimens in this collection,
is John Garland, born at the beginning of the thirteenth century in
London, where his namesakes and likely of his stock, were and are
known. First, a John Garland, A.D. 1170, held a prebend’s stall in
St. Paul’s Cathedral.[39] Another, A.D. 1211, was sheriff, at a later
period.[40] A third, a wealthy draper of London, gave freely towards
the building of a church in Somersetshire.[41] A fourth, who died A.D.
1461, lies buried in St. Sythe’s;[42] and, at the present day, no fewer
than twenty-two trades-men of that name, of whom six are merchants of
high standing in the city, are mentioned in the London Post Office
Directory for this year 1868. We give these instances as some have
tried to rob us of John Garland by saying he was not an Englishman,
though of himself he had said: “Anglia cui mater fuerat, cui gallia
nutrix,” &c.

 [39] Dugdale’s St. Paul’s, p. 264.

 [40] Liber de Antiq. Legibus, pp. 3, 223.

 [41] Leland’s Itinerary, t. 7, p. 99.

 [42] Stowe’s Survey, B. iii. p. 31.

In a sort of very short dictionary, drawn up by that writer, and
printed at the end of “Paris sous Philippe Le Bel,” edited by M.
H. Geraud, our countryman says: “Textrices quæ texunt serica texta
projiciunt fila aurata officio cavillarum et percuciunt subtemina cum
linea (lignea?) spata: de textis vero fiunt cingula et crinalia divitum
mulierum et stole sacerdotum.”[43] Though short, this passage is
curious and valuable. From it we learn that, besides the usual homely
textiles, those more costly cloth-of-gold webs were wrought by our
women, and very likely, among their other productions--cingula--were
those “blodbendes,” the weaving of which had been forbidden to
ankresses and nuns; perhaps, too, of those narrow gold-wrought ribbons
in this collection, pp. 24, 33, 38, 217, 218, 219, 221, &c., some may
have been so employed by our high-born dames on occasion of their
being bled, since as late as the sixteenth century some seasons were
deemed fit, others quite unfitting for the operation. Hence, in his
Richard II. act 1, scene i. Shakespeare makes the king to warn those
wrath-kindled gentlemen, Bolingbroke and Norfolk:

 Our doctors say this is no month to bleed.

 [43] Ib. 607.

And our most popular books in olden time, one the Shepherd’s Kalendar,
speaking about the signs of the zodiack, tell us which of the twelve
months are either good, evil, or indifferent for blood-letting.

John Garland’s “cingula” may also mean those rich girdles or sashes
worn by our women round the waist, and of which we have one in this
collection, No. 8571, p. 218. Of this sort, is that border--amber
coloured silk and diapered--round a vestment found in a grave at
Durham, and like “a thick lace, one inch and a quarter broad--evidently
owing its origin, not to the needle, but to the loom,” &c.[44] For
the artist wishful to be correct concerning the head-gear of ladies
from Anglo-Saxon times till the end of the later Plantagenets, this
collection can furnish examples of those bands in those narrow textiles
spoken of by our John Garland. For an after-period those bands are
shown on the statuary, and amid the limning in illuminated MSS. of the
thirteenth century; as instances of the narrow girdle, may be viewed
a lady’s effigy, in Romney church, Hants; and that of Ann of Bohemia,
in Westminster Abbey; both to be found in Hollis’s Monumental Effigies
of Great Britain; for the band about the head, the examples in the
wood-cuts in Planchè’s British Costumes, p. 116.

 [44] Raine’s St. Cuthbert, p. 196.

Of such head-bands we have one at number 8569, p. 217, and other
three mentioned upon p. 221. They are, no doubt, the old snôd of
the Anglo-Saxon period. For high-born dames they were wrought of
silk and gold; those of lower degree wore them of simpler stuff. The
silken snood, affected to the present hour by young unmarried women
in Scotland, is a truthful witness to the fashion in vogue during
Anglo-Saxon and later times in this country.

With regard to what John Garland says of stoles so made, there is one
here, No. 1233, p. 24, quite entire.

From what has been here brought forward, it will be seen that of silk,
whence it came or what was its kind, nothing was truly understood,
even by the learned, for many ages. While, then, we smile at Virgil
and the other ancients for thinking that silk was a sort of herbaceous
fleece growing upon trees, let us not forget that not so many years
ago our own Royal Society printed a paper in which it is set forth
that the yet-called Barnacle Goose comes from a mussel-like bivalve
shell, known as the “Anatifa,” or Barnacle, an origin for the bird
still believed in by some of our seafaring folks, and fostered after
a manner by well-read people by the scientific nomenclature of the
shell and the vernacular epithet for the goose. In the twelfth century,
our countryman, Alexander Neckham, foster-brother to our Richard I.,
wrote of this marvel thus: “Ex lignis abiegnis salo diuturno tempore
madefactis originem sumit avis quæ vulgo dicitur bernekke,” &c.[45]
Such, however, was the Cirencester Augustinian friar’s knowledge of
natural history, that, at least four hundred years ere the Royal
Society had a being amongst us, he thus spurns the popular belief upon
the subject:--

    Ligna novas abiegna salo madefacta, jubente
      Natura, volucres edere fama refert.
    Id viscosus agit humor, quod publica fama
      Afserit indignans philosophia negat.[46]

Of a truth the Record Commission is doing England good service by
drawing out of darkness the works of our mediæval writers.

 [45] De Natura Rerum, p. 99, published under the direction of the
    Master of the Rolls.

 [46] Ib. p. 304.

The breeding of the worm and the manufacture of its silk both spread
themselves with steady though slow steps over most of those countries
which skirt the shores of the Mediterranean; so that, by the tenth
century, those processes had reached from the far east to the uttermost
western limits of that same sea. Even then, and a long time after, the
natural history of the silkworm became known but to a very few. Our
aforesaid countryman, Alexander Neckham, made Abbot of Cirencester,
A.D. 1213, was, it is likely, the first who, while he had learned,
tried in his popular work, “De Natura Rerum,” to help others to
understand the habits of the insect: “Materiam vestium sericarum
contexit vermis qui bombex dicitur. Foliis celsi, quæ vulgo morus
dicitur, vescitur, et materiam serici digerit; postquam vero operari
cœperit, escam renuit, labori delicioso diligentem operam impendens.
Calathi parietes industrius textor circuit, lanam educens crocei
coloris quæ nivei candoris efficitur per ablutionem, antequam tinctura
artificialis superinduitur. Consummato autem opere nobilis textoris,
thecam in opere proprio involutam centonis in modum subintrat jamque
similis papilioni, &c.”[47]

 [47] Ed. T. Wright, p. 272.

Of those several raw materials that have, from the earliest periods,
been employed in weaving, though not in such frequency as silk, one is


GOLD,

which, when judiciously brought in, brings with it, not a barbaric, but
artistical richness.

The earliest written notice we have about the employment of this
precious metal in the loom, or of the way in which it was wrought for
such a purpose, we find set forth in the Pentateuch, where Moses tells
us that he (Beseleel) made of violet and purple, scarlet and fine
linen, the vestments for Aaron to wear when he ministered in the holy
places. So he made an ephod of gold, violet, and purple, and scarlet
twice dyed, and fine twisted linen, with embroidered work; and he cut
thin plates of gold and drew them small into strips, that they might
be twisted with the woof of the aforesaid colours.[48] Instead of
“strip,” the authorized version says, “wire,” another translation reads
“thread;” but neither can be right, for both of these English words
mean a something round or twisted in the shape given to the gold before
being wove, whereas the metal must have been worked in quite flat, as
we learn from the text.

 [48] Exodus xxxix. 1, 2, 3.

This brings us to a short notice of


CLOTH OF GOLD, OR TISSUE.

The use of gold for weaving, both along with linen or quite by itself,
existed, it is likely, among the Egyptians, long before the days of
Moses. In either way of its being employed, the precious metal was
at first wrought in a flattened, never in a round or wire shape. To
this hour the Chinese and the people of India work the gold into their
stuffs after the first and ancient form. In this fashion, to even now,
the Italians love to weave their lama d’oro, or the more glistening
toca--those cloths of gold which, to all Asiatic and many European
eyes, do not glare with too much garishness, but shine with a glow that
befits the raiment of personages in high station.

Among the nations of ancient Asia, garments made of webs dyed with
the costly purple tint, and interwoven with gold, were on all grand
occasions worn by kings and princes. So celebrated did the Medes
and Persians become in such works of the loom, that cloths of
extraordinary beauty got their several names from those peoples, and
Medean, Lydian, and Persian textiles came to be everywhere sought for
with eagerness.

Writing of the wars carried on in Asia and India by Alexander the
Great, almost four centuries before the birth of Christ, Quintus
Curtius often speaks about the purple and gold garments worn by the
Persians and more eastern Asiatics. Among the many thousands of those
who came forth from Damascus to the Greek general, Parmenio, many
were so clad: “Vestes ... auro et purpura insignes induunt.”[49] All
over India the same fashion was followed in dress. When an Indian
king, with his two grown-up sons, came to Alexander, all three were so
arrayed: “Vestis erat auro purpuraque distincta, &c.”[50] Princes and
the high nobility, all over the East, are by Quintus Curtius called,
“purpurati.”[51] Not only garments but hangings were made of the same
costly fabric. When Alexander wished to afford some ambassadors a
splendid reception, the golden couches upon which they lay to eat their
meat were screened all about with cloths of gold and purple: “Centum
aurei lecti modicis intervallis positi erant: lectis circumdederat
(rex Alexander) ælæa purpura auroque fulgentia, &c.”[52] But these
Indian guests themselves were not less gorgeously arrayed in their own
national costume, as they came wearing linen (perhaps cotton) garments
resplendent with gold and purple: “Lineæ vestes intexto auro purpuraque
distinctæ, &c.”[53]

The dress worn by Darius, as he went forth to do battle, is thus
described by the same historian: The waist part of the royal purple
tunic was wove in white, and upon his mantle of cloth of gold were
figured two golden hawks as if pecking at one another with their beaks:
“Purpureæ tunicæ medium album intextum erat: pallam auro distinctam
aurei accipitres, velut rostris inter se concurrerent, adornabant.”[54]

 [49] Q. Curtii Rufi, lib. iii. cap. xiii. 34, p. 26, ed Foss.

 [50] Ib. lib. ix. cap. i. p. 217.

 [51] Ib. lib. iii. cap. ii. p. 4, cap. viii. p. 16.

 [52] Ib. lib. ix. cap. vii. p. 233.

 [53] Ib. cap. vii. p. 233.

 [54] Ib. lib. iii. cap. iii. p. 7.

From the east this love for cloth of gold reached the southern end of
Italy, called Magna Græcia, and thence soon got to Rome; where, even
under its early kings and much later under its emperors, garments made
of it were worn. Pliny, speaking of this rich textile, says:--Gold may
be spun or woven like wool, without any wool being mixed with it. We
are informed by Verrius, that Tarquinius Priscus rode in triumph in
a tunic of gold; and we have seen Agrippina, the wife of the Emperor
Claudius, when he exhibited the spectacle of a naval combat, sitting by
him, covered with a robe made entirely of woven gold without any other
material.[55] In fact, about the year 1840, the Marquis Campagna dug
up, near Rome, two old graves, in one of which had been buried a Roman
lady of high birth, inferred from the circumstance that all about her
remains were found portions of such fine gold flat thread, once forming
the burial garment with which she had been arrayed for her funeral: “Di
due sepolcri Romani, del secolo di Augusto scoverti tra la via Latina e
l’Appia, presso la tomba degli Scipioni.”

 [55] Book XXXIII. c. 19. Dr. Bostock’s Translation.

Now we get to the Christian epoch. When Pope Paschal, A.D. 821, sought
for the body of St. Cecily, who underwent martyrdom A.D. 230, the
pontiff found, in the catacombs, the maiden bride whole, and dressed
in a garment wrought all of gold, with some of her raiment drenched in
blood lying at her feet: “Aureis illud (corpus) vestitum indumentis
et linteamina martyris ipsius sanguine plena.”[56] In making the
foundations for the new St. Peter’s at Rome, they came upon and looked
into the marble sarcophagus in which had been buried Probus Anicius,
prefect of the Pretorian, and his wife, Proba Faltonia, each of whose
bodies was wrapped in a winding-sheet woven of pure gold strips.[57]
Maria Stilicho’s daughter, was wedded to the Emperor Honorius, and
died sometime about A.D. 400. When her grave was opened, A.D. 1544,
the golden tissues in which her body had been shrouded were taken out
and melted, when the yield of precious metal amounted to thirty-six
pounds.[58] The late Father Marchi found, among the remains of St.
Hyacinthus, martyr, several fragments of the same kind of golden web,
winding sheets of which were often given by the opulent for wrapping
up the dead body of some poor martyred Christian brother, as is shown
by the example specified in Boldetti’s “Cimiteri de’ santi martiri di
Roma.”[59]

 [56] Liber Pontificalis, t. ii. p. 332, ed. Vignolio, Romæ, 1752;
    Hierurgia, 2nd ed. p. 275.

 [57] Batelli, de Sarco. Marm. Probi Anicii et Probæ Faltoniæ in Temp.
    Vatic. Romæ. 1705.

 [58] Cancellieri, De Secretariis Basil. Vatic. ii. 1000.

 [59] T. II. p. 22.

Childeric, the second and perhaps the most renowned king of the
Merovingean dynasty, died and was buried A.D. 485, at Tournai. In the
year 1653 his grave was found out, and amid the earth about it so many
remains of pure gold strips were turned up, that there is every reason
for thinking that the Frankish king was wrapped in a mantle of such
golden stuff for his burial.[60] That the strips of pure gold out of
which the burial cloak of Childeric was woven were not anywise round,
but quite flat, we are warranted in thinking, from the fact that,
while digging in a Merovingean burial ground at Envermeu, A.D. 1855,
the distinguished archæologist l’Abbe Cochet came upon the grave once
filled, as it seemed, by a young lady whose head had been wreathed with
a fillet of pure golden web, the tissue of which is thus described:
“Ces fils aussi brillants et aussi frais que s’ils sortaient de la main
de l’ouvrier, n’étaient ni étirés ni cordés. Ils étaient plats et se
composaient tout semplement de petites lanières d’or d’un millimètre de
largeur, coupée à même une feuille d’or épaisse de moins d’un dixième
de millimètre. La longueur totale de quelques-uns atteignait parfois
jusqu’à quinze ou dix-huit centimètres.”[61]

 [60] Cochet, Le Tombeau de Childeric I^{er}, p. 174.

 [61] Cochet, Le Tombeau de Childeric I^{er} p. 175.

Our own country can furnish an example of this kind of golden textile.
At Chessel Down, in the Isle of Wight, when Mr. Hillier was making some
researches in an old Anglo-Saxon place of burial, the diggers found
pieces of golden strips, thin, and quite flat, which are figured in M.
l’Abbé Cochet’s learned book just quoted.[62] Of such a rich texture
must have been the vestment covered with precious stones, given to St.
Peter’s Church, at Rome, by Charles of France, in the middle of the
ninth century: “Carolus rex sancto Apostolo obtulit ex purissimo auro,
et gemmis constructam vestem, &c.”[63]

In the working of such webs and embroidery for use in the Church, a
high-born Anglo-Saxon lady, Ælthelswitha, with her waiting maids, spent
her life near Ely, where, “aurifrixoriæ et texturis secretius cum
puellulis vacabat, quæ de proprio sumptu, albam casulam suis manibus
ipsa talis ingenii peritissima fecit,” &c.[64]

 [62] Ib. p. 176.

 [63] Liber Pontificalis, l. iii., p. 201, ed. Vignolia.

 [64] Liber Eliensis, ed. Stewart, p. 208.

Such a weaving of pure gold was, here in England, followed certainly
as late as the beginning of the tenth century; very likely much later.
In the chapter library belonging to Durham Cathedral may be seen,
along with several other very precious liturgical appliances, a stole
and maniple, which happily, for more reasons than one, bear these
inscriptions: “Ælfflaed Fieri Precepit. Pio Episcopo Fridestano.” Queen
to Alfred’s son and successor, Edward the elder was our Ælfflaed who
got this stole and maniple made for a gift to Fridestan, consecrated
bishop of Winchester A.D. 905. With these webs under his eye, Mr.
Raine, in his “Saint Cuthbert,”[65] writes thus: In the first, the
ground work of the whole is woven exclusively with thread of gold. I
do not mean by thread of gold, the silver-gilt wire frequently used in
such matters, but real gold thread, if I may so term it, not round,
but flat. This is the character of the whole web, with the exception
of the figures, the undulating cloud-shaped pedestal upon which they
stand, the inscriptions, and the foliage; for all of which, however
surprising it may appear, vacant spaces have been left by the loom, and
they themselves afterwards inserted with the needle. Further on, in
his description of a girdle, the same writer tells us: Its breadth is
exactly seven-eighths of an inch. It has evidently proceeded from the
loom; and its two component parts are a flattish thread of pure gold,
and a thread of scarlet silk, &c.[66] Let it be borne in mind that
Winchester was then a royal city, and abounded, as it did afterwards,
with able needle-women.

 [65] P. 202.

The employment, till a late period, of flattened gold in silk textiles
is well shown by those fraudulent imitations, and substitution in its
stead of gilt parchment, which we have pointed out among the specimens
in this collection, as may be seen at Nos. 7095, p. 140; 8590, p. 224;
8601, p. 229; 8639, p. 244, &c.

That these Durham cloth-of-gold stuffs for vestments were home made--we
mean wrought in Anglo-Saxondom--is likely, and by our women’s hands,
after the way we shall have to speak about further on.

This love for such glittering attire, not only for liturgical use but
secular wear, lasted long in England. Such golden webs went here under
different names; at first they were called “ciclatoun,” “siglaton,” or
“siklatoun,” as the writer’s fancy led him to spell the common Persian
word for them at the time throughout the east.

By the old English ritual, plain cloth of gold was allowed, as now, to
be taken for white, and worn in the Church’s ceremonials as such, when
that colour happened to be named for use by the rubric. Thus in the
reign of Richard II., among the vestments at the Chapel of St. George,
Windsor Castle, there was “unum vestimentum album bonum de panno
adaurato pro principalibus festis B. Mariæ,” &c.[67]

St. Paul’s, London, had, at the end of the thirteenth century, two
amices; one an old one, embroidered with solid gold wire: “Amictus
breudatus de auro puro; amictus vetus breudatus cum auro puro.”[68]

 [66] Mr. Raine, St. Cuthbert, p. 209.

 [67] Dugdale’s Mon. Angl. t. viii., p. 1363.

 [68] Dugdale, p. 318.

The use of golden stuffs not unlikely woven in England, but assuredly
worn by royalty here, is curiously shown by the contrast between the
living man clothed in woven gold, and the dead body, and its frightful
state at burial, of Henry I., set forth by Roger Hoveden; who thus
writes of that king: “vide ... quomodo regis potentissimi corpus
cujus cervix diademite, auro et gemmis electissimis quasi divino
splendore vernaverat ... cujus reliqua superficies auro textile tota
rutilaverat,” &c.[69]

Often was this splendid web wrought so thick and strong, that each
string, whether it happened to be of hemp or of silk, in the warp, had
in it six threads, while the weft was of flat gold shreds. Hence such
a texture was called “samit,” a word shortened from its first and old
Byzantine name “exsamit,” as we shall have to notice further on. Among
several other purchases for the wardrobe of Edward I., in the year
1300, we find this entry: “Pro samitis pannis ad aurum tam in canabo
quam in serico,” &c.[70] And such was the quantity kept there of this
costly cloth, that the nobles of that king were allowed to buy it out
of the royal stores; for instance, four pieces at thirty shillings each
were sold to the Lord Robert de Clifford, and another piece at the same
price to Thomas de Cammill.[71] Not only Asia Minor, but the Island
of Cyprus, the City of Lucca, and Moorish Spain, sent us these rich
tissues. The cloth of gold from Spain is incidentally spoken of later
in the Sherborn bequest, p. lvi. Along with other things left behind
him at Haverford castle, by Richard II., were twenty-five cloths of
gold of divers suits, of which four came from Cyprus, the others from
Lucca: “xxv. draps d or de diverses suytes dount iiii. de _Cipres_ les
autres de _Lukes_.”[72] How Edward IV. liked cloth-of-gold for his
personal wear, may be gathered from his “Wardrobe Accounts,” edited by
Nicolas; and the lavish use of this stuff ordered by Richard III. for
his own coronation, is recorded in the “Antiquarian Repertory.”[73] The
robes to be worn by the unfortunate Edward V. at this same function
were cloth of gold tissue. “Diverse peces of cloth of gold” were bought
by Henry VII., “of Lombardes.”[74]

 [69] Annalium, &c., p. 276, ed. Savile.

 [70] Liber Quotidianus Garderobæ, p. 354.

 [71] Ib., p. 6.

 [72] Ancient Kalendars, &c., ed. Palgrave, t. iii., 358.

 [73] I. p. 43, &c.

 [74] Excerpta Historica, p. 90.

A “gowne of cloth-of-gold, furred with pawmpilyon, ayenst Corpus Xpi
day,” was brought from London to Richmond, to Elizabeth of York,
afterwards Henry VII.’s queen, for her to wear as she walked in the
procession on that great festival.[75] The affection shown by Henry
VIII., and all our nobility, men and women, of the time, for cloth
of gold in their garments, was unmistakingly set forth in so many of
their likenesses brought together in that very instructive Exhibition
of National Portraits in the year, A.D. 1866, in the South Kensington
Museum. This stuff seems to have been costly then, for Princess,
afterwards Queen Mary, thirteen years before she came to the throne:
“payed to Peycocke, of London, for xix yerds iii. qr̃t of clothe of
golde at xxxviij.[~s] the yerde, xxxvij_li._ x_s._ vj_d._”[76] And for
“a yerde and d^r qr̃t of clothe of siluer xl_s._”[77]

 [75] Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York, p. 33, ed. Nicolas.

 [76] Privy Purse Expenses of Princess Mary, ed. Madden, p. 87.

 [77] Ib. p. 86.

Cloth of gold called


TISSUE.

As between common silk and satin, there runs a broad difference, at
least in look, one being dull, the other smooth and glossy, so there
is a great distinction to be made among cloths of gold; some are,
so to say, dead; others, brilliant and sparkling. When the gold is
twisted into its silken filament, it takes the deadened look; when the
flattened, filmy strip of metal is rolled about it so evenly as to
bring its edges close to one another, it seems to be one unbroken wire
of gold, sparkling and lustrous, like what is now known as “passing,”
and, during the middle ages, went by the term of Cyprus gold; and rich
samits woven with it, were called damasks of Cyprus.

The very self-same things get for themselves other denominations as
time goes on: such happened to cloths of gold. What the thirteenth
century called, first, “ciclatoun,” then “baudekin,” afterward “nak,”
people, two hundred years later, chose to name “tissue,” or the bright
shimmering golden textile affected so much by our kings and queens in
their dress, for the more solemn occasions of stately grandeur, as was
just now mentioned. Up to this time, the very thin smooth paper made
at first on purpose to be, when this rich stuff lay by, put between
its folds to hinder it from fraying or tarnish, yet goes, though its
original use is forgotten, by the name of tissue-paper.

The gorgeous and entire set of vestments presented to the altar at
St. Alban’s Abbey, by Margaret, Duchess of Clarence, A.D. 1429, and
made of the cloth of gold commonly called “tyssewys,” must have
been as remarkable for the abundance and purity of the gold in its
texture, as for the splendour of the precious stones set on it, as
well as the exquisite beauty of its embroideries: “Obtulit etiam unum
vestimentum integrum cum tribus capis choralibus de panno Tyssewys
vulgariter nuncupato in quibus auri pretiosa nobilitas, gemmarum
pulchritudo et curiosa manus artificis stuporem quendam inspectantium
oculis repræsentant.”[78] The large number of vestments made out of
gold tissue, and of crimson, light blue, purple, green, and black,
once belonging to York Cathedral, are all duly registered in the
valuable “Fabric Rolls” of that Church lately published by the Surtees
Society.[79]

 [78] Mon. Anglic. II. 222.

 [79] Pp. 229, &c.

Among those many rich and costly vestments in Lincoln Cathedral, some
were made of this sparkling golden tissue contra-distinguished in its
inventory, from the duller cloth of gold, thus: “Four good copes of
blew tishew with orphreys of red cloth of gold, wrought with branches
and leaves of velvet;”[80] “a chesable with two tunacles of blew tishew
having a precious orphrey of cloth of gold.”[81]

To this day, in some countries the official robes of certain
dignitaries are wrought of this rich textile. Even now, these Roman
princes, and the senator whose place on great festivals when the Pope
is present, is about the pontifical throne, are all arrayed in state
garments made of cloth of gold.

 [80] Monasticon Anglicanum, ed. Dugdale, t. viii. p. 1282.

 [81] Ib.

Silken textures ornamented with designs in copper gilt thread, were
brought into market and honestly sold for what they really were: of
such inferior wares we find mention in the inventory of vestments at
Winchester Cathedral, drawn up by order of Henry VIII. where we read of
“twenty-eight copys of white bawdkyne, woven with copper gold.”[82] The
substitution of gilt parchment for metal will be noticed further on,
Section vi.

To imitate cloth of gold, the gilding of silk and fine canvas, like our
gilding of wood and other substances, though not often, was sometimes
resorted to for splendour’s sake on momentary occasions; such, for
instance, as some stately procession, or a solemn burial service. Mr.
Raine tells us he got from a grave at Durham, among other textiles,
“a robe of thinnish silk; the ground colour of the whole is amber;
and the ornamental parts were literally covered with _leaf gold_, of
which there remained distinct and very numerous portions.”[83] In the
churchyard of Cheam, Surrey, A.D. 1865, was found the skeleton of a
priest buried there some time during the fourteenth century; around the
waist was a flat girdle made of brown silk that had been gilt, and a
shred of it now lies before the writer.

In the “Romaunt of the Rose,” translated by Chaucer, Dame Gladnesse is
thus described:--

          --in an over gilt samite
    Clad she was.[84]

On a piece of German orphrey-web, in this collection, No. 1373, p. 80,
and likely done at Cologne, in the sixteenth century, the gold is put
by the gilding process.

 [82] Ib. t. i. p. 202, new ed.

 [83] Saint Cuthbert, by J. Raine, p. 194.

 [84] Poems, ed. Nicolas, t. iv. p. 27.

In the year 1295, St. Paul’s, London, had: “Casula de panno inaurato
super serico,” a chasuble of gilded silk;[85] and it was lined with red
cloth made at Ailesham,[86] or Elesham Priory in Lincolnshire. It had,
too, another chasuble, and altar frontals of gilded canvas: “casula
de panno inaurato in canabo, lineata carda Indici coloris cum panno
consimili de Venetiis ad pendendum ante altare.”[87] Venice seems to
have been the place where these gilded silks and canvases, like the
leather and pretty paper of a later epoch, were wrought.

 [85] Dugdale’s St. Paul’s, p. 335.

 [86] Ib.

 [87] Ib.

As gold, so too

SILVER,

was hammered out into very thin sheets, which were cut into narrow long
shreds to be woven, unmixed with anything else, into a web for garments
fitting for the wear of kings. Of this we have a striking illustration
in the “Acts,” where St. Luke, speaking of Herod Agrippa, tells us that
he presented himself arrayed in kingly apparel, to the people, who to
flatter him, shouted that his was the voice, not of a man, but of a
god; and forthwith he was smitten by that loathsome disease--eaten up
by worms--which shortly killed him.[88] This royal robe, as Josephus
informs us, was a tunic all made of silver and wonderful in its
texture. Appearing in this dress at break of day in the theatre, the
silver, lit up by the rays of the early morning’s sun, gleamed so
brightly as to startle the beholders in such a manner that some among
them, by way of glozing, shouted out that the king before them was a
god.[89]

 [88] Acts. c. xii. vv. 21-23.

 [89] Ant. l. xix. 8.

Intimately connected with the raw materials, and how they were wrought
in the loom, is the question about the time when


WIRE-DRAWING

was found out. At what period, and among what people the art of
working up pure gold, or gilded silver, into a long, round, hair-like
thread--into what may be correctly called “wire”--began, is quite
unknown. That with their mechanical ingenuity the ancient Egyptians
bethought themselves of some method for the purpose, is not unlikely.
From Sir Gardiner Wilkinson, we learn that at Thebes there was found
the appearance of gold wire.[90] Of those remarkable pieces of Egyptian
handicraft the corslets sent by King Amasis--one to Lindus, the second
to Lacædemon--of which we have already spoken (p. xiv.), we may fairly
presume that the work upon them done by the needle in gold, required
by its minuteness that the precious metal should be not flat, but in
the shape of a real wire. By the delicate management of female fingers,
the usual narrow flat strips might have been pinched or doubled up, so
that the two edges should meet, and then rubbed between men’s harder
hands, or better still, between two pieces of smooth highly-polished
granite, would produce a golden wire of any required fineness.
Belonging to the writer is an Egyptian gold ring, which was taken from
off the finger of a mummy by a friend. The hoop is a plain, somewhat
thick wire. On each side of its small green-dyed ivory scarabee, to
keep it in its place, are wound several rounds of rather fine wire. In
Etruscan and Greek jewellery, wire is often to be found; but in all
instances it is so well shaped and so even, that no hammer could have
hardly wrought it, and it must have been fashioned by some rolling
process. All through the mediæval times the filigree work is often
very fine and delicate. Likely is it that the embroidery which we thus
read of in the descriptions of the vestments belonging whilom to our
old churches, for instance: “amictus breudatus cum auro puro”[91]--was
worked with gold wire. To go back to Anglo-Saxon times in this country,
such gold wire would seem to have been well known and employed, since
in Peterborough minster there were two golden altar-cloths: “ii.
gegylde ƿeofad sceatas;”[92] and at Ely Cathedral, among its old ritual
ornaments, were, in the reign of William Rufus: “Duo cinguli, unus
totus de auri filo, alter de pallio cujus pendentia” (the tassels)
“sunt bene ornata de auri filo.”[93]

The first idea of a wire-drawing machine dawned upon a workman’s mind
in the year 1360, at Nuremberg; and yet it was not until two hundred
years after, A.D. 1560, that the method was brought to England. One
sample of a stuff with pure wire in it may be seen, p. 220, No. 8581,
in this collection, as well as at No. 8228, p. 150.

 [90] Ancient Egyptians, iii. 130.

 [91] Church of our Fathers, i. 469.

 [92] Mon. Anglic. t. i. p. 382.

 [93] Hist. Elien. lib. ii., c. 139, p. 283, ed. Steuart.

Equally interesting to our present subject is the process of twining
long narrow strips of gold, or in its stead gilt silver, round a line
of silk or flax, and thus producing


GOLD THREAD.

Probably its origin, as far as flax and not silk is concerned, as being
the underlying substance, is much earlier than has been supposed; and
when Attalus’s name was bestowed upon a new method of interweaving gold
with wool or linen, it happened so not because that Pargamanean king
had been the first to think of twisting gold about a far less costly
material, and thus, in fact, making gold thread such as we now have,
but through his having suggested to the weaver the long-known golden
thread as a woof into the textiles from his loom. From this point of
view, we may easily believe what Pliny says: “Aurum intexere in eadem
Asia invenit Attalus rex; unde nomen Attalicis.”[94] In that same Asia
King Attalus invented the method of using a woof of gold; from this
circumstance the Attalic cloths got their name.

That, at least for working embroidery, ladies at an early Christian
period used to spin their own gold thread, would seem from a passage in
Claudian. Writing on the elevation to the consulate of the two brothers
Probinus and Olybrius, at the end of the fourth century, the poet thus
gracefully compliments their aged mother, Proba, who with her own hands
had worked the purple and gold-embroidered robes, the “togæ pictæ,” or
“trabeæ,” to be worn by her sons in their office:

    Lætatur veneranda parens, et pollice docto
    Jam parat auratas trabeas ...

           *       *       *       *       *

    Et longum tenues tractus producit in aurum
    Filaque concreto cogit squalere metallo.[95]

    The joyful mother plies her learned hands,
    And works all o’er the trabea golden bands,
    Draws the thin strips to all their length of gold,
    To make the metal meaner threads enfold.

A consular figure, arrayed in the purple trabea, profusely embroidered
in gold, is shown in “The Church of our Fathers.”[96]

 [94] Lib. viii. c. 47.

 [95] In Probini et Olybrii Consulatum, 177-182.

 [96] T. ii. p. 131.

That, in the thirteenth century our own ladies, like the Roman Proba,
themselves used to make the gold thread needed for their own embroidery
is certain; and the process which they followed is set forth as one of
the items among the other costs for that magnificent frontal wrought
A.D. 1271, for the high altar at Westminster Abbey. As that bill
itself, to be seen on the Chancellor’s Roll for the year 56 of Henry
III., affords so many curious and available particulars about the whole
subject in hand, we will give it here at full length for the sake of
coming back hereafter to its several parts: “In xij. ulnis de canabo
ad frontale magni altaris ecclesiæ (Westmonasterii) et cera ad eundem
pannum ceranda, v_s._ vi_d._ Et in vj marcis auri ad idem frontale,
liij marcas. Et in operacione dicti auri, et sessura (scissura?) et
filatura ejusdem, iiij_l._ xiij_s._ Et in ij libris serici albi et in
duobus serici crocei ad idem opus, xxxv_s._ Et in perlis albis ponderis
v marcarum, et dimidiæ ad idem opus lxx_li._ Et pro grossis perlis
ad borduram ejusdem panni, ponderis ij marcarum, xiij_li._ dimidiam
marcam. Et in una libra serici grossi, x_s._ Et in stipendio quatuor
mulierum operancium in predicto panno per iij annos et iij partes unius
anni, xxxvi_li_. Et in Dccciij^{xx} vi estmalles ponderis liii_s._ ad
borduram predictam. Et pro lxxvj asmallis grossis ponderis lxv_s._ ad
idem frontale iiij^{xx}_li._ xvj_s._ Et pro Dl gernectis positis in
predictis borduris, lxvi_s._ Et in castoniis auri ad dictas gernectas
imponendas ponderis xij_s._ vj_d._, cxij_s._ vj_d._ Et in pictura
argenti posita subtus predicta asmalla, ij marcas. Et in vj ulnis
cardonis de viridi, iij_s._”[97] As the pound-weight now is widely
different from the pound sterling, so then the mark-weight of gold
cost nine marks of money. The “operacio auri” of the above document
consisted in flattening out, by a broad-faced hammer like one such as
our gold-beaters still use, the precious metal into a sheet thin as
our thinnest paper. The “scissura” was the cutting of it afterwards
into long narrow strips, the winding of which about the filaments of
the yellow silk mentioned, is indicated by the word “filatura,” and
thus was made the gold thread of that costly frontal fraught with
seed-pearls and other some, of a much larger size, and garnets, or
rather carbuncles, and enamels, and which took four women three years
and three-quarters to work. At the back it was lined with green frieze
or baize--“cardo de viridi.”

Such was the superior quality of some gold thread that it was
known to the mediæval world under the name of the place wherein it
had been made. Thus we find a mention at one time of Cyprus gold
thread--“vestimentum embrowdatum cum aquilis de auro de Cipre;”[98]
later, of Venice gold thread--“for frenge of gold of Venys at vj_s._
the ounce;”[99] “one cope of unwaterd camlet laid with strokes of
Venis gold.”[100] What may have been their difference cannot now be
pointed out: perhaps the Cyprian thread was so much esteemed because
its somewhat broad shred of flat gold was wound about the hempen twist
beneath it so nicely as to have the smooth unbroken look of gold wire;
while the article from Venice showed everywhere the twisting of common
thread.

 [97] Rot. Cancel. 56 Henrici III. Compot. Will. de Glouc.

 [98] Mon. Anglic. ii. 7.

 [99] Wardrobe Accounts of King Edward IV. p. 117, ed. N. H. Nicolas.

 [100] Mon. Anglic. ii. 167.

As now, so of old,


SILKS HAD VARIOUS NAMES

given them, meaning either their kind of texture and dressing, their
colour and its several tints, the sort of design or pattern woven on
them, the country from which they were brought, or the use for which,
on particular occasions, they happened to be especially set apart.

All of these designations are of foreign growth; some sprang up in the
seventh and following centuries at Byzantium, and, not to be found in
classic writers, remain unknown to modern Greek scholars; some are
half Greek, half Latin, jumbled together; other some, borrowed from
the east, are so shortened, so badly and variously spelt, that their
Arabic or Persian derivation can be hardly recognized at present. Yet,
without some slight knowledge of them, we may not understand a great
deal belonging to trade, and the manners of the times glanced at by our
old writers; much less see the true meaning of many passages in our
mediæval English poetry.

Among the terms significative of the kind of web, or mode of getting up
some sorts of silk, we have

_Holosericum_, the whole texture of which, as its Greek-Latin compound
means to say, is warp and woof wholly pure silk: in a passage from
Lampridius, quoted before, p. xix., we learn that so early as the reign
of Alexander Severus, the difference between “vestes holosericæ,” and
“subsericæ,” was strongly marked, and from which we learn that

_Subsericum_ implied that such a texture was not entirely, but in
part--likely its woof--of silk.

Although the warp only happened to be of silk, while the woof was of
gold, still the tissue was often called “holosericum;” of the vestments
which Beda says[101] S. Gregory sent over here to S. Austin, one is
mentioned by a mediæval writer as “una casula oloserica purpurei
coloris aurea textura”--a chasuble all silk, of a purple colour, woven
with gold.[102] Examples of “holosericum” and “subsericum” abound in
this collection.

 [101] Hist. Ecc. lib. i. c. 29.

 [102] Bedæ Hist., ed. Smith, p. 691.

_Examitum_, _xamitum_, or, as it is called in our old English documents
so often, _samit_, is a word made up of two Greek ones, εξ, “six,”
and μίτοι, “threads,” the number of the strings in the warp of the
texture. That stuffs woven so thick must have been of the best, is
evident. Hence, to say of any silken tissue that it was “examitum,”
or “samit,” meant that it was six-threaded, in consequence costly and
splendid. At the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth
centuries, “examitum,” as the writer still names the silk, was much
used for vestments in Evesham abbey, as we gather from the “Chronicon”
of that house, published lately for the Master of the Rolls.[103]
About the same period, among the best copes, chasubles, and vestments
in St. Paul’s, London, many were made of “sametum;” so Master Radulph
de Baldock chose to call it in his visitation of that church as its
dean, A.D. 1295.[104] As we observed just now, these rich silks, which
were in all colours, with a warp so stiff, became richer still from
having a woof of golden thread, or, as we should now say, being shot
with gold. But years before, “examitum” was shortened into “samet;” for
among the nine gorgeous chasubles bequeathed to Durham cathedral by its
bishop, Hugh Pudsey, A.D. 1195, there was the “prima de rubea samete
nobiliter braudata cum laminis aureis et bizanciis et multis magnis
perlis et lapidibus pretiosis.”[105] About a hundred years afterwards
the employment of it, after its richest form, in our royal wardrobes,
has been pointed out just now, p. xxviii., &c.

In that valuable inventory, lately published, of the rich vestments
belonging to Exeter cathedral, A.D. 1277, of its numerous chasubles,
dalmatics, tunicles, besides its seventy and more copes, the better
part were made of this costly tissue here called “samitta;” for
example: “casula, tunica, dalmatica de samitta--par (vestimentorum) de
rubea samitta cum avibus duo capita habentibus;” “una capa samitta cum
leonibus deauratis.”[106] In a later document, A.D. 1327, this precious
silk is termed “samicta.”[107]

Our minstrels did not forget to array their knights and ladies in this
gay attire. When Sir Lancelot of the Lake brought back Gawain to King
Arthur:--

    Launcelot and the queen were cledde
      In robes of a rich wede,
    Of samyte white, with silver shredde:

           *       *       *       *       *

    The other knights everichone,
      In samyte green of heathen land,
    And their kirtles, ride alone.[108]

 [103] Pp. 282-88.

 [104] Dugdale’s St. Paul’s, new ed. pp. 316, &c.

 [105] Wills and Inventories, part i. p. 3, published by the Surtees
    Society.

 [106] Lives of the Bishops of Exeter, and a History of the Cathedral,
    by Oliver, pp. 297, 298.

 [107] Ibid. 313.

 [108] Ellis’s Metrical Romances, i. 360.

In his “Romaunt of the Rose,” Chaucer describes the dress of _Mirthe_
thus:--

    Full yong he was, and merry of thought
    And in samette, with birdes wrought,
    And with gold beaten full fetously,
    His bodie was clad full richely.[109]

Many of the beautifully figured damasks in this collection are
what anciently were known as “samits;” and if they really be not
“six-thread,” according to the Greek etymology of their name, it is
because, that at a very early period the stuffs so called ceased to be
woven of such a thickness.

Those strong silks of the present day with the thick thread called
“organzine” for the woof, and a slightly thinner thread known by the
technical name of “tram” for the warp, may be taken to represent the
ancient “examits.”

Just as remarkable for the lightness of its texture, as happened to be
“samit” on account of the thick substance of its web, yet quite as much
sought after, was another kind of thin glossy silken stuff “wrought
in the orient” by Paynim hands, and here called first by its Persian
name which came with it, _ciclatoun_, that is, bright and shining;
but afterwards _sicklatoun_, _siglaton_, _cyclas_. Often a woof of
golden thread lent it more glitter still; and it was used equally for
ecclesiastical vestments as for secular articles of stately dress. In
the “Inventory of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London,” A.D. 1295, there was a
cope made of cloth of gold, called “ciclatoun:”--“capa de panno aureo
qui vocatur ciclatoun.”[110]

Among the booty carried off by the English when they sacked the camp of
Saladin, in the Holy Land,

    King Richard took the pavillouns
    Of sendal, and of cyclatoun.
    They were shape of castels;
    Of gold and silver the pencels.[111]

In his “Rime of Sire Thopas,” Chaucer says of the doughty swain,

    Of Brugges were his hosen broun
    His robe was of ciclatoun.[112]


Though so light and thin, this cloak of “ciclatoun” was often
embroidered in silk, and had sewn on it golden ornaments; for we read
of a young maid who sat,

    In a robe ryght ryall bowne
      Of a red syclatowne
        Be hur fader syde;
    A coronell on hur hedd set,
    Hur clothys with bestes and byrdes wer bete
      All abowte for pryde.[113]

 [109] Poems, ed. Nicolas, t. iv. p. 26.

 [110] Dugdale’s St. Paul’s, new ed. p. 318.

 [111] Ellis’s Metrical Romances, t. ii. p. 253.

 [112] Poems, ed. Nicolas, t. iii. p. 83.

 [113] Ancient English Met. Rom., ed. Ritson, t. iii. pp. 8, 9.

When in the field, over their armour, whether of mail or plate, knights
wore a long sleeveless gown slit up almost to the waist on both sides:
sometimes of “samit,” often of “cendal,” oftener still of “ciclatourn,”
because of its flowing showy texture was this garment made, and from
a new and contracted way of calling it, the name of the gown, like
the shortened one for its stuff, became known as “cyclas,” nothing
akin to the κυκλας--the full round article of dress worn by the women
of Greece and Rome. When, A.D. 1306, before setting out to Scotland,
Edward I. girded his son, the prince of Wales, with so much pomp, a
knight, in Westminster Abbey; to the three hundred sons of the nobility
whom the heir to the throne was afterward to dub knights in the same
church, the king made a most splendid gift of attire fitting for the
ceremony, and among other textiles sent them were these “clycases”
wove of gold:--“Purpura, bissus, syndones, cyclades auro textæ,” &c.
as we learn from Matthew Westminster, “Flores Historiarum,” p. 454.
How very light and thin must have been all such garments, we gather
from the quiet wit of John of Salisbury while jeering the man who
affected to perspire in the depth of winter, though clad in nothing but
his fine “cyclas:”--“dum omnia gelu constricta rigent, tenui sudat in
cylade.”[114]

Not so costly, and even somewhat thinner in texture, was a silken stuff
known as _cendal_, _cendallus_, _sandal_, _sandalin_, _cendatus_,
_syndon_, _syndonus_, as the way of writing the word altered as time
went on. When Sir Guy of Warwick was knighted,

    And with him twenty good gomes
    Knightes’ and barons’ sons,
    Of cloth of Tars and rich cendale
    Was the dobbing in each deal.[115]

 [114] Polycraticus, lib. VIII. c. xii.

 [115] Ellis’s Met. Rom. i. 15.

The Roll of Caerlaverock tells us that among the grand array which met
and joined Edward I. at Carlisle, A.D. 1300, on his
road to invade Scotland, there was to be seen many a rich caparison
embroidered upon cendal and samit:--

    La ot meint riche guarnement
    Brodé sur sendaus e samis.[116]

And Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, leading the first squadron, hoisted his
banner made of yellow cendal blazoned with a lion rampant purpre.[117]

    Baner out de un cendal safrin,
    O un lioun rampant purprin.

Most, if not all the other flags were made of the same cendal silk.

 [116] Roll of Caerlaverock, ed. Wright, p. 1.

 [117] Ibid. p. 2.

When the stalworth knight of Southampton wished to keep himself unknown
at a tournament, we thus read of him--

    Sir Bevis disguised all his weed
    Of black cendal and of rede,
    Flourished with roses of silver bright, &c.[118]

Of the ten beautiful silken albs which Hugh Pudsey left to Durham,
two were made of samit, other two of cendal, or as the bishop calls
it, _sandal_: “Quæ dicuntur sandales.”[119] Exeter cathedral had a
red cope with a green lining of sandal: “Capa rubea cum linura viridi
sandalis;”[120] and a cape of sandaline: “Una capa de sandalin.”[121]
Chasubles, too, were, it is likely, for poorer churches, made of cendal
or sandel; Piers Ploughman speaks thus to the high dames of his day--

    And ye lovely ladies
    With youre long fyngres,
    That ye have silk and sandal
    To sowe, whan tyme is.
    Chesibles for chapeleyns,
    Chirches to honoure, &c.[122]

A stronger kind of cendal was wrought and called, in the Latin
inventories of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, cendatus
afforciatus, and of such there was a cope at St. Paul’s;[123] while
another cope of cloth of gold was lined with it,[124] as also a
chasuble of red samit given by Bishop Henry of Sandwich.

 [118] Ellis’s Met. Rom. ii. 156.

 [119] Wills and Inventories, p. 3.

 [120] Oliver, p. 299.

 [121] Ib. p. 315.

 [122] The Vision, Passus Sextus, t. i. p. 117, ed. Wright.

 [123] P. 317.

 [124] P. 318.

_Syndonus_ or _Sindonis_, as it would seem, was a bettermost sort of
cendal. St. Paul’s had a chasuble as well as a cope of this fabric:
“Casula de sindone purpurea, linita cendata viridi;[125] “capa de
syndono Hispanico.”[126]

 [125] P. 323.

 [126] Transcriber’s note: Footnote, originally number 9 on page xli,
    not in original text.

_Taffeta_, it is likely, if not a thinner, was a less costly silken
stuff than cendal; which word, to this day, is used in the Spanish
language, and is defined to be a thin transparent textile of silk or
linen: “Tela de seda ó lino muy delgada y trasparente.”

As the Knights’ flags:

    Ther gonfanens and ther penselles
    Wer well wrought off grene sendels;

as their long cyclases which they wore over their armour were of
cendal, so too were of cendal, all blazoned with their armorial
bearings, the housing of the steeds they strode. Of cendal, also, was
the lining of the church’s vestments, and the peaceful citizen’s daily
garments. Of his “Doctour of Phisike,” Chaucer tells us:--

    In sanguin and in perse he clad was alle
    Lined with taffata, and with sendalle.[127]

For the weaving of cendal, among the Europeans, Sicily was once
celebrated, and a good example from others in this collection, is No.
8255, p. 163.

 [127] Prologue, Poems, ed. Nicolas, ii. 14.

_Sarcenet_, during the fifteenth century took by degrees the place of
cendal, at least here in England.

By some improvement in their weaving of cendal, the Saracens, it
is likely in the south of Spain, earned for this light web as they
made it, or sold it, a good name in our markets, and it became much
sought for here. Among other places, York Cathedral had several sets
of curtains for its high altar, “de sarcynet.”[128] At first we
distinguished this stuff by calling it, from its makers, “saracenicum.”
But while Anglicising, we shortened that appellation into the
diminutive “sarcenet;” and this word we keep to the present day, for
the thin silk which of old was known among us as “cendal.”

 [128] Fabric Rolls, &c. p. 227.

_Satin_, though far from being so common as other silken textures,
was not unknown to England, in the middle ages; and of it thus speaks
Chaucer, in his “Man of Lawes Tale:”

    In Surrie whilom dwelt a compagnie
    Of chapmen rich, and therto sad and trewe,
    That wide were senten hir spicerie,
    Clothes of gold, and satins riche of hewe.[129]

 [129] Poems, ii. 137.

But as Syria herself never grew the more precious kinds of spices,
so we do not believe that she was the first to hit upon the happy
mechanical expedient of getting up a silken texture so as to take, by
the united action at the same moment of strong heat and heavy pressure
upon its face, that lustrous metallic shine which we have in satin. No.
702, p. 8, is a good example of late Chinese manufacture, a process
which this country is only now beginning to understand and successfully
employ.

When satin first appeared in trade, it was all about the shores of
the Mediterranean called “aceytuni.” This term slipped through early
Italian lips into “zetani;” coming westward this, in its turn, dropped
its “i,” and smoothed itself into “satin,” a word for this silk among
us English as well as our neighbours in France, while in Italy it
now goes by the name of “raso,” and the Spaniards keep up its first
designation in their dictionary.

In the earlier inventories of church vestments, no mention can be found
of satin; and it is only among the various rich bequests (ed. Oliver)
made to his cathedral at Exeter by Bishop Grandison, between A.D.
1327-69 that this fine silk is spoken of; though later, and especially
in the royal wardrobe accompts (ed. Nicolas), it is perpetually
specified. Hence we may fairly assume that till the beginning of the
fourteenth century satin was unknown in England; afterwards it met
much favour. Flags were made of it. On board the stately ship in which
Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, in the reign of Henry VI., sailed from
England to France, there were flying “three penons of satten,” besides
“sixteen standards of worsted entailed with a bear and a chain,” and
a great streamer of forty yards in length and eight yards in breadth,
with a great bear and griffin holding a ragged staff poudred full of
ragged staffs.[130] Like other silken textiles, satin seems to have
been, in some few instances, interwoven with flat gold thread, so as to
make it a tissue: for example, Lincoln had of the gift of one of its
bishops, eighteen copes of red tinsel sattin with orphreys of gold.[131]

Though not often, yet sometimes do we read of a silken stuff called,
_cadas_, _carda_, _carduus_, and used for inferior purposes. The
outside silk on the cocoon is of a poor quality compared with the
inner filaments, from which it is kept quite apart in reeling, and set
aside for other uses; this is _cadas_ which the Promptorium Parvulorum
defines, however, as “Bombicinium,” or silk. St. Paul’s, A.D. 1295,
had “pannus rubeus diasperatus de Laret lineatus de carda Inda;”[132]
and Exeter possessed another cloth for the purpose: “Cum carduis
viridibus.”[133] More frequently, instead of being spun it served as
wadding in dress; on the barons at the siege of Caerlaverock, might be
seen many a rich gambeson garnished with silk, cadas, and cotton:--

    Meint riche gamboison guarni
    De soi, de cadas e coton.[134]

One of the Lenten veils at St. Paul’s, in the chapel of St. Faith, was
of blue and yellow carde: “velum quadragesimale de carde croceo et
indico.”[135] The quantity of card purchased for the royal wardrobe,
in the twenty-eighth year of Edward I.’s reign, A.D. 1299, is set forth
in the Liber Quotidianus, &c.[136]

Chasubles made in the thirteenth century, and belonging to Hereford
Cathedral, were lined with carda: “Unam casulam de rubeo sindone linita
de carda crocea--tertiam casulam de serico de India linita de carda
viridi,” &c.[137]

 [130] Baronage of England, Dugdale, i. 246.

 [131] Mon. Anglic. viii. 1282.

 [132] P. 335.

 [133] Ed. Oliver, p. 317.

 [134] Roll. p. 30.

 [135] St. Paul’s ed. Dugdale, p. 336.

 [136] P. 354.

 [137] Roll of the Household Expenses of Swinford, Bishop of Hereford,
    t. ii. p. xxxvi. ed. Web. for the Camden Society.

_Camoca_, _camoka_, _camak_, _camora_ (a misspelling), as the name is
differently written, was a textile of which in England we hear nothing
before the latter end of the fourteenth century. No sooner did it make
its appearance than this camoca rose into great repute; the Church used
it for her liturgical vestments, and royalty employed it for dress on
grand occasions as well as in adorning palaces, especially in draping
beds of state. In the year 1385, besides some smaller articles, the
royal chapel in Windsor Castle had a whole set of vestments and other
ornaments for the altar, of white camoca: “Unum vestimentum album de
camoca,” &c.... “Album de camoca, cum casula.”[138]... “Duo quissini
rubei de camoca.”[139] To his cathedral of Durham, the learned Richard
Bury left a beautifully embroidered whole set of vestments, A.D. 1345:
“Unum vestimentum de alma camica (_sic_) subtiliter brudata,” &c.[140]

Our princes must have arrayed themselves, on grand occasions, in
camoca; for thus Herod, in one of the Coventry Misteries--the Adoration
of the Magi--is made to boast of himself: “In kyrtyl of cammaka kynge
am I cladde.”[141] But it was in draping its state-beds that our
ancient royalty showed its affection for camoca. To his confessor,
Edward the Black Prince bequeaths “a large bed of red camora (_sic_)
with our arms embroidered at each corner,”[142] and the prince’s mother
leaves to another son of hers, John Holland, “a bed of red camak.”[143]
Our nobles, too, had the same likings, for Edward Lord Despencer, A.D.
1375, wills to his wife, “my great bed of blue camaka, with griffins,
also another bed of camaka, striped with white and black.”[144] What
may have been the real texture of this stuff, thought so magnificent,
we do not positively know, but hazarding a guess, we think it to have
been woven of fine camel’s hair and silk, and of Asiatic workmanship.

From this mixed web pass we now to another, one even more precious,
that is the _Cloth of Tars_, which we presume to have, in a manner,
been the forerunner of the now so celebrated cashmere, and along with
silk made of the downy wool of a family of goats reared in several
parts of Asia, but especially in Tibet, as we shall try to show a
little further on.

 [138] Mon. Anglic. ed. Dugdale, new edition, p. viii. 1363, _a_.

 [139] Ib. p. 1366, _a_.

 [140] Wills and Inventories, t. i. p. 25, published by the Surtees
    Society.

 [141] Ed. Halliwell, p. 163.

 [142] Nicolas’s Testamenta Vetusta, t. i. p. 12.

 [143] Ib. p. 14.

 [144] Ib. p. 99.

_Velvet_ is a silken textile, the history of which has still to be
written. Of the country whence it first came, or the people who were
the earliest to hit upon the happy way of weaving it, we know nothing.
The oldest piece we remember to have ever seen was in the beautiful
crimson cope embroidered by English hands in the fourteenth century,
now kept at the college of Mount St. Mary, Chesterfield, and exhibited
here in the ever memorable year ’62.

Our belief is, that to central Asia--perhaps China,--we are indebted
for velvet as well as satin, and we think the earliest places in Europe
to weave it was, first the south of Spain, and then Lucca.

In the earlier of those oldest inventories we have of church vestments,
that of Exeter Cathedral, A.D. 1277, velvet is not spoken of; but in
St. Paul’s, London, A.D. 1295, there is some notice of velvet,[145]
along with its kindred web, “fustian,” for chasubles.[146] At Exeter,
in the year 1327, velvet--and it was crimson--is for the first time
there mentioned, but as in two pieces not made up, of which some yards
had been then sold for vestment-making.[147] From the middle of the
fourteenth century, velvet--mostly crimson--is of common occurrence.

The name itself of velvet, “velluto,” seems to point out Italy as the
market through which we got it from the East, for the word in Italian
indicates something which is hairy or shaggy, like an animal’s skin.

Fustian was known at the end of the thirteenth century. St. Paul’s
Cathedral had: “Una casula alba de fustian.”[148] But in an English
sermon preached at the beginning of this thirteenth century, great
blame is found with the priest who had his chasuble made of middling
fustian: “þe meshakele of medeme fustian.”[149] As then wove, fustian,
about which we have to say more, had a short nap on it, and one of
the domestic uses to which, during the middle ages, it had been put,
was for bed clothes, as thick undersheets. Lady Bergavenny bequeaths
A.D. 1434, “A bed of gold of swans, two pair sheets of Raynes (fine
linen, made at Rheims), a pair of fustians, six pair of other sheets,
&c.”[150] That this stuff may have hinted to the Italians the way of
weaving silk in the same manner, and so of producing velvet, is not
unlikely. Had the Egyptian Arabs been the first to push forward their
own discovery of working cotton into fustian, and changing cotton
for silk, and so brought forth velvet, it is probable some one would
have told us; as it is, we yield the merit to Asia--may be China.
Other nations took up this manufacture, and the weaving of velvet
was wonderfully improved. It became diapered, and upon a ground of
silk or of gold, the pattern came out in a bold manner, with a raised
pile; and, at last, that difficult and most beautiful of all manners
of diapering, or making the pattern to show itself in a double pile,
one pile higher than the other and of the same tint, now, as formerly,
known as velvet upon velvet, was brought to its highest perfection:
and velvets in this fine style were wrought in greatest excellence all
over Italy and in Spain and Flanders. Our old inventories often specify
these differences in the making of the web. York cathedral had “four
copes of crimson velvet plaine, with orphreys of clothe of goulde, for
standers;”[151] and besides, “a greene cushion of raised velvet,”[152]
possessed “a cope of purshed velvet (redd)”[153] “purshed” meaning the
velvet raised in a net-work pattern.

 [145] P. 318.

 [146] P. 323.

 [147] Ed. Oliver, p. 317.

 [148] Ed. Dugdale, p. 323.

 [149] Reliquiæ Antiquæ, i. 129.

 [150] Test. Vet. i. 227.

 [151] Fabric Rolls, p. 309.

 [152] Ib. p. 311.

 [153] Ib. p. 310.

_Diaper_ was a silken fabric, held everywhere in high estimation during
many hundred years, both abroad and here in England. This we know from
documents beginning with the eleventh century. What was its distinctive
characteristic, and whence it drew its name, we have not been hitherto
told, with anything like certainty. Several eminent men have discussed
these points, but while hazarding his own conjecture, each of these
writers has differed from the others. Till a better may be found, we
submit our own solution.

The silk weavers of Asia had, of old, found out the way so to gear
their looms, and dress their silk, or their threads of gold, that
with a warp and woof, both precisely of the same tone of colour they
could give to the web an elegant design, each part of which being
managed in the weaving, as either to hide or to catch the light and
shine, looked to be separated from or stand well up above the seeming
dusky ground below it: at times the design was dulled, and the ground
made glossy. To indicate such a one-coloured, yet patterned silk, the
Byzantine Greeks of the early middle ages bethought themselves of the
term διασπρον, diaspron, a word of their own coinage, and drawn from
the old Greek verb, διασπαω, I separate, but meant by them to signify
“what distinguishes or separates itself from things about it,” as every
pattern must do on a one-coloured silk. Along with this textile, the
Latins took the name for it from the Greeks, and called it “diasper,”
which we English have moulded into “diaper.” In the year 1066, the
Empress Agnes gave to Monte Cassino a diaper-chasuble of cloth of gold,
“optulit planetam diasperam totam undique auro contextam.”[154]

How a golden web may be so wrought is exemplified, amid several other
specimens in this collection, by the one under No. 1270, p. 38, done
most likely by an English hand. At York Minster, in the year 1862,
was opened a tomb, very likely that of some archbishop; and there was
found, along with other textiles in silk, a few shreds of what had been
a chasuble made of cloth of gold diapered all over with little crosses,
as we ourselves beheld. It would seem, indeed, that cloth of gold was
at most times diapered with a pattern, at least in Chaucer’s days,
since he thus points to it on the housing of his king’s horse:--

                    -- -- trapped in stele,
    Covered with cloth of gold diapred wele.[155]

 [154] Chron. S. Monast. Cassin. Lib. iii. cap. 73, p. 450, ed.
    Muratori.

 [155] Knight’s Tale, l. 2159-60.

Our oldest Church inventories make frequent mention of such diapered
silks for vestments. In 1277, Exeter Cathedral had: “una (capa) de alba
diapra cum noviluniis,”[156]--a cope of white diaper with half moons.
It was the gift of Bishop Bartholomew, A.D. 1161. Bishop Brewer, A.D.
1224, bestowed upon the Church a small pall of red diaper: “parva palla
de rubea diapra;” along with a chasuble, dalmatic and tunicle of white
diaper: “casula, &c. de alba diapra.”[157] Among its vast collection of
liturgical garments, A.D. 1295, old St. Paul’s had a large number made
of diaper, which was almost always white. Sometimes the pattern of the
diapering is noticed; for instance, a chasuble of white diaper, with
coupled parrots in places, among branches: “casula de albo diaspro cum
citaciis combinatis per loca in ramusculis.”[158] Again: “tunica et
dalmatica de albo diaspro cum citacis viridibus in ramunculis,”[159]
where we see the white diaper having the parrots done in green.
Probably the most remarkable and elaborate specimen of diaper-weaving
on record, is the one that Edmund, Earl of Cornwall gave, made up in
“a cope of a certain diaper of Antioch colour, covered with trees and
diapered birds, of which the heads, breasts, and feet, as well as the
flowers on the trees, are woven in gold thread: “Capa Domini Edmundi
Comitis Cornubiæ de quodam diaspero Antioch coloris, tegulata cum
arboribus et avibus diasperatis quarum capita, pectora et pedes, et
flores in medio arborum sunt de aurifilo contextæ.[160]

 [156] P. 297.

 [157] P. 298.

 [158] St. Paul’s, ed. Dugdale, p. 323.

 [159] Ib. p. 322.

 [160] Ib. p. 318.

By degrees the word “diaper” became widened in its meaning. Not only
all sorts of textile, whether of silk, of linen, or of worsted, but the
walls of a room were said to be diapered when the self-same ornament
was repeated and sprinkled well over it. Thus, to soothe his daughter’s
sorrows, the King of Hungary promises her a chair or carriage, that--

    Shal be coverd wyth velvette reede
    And clothes of fyne golde al about your heede,
    With damaske whyte and azure blewe
    Well dyaperd with lylles newe.[161]

Nay, the bow for arrows held by SWEET LOOKING is, in Chaucer’s “Romaunt
of the Rose,” described as--

          painted well, and thwitten
    And over all diapred and written, &c.[162]

Even now, our fine table linen we call “diaper,” because it is figured
with flowers and fruits. Sometimes, with us, silks diapered were
called “sygury:” una capa de sateyn sygury, cum ymagine B. M. V. in
capucio.[163]

 [161] Squire of Low Degree, ed. Ritson.

 [162] “Romaunt of the Rose,” l. 900.

 [163] Fabric Rolls of York Cathedral, p. 230.

In their etymology of diaper, modern writers try to draw the word from
Yprès, or d’Ypriès, because that town in Belgium was once celebrated,
not for silken stuffs, but for linen. Between the city and the name
of “diaper” a kinship even of the very furthest sort cannot be fairly
set up. From the citations out of the Chronicle of Monte Cassino we
learn, that at the beginning of the eleventh century, the term in
use there for a certain silken textile, brought thither from the
east, was “diasperon.” We find, too, how that great monastery was in
continual communication with Constantinople, whither she was in the
habit of sending her monks to buy art-works of price, and bring back
with them workmen, for the purpose of embellishing her Church and its
altars. Getting from South Italy to England, and our own records, we
discover this same Greece-born phrase, diaspron, diasper, given to
precious silks used as vestments during the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, in London and Exeter. By the latter end of the fourteenth
century--Chaucer’s time--the terms “diasper,” and “diasperatus,” among
us, had slidden into “diaper,” “diaperatus,” Englished, “diapered.”
Now, in this same fourteenth century, do we, for the first time, meet
a mention of Yprès; and not alone, but along with Ghent, as famous for
linen, if by that word we understand cloth; and even then our own Bath
seems to have stood above those Belgian cities in their textiles. Among
Chaucer’s pilgrims--

    A good wif was ther of beside Bathe

           *       *       *       *       *

    Of cloth making she hadde swiche an haunt
    She passed hem of Ipres and of Gaunt.[164]

 [164] The Prologue, 447.

Neither in this, nor any other subsequent notice of Yprès weaving,
is there anything which can be twisted into a warrant for thinking
the distinctive mark to have been the first employment of pattern on
its webs, or even its peculiar superiority in such a style of work.
The important fact which we have just now verified that several ages
had gone by between the period when, in Greece, in South Italy, and
England, the common name for a certain kind of precious silk was
“diaspron,” “diasper,” “diaper,” and the day when, for the first time,
Yprès, not alone, but in company with other neighbouring cities,
started up into notice for its linens, quite overthrows the etymology
thought of now-a-days for the word “diaper,” and hastens us to the
conclusion that this almost ante-mediæval term came to us from Greece,
and not from Flanders.

Of the several oldest pieces in this collection, there are not a
few which those good men who wrote out the valuable inventories of
Exeter and St. Paul’s, London, would have jotted down as “diasper,” or
“diaper.” The shreds of creamy, white silk, number 1239, p. 26, fully
illustrate the meaning of this term, and will repay minute inspection.

More ancient still are other terms which we are about to notice,
such as “chrysoclavus,” “stauracin,” “polystaurium,” “gammadion,” or
“gammadiæ,” “de quadruplo,” “de octoplo,” and “de fundato.” First,
textiles of silk and gold are, over and over again, enumerated as
then commonly known under such names, in the so-called Anastasius
Bibliothecarius, Liber Pontificalis seu de Gestis Romanorum Pontificum,
the good edition of which, in three volumes, edited by Vignolius, ought
to be in the hands of every student of early Christian art-work, and in
particular of textiles and embroidery.

The _Chrysoclavus_ or golden nail-head, was a remnant, which lingered a
long time among the ornaments embroidered on ecclesiastical vestments,
and robes for royal wear, of that once so coveted “latus clavus,” or
broad nail-head-like purple round patch worn upon the outward garment
of the old Roman dignitaries, as we learn from Horace, while laughing
at the silly official whom he saw at Fondi--

            Insani ridentes præmia scribæ,
    Prætextam et latum clavum.[165]

 [165] Serm. lib. i. satir. v.

In the Court of Byzantium this device of dignity was elevated, from
being purple on white, into gold upon purple. Hence came it that
all rich purple silks, woven or embroidered, with the “clavus” done
in gold, became known from their pattern as gold nail-headed, or
chrysoclavus, a half Greek half Latin word, employed as often as
an adjective as a substantive; and silken textiles of Tyrian dye,
sprinkled all over with large round spots, were once in great demand.
Shortly after, A.D. 795, Pope Leo, among his several other gifts to
the churches at Rome, bestowed a great number of altar frontals made
of this purple and gold fabric, as we are told by Anastasius. To
the altar of St. Paul’s the pontiff sent “vestem super altare albam
chrysoclavam;”[166] but to another “vestem chrysoclavam ex blattin
Byzanteo.”[167] Sometimes these “clavi” were made so large that upon
their golden ground an event in the life of a saint, or the saint’s
head, was embroidered, and then the whole piece was called “sigillata,”
or _sealed_.

_Stauracin_, or “stauracinus,” taking its name from σταυρος, the Greek
for “cross,” was a silken stuff figured with small plain crosses, and
therefore from their number sometimes further distinguished by the word
signifying that meaning in Greek,

_Polystauron._ Of such a textile St. Leo gave presents to churches, as
we learn from Anastasius, lib. Pont. ii. 265.

How much silken textiles figured with the cross were in request for
church adornment we learn from Fortunatus, who, about the year 565,
thus describes the hangings of an oratory in a church at Tours--

    Pallia nam meruit, sunt quæ cruce textile pulchra,

           *       *       *       *       *

    Serica qua niveis sunt agnava blattea telis,
        Et textis crucibus magnificatur opus.[168]

Very often the crosses woven on these fabrics were of the simplest
shape; oftener were they designed after an elaborate type with a
symbolic meaning about it that afforded an especial name to the stuffs
upon which they were figured, the first of which that claims our notice
is denominated

 [166] Lib. Pon. ii. 257.

 [167] Ibid. 258.

 [168] Poematum, Liber II. iv.

_Gammadion_, or _Gammadiæ_, a word applied as often to the pattern upon
silks as the figures wrought upon gold and silver for use in churches,
we so repeatedly come upon in the “Liber Pontificalis.”

In the Greek alphabet the capital letter of gamma takes the shape of an
exact right angle thus, Γ. Being so, many writers have beheld in it an
emblem of our Lord as our corner-stone. Following this idea artists at
a very early period struck out a way of forming the cross after several
shapes by various combinations with it of this letter Γ. Four of these
gammas put so

 ┘└
 ┐┌

fall into the shape of the so-called Greek cross; and in this form it
was woven upon the textiles denominated “stauracinæ;” or patterned
with a cross. Being one of the four same-shaped elements of the cross’s
figure, the part was significant of the whole. Being, too, the emblem
of our corner-stone--our Lord, the gamma, or Γ, was shown at one edge
of the tunic on most of the apostles in ancient mosaics; wherein
sometimes we find, in place of the gamma, our present capital Η for the
aspirate, with which for their symbolic purpose the early Christians
chose to utter, if not, write the sacred name. This Η is, however,
only another combination of the four gammas in the cross. Whatsoever,
therefore, whether of silver or of silk, was found to be marked in
these or other ways of putting the gammas together, or with only a
single one, such articles were called “gammadion,” or “gammadiæ;”
but as often the so-formed cross was designated as “gammaed,” or
“gammadia.” St. Leo gave to the Church of S. Susanna, at Rome, an
altar-frontal, upon which there were four of such crosses made of
purple silk speckled with gold spots; “vestem de blatthin habentem ...
tabulas chrysoclavas iiii cum gemmis ornatas, atque gammadias in ipsa
veste chrysoclavas iiii.”[169]

Ancient ingenuity for throwing its favourite gamma into other
combinations, and thus bringing forth other pretty but graceful
patterns to be wrought on all sorts of ecclesiastical appliances,
did not stop here. In the “Liber Pontificalis” of Anastasius, we
meet not unfrequently with such passages as these: “Cortinas miræ
magnitudinis de palliis stauracin seu quadrapolis;”[170] “vela ...
ex palliis quadrapolis seu stauracin;”[171] “vela de octapolo.”[172]
The explanation of these two terms, “de quadrapolo,” “de octapolo,”
has hitherto baffled all commentators of the text through their
forgetfulness of comparing together the things themselves and the
written description of them. In these texts there is evidently meant a
strong contrast between a something amounting to four, and to eight,
in or upon these textiles. It cannot be to say that one fabric was
woven with four, the other with eight threads: had that been so meant,
then the fact would have been announced by words constructed like
“examitus,” p. xxxvii. As the contrast is not in the texture, it must
then be searched for in the pattern of these two stuffs. Sure enough,
there we find it, as “de quadrapolis” and “stauracin” were, as we
see above, interchangeable terms; the first, like the second sort of
textile, was figured with crosses.

Given at the end of Du Cange’s “Glossary” is an engraving of a work
of Greek art, plate IX. Here St. John Chrysostom stands between St.
Nicholas and St. Basil. All three are arrayed in their liturgical
garments, which being figured with crosses, are of the textile called
of old “stauracin;” but a marked difference in the way in which the
crosses are put is discernible. As a metropolitan St. John wears the
saccos upon which the crosses are arranged thus

[Illustration]

St. Nicholas, and St. Basil have chasubles which, though worked all
over with crosses, made, as on St. John’s saccos, with gammas, are
surrounded with other gammas joined so as to edge in the crosses, thus

[Illustration]

As four gammas only are necessary to form all the crosses upon St.
John’s vestment, therein we behold the textile called by Anastasius,
“Stauracin de quadruplo,” or the stuff figured with a cross of four
(gammas); while as eight of these Greek letters are required for the
pattern on the chasubles, we have in them an example of the other
“stauracin de octaplo,” or “octapulo,” a fabric with a pattern composed
of eight gammas. But of all the shapes fashioned out of the repetition
of the one same element, the Greek letter Γ, by far the most ancient,
universal, and mystic, is that curious one particularized by many as the

 [169] Lib. Pontif. ii. 243.

 [170] Ib. ii. 196.

 [171] Ib. ii. 198.

 [172] Ib. ii. 209.

_Gammadion_, or _Filfot_, a name by which, at one time in England, it
was generally known. Several pieces in this collection exhibit on them
some modification of it, as Nos. 1261, p. 34; 1325, p. 60; 7052, p.
127; 8279A, p. 174; 8305, p. 185; 8635, p. 242; 8652, p. 249. Its figure
is made out of the usual four gammas, so that they should fall together
thus 卍: of its high antiquity and symbolism, we speak further on,
section VII.

Silks figured with a cross, some made with four, some with eight
Greek gammas, remained in Eastern Church use all through the middle
ages, as we may gather from several monuments of that period.
Besides a good many other books, Gori’s fine one, “Thesaurus Veterum
Diptychorum” affords us several instances.[173] The name also remained
to such textiles as we know from the Greek canonist Balsamon, who,
writing about the end of the twelfth century on episcopal garments,
calls the tunic, στιχάριον διὰ γαμμάτων or (with a pattern) of
gammas--gammadion. How to this day the cross made by four gammas is
woven on Greek vestments, may be observed in the plates we have given
in “Hierurgia.”[174] Two late specimens of “stauracin” are in this
collection under Nos. 7039, p. 123; 7048, p. 126; and 8250A, p. 161.

 [173] T. iii. p. 84.

 [174] Pp. 445, 448, second edition.

Of silks patterned with the Greek cross or “stauracin,” there are
several examples in this collection; and though not of the remotest
period, are interesting; the one No. 8234, p. 154, wrought in Sicily
as it is probable by the Greeks brought as prisoners from the Morea,
in the twelfth century, is not without some value. In the Chapter
Library at Durham may be seen a valuable sample of Byzantine stauracin
“colours purple and crimson; the only prominent ornament a cross--often
repeated, even upon the small portion which remains.”[175] Those who
have seen in St. Peter’s sacristy at Rome, that beautiful light-blue
dalmatic said to have been worn by Charlemagne when he sang the Gospel
at high mass, at the altar, vested as a deacon, the day he was crowned
emperor in that church by Pope Leo III. will remember how plentifully
it is sprinkled with crosses between its exquisite embroideries, so
as to make the vestment a real “stauracin.” It has been well given by
Sulpiz Boisserée in his “Kaiser Dalmatika in der St. Peterskirche;” but
far better by Dr. Bock in his splendid work on the Coronation Robes of
the German emperors.

Silks, from the pattern woven on them called _de fundato_, are
frequently spoken of by Anastasius. From the texts themselves of that
writer, and passages in other authors of his time, it would seem that
the silks themselves were dyed of the richest purple, and figured
with gold in the pattern of netting. As one of the meanings for the
substantive “funda” is a fisherman’s net, rich textiles so figured in
gold, were denominated from such a pattern “de fundato” or netted. To
St. Peter’s Church at Rome the pontiff, Leo III. gave “cortinam majorem
Alexandrinam holosericam habentem in medio adjunctum fundatum, et in
circuitu ornatum de fundato;”[176] and for the Church of St. Paul’s,
Leo provided “vela holoserica majora sigillata habentia periclysin et
crucem tam de blattin seu de fundato.”[177] From Fortunatus we gather
that those costly purple-dyed silks called “blatta,” were always
interwoven with gold:--

    Serica purpureis sternuntur vellera velis,
    Inlita blatta toris, aurumque intermicat ostro.[178]

This net-pattern lingered long, and, no doubt, we find it, under a new
name, “laqueatus”--meshed--as identified upon a cope made of baudekin,
at St. Paul’s, London, A.D. 1295: “Capa de baudekino cum pineis
(fir-apples) in campis laqueatis.”[179] Modifications of this very old
pattern may be seen in this catalogue (pp. 35, 36, 154).

 [175] Raine’s St. Cuthbert, p. 196.

 [176] Lib. Pontif. ii. 282.

 [177] Ibid. 240.

 [178] De Vita S. Martini lib. ii.

 [179] Dugdale’s St. Paul’s, p. 318.

The Latin term “de fundato,” for this net-pattern, so unusual, has for
many been quite a puzzle. Here, too, art-works are our best help to
properly understand the meaning of the word. The person of Constantine
the Great, given by Gori,[180] as well as that of a much later
personage, shown us by Du Cange, at the end of his “Glossarium,”[181]
shows the front of the imperial tunic, which was purple, to have been
figured in gold with a netting-pattern, marked with pearls. Gori,
moreover, presents us with a bishop whose chasuble is of the same
design.[182] Further still, Paciaudi, in his “De Cultu S. Johannis
Baptistæ,”[183] furnishes a better illustration, if possible, by an
engraving of a diptych first published by him. Here St. Jacobus, or
James, is arrayed in chasuble and pall of netting-patterned silk; and
of the same-figured stuff is much of the trimming or ornamentation on
the robes of the B. V. Mary, but on those more especially worn by the
archangels, St. Michael and Gabriel. In the diapered pattern on some
of the cloth of gold found lately in the grave of some archbishop of
York, buried there about the end of the thirteenth century, is the same
netting discernible.

 [180] T. iii. p. xx.

 [181] T. viii. plate 5.

 [182] Ib. p. 84.

 [183] P. 389.

_Striped_ or _barred_ silks--stragulatæ--got their especial name
for such a simple pattern, and at one time were in much request.
Frequent mention is made of them in the Exeter Inventories, of which
the one taken, A.D. 1277, specifies, “Due palle de baudekyno--una
stragulata;”[184] and A.D. 1327, the same cathedral had, “Unum
filatorium de serico bonum stragulatum cum serico diversi
coloris,”[185] a veil or scarf for the sub-deacon, made of silk striped
in different colours. The illuminations on the MS. among the Harley
collection at the British Museum, of the deposition of Richard II.
published by the Society of Antiquaries, afford us instances of this
textile. The young nobleman to the right sitting on the ground at the
archbishop’s sermon, is entirely, hood and all, arrayed in this striped
silk,[186] and at the altar, where Northumberland is swearing on the
Eucharist, the priest who is saying mass, wears a chasuble of the same
stuff.[187] Old St. Paul’s had copes like it: “Capæ factæ de uno panno
serico veteri pro parte albi coloris, pro parte viridi;”[188] besides
which, it had offertory-veils of the same pattern, one of them with its
stripes paly red and green:--“Unum offertorium stragulatum, de rubeo et
viridi;” and two others with their stripes bendy-wise: “Duo offertoria
bendata de opere Saraceno.”[189] York Cathedral also had two red palls
paled with green and light blue: “Duæ pallæ rubiæ palyd cum viridi et
blodio,”[190] so admirably edited for the Surtees Society, by Rev. Jas.
Raine, jun. Under this kind of patterned silks must be put one the name
for which has hitherto not been explained by our English antiquaries.

At the end of the twelfth century there was brought to England, from
Greece, a sort of precious silk named there _Imperial_.

Ralph, dean of St. Paul’s cathedral, London, tells us, that William
de Magna Villa, on coming home from his pilgrimage to the Holy Land,
made presents to several churches, A.D. 1178, of cloths which at
Constantinople were called imperial: “Pannos quos Constantinopolis
civitas vocat Imperiales, &c.”[191] Relating the story of John’s
apparition, A.D. 1226, Roger Wendover, and after him Matt. Paris,
tells us that the King stood forth dressed in royal robes made of
the stuff they call Imperial: “Astitit rex in vestibus regalibus de
panno scilicet quem imperialem appellant.”[192] In the Inventory of
St. Paul’s, London, drawn up A.D. 1295, four tunicles, vestments for
subdeacons and lower ministers about the altar, are mentioned as made
of this imperial. No colour is specified, except in the one instance
of the silk being marbled; and the patterns are noticed as of red and
green, with lions wove in gold.[193] It seems not to have been thought
good enough for the more important vestments, such as chasubles and
copes. Were it not spoken of thus by Wendover and Paris, as well as by
a dean of St. Paul’s, and mentioned once as used in a few liturgical
garments for that cathedral, we had never heard a word about such
a textile anywhere in England. Our belief is that it got its name
neither from its colour--supposed royal purple--nor its costliness,
but through quite another reason: woven at a workshop kept up by the
Byzantine emperors, just like the Gobelins is to-day in Paris by the
French, and bearing about it some small, though noticeable mark, it
took the designation of “Imperial.” That it was partly wrought with
gold, we know; but that its tint was always some shade of the imperial
purple--hence its appellation--is a purely gratuitous assumption.
Moreover, as Saracenic princes in general had wrought in their own
palaces, at the tiraz there, those silks wanted by themselves, their
friends, and officers, and caused them to be marked with some adopted
word or sentence; so, too, the rulers of Byzantium followed, it is
likely the same usage, and put some royal device or word, or name in
Greek upon theirs, and hence such textiles took the name of Imperial.
In France, this textile was in use as late as the second half of the
fifteenth century, but looked upon as old. Here, at York, as late as
the early part of the sixteenth, one of its deans bestowed on that
cathedral “two (blue) copes of clothe imperialle.”[194]

 [184] Ed. Oliver, p. 298.

 [185] Ib. p. 312.

 [186] Plate v. p. 53.

 [187] Plate xii. p. 141.

 [188] Dugdale’s St. Paul’s, p. 318.

 [189] Ib.

 [190] York Fabric Rolls, p. 230.

 [191] Hist. Anglic. Script. X. t. i. p. 602, ed. Twysden.

 [192] Rog. de Wendover, Chronica, t. iv. p. 127, ed. Coxe.

 [193] P. 322.

 [194] Fabric Rolls, p. 310.


BAUDEKIN

Was a costly stuff much employed and often spoken of in our literature
during many years of the mediæval period.

Ciclatoun, as we have elsewhere remarked, was the usual term during
centuries throughout Western Europe, by which those showy golden
textiles were called. When, however, Bagdad, or Baldak, standing where
once stood the Babylon of old, took and held for no short length of
time the lead all over Asia in weaving, every kind of fine silks and
in especial golden stuffs shot, as now, in different colours, cloths
of gold so tinted became every where known more particularly among us
English as “baldakin,” “baudekin,” or “baudkyn,” or silks from Baldak.
At last the earlier term “ciclatoun” dropped quite out of use. With
this before him the reader will hereafter more readily understand
several otherwise puzzling passages in many of our old writers in
poetry and prose, as well as in the inventories of royal furniture and
church vestments.

Our kings and our nobility affected much this rich stuff for the
garments worn by them on high occasions. When, A.D. 1247, girding in
Westminster Abbey William de Valence his uterine brother, a knight, our
Henry III. had on a robe of baudekin, or cloth-of-gold, likely shot
with crimson silk: “Dominus Rex veste deaurata facta de preciosissimo
Baldekino et coronula aurea, quæ vulgariter garlanda dicitur redimitus,
sedens gloriose in solio regio, fratrem suum uterinum, baltheo
militari gaudenter insignivit.”[195] In the year 1259 the master of
Sherborn Hospital in the north, bequeathed to that house a cope made
of cloth-of-gold, or “baudekin:”--“Capam de panno ad aurum scilicet
Baudekin cum vestimento plenario de panno Yspaniæ ad aurum.”[196]

But these Bagdad or Baldak silks, with a weft of gold known among us
as “baudekins” were often wove very large in size, and applied here
in England to especial ritual purposes. As a thanks-offering after a
safe return home from a journey, they were brought and given to the
altar; at all the solemn burials of our kings and queens, and other
great ones, each of the many mourners, when offertory time came,
went to the illuminated hearse,--one is figured in the “Church of
Our Fathers,”[197]--and strewed a baudekin of costly texture over
the coffin. Artists or others who wish to know the ceremonial for
that occasion, will find it set forth in the descriptions of many of
our mediæval funerals. At the obsequies of Henry VII. in Westminster
Abbey:--“Twoe herauds came to the Duke of Buck. and to the Earles and
conveyed them into the Revestrie where they did receive certen Palles
which everie of them did bringe solemply betwene theire hands and
comminge in order one before another as they were in degree unto the
said herse, thay kissed theire said palles and delivered them unto the
said heraudes which laide them uppon the kyngs corps, in this manner:
the palle which was first offered by the Duke of Buck. was laid on
length on the said corps, and the residewe were laid acrosse, as thick
as they might lie.”[198] In the same church at the burial of Anne of
Cleves, A.D. 1557, a like ceremonial of carrying cloth-of-gold palls to
the hearse was followed.[199]

 [195] Matt. Paris, p. 249.

 [196] Wills, &c. of the Northern Counties of England, Surtees Society,
    p. 6.

 [197] Tom. ii. p. 501.

 [198] Lelandi Collectanea, t. iv. p. 308.

 [199] Excerpta Historica, p. 312.

Among the many rich textiles belonging to St. Paul’s, London, A.D.
1295, are mentioned: “Baudekynus purpureus cum columpnis et arcubus
et hominibus equitantibus infra, de funere comitissæ Britanniæ. Item
baudekynus purpureus cum columpnis et arcubus et Sampson fortis
infra arcus, de dono Domini Henrici Regis. Duo baudekyni rubei cum
sagittarijs infra rotas, de dono E. regis et reginæ venientium de
Wallia, Unus Baudekynus rubei campi cum griffonibus, pro anima Alianoræ
reginæ junioris,”[200] &c. At times these rich stuffs were cut up into
chasubles: “Casula de baudekyno de opere Saracenico,”[201] as was the
cloth-of-gold dress worn by one of our princesses at her betrothal:
“Unam vestimentum rubeum de panno adaurato diversis avibus poudratum,
in quo domina principessa fuit desponsata.”[202] The word “baudekin”
itself became at last narrowed in its meaning. So warm, so mellow, so
fast were all the tones of crimson which the dyers of Bagdad knew how
to give their silks, that without a thread of gold in them, the mere
glowing tints of those plain crimson silken webs from Bagdad won for
themselves the name of baudekins. Furthermore, when they quite ceased
to be partly woven in gold, and from their consequent lower price and
cheapness got into use for cloths of estate over royal thrones, on
common occasions, the shortened form of such a regal emblem, the canopy
hung over the high altar of a church, acquired, and yet keeps its
appellation, at least in Italy, of “baldachino.”

 [200] Dugdale’s St. Paul’s, pp. 328-9.

 [201] Ibid. p. 331.

 [202] Inventory of the Chapel, Windsor Castle, Mon. Ang. viii. 1363.

How very full in size, how costly in materials and embroidery, must
have sometimes been the cloth of estate spread overhead and behind the
throne of our kings, may be gathered from the “Privy Purse Expenses
of Henry the Seventh,” wherein this item comes: “To Antony Corsse
for a cloth of an estate conteyning 47½ yerds, £11 the yerd, £522
10_s._”[203]

About the feudal right, still kept up in Rome, to a cloth of estate,
among the continental nobility, we have spoken, p. 107 of this
catalogue, where a fragment of such a hanging is described.

The custom itself is thus noticed by Chaucer:--

    Yet nere and nere forth in I gan me dress
    Into an hall of noble apparaile,
    With arras spred, and cloth of gold I gesse,
    And other silke of easier availe:
    Under the cloth of their estate sauns faile
    The king and quene there sat as I beheld.[204]

 [203] Excerpta Historica, p. 121.

 [204] Poems, ed. Nicolas, t. vi. p. 134.

This same rich golden stuff asks for our notice under a third and even
better known name, to be found all through our early literature as


CLOTH OF PALL.

The cloak (in Latin pallium, in Anglo-Saxon paell) of state for regal
ceremonies and high occasions, worn alike by men as well as women, was
always made of the most gorgeous stuff that could be found. From a very
early period in the mediæval ages, golden webs shot in silk with one or
other of the various colours--occasionally blue, oftener crimson--were
sought out, as may be easily imagined, for the purpose, through so
many years, and everywhere, that at last each sort of cloth of gold
had given to it the name of “pall,” no matter the immediate purpose
to which it might have to be applied, and after so many fashions.
Vestments for church use and garments for knights and ladies were made
of it. Old St. Paul’s had chasubles and copes of cloth of pall: “Casula
de pal, capa chori de pal, &c.”[205]

In worldly use, if the king’s daughter was to have a

    Mantell of ryche degre
    Purple palle and armyne fre.[206]

So in the poem of Sir Isumbras--

    The rich queen in hall was set;
    Knights her served, at hand and feet
        In rich robes of pall.[207]

 [205] Hist. ed. Dugdale, p. 336.

 [206] The Squire of Low Degree.

 [207] Ellis’s Metrical Romances, t. iii. p. 167.

For state receptions, our kings used to send out an order that the
houses should be “curtained” all along the streets which the procession
would have to take through London, “incortinaretur.”[208] How this was
done we learn from Chaucer in the “Knight’s Tale,”[209]

    By ordinance, thurghout the cite large
    Hanged with cloth of gold, and not with sarge;

as well as from the “Life of Alexander:”--

    Al theo city was by-hong
    Of riche baudekyns and pellis (palls) among.[210]

Hence, when Elizabeth, our Henry VII.’s queen, “proceeded from the
Towre throwge the Citie of London (for her coronation) to Westminster,
al the strets ther wich she shulde passe by, were clenly dressed
and besene with clothes of Tappestreye and Arras. And some strets,
as Cheepe, hangged with riche clothes of gold, velvetts, and silks,
&c.[211] “As late as A.D. 1555, at Bow chyrche in London was hangyd
with cloth of gold and with ryche hares (arras).”[212]

Those same feelings which quickened our doughty knights and high-born
ladies to go and overspread the bier of each dead noble friend, with
costly baudekins or cloths of gold, so the church whispered and she
whispers us still to do, in due degree, the same to the coffin in which
the poor man is being carried to the grave beneath a mantle of silk and
velvet. The brother or the sister belonging to any of our old London
gilds had over them, however lowly they might have been in life, one
or other of those splendid hearse-cloths which we saw in this museum,
among the loans, in the ever memorable year 1862.

This silken textile interwove with gold, first known as “ciclatoun,”
on account of its glitter, then as “baudekin,” from the city where it
was best made, came at last to be called by the name of “pall.” Whether
employed on jubilant occasions, for a joyful betrothal, or a stately
coronation, or for a sorrowing funeral, it mattered not, it got the
common term of “cloth of pall,” which we yet keep up in that velvet
covering for a coffin, a burial pall.

 [208] Matt. Paris, p. 661.

 [209] V. 2569-70.

 [210] Warton’s Hist. of English Poetry, t. ii. p. 8.

 [211] Leland’s Collectanea, t. iv. p. 220.

 [212] Machyn’s Diary, p. 102.


LETTERED SILKS

are of no uncommon occurrence, and some examples may be seen in this
collection.

A celebrated Mohammedan writer, Ebn-Khaldoun, who died about the middle
of the fifteenth century, while speaking of that spot in an Arab
palace, the “Tiraz,” so designated from the name itself of the rich
silken stuffs therein woven, tells us that of the attributes of all
Saracenic kings and sultans, and which became a particular usage for
ruling dynasties, one was to have woven the name of the actual prince,
or that special ensign chosen by his house, into the stuffs intended
for their personal wear, whether wrought of silk, brocade, or even
coarser kind of silk. While gearing his loom, the workman contrived
that the letters of the title should come out either in threads of
gold, or in silk of another colour from that of the ground. The royal
apparel thus bore about it its own especial marks emblematic of the
sultan’s wardrobe, and so became the distinguishing ensigne of the
prince himself, as well as for those personages around him, who were
allowed, by their official rank in his court, to wear them, and those
again upon whom he had condescended to bestow such garments as especial
tokens of the imperial favour, like the modern pelisse of honour.
Before the period of their having embraced Islamism the Kings of Persia
used to have woven upon the stuffs wrought for their personal use, or
as gifts to others, their own especial effigies or likeness, or at
times the peculiar ensign of their royalty. On becoming Mussulmans,
the rulers of that kingdom changed the custom, and instead of
portraiture substituted their names, to which they added words sounding
to their ears as foreboding good, or certain formulas of praise and
benediction.[213] Wherever the Moslem ruled, there did he set up the
same practice; and thus, whether in Asia, in Egypt, or other parts of
Africa, or in Moorish Spain, the silken garments for royalty and its
favoured ones, showed woven in them the prince’s name, or at least his
chosen badge. The silken garments wrought in Egypt for the far-famed
Saladin, and worn by him as its Kalif, bore very conspicuously upon
them the name of that conqueror.

In our old lists of church ornaments, frequent mention is found of
vestments inscribed, like pieces here, with words in real or pretended
Arabic; and when St. Paul’s inventory more than once speaks of silken
stuffs, “de opere Saraceno,” we lean to the belief that, though not
all, some at least of those textiles were so called from having Arabic
characters woven on them. Such, too, were the letters on the red
pall, figured with elephants and a bird, belonging to Exeter: “Palla
rubea cum quibusdam literis et elephantis et quadam avi in superiori
parte.”[214] Later, our trade with the South of Spain and the Moors
there, led us to call such words on woven stuffs Moorish, as we find
in old documents, thus Joane Lady Bergavenny bequeaths (A.D. 1434) a
“hullyng (hangings for a hall) of black, red, and green, with morys
letters, &c.”[215]

The weaving of letters in textiles is neither a Moorish, nor Saracenic
invention; ages before, the ancient Parthians used to do so, as we
learn from Pliny: “Parthi literas vestibus intexunt.” A curious
illustration of silken stuffs so frequently bearing letters, borrowed
in general from some real or supposed oriental alphabet, is the custom
which many of the illuminators had of figuring very often on frontals
and altar canopies, made of silk, meaningless words; and the artists
of Italy up to the middle of the sixteenth century did the same on the
hems of the garments worn by great personages, in their paintings. On
the inscribed textiles here, the real or pretended Arabic sentence is
written twice on the same line, once forwards, once backwards.

 [213] Silvestre De Sacy, Chrestomathie Arabe, t. ii. p. 287.

 [214] Oliver, p. 298.

 [215] Test. Vet. i. p. 228.


THE EAGLE,

single and double-headed, may frequently be found in the patterns of
old silks. In all ages certain birds of prey have been looked upon by
heathens as ominous for good or evil. Of this our own country affords
us a mournful example. Upon the standard which was carried at the head
of the Danish masters of Northumbria was figured the raven, the bird of
Odin. This banner had been woven and worked by the daughters of Regnar
Lodbrok, in one noontide’s while; and those heathens believed that if
victory was to follow, the raven would seem to stand erect, and as if
about to soar before the warriors, but if a defeat was impending, the
raven hung his head and drooped his wings; as we are told by Asser:
“Pagani acceperunt illud vexillum quod Reafan nominant: dicunt enim
quod tres sorores Hungari et Habbæ filiæ videlicet Lodebrochi illud
vexillum texuerunt et totum paraverunt illud uno meridiano tempore:
dicunt etiam quod, in omni bello ubi præcederet idem signum, si
victoriam adepturi essent, appereret in medio signi quasi corvus vivens
volitans: sin vero vincendi in futuro fuissent, penderet directe nihil
movens.”[216] Another and a more important flag, that which Harold and
his Anglo-Saxons fought under and lost at Hastings, is described by
Malmesbury as having been embroidered in gold, with the figure of a man
in the act of fighting, and studded with precious stones, all done in
sumptuous art:

“Quod (vexillum) erat in hominis pugnantis figura auro et lapidibus
arte sumptuosa intextum.”[217]

Still farther down in past ages, known for its daring and its lofty
flight, the eagle was held in high repute; throughout all the East,
where it became the emblem of lordly power and victory, often it is to
be seen flying in triumph over the head of some Assyrian conqueror,
as may be witnessed in Layard’s Work on Nineveh.[218] Homer calls it
the bird of Jove. Upon the yoke in the war chariot of the Persian king
Darius sat perched an eagle as if outstretching his wings wrought all
in gold: “Auream aquilam pinnas extendenti similem.”[219] The sight of
this bird in the air while a battle raged was, by the heathen looked
upon as an omen boding victory to those on whose side it hovered. At
the battle of Granicus those about Alexander saw or thought they saw
fluttering just above his head, quite heedless of the din, an eagle,
to which Aristander called the attention of the Macedonians as an
unmistakable earnest of success: “Qui circa Alexandrum erant, vidisse
se crediderunt, paululum super caput regis placide volantem aquilam
non gemitu morientium territam Aristander ... militibus in pugnam
intentis avem monstrabat, haud dubium victoriæ auspicium.”[220] The
Romans bore it on their standards; the Byzantine emperors kept it as
their own device, and following the ancient traditions of the east,
and heedless of their law that forbids the making of images, the
Saracens, especially when they ruled in Egypt, had the eagle figured on
several things about them, sometimes single at others double-headed,
which latter was the shape adopted by the emperors of Germany as their
blazon; and in this form it is borne to this day by several reigning
houses. No wonder then that eagles of both fashions are so often to be
observed woven upon ancient and eastern textiles.

Very likely, as yet left to show itself upon the walls of the citadel
at Cairo, and those curious old glass lamps hung up there and elsewhere
in the mosques, the double-headed eagle with wings displayed, which
we find on royal Saracenic silks, was borrowed by the Paynim from
the Crusaders, as it would seem, and selected for its ensign by the
government of Egypt in the thirteenth century, which will easily
account for the presence of that heraldic bird upon so many specimens
from Saracenic looms, to be found in this collection. The “tiraz,” in
fact, was for silk like the royal manufactory of Dresden and Sèvres
china, or Gobelin’s looms for tapestry, and as the courts of France for
its mark or ensign fixed upon the two LLs interlaced, and the house of
Saxony the two swords placed saltire wise, so at least for Saladin
and Egypt, in the middle ages the double-headed eagle with its wings
outstretched, was the especial badge or ensign. In the same manner
the sacred “horm,” or tree of life, between the two rampant lions or
cheetahs may be the mark of Persia.

As early as A.D. 1277 Exeter Cathedral reckoned among her vestments
several such; for instance, a cope of baudekin figured with small
two-headed eagles: “Capa baudekyn cum parvis aquilis, ij capita
habentibus;”[221] and our Henry III.’s brother, Richard the king
of Germany, gave to the same church a cope of black baudekin, with
eagles in gold figured on it: “Una capa de baudek, nigra cum aquilis
deauratis.”[222] Many other instances might be noticed all through
England.

 [216] Asserius, De Rebus Gestis Ælfredi, ed. Wise, p. 33.

 [217] Will. Malmes. Gesta Regum Anglorum, t. ii. p. 415, ed. Duffus
    Hardy.

 [218] Plates, 18, 20, 22.

 [219] Quintus Curtius, Lib. III. cap. iii. p. 7.

 [220] Ibid. Lib. IV. cap. xv. p. 72.

 [221] Oliver, p. 299.

 [222] Ibid.

As in architecture, sculpture, and painting, ancient and modern, so


IN WOVEN STUFFS THERE ARE STYLES NICELY DEFINED, AND EPOCHS EASILY
DISCERNIBLE.

Hitherto no attempt has been anywhere made to distribute olden silken
textiles into various schools, and as the present is the first and only
collection which has in any country been thrown open as yet to the
public, the occasion seems a fitting one to warrant such an endeavour
of classification.

With no other than the specimens here before us, we think we see them
fall into these several groups--Chinese, Persian, Byzantine, Oriental
or Indian, Syrian, Saracenic, Moresco-Spanish, Sicilian, Italian,
Flemish, British, and French.

_Chinese_ examples here are very few; but what they are, whether plain
or figured, they are beautiful in their own way. From all that we know
of the people, we are led to believe their own way two thousand years
ago is precisely theirs still, so that the web wrought by them this
year or two hundred years ago, like No. 1368, p. 75, would not differ
hardly in a line from their textiles two thousand years gone by, when
Dionysius Periegetes wrote that, the “Seres make precious figured
garments, resembling in colour the flowers of the field, and rivalling
in fineness the work of spiders.” In the stuffs, warp and woof are of
silk, and both of the best kinds.

_Persian_ textiles, even as we see them in this collection, must have
been for many centuries just as they were ever figured, and may be,
even now, described by the words of Quintus Curtius, with some little
allowance for those influences exercised upon the mind of the weaver by
his peculiar religious belief, which would not let the lowliest workman
forget the “homa,” or tree of life. When Marco Polo travelled through
those parts, in the thirteenth century, and our countryman, Sir John
Mandeville, a hundred years later, the old love for hunting wild beasts
still lived, and the princes of the country were as fond as ever of
training the cheetah, a kind of small lion or leopard, for the chase,
as we have noticed, p. 178.

When the design is made up of various kinds of beasts and birds, real
or imaginary, with the sporting cheetah nicely spotted among them; and
the “homa” conspicuously set forth above all; sure may we be that the
web was wrought by Persians, and on most occasions the textile will be
found in all its parts to be woven from the richest materials.

As an illustration of the Persian type of style, No. 8233, p. 154, may
be taken as a specimen.

For trade purposes, and to make the textile pass in the European market
as from Persia, the manner of its loom was often copied by the Jewish
and the Christian weavers in Syria, as we shall have to notice just now.

_The Byzantine_ Greeks, for their textiles from the time when in the
sixth century they began to weave home-grown silk, made for themselves
a school of design which kept up in their drawing not a little of the
beauty, breadth, and flowing outline which had outlived among them
the days of heathenish art. Along with this a strong feeling of their
Christianity showed itself as well in many of the subjects which they
took out of holy writ, as in the smaller elements of ornamentation.
Figures, whether of the human form or of beasts, are given in a much
larger and bolder size than on any other ancient stuffs. Though there
be very few known specimens from the old looms of Constantinople, the
one here, No. 7036, p. 122, showing Samson wrestling with a lion, may
serve as a type. In the year 1295 old St. Paul’s Cathedral, here in
London, would seem to have possessed several splendid vestments made of
Byzantine silk, as we note in the samples to be named _infra_ under the
head of Damask.

The way in which those Greeks gave a pattern to the stuff intended more
especially for liturgical purposes is pointed out while speaking about
“Stauracin” and the “Gammadion,” a form of the cross with which they
powdered their silks; p. lii.

The world-wide fame of the Byzantine purple tint is attested by our
Gerald Barry, whose words we quote further on. As a sample of the
Byzantine loom in “diaspron,” or diapering, we would refer to No. 1239,
p. 26.

The specimens here from the Byzantine, and later Greek loom, are
not to be taken as by any means appropriate samples of its general
production. They are poor in both respects--material and, when
figured, design--as may be seen at pp. 27, 28, 33, 36, 123, 124, 126,
219, &c.

_Oriental_ ancient silks and textiles have their own distinctive marks.

From Marco Polo, who wandered much over the far east, some time during
the thirteenth century, we learn that the weaving there was done by
women who wrought in silk and gold, after a noble manner, beasts and
birds upon their webs:--“Le loro donne lavorano tutte cose a seta e ad
oro e a uccelli e a bestie nobilmente e lavorano di cortine ed altre
cose molto ricamente.”[223]

Out of the several specimens here from Tartary and India, during our
mediæval period, we pick one or two which show well the meaning of
those words uttered by that great Venetian traveller, while speaking
about the textiles he saw in those countries. The dark purple piece of
silk, figured in gold with birds and beasts, of the thirteenth century,
No. 7086, p. 137, is good; but better still for our purpose is the
shred, No. 7087, p. 138, of blue damask, with its birds, its animals,
and flowers wrought in gold, and different coloured silks.

What India is, it has ever been, famous for its cloud-like transparent
muslins, which since Marco Polo’s days have kept till now even that
oriental name, through being better than elsewhere woven at Mosul.

 [223] I Viaggi di Marco Polo, ed. A. Bartoli, Firenze, 1865, p. 345.

The _Syrian_ school is well represented here by several fine pieces.

The whole sea-board of that part of Asia Minor, as well as far
inland, was inhabited by a mixture of Jews, Christians, and Saracens;
and each of these people were workers in silk. The reputation of
the neighbouring Persia had of old stood high for the beauty and
durability of her silken textiles, which made them to be sought for by
the European traders. Persia’s outlet to the west for her goods, lay
through the great commercial ports on the coast of Syria. Setting, like
Persia used to do, as it were, her own peculiar seal upon her figured
webs, by mingling in her designs the mystic “homa,” to the European
mind this part of the pattern became, at first, a sort of assurance
that those goods had been thrown off by Persian looms. By one of those
tricks of imitation followed then, as well as now, the Syrian designers
for the loom threw this “homa” into their patterns. This symbol of
“the tree of life,” had no doubt been a borrow by Zoroaster from Holy
Writ.[224] Neither to the Christian’s eye, nor to the Jew’s, nor
Moslem’s, was there in it anything objectionable; all three, therefore,
took it and made it a leading portion of design in the patterns of
their silks; and hence is it that we meet it so often. Though done
with perhaps a fraudulent intention of palming on the world Syrian for
real Persian silks, those Syrians usually put into their own designs a
something which spoke of their peculiar selves and their workmanship.
Though there be seen the “homa,” the “cheetah,” and other elements of
Persian patterns, still the discordant two-handled vase, the badly
imitated Arabic sentence, betray the textile to be not Persian,
but Syrian. No. 8359, p. 213, will readily exemplify our meaning.
Furthermore, perhaps quite innocent of any knowledge about Persia’s
first belief, and her use of the “homa” in her old religious services,
the Christian weavers of Syria, along with the Zorasterian symbol, put
the sign of the cross by the side of that “tree of life,” as we find
upon the piece of silk, No. 7094, p. 140. Another remarkable specimen
of the Syrian loom is No. 7034, p. 122, whereon the Nineveh lions come
forth so conspicuously. As a good example of well-wrought “diaspron” or
diaper, No. 8233, p. 154, may be mentioned, along with No. 7052, p. 127.

 [224] Genesis ii. 9.

_Saracenic_ weaving, as shown by the design upon the web, is
exemplified in several specimens before us.

However much against what looks like a heedlessness of the Koran’s
teachings, certain it is that the Saracens, those of the upper
classes in particular, felt no difficulty in wearing robes upon which
animals and the likenesses of other created things were woven; with
the strictest of their princes, a double-headed eagle was a royal
heraldic device, as we have shown, p. lxiii. Stuffs, then, figured
with birds and beasts, with trees and flowers, were not the less of
Saracenic workmanship, and meant for Moslem wear. What, however, may
be looked for upon real Saracenic textures is a pattern consisting of
longitudinal stripes of blue, red, green, and other colour; some of
them charged with animals, small in form, other some written, in large
Arabic letters, with a word or sentence, often a proverb, often a good
wish or some wise saw.

As examples we would point to No. 8288, p. 178, and 7051, p. 127.
For a fair specimen of diapering, No. 7050, p. 127, while No. 8639,
p. 243, presents us with a design having in it, besides the crescent
moon, a proof that architectural forms were not forgotten by the
weaver-draughtsman, in his sketches for the loom.

Later, in our chapter on Tapestry, we shall have occasion to speak
about another sort of Saracenic work or tapestry, of the kind called
abroad, from the position of its frame, of the basse lisse.

_Moresco-Spanish_, or Saracenic textiles, wrought in Spain, though
partaking of the striped pattern, and bearing words in real or imitated
Arabic, had some distinctions of their own. The designs shown upon
these stuffs are almost always drawn out of strap-work, reticulations,
or some combination or another of geometrical lines, amid which are
occasionally to be found different forms of conventional flowers.
Specimens are to be seen here at pp. 51, 55, 121, 124, 125, 186, 240,
&c. Sometimes, but very rarely, the crescent moon is figured as in the
curious piece, No. 8639, p. 243. The colours of these silks are usually
either a fine crimson, or a deep blue with almost always a fine toned
yellow as a ground. But one remarkable feature in these Moresco-Spanish
textiles is the presence, when gold is brought in, of an ingenious
though fraudulent imitation of the precious metal, for which shreds of
gilded parchment cut up into narrow flat strips are substituted, and
woven with the silk. This, when fresh, must have looked very bright,
and have given the web all the appearance of those favourite stuffs
called here in England “tissues,” of which we have already spoken, p.
xxiii.

We are not aware that this trick has ever been found out before, and it
was only by the use of a highly magnifying glass that we penetrated the
secret. Our suspicion was awakened by so often observing that the gold
had become quite black. Examples of this gilt vellum may be seen here,
at Nos. 7095, p. 140; 8590, p. 224; 8639, p. 244; &c.

When the Christian Spanish weavers lived beyond Saracenic control, they
filled their designs with beasts, birds, and flowers; but even then the
old Spanish fine tone of crimson is rather striking in their webs, as
is evidenced in the beautiful piece of diaper, No. 1336, p. 64.

Spanish velvets--and they were mostly wrought in Andalusia--are
remarkably fine and conspicuous both for their deep soft pile, and
their glowing ruby tones; but when woven after the manner of velvet
upon velvet, are very precious: a good specimen of rich texture, and
mellow colouring is furnished by the chasuble at No. 1375, p. 81.

The _Sicilian_ school strongly marked the wide differences between
itself and all the others which had lived before; and the history of
its loom is as interesting as it is varied.

The first to teach the natives of Sicily the use of cotton for their
garments, and how to rear the silkworm and spin its silk, were, as
it would seem, the Mahomedans, who, in coming over from Africa,
brought along with them, besides the art of weaving silken textiles,
a knowledge of the fauna of that vast continent--its giraffes, its
antelopes, its gazelles, its lions, its elephants. These Mussulmans
told them, too, of the parrots of India and the hunting sort of
lion,--the cheetahs, that were found in Asia; and when the stuff had to
be wrought for European wear, imaged both beast and bird upon the web,
at the same time that they wove a word in Arabic, of greeting to be
read among the flowers. Like all other Saracens, those in Sicily loved
to mingle gold in their tissues; and, to spare the silk, cotton thread
was not unfrequently worked up in the warp. When, therefore, we meet
with beasts taken from the fauna of Africa, such, especially, as the
giraffe, and the several classes of the antelope family--in particular
the gazelle--with, somewhere about, an Arabic motto--and part of the
pattern wrought in gold, which, at first poor and thin, is now become
black, as well as cotton in the warp, we may fairly take the specimen
as a piece of Sicily’s work in its first period of weaving, all so
Saracenic to the eye. Even when that Moslem nation had been driven out
by the Normans, if many of its people did not stay as workmen in silk
at Palermo, yet they left their teachings in weaving and design behind
them, and their practices were, years afterwards, still followed.

Now we reach Sicily’s second epoch.

While at war with the Byzantines, in the twelfth century, Roger, King
of Sicily, took Corinth, Thebes, and Athens, from each of which cities
he led away captives all the men and women he could find who knew how
to weave silks, and carried them to Palermo. To the Norman tiraz there,
these Grecian new comers brought fresh designs, which were adopted
sometimes wholly, at others but in part and mixed up with the older
Saracenic style, for silks wrought under the Normano-Sicilian dynasty.
In this second period of the island’s loom we discover what traces the
Byzantine school had impressed upon Sicilian silks, and helped so much
to alter the type of their design. On one silk, a grotesque mask amid
the graceful twinings of luxuriant foliage, such as might have been
then found by them upon many a fragment of old Greek sculpture, was the
pattern, as we witness, at No. 8241, p. 158; on another, a sovereign on
horseback wearing the royal crown, and carrying as he rides a hawk upon
his wrist--token both of the love for lordly sports at the period, and
the feudalism all over Italy and Christendom, shown in the piece, No.
8589, p. 223; on a third, No. 8234, p. 154, is the Greek cross, along
with a pattern much like the old netted or “de fundato” kind which we
have described, p. liii.

But Sicily’s third is quite her own peculiar style. At the end of the
thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth century, she struck out of
herself into quite an unknown path for design. Without throwing aside
the old elements employed till then especially, all over the east,
and among the rest, by the Mahomedans, Sicily put along with them the
emblem of Christianity, the cross, in various forms, on some occasions
with the letter V. four times repeated, and so placed together as to
fall into the shape of this symbol, like what we find at No. 1245, p.
28; in other instances the cross is floriated, as at No. 1293, p. 47.

From the far east to the uttermost western borders of the
Mediterranean the weavers of every country had been in the habit
of figuring upon their silks those beasts and birds they saw around
them: the Tartar, the Indian, and the Persian gave us the parrot
and the cheetah; the men of Africa the giraffe and the gazelle; the
people of each continent the lions, the elephants, the eagles, and
the other birds common to both. From the poetry and sculpture of the
Greeks and Romans could the Sicilians have easily learned about the
fabled griffin and the centaur; but it was left for their own wild
imaginings to figure as they have, such an odd compound in one being as
the animal--half elephant, half griffin--which we see in No. 1288, p.
45. Their daring flights of fancy in coupling the difficult with the
beautiful, are curious; in one place, No. 1302, p. 50, large eagles
are perched in pairs with a radiating sun between them, and beneath
dogs, in pairs, running with heads turned back, &c.; in another, No.
1304, p. 51, running harts have caught one of their hind legs in a cord
tied to their collar, and an eagle swoops down upon them; and the same
animal, in another place, on the same piece has switched its tail into
the last link of a chain fastened to its neck; on a third sample, No.
8588, p. 222, we behold figured, harts, the letter M floriated, winged
lions, crosses floriated, crosses sprouting out on two sides with
_fleurs-de-lis_, four-legged monsters, some like winged lions, some
biting their tails. Exeter Cathedral had a cloth of gold purple cope,
figured with “draconibus volantibus ac tenentibus caudas proprias in
ore,”[225] doves in pairs upholding a cross, &c. Hardly elsewhere to
be found are certain elements peculiar to the patterns upon silks from
mediæval Sicily; such, for instance, as harts, and demi-dogs with very
large wings, both animals having remarkably long manes streaming far
behind them, No. 1279, p. 41; harts again, but lodged beneath green
trees, in a park with paling about it, as in No. 1283, p. 43, and No.
8710, p. 269; that oft-recurring sun shedding its beams with eagles
pecking at them, or gazing undazzled at the luminary, pp. 48, 50, 137,
but sometimes stags, as at pp. 54, 239, carrying their well attired
heads upturned to a large pencil of those sunbeams as they dart down
upon them amid a shower of rain-drops. Of birds, the hawk, the eagle,
double and single headed, the parrot, may be found on stuffs all over
the east; not so, however, with the swan, yet this majestic creature
was a favourite with Sicilians, and may be seen here often drawn with
great gracefulness, as at Nos. 1277, p. 41; 1299, p. 49; 8264, p. 166;
8610, p. 232, &c.

 [225] Oliver, p. 345.

The Sicilians showed their strong affection for certain plants and
flowers. On a great many of the silks in this collection, from
Palermitan looms, we see figured upon a tawny-coloured grounding,
beautifully drawn foliage in green; which, on a nearer inspection,
bears the likeness of parsley, so curled, crispy and serrated are its
leaves. Besides their cherished parsley along with the vine-leaf for
foliage, they had their especial favourite among flowers; and it is the
centaurea cyanus, our corn blue-bottle, shown among others in No. 1283,
&c. p. 43, No. 1291, p. 47, No. 1308, p. 53.

Another peculiarity of theirs is the introduction of the letter U,
repeated so as at times to mark the feathering upon the tails of birds;
at others, to fall into the shape of an O, as we pointed out at pp. 40,
225, 227, 228.

Whether it was that, like our own Richard I., crusaders in after times
often made Sicily the halting spot on their way to the Holy Land, or
that knights crowded there for other purposes, and thus dazzled the
eyes of the islanders with the bravery of their armorial bearings,
figured on their cyclases and pennons, their flags and shields, certain
is it that these Sicilians were particularly given to introduce a deal
of heraldic charges--wyverns, eagles, lions rampant, and griffins--into
their designs; and the very numerous occasions in which such elements
of blazoning come in, are very noticeable, so that one of the features
belonging to the Sicilian loom in its third period, is that, bating
tinctures, it is so decidedly heraldic.

Not the last among the peculiarities of the third period in the
Sicilian school is the use, for many of its stuffs, of two certain
colours--murrey, for the ground, and a bright green for the pattern.
When the fawn-coloured ground is gracefully sprinkled with parsley
leaves, and nicely trailed with branches of the vine, and shows beasts
and birds disporting themselves between the boughs of lively joyous
green; the effect is cheerful, as may be witnessed in those specimens
No. 8594, p. 226, No. 8602, p. 229, No. 8607, p. 231, Nos. 8609, 8610,
p. 232, all of which so admirably exemplify the style.

All their beauty and happiness of invention, set forth by bold, free,
spirited drawing, were bestowed, if not thrown away, too often upon
stuffs of a very poor inferior quality, in which the gold, if not
actually base, was always scanty, and a good deal of cotton was sure to
be found wrought up along with the silk.

Though Palermo was, without doubt, the great workshop for weaving
Sicilian silks, that trade used to be carried on not only in other
cities of the island, but reached towns like Reggio and other such in
Magna Græcia, northward up to Naples. We think that, as far as the two
Sicilies are concerned, the growth of the cotton plant always went
along with the rearing of the silkworm. Of the main-land loom we would
specify No. 8256, p. 163, No. 8634, p. 242, No. 8638, p. 243.

Till within a few years the royal manufactory at Sta. Leucia, near
Naples, produced silks of remarkable richness; and the piece, likely
from that city itself, No. 721, p. 13, does credit to its loom, as
it wove in the seventeenth century. Northern Italy was not idle; and
the looms which she set up in several of her great cities, in Lucca,
Florence, Genoa, Venice and Milan, earned apart for themselves a good
repute in some particulars, and a wide trade for their gold and silver
tissues, their velvets, and their figured silken textiles. Yet, like
as each of these free states had its own accent and provincialisms
in speech, so too had it a something often thrown into its designs
and style of drawing which told of the place and province whence the
textiles came.

_Lucca_ at an early period made herself known in Europe for her
textiles; but her draughtsmen, like those of Sicily, seem to have
thought themselves bound to follow the style hitherto in use, brought
by the Saracens, of figuring parrots and peacocks, gazelles, and even
cheetahs, as we behold in the specimens here No. 8258, p. 163, and No.
8616, p. 234. But, at the same time, along with these eastern animals,
she mixed up emblems of her own, such as angels clothed in white, like
in the example the last mentioned. She soon dropped what was oriental
from her patterns, which she began to draw in a larger, bolder manner,
as we observe, under No. 8637, p. 243, No. 8640, p. 244, and showing an
inclination for light blue, as a colour.

As in other places abroad, so at Lucca, cloths of gold and of silver
were often wrought, and the Lucchese cloths of this costly sort
were, here in England, during the fourteenth century, in particular
request. In all likelihood they were, both of them, not of the
deadened but sparkling kind, afterwards especially known as “tissue.”
Exeter Cathedral, A.D. 1327, had a cope of silver tissue, or cloth
of Lucca:--“una capa alba de panno de Luk.”[226] At a later date,
belonging to the same church, were two fine chasubles--one purple, the
other red--of the same glittering stuff, “casula de purpyll panno,”
&c.,[227] where we find it specified that not only was the textile
of gold, but of that especial sort called tissue. York cathedral was
particularly furnished with a great many copes of tissue shot with
every colour required by its ritual, and among them were--“a reade cope
of clothe of tishewe with orphry of pearl, a cope with orphrey, a cope
of raised clothe of goulde,”[228] making a distinction between tissue
and the ordinary cloth of gold. But at the court of our Edward II. its
favour would seem to have been the highest. In the Wardrobe Accounts
of that king, we see the golden tissue, or Lucca cloth, several times
mentioned. Whether the ceremony happened to be sad or gay, this
glistening web was used; palls made of Lucca cloth were, at masses for
the dead, strewed over the corpse; at marriages the care-cloth was
made of the same stuff; thus when Richard de Arundell and Isabella,
Hugh le Despenser’s daughter, had been wedded at the door of the royal
chapel, the veil held spread out over their heads as they knelt inside
the chancel during the nuptial mass, for the blessing, was of Lucca
cloth.[229] Richard II.’s fondness for this cloth of gold was lately
noticed, p. xxx.

Just about Edward II.’s time was it that velvet became known, and
got into use amongst our churchmen for vestments, and our nobles for
personal wear, and the likelihood is that Lucca was among the first
places in Europe to weave it. The specimens here of this fine textile
from Lucchese looms, though in comparison with those from Genoa, they
be few and mostly after one manner--the raised or cut--still have now a
certain historical value for the English workman: No. 1357, p. 72, with
its olive green plain silken ground, and trailed all over with flowers
and leaves in a somewhat deeper tone, and the earlier example, No.
8322, p. 192, with its ovals and feathering stopped with graceful cusps
and artichokes, afford us good instances of what Lucca could produce in
the way of artistic velvets.

 [226] Oliver, p. 315.

 [227] P. 344.

 [228] York Fabric Rolls, p. 308.

_Genoa_, though in far off mediæval times not so conspicuous as she
afterwards became for her textile industry, still must have from
a remote period, encouraged within her walls, and over her narrow
territory, the weaving of silken webs. Of these the earliest mention we
anywhere find, is to be seen in the inventory of those costly vestments
once belonging to our own St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, in the year
1295: besides a cope of Genoa cloth, that church had, from the same
place, a hanging patterned with wheels and two-headed birds.[230]
Though this first description be scant, we read in it quite enough
to gather that these Genoese cloths must have entirely resembled the
textiles wrought at Lucca, but, in particular, in Sicily. Perhaps
they had been carried by trade from Palermo to the north-west shores
of Italy, whence they were brought in the same way to England, so
that they may be deemed to have reached us not so much from the looms
themselves of Genoa, as those of some other place, but through her then
great port.

Of Genoa’s own weaving of beautiful velvets there can be no doubt,
a reputation she keeps to the present day as far as plain velvet is
concerned.

In this collection we have samples in every kind of Genoese velvets,
from those with a smooth unbroken surface to the elaborately patterned
ones--art-wrought velvets in fact--showing, together with wonderful
skill in the weaving, much beauty of design. Among the plain velvets in
which we have nothing but great softness and depth of pile, along with
clear bright luminous tones of colour, No. 540, p. 3, is a very fair
specimen for its delicious richness of pile; and No. 8334, p. 199, not
merely for this property, but as well for its lightsome mellow deep
tint of crimson.

Getting to what may be truly called art-velvets, we come to several
specimens here. Some are raised or cut, the design being done in a pile
standing well up by itself from out of a flat ground of silk, sometimes
of the same, sometimes of another colour, and not unfrequently wrought
in gold, as at pp. 18, 90, 107, 110, 263. Then we have at No. 7795, p.
145, an example of that precious kind--velvet upon velvet--in which the
ground is velvet, and again of velvet is the pattern itself, but raised
one pile higher and well above the other, so as to show its form and
shape distinctly. Last of all we here find samples, as in No. 8323, p.
192, how the design was done in various coloured velvet. Such was a
favourite in England, and called motley; in his will, A.D. 1415, Henry
Lord Scrope bequeathed two vestments, one, motley velvet rubeo de auro;
the other, motley velvet nigro, rubeo et viridi, &c.[231]

 [229] Archæologia, t. xxvi. pp. 337, 344.

 [230] Hist. of St. Paul’s, ed. Dugdale, pp. 318, 329.

 [231] Rymer’s Fœdera, t. 9, p. 274.

_Venice_ does not seem to have been at any time, like Sicily and
Lucca, smitten with the taste of imitating in her looms at home the
patterns which she saw abroad upon textile fabrics, but appears to have
borrowed from the Orientals only one kind of weaving cloth of gold: the
yellow chasuble at Exeter Cathedral, A.D. 1327, figured with beasts,
cum bestiis crocei coloris,[232] is the solitary instance we know,
upon which she wove, like the east, animals upon silks. She, however,
set up for herself a new branch of textiles, and wrought for church
use certain square webs of a crimson ground on which she figured, in
gold, or on yellow silk, subjects taken from the New Testament, or the
persons of saints and angels. These square pieces were as they yet are,
employed, when sewed together in squares as frontals to altars, but
when longwise much more generally as orphreys to chasubles, copes and
other vestments. Of such stuffs must have been those large orphreys
upon a dalmatic and tunicle, at St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, A.D.
1295.[233]

Though not of so early a date as the thirteenth century, there are
in this collection specimens of this Venetian web belonging to the
sixteenth, which are very fine, No. 5900, p. 112, represents the
resurrection of our Lord; so does No. 8976, p. 271, while No. 8978, p.
272, presents us with the coronation of the Virgin, and No. 8976, the
Virgin and the Child, as also No. 1335, p. 71. Far below in worth are
the same kind of webs wrought at Cologne, as will be noticed just now.

Any one that has ever looked upon the woodcuts done at Venice in
the sixteenth century, such as illustrate, for instance, the Roman
Pontifical, published by Giunta, the “Rosario della G. V. Maria,” by
Varisco, and other such religious books from the Venetian press, will,
at a glance, find on the webs before us from that state, the self-same
style and manner in drawing, the same broad, nay, majestic fold and
fall of drapery, and in the human form the same plumpness, and not
unfrequently with the facial line almost straight; and there, but more
especially about the hands and feet, a somewhat naturalistic shape;
so near is the likeness in design that one is led to think that the
men who cut the blocks for the printers also worked for the weavers of
Venice, and sketched out the drawings for their looms.

By the fifteenth century Venice knew how to produce good damasks in
silk and gold, and of an historiated kind: if we had nothing more than
the specimen, No. 1311, p. 54, where St. Mary of Egypt is so well
represented, it would be quite enough for her to claim for herself such
a distinction. That like her neighbours, Venice wrought in velvet,
there can be little or no doubt, and if she it was who made those deep
piled stuffs, sometimes raised, sometimes pile upon pile, in which
her painters loved to dress the personages, men especially, in their
pictures, then, of a truth, Venetian velvets were beautiful. Of this,
any one may satisfy himself by one visit to our National Gallery.
There, in the “Adoration of the Magi,” painted by Paulo Veronese, A.D.
1573, the second of the wise men is clad in a robe all made of crimson
velvet, cut or raised after a design quite in keeping with the style of
the period.

No insignificant article of Venetian textile workmanship was her laces
wrought in every variety--in gold, in silk, in thread. The portrait of
a Doge usually shows us that dignitary clothed in his dress of state.
His wide mantle, having such large golden buttons, is made of some rich
dull silver cloth; and upon his head is that curiously Phrygian-shaped
ducal cap bound round with broad gold lace diapered after some nice
pattern, as we see in the bust portrait of Doge Loredano, painted
by John Bellini, and now in our National Gallery. Not only was the
gold in the thread particularly good, but the lace itself in great
favour at our court during one time, where it used to be bought, not
by yard measure, but by weight; a pounde and a half of gold of Venys
was employed “aboutes the making of a lace and botons for the king’s
mantell of the garter.”[234] “Frenge of Venys gold,” appears twice, pp.
136, 163, in the wardrobe accounts of Edward IV.

Laces in worsted or in linen thread wrought by the bobbin at Venice;
but more especially her point laces, or such as were done with the
needle, always had, as indeed they still have, a great reputation:
sewed to table-covers, two specimens are found in this collection,
described at p. 141.

Venetian linens, for fine towelling and napery in general, at one time
were in favourite use in France during a part of the fifteenth century.
In the “Ducs de Bourgogne,” by Le Comte de Laborde,[235] more than
once we meet with such an entry, as “une pièce de nappes, ouvraige de
Venise,” &c.

 [232] Oliver, p. 313.

 [233] Ed. Dugdale, p. 321.

 [234] Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York, p. 8.

 [235] T. ii. Preuves, p. 107.

_Florence_, always so industrious and art-loving, got for its loom,
about the middle of the fourteenth century, a place in the foremost
rank amid the weavers of northern Italy. Specimens of her earliest
handicraft are yet few--only two--here; but one sample of the able way
in which she knew how to diaper, well shows her ability: No. 8563, p.
215, woven in the fifteenth century, will prove this with reference
to her secular silks. The pieces described at pp. 202, 264, witness
the boldness of her design during the sixteenth century. In her webs,
expressly woven for church-use, is it that she displays her great taste
in design, and wonderful power--at least for that time, the fourteenth
century--in gearing the loom: the violet silk damask, No. 1265, p. 36,
and another like piece, No. 7072, p. 133, figured with angels swinging
thuribles, or bearing crowns of thorns in the hands, or holding a
cross, will warrant our remarks. The style of doing the face and hands
in white of those otherwise yellow angels, is a peculiarity of the
Tuscan loom.

The orphrey-webs of Florence are equally conspicuous for drawing and
skill in weaving as her vestment textiles, and in beauty come up to
those done at Venice, and far surpass anything of the kind ever wrought
at Cologne; specimens of this sort of Florentine work may be seen at
Nos. 4059, p. 89; 7080, p. 136; 7674, p. 142; 7791, p. 143; 197, p.
291. Along with these may be classed the hood of a cope, described at
No. 8692, p. 260, as well as the apparels to the dalmatic and tunicle,
p. 143, where the cherubic heads have white faces.

But it was of her velvets that Florence might be so warrantably proud.
Our Henry VII. in his will, “Testamenta Vetusta,”[236] bequeathed
“to God and St. Peter, and to the abbot and prior and convent of
our monastery of Westminster, the whole suit of vestments to be made
at Florence in Italy.” Gorgeous and artistically designed was this
textile, as we may yet see in one of these Westminster Abbey copes
still in existence, and belonging to Stonyhurst college. The golden
ground is trailed all over with leaf-bearing boughs of a bold type, in
raised or cut ruby-toned velvet of a rich soft pile, which is freckled
with gold thread sprouting up like loops. Though nothing so rich in
material, nor so beauteous in pattern, there are here, pp. 144, 145,
two specimens of Florentine cut, crimson velvet on a golden ground,
quite like in sort to the royal vestments, and having too that strong
peculiarity upon them--the little gold thread loop shooting out of the
velvet pile. Though a full century later than the splendid cope at
Stonyhurst, and the two pieces Nos. 7792, 7799, these illustrate the
peculiar style of Tuscan velvets.

Among the truly prince-like gifts of vestments to Lincoln Cathedral,
by John of Gaunt and his duchess, are many made of the richest crimson
velvet of both sorts, that is, plain, and cut or raised to a pattern
upon a ground of gold, as for instance:--two red copes, of the which
one is red velvet set with white harts lying in colours, full of these
letters S. S., with pendents silver and gilt, the harts having crowns
upon their necks with chains silver and gilt; and the other cope is of
crimson velvet of precious cloth of gold, with images in the orphrey,
&c.[237]

That peculiar sort of ornamentation--the little loop of gold thread
standing well up, and in single spots--upon some velvets, seems at
times to have been replaced, perhaps with the needle, by small dots of
solid metal, gold or silver gilt, upon the pile; of the gift of one of
its bishops, John Grandisson, Exeter cathedral had a crimson velvet
cope, the purple velvet orphrey to which was so wrought:--De purpyll
velvete operata cum pynsheds de puro auro.[238]

 [236] Ed. Nicolas, t. i. p. 33.

 [237] Mon. Anglic. viii. 1281.

 [238] Oliver, p. 345.

_Milan_, though now-a-days she stands in such high repute for the
richness and beauty of her silks of all sorts, was not, we believe,
at any period during mediæval times, as famous for her velvets,
her brocades, or cloths of gold, as for her well wrought admirably
fashioned armour, so strong and trustworthy for the field--so furbished
and exquisitely damascened for courtly service. Still, in the sixteenth
century she earned a name for her rich cut velvets, as we may see in
the specimen, No. 698, p. 7; her silken net-work, No. 8336, p. 200,
which may have led the way to weaving silk stockings; and her laces
of the open tinsel kind once in such vogue for liturgical, as well as
secular attire, as we have in No. 8331, p. 197.

_Britain_, from her earliest period, had textile fabrics varying in
design and material; of the colours in the woollen garments worn by
each of the three several classes into which our Bardic order was
apportioned. Of the checkered pattern in Boadicea’s cloak we have
spoken just now, p. xii.

Of the beauty and wide repute of English needlework, we shall have to
speak when, a little further on, we reach the subject of embroidery.

From John Garland’s words, which we gave at p. xxii, it would seem that
all the lighter and more tasteful webs wrought here came from women’s
hands; and the loom, one of which must have been in almost every
English nunnery and homestead, was of the simplest make.

In olden times, the Egyptians wove in an upright loom, and beginning
at top so as to weave downwards, sat at their work. In Palestine the
weaver had an upright loom too, but beginning at bottom and working
upwards, was obliged to stand. During the mediæval period the loom,
here at least, was horizontal, as is shown by the one figured in that
gorgeously illuminated Bedford Book of Hours, fol. 32, at which the
Blessed Virgin Mary is seated weaving curtains for the temple.

As samples of one of the several kinds of work wrought by our nuns
and mynchens, as well as English ladies, we refer to Nos. 1233, p.
24, 1256, p. 33, 1270, p. 38, demonstrating the ability of their
handicraft as well as elegance in design during the thirteenth century.
For specimens of the commoner sorts of silken textiles and of wider
breadth, which began to be woven in this country under Edward III.,
it would be as hard as hazardous to direct the reader. Very recent
examples of all sorts--velvets among the rest--may be found in the
Brooke collection. To some students the piece of Old English printed
chintz, No. 1622, p. 84, will not be without an interest.

For the finer sort of linen napery, Eylisham or Ailesham in
Lincolnshire was famous during the fourteenth century. Exeter
cathedral, A.D. 1327, had “unum manutergium de Eylisham”--a hand towel
of Ailesham cloth.[239]

Our coarser native textiles in wool, in thread or in both, woven
together, forming a stuff called “burel,” made of which St. Paul’s
London, A.D. 1295, had a light blue chasuble;[240] and Exeter
cathedral, A.D. 1277, a long pall;[241] all sorts, in fine, of heavier
work, were wrought in our monasteries for men. By their rule the
Benedictine monks, and all their offsets, were bound to give a certain
number of hours every week-day to hand work, either at home or in the
field.[242]

Weeping over the wars and strife in England during the year 1265 and
the woes of the people, our Matthew of Westminster sums up, among our
losses, the fall in our trade of woollen stuffs, with which we used
to supply the world. O Anglia olim gloriosa ... licet maris angustata
littoribus ... tibi tamen per orbem benedixerunt omnium latera nationum
de tuis ovium velleribus calefacta.[243]

The weaving in this country of woollen cloth, as a staple branch of
trade, is older than some are willing to believe. Of the monks at
Bath abbey we are told by a late writer, “the shuttle and the loom
employed their attention, (about the middle of the fourteenth century,)
and under their active auspices the weaving of woollen cloth (which
made its appearance in England about the year 1330, and received the
sanction of an Act of Parliament in 1337) was introduced, established,
and brought to such perfection at Bath as rendered this city one of the
most considerable in the west of England for this manufacture.”[244]
Worcester cloth, which was of a fine quality, was so good, that by
a chapter of the Benedictine Order, held A.D. 1422, at Westminster
Abbey, it was forbidden to be worn by the monks, and declared smart
enough for military men.[245] Norwich, too, wove stuffs that were
in demand for costly household furniture, for, A.D. 1394, Sir John
Cobham bequeathed to his friends “a bed of Norwich stuff embroidered
with butterflies.”[246] In one of the chapels at Durham Priory there
were four blue cushions of Norwich work.[247] Worsted, a town in
Norfolk, by a new method of its own for the carding of the wool with
combs of iron well heated, and then twisting the thread harder than
usual in the spinning, enabled our weavers to produce a woollen stuff
of a fine peculiar quality, to which the name itself of worsted was
immediately given. Unto such a high repute did the new web grow that
liturgical raiment and domestic furniture of the choicest sorts were
made out of it; Exeter cathedral, among its chasubles, had several
“de nigro worsted” in cloth of gold. Elizabeth de Bohun, A.D. 1356,
bequeathed to her daughter the Countess of Arundel “a bed of red
worsted embroidered;”[248] and Joane Lady Bergavenny leaves to John of
Ormond “a bed of cloth of gold with lebardes, with those cushions and
tapettes of my best red worsted,”[249] &c. Of the sixteen standards of
worsted entailed with the bear and a chain which floated aloft in the
ship of Beauchamp Earl of Warwick, we have spoken before (p. xliii.)
In the “Fabric Rolls of York Minster” vestments made of worsted--there
variously spelt “worsett,”[250] and “woryst”[251]--are enumerated.

 [239] Oliver, p. 314.

 [240] Dugdale’s St. Paul’s, p. 323.

 [241] Oliver, p. 298.

 [242] Reg. S. Ben. c. xlviii. De Opere Manuum quotidiano, p. 129; c.
    lvii. De Artificibus Monasterii, p. 131; ed. Brockie, t. i. “Lena”
    is the mediæval Latin for a bed coverlet.

 [243] Flores Histor. p. 396. Frankfort, A.D. 1601.

 [244] Monasticon Anglicanum, t. ii. p. 259.

 [245] Benedict. in Anglia, ed. Reyner, App. p. 165.

 [246] Testamenta Vetusta, ed. Nicolas, t. i. p. 136.

 [247] Hist. Dunelm. Scriptores Tres. Append. p. cclxxxvi.

 [248] Testamenta Vetusta, i. 61.

 [249] Ibid. p. 227.

 [250] Pp. 301, 305.

 [251] P. 302.

_Irish_ cloth, white and red, in the reign of John, A.D. 1213, was much
used in England; and in the household expenses of Swinford, bishop of
Hereford, A.D. 1290, an item occurs of Irish cloth for lining.[252]

But our weavers knew how to throw off from their looms, artistically
designed and well-figured webs; in the “Wardrobe Accounts” of our
Edward II. we read this item: “to a mercer of London for a green
hanging of wool wove with figures of kings and earls upon it, for the
king’s service in his hall on solemn feasts at London.”[253] Such
“salles,” as they were called in France, and “hullings,” or rather
“hallings,” the name they went under here, were much valued abroad, and
in common use at home: under the head of “Salles d’Angleterre,” among
the articles of costly furniture belonging to Charles V. of France,
A.D. 1364, who began his reign some forty years after our Edward
II.’s death, one set of such hangings is thus put down: “une salle
d’Angleterre vermeille brodée d’azur, et est la bordeure à vignettes et
le dedens de lyons, d’aigles et de lyepars,” quoted from the MS. No.
8356, in the Imperial Library, Paris, by Michel;[254] while here in
England, Richard Earl of Arundel, A.D. 1392, willed to his dear wife
“the hangings of the hall which was lately made in London, of blue
tapestry with red roses with the arms of my sons,”[255] &c.; and Lady
Bergavenny, after bequeathing her hullying of black, red, and green, to
one friend, to another left her best stained hall.[256]

 [252] Ed. Web. for the Camden Society, p. 193, t. i.

 [253] Archæologia, t. xxvi. p. 344.

 [254] Tom. i. p. 49.

 [255] Test. Vetust. t. i. p. 130.

 [256] Ibid. pp. 228, 229.

_Flemish_ textiles, at least of the less ambitious kinds, such as
napery and woollens, were much esteemed centuries ago, and our
countryman, Matthew of Westminster, says of Flanders, that from the
material--perhaps wool--which we sent her, she sent us back those
precious garments she wove.[257]

Though industrious everywhere within her limits, some of her towns
stood foremost for certain kinds of stuff, and Bruges became in
the latter end of the fifteenth century conspicuous for its silken
textiles. Here in England, the satins of Bruges were in great use
for church garments; in Haconbie church, A.D. 1566, was “one white
vestmente of Bridges satten repte in peces and a clothe made thereof
to hange before our pulpitt;”[258] and, A.D. 1520, York cathedral had
“a vestment of balkyn (baudekin) with a crosse of green satten in
bryges.”[259]

Her damask silks were equally in demand; and the specimens here
will interest the reader. Nos. 8318, p. 190, 8332, p. 197, show the
ability of the Bruges loom, while the then favourite pattern with the
pomegranate in it, betrays the likings of the Spaniards, at that time
the rulers of the country, for this token of their beloved Isabella’s
reconquered Granada. No. 8319, p. 191, is another sample of Flemish
weaving, rich in its gold, and full of beauty in design.

In her velvets, Flanders had no need to fear a comparison with anything
of the kind that Italy ever threw off from her looms, whether at
Venice, Florence, or Genoa, as the samples we have here under Nos.
8673, p. 254, 8674, p. 255, 8704, p. 264, will prove. Nay, this last
specimen, with its cloth of gold ground, and its pattern in a dark
blue deep-piled velvet, is not surpassed in gorgeousness even by that
splendid stuff from Florence yet to be seen in one of the copes for
Westminster Abbey given it by Henry VII.

Block-printed linen was, toward the end of the fourteenth century,
another production of Flanders, of which pieces may be seen at Nos.
7022, p. 118, 7027, p. 120, 8303, p. 184, 8615, p. 234. Though to
the eyes of many, these may look so poor, so mean; to men like the
cotton-printers of Lancashire and other places they will have a
strong attraction; to the scholar they will be deeply interesting as
suggestive of the art of printing. Such specimens are rare, but it is
likely that England can show, in the chapter library at Durham, the
earliest sample of the kind as yet known, in a fine sheet wrapped about
the body of some old bishop discovered, along with several pieces of
ancient silks, and still more ancient English embroidery, in a grave
opened by Mr. Raine, A.D. 1827, within that grand northern cathedral.

What Bruges was in silks and velvets Yprès, in the sixteenth century,
became for linen, and for many years Flemish linens had been in
favourite use throughout England. Hardly a church of any size, scarcely
a gentleman’s house in this country, but used a quantity of towels and
other napery that was made in Flanders, especially at Yprès.[260] Of
this textile instances may be seen at pp. 34, 73, 75, 124, 203, 205,
255, 263.

 [257] Hist. p. 396, Frankfort, A.D. 1601.

 [258] Church Furniture, ed. Peacock, p. 94.

 [259] Fabric Rolls, p. 302.

 [260] Oliver’s Exeter, p. 356.

_French_ silks, now in such extensive use, were until the end of the
sixteenth century not much cared for in France itself, and seldom
heard of abroad. The reader, then, must not be astonished at finding
so few examples of the French loom, in a collection of ancient silken
textiles.

France, as England, used of old to behold her women, old and young,
rich and poor, while filling up their leisure hours in-doors, at work
on a small loom, and weaving certain narrow webs, often of gold, and
diapered with coloured silks, as we mentioned before (p. xxii.) Of such
French wrought stuffs belonging to the thirteenth century, some samples
are described at pp. 29, 130, 131.

In damasks, her earliest productions are of the sixteenth century, and
are described at pp. 13, 205, 206; and the last is a favourable example
of what the loom then was in France; everything later is of that type
so well known to everybody. In several of her textiles a leaning
towards classicism in design is discernible.

Though so few, her cloths of gold, pp. 9, 15, are good, more especially
the fine one at p. 104.

Her velvets, too, pp. 14, 89, 106, are satisfactory.

Satins from France are not many here.

The curious and elaborately ornamented gloves, p. 105, which got into
fashion, especially for ladies, at the end of the sixteenth century,
will be a welcome object for such as are curious in the history of
women’s dress, in France and England.

Quilting, too, on coverlets, shown at pp. 13, 104, displays the taste
of our neighbours in such stitchery, so much in use among them and
ourselves from the sixteenth century.

Like Flanders, France knew how to weave fine linen, which here in
England was much in use for ecclesiastical as well as household
purposes. Three new cloths of Rains (Rennes in Brittany) were, A.D.
1327, in use for the high altar in Exeter cathedral,[261] and many
altar-cloths of Paris linen. In the poem of the “Squier of Low Degree,”
the lady is told

    Your blankettes shal be of fustyane,
    Your shetes shal be of cloths of rayne;

and, A.D. 1434, Joane Lady Bergavenny devises in her will, “two
pair sheets of Raynes, a pair of fustians,” &c.[262] For her
Easter “Sepulchre” Exeter had a pair of this Rennes sheeting; “par
linthiaminum de Raynys pro sepulchro.”[263]

 [261] Oliver, p. 314.

 [262] Test. Vet. i. 227.

 [263] Oliver, p. 340.

_Cologne_, the queen of the Rhine, became famous during the whole of
the fifteenth and part of the sixteenth century for a certain kind of
ecclesiastical textile which, from the very general use to which it
has been applied, we have named “orphrey web.” Since by far the greater
part of this collection, as it now exists, had been made in Germany,
beginning with Cologne, it is, as might be expected, well supplied with
specimens of a sort of stuff, if not peculiar, at least abounding in
that country. Those same liturgical ornaments which Venice and Florence
wove with such artistic taste for Italian church use, Cologne succeeded
in doing for Germany. Her productions, however, are every way far below
in beauty Italy’s like works. The Italian orphrey-webs are generally
done in gold or yellow silk, upon a crimson ground of silk. Florence’s
are often distinguished from those of Venice by the introduction of
white for the faces; Cologne’s vary from both by introducing blue,
while the material is almost always very poor, and the weaving coarse.

The earliest specimen here of this Cologne orphrey-web is No. 8279, p.
174; but it is far surpassed by many others, such as are, for instance,
to be found at pp. 61, 62, 63, 64, 69, 80, 82, 116, 117, 118, 119, 174,
175, 252, 253. Among these some have noticeable peculiarities; No.
1329, p. 61, a good specimen, has the persons of the saints so woven
that the heads, hands, and emblems are wrought with the needle; the
same, too, in Nos. 7023, p. 118, and 8667, p. 252; in No. 1373, though
the golden ground looks very fresh and brilliant, the gilding process,
as on wood, has been employed. Here in England this orphrey web was in
church use and called “rebayn de Colayn.”[264]

The piece of German napery at No. 8317, p. 190, of the beginning of the
fifteenth century will be to those curious about household linen, an
acceptable specimen.

If by hazard while reading some old inventory of church vestments the
reader should stumble upon some entry mentioning a chasuble made of
cloth of Cologne, let him understand it to mean not a certain broad
textile woven there, but merely a vestment composed of several pieces
of this kind of web sewed together, just as was the frontal made out of
pieces of woven Venice orphreys at No. 8976, p. 271.

 [264] Testamenta Eborac, iii. 13.


The countries whence silks came to us are numerous; with confidence,
however, we may say, that till the middle of the fifteenth century,
when we began to weave some of them for ourselves, the whole geography
of silken textiles lay within the basin of the Mediterranean to the
west, and the continent of Asia to the east.

Though mention is often made of tissues coming from various places,
those cities are always to be found upon the map we have just marked
out. Among those spoken of _Antioch_, _Tarsus_, _Alexandria_,
_Damascus_, _Byzantium_, _Cyprus_, _Trip_ or _Tripoli_, and _Bagdad_,
are easily recognized, as well as the later centres of trade and
manufacture, Venice, Genoa and Lucca. To fix the localities of a few
others would be but guess-work.

At the beginning of the fourteenth century is mentioned occasionally
a silk called “_Acca_,” and, from the description of it, it must have
been a cloth of gold shot with coloured silk, figured with animals:
William de Clinton, Earl of Huntingdon, gave to St. Alban’s monastery a
whole vestment of cloth of gold shot with sky-blue, and called cloth of
Acca; “unum vestimentum ... de panno quem Accam dicimus; cujus campus
est aerius. In reliquis vero partibus resultat auri fulgor.”[265] To
some it would look as if this stuff took its name from having been
brought to us through the port of Acre. We lean towards this belief
on finding, on the authority of Macri, in his valuable Hierolexicon,
Venice, 1735, pp. 5, 542, that so used to be written the name of the
ancient Ptolemais in Syria.

What in one age, and at a particular place, happened to be so well
made, and hence became so eagerly sought for, at a later period, and
in another place, got to be much better wrought and at a lower price.
Time, indeed, changed the name of the market, but did not alter in any
great degree either the quality of the material, or the style of the
design wrought upon it. All over the kingdom of the Byzantine Greeks
the loom had to change its gearing very little. The Saracenic loom,
whether in Asia, Africa, or Spain, was always Arabic, though Persia
could not forget her olden Zoroasterian traditions about the “hom”
or tree of life separating lions, and having all about lion-hunting
cheetahs, and birds of various sorts.

With regard to the whole of Asia, we learn that its many peoples,
from the earliest times, knew how not only to weave cloth of gold,
but figure it too with birds and beasts. Almost two thousand years
afterwards, Marco Polo, in the thirteenth century, found exactly
the very same kinds of textile known in the days of Darius still
everywhere, from the shores of the Mediterranean to far Cathay, in
demand and woven. What he says of Bagdad, he repeats in fewer words
about many other cities.[266]

In finding their way to England these fabrics had given them not so
often the names of the places where they had been wrought, but, if not
in all, at least in most instances, the names of the seaports in the
Mediterranean where they had been shipped.

 [265] Mon. Anglic. ii. 221.

 [266] I Viaggi di Marco Polo, ed. A. Bartoli, Firenze, 1863.

For beautifully wrought and figured silk, of the few terms that still
outlive the mediæval period, one is _Damask_.

China, no doubt, was the first country to ornament its silken webs
with a pattern. India, Persia and Syria, then Byzantine Greece,
followed, but at long intervals between, in China’s footsteps. Stuffs
so figured brought with them to the west the name “diaspron” or diaper,
bestowed upon them at Constantinople. But about the twelfth century,
so very far did the city of Damascus, even then long celebrated for
its looms, outstrip all other places for beauty of design, that her
silken textiles were eagerly sought for everywhere, and thus, as often
happens, traders fastened the name of Damascen or Damask upon every
silken fabric richly wrought and curiously designed, no matter whether
it came or not from Damascus. After having been for ages the epithet
betokening all that was rich and good in silk, “Samit” had to be
forgotten, and Diaper, from being the very word significant of pattern,
became a secondary term descriptive of merely a part in the elaborate
design on Damask.

_Baudekin_, that sort of costly cloth of gold spoken of so much during
so many years in English literature, took, as we said before, its
famous name from Bagdad.

Many are the specimens in this collection furnishing proofs of the
ancient weavers’ dexterity in their management of the loom, but
especially of the artists’ taste in setting out so many of their
intricate and beautiful designs.

What to some will be happily curious is that we have this very day
before our eyes pieces, in all likelihood, from the self-same web which
furnished the material, centuries ago, for vestments and ornaments used
of old in the cathedrals of England. Let any one turn to p. 122, and,
after looking at number 7036, compare that silk with this item in the
inventory of St. Paul’s, London, A.D. 1225: “Item, Baudekynus rubeus
cum Sampsone constringente ora leonum,” &c.[267] See also number 8589,
and number 8235.

An identification between very many samples, brought together here, of
ancient textiles in silk, and the descriptions of such stuffs afforded
us in those valuable records--our old church inventories--might be
carried on, if necessary, to a very lengthened extent.

 [267] Dugdale’s St. Paul’s, p. 328.

_Dorneck_ was the name given to an inferior kind of damask wrought
of silk, wool, linen thread and gold, in Flanders. Towards the end
of the fifteenth century, mostly at Tournay, which city, in Flemish,
was often called Dorneck--a word variously spelt as Darnec, Darnak,
Darnick, and sometimes even Darness.

The gild of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Boston had a care cloth of
silke dornex and church furniture.[268] The “care cloth” was a sort of
canopy held over the bride and bridegroom as they knelt for the nuptial
blessing, according to the Salisbury rite, at the marriage mass. At
Exeter it was used in chasubles for orphreys.[269] A specimen of Dornex
may be seen, No. 7058, p. 129. See also York Fabric Rolls, pp. 291,
297, 298, 300, 305.

 [268] Peacock, p. 204.

 [269] Oliver, pp. 359, 365.

_Buckram_, a cotton textile, has a history and a reputation somewhat
varied.

In our oldest inventories mention is often made of a “panus Tartaricus”
or Tartary cloth, which was, if not always, at least often purple.
Asia, especially in its eastern borders, became famous for the fine
textiles it wove out of cotton, and dyed in every colour. Cities got
for themselves a reputation for some especial excellence in their
looms, and as Mosul had the name of Muslin from that place given to the
fine and delicate cotton webs it wrought, so the term of buckram for
another sort of cotton textile came from the city of Bokhara in Tartary
where this cloth was made. All along the middle ages buckram was much
esteemed for being costly and very fine, and consequently fit for use
in church vestments, and for secular personal wear. John Grandison,
consecrated bishop of Exeter, A.D. 1327, gave to his cathedral flags
of white and red buckram;[270] and among the five very rich veils for
covering the moveable lectern in that church, three were lined with
blue “bokeram.”[271] As late as the beginning of the sixteenth century
this stuff was held good enough for lining to a black velvet gown for a
queen, Elizabeth of York.[272] The coarse thick fabric which now goes
by the name was anything but the olden production known as “bokeram.”

 [270] Ib. p. 319.

 [271] Ib. p. 329.

 [272] Her Privy Purse Expenses, ed. Nicolas, p. 22, &c.

_Burdalisaunder_, _Bordalisaunder_, _Bourde de Elisandre_, with other
varieties in spelling, is a term often to be met with in old wills and
church inventories. In the year 1327 Exeter had a chasuble of Bourde de
Elisandre of divers colours.[273] It was wide enough for half a piece
to form the adornment of a high altar.[274]

The difficulty of understanding what this textile was will vanish when
we remember that in Arabic “bord” to this day means a striped cloth;
and we know, both from travellers and the importation of the textile
itself, that many tribes in North and Eastern Africa weave stuffs for
personal wear of a pattern consisting of white and black longitudinal
stripes. St. Augustin too, living in North Africa near the modern
Algiers, speaks of a stuff for clothing called “burda,” in the end of
the fourth and beginning of the fifth century. Burdalisaunder was a
silken web in different coloured stripes, and specimens of this, at
one time known as “stragulata” may be found here at pp. 21, 27, 33,
56, 57, 161, 225, 226, &c. Though made in so many places round the
Mediterranean, this silk took its name, at least in England, from
Alexandria, because it was to be had in that Egyptian city, always
celebrated for its silks, either better made or at a much lower price
than elsewhere.

In all likelihood the curtains for the tabernacle, as well as the
girdles for Aaron and his sons, of fine linen and violet and purple,
and scarlet twice dyed, were wrought with this very pattern, so that
in the “stragulata” or “burd Aliscaunder” we behold the oldest known
design for any textile.

 [273] Oliver, p. 312.

 [274] Yorkshire Wills. Part i. p. 174.

_Fustian_, of which two of its forms we still have in velveteen and
corduroy, was originally wove at Fustat, on the Nile, with a warp of
linen thread and a woof of thick cotton, which was so twilled and cut
that it showed on one side a thick but low pile; and the web so managed
took its name of Fustian from that Egyptian city. At what period it was
invented we do not rightly know, but we are well aware it must have
been brought to this country before the Normans coming hither, for our
Anglo-Saxon countryman, St. Stephen Harding, when a Cistercian abbot
and an old man, _circ._ A.D. 1114, forbade chasubles in his church to
be made of anything but fustian or plain linen: “neque casulas nisi
de fustaneo vel lino sine pallio aureo vel argenteo,” &c.[275] The
austerity of his rule reached even the ornament of the church. From
such a prohibition we are not to draw as a conclusion that fustian
was at the time a mean material; quite the contrary, it was a seemly
textile. Years afterwards, in the fourteenth century, Chaucer tells us
of his knight:--

 Of fustian he wered a gepon.[276]

Fustian, so near akin to velvet, is more especially noticed along with
what is said upon that fine textile.

In the fifteenth century Naples had a repute for weaving fustians, but
our English churchwardens, not being learned in geography, made some
laughable bad spelling of this, like some other continental stuffs:
“Fuschan in appules,” for fustian from Naples, is droll; yet droller
still is “mustyrd devells,” for a cloth made in France at a town
called Mustrevilliers.

 [275] Mon. Anglic. ed. Dugdale, v. 225.

 [276] The Prologue, Poems, ed. Nicolas, ii. 3.

_Muslin_, as it is now throughout the world, so from the earliest
antiquity has been everywhere in Asia in favourite use, both as an
article of dress and as furniture. Its cloud-like thinness, its
lightness, were, as they still are to some Asiatics, not the only
charms belonging to this stuff: it was esteemed equally as much for
the taste in which stripes of gold had been woven in its warp. As we
learn from the travels of Marco Polo, the further all wayfarers in Asia
wandered among its eastern nations, the higher they found the point of
excellence which had been reached by those people in weaving silk and
gold into splendid fabrics. If the silkworm lived, nay, thrived there,
the cotton plant was in its home, its birth-place, in those regions.
Where stood Nineveh Mosul stands now.

Like many cities of Middle Asia, Mosul had earned for itself a
reputation of old for the beauty of its gold-wrought silken textiles.
Cotton grew all around in plenty; the inhabitants, especially the
women, being gifted with such quick feeling of finger, could spin
thread from this cotton of more than hair-like fineness. Cotton then
took with them, on many occasions, the place of silk in the loom;
but gold was not forgotten in the texture. This new fabric, not only
because it was so much cheaper, but from its own peculiar beauty and
comeliness, won for itself a high place in common estimation. At once,
and by the world’s accord, on it was bestowed as its distinctive name,
the name of the place where it was wrought in such perfection. Hence,
whether wove with or without gold, we call to this day this cotton web
Muslin, from the Asiatic city of Mosul.

_Cloth of Areste_ is another of those terms for woven stuffs which
students of textiles had never heard of were it not to be found in our
old English deeds and inventories. The first time we meet it is in an
order given, A.D. 1244, by Henry III. for finding two of these cloths
of Areste with which two copes had to be made for royal chapels: “Duos
pannos del Areste ad duas capas faciendas,” &c.[277] Again it comes
a few years later at St. Paul’s, which cathedral, A.D. 1295, had,
besides a dalmatic and tunicle of this silk--“de serico albo diasperato
de Arest,”[278]--as many as thirty and more hangings of this same
texture.[279]

From the description of these pieces we gather that this so-called
cloth of Areste must have been as beautiful as it was rich, being for
the most part cloth of gold figured elaborately, some with lions and
double-headed eagles, others, for example, with the death and burial
of our Lord--“campus aureus cum leonibus et aquilis bicapitibus de
aurifilo contextis--campus rubeus cum historia Passionis Domini et
sepulturæ ejusdem.” These designs speak of the looms at work in the
middle ages on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, and we are much
strengthened in this thought by beholding how the death and burial
of our Lord, like the sample here, number 8278, p. 170-1, are shown
on a crimson ground, as we shall have to instance further on under
Symbolism, § VII.

That this sort of stuff, wove of silk and gold, was of any kind of
Arras, or made in that town, to our seeming is a very unhappy guess.
Arras had not won for itself a reputation for its tapestry before the
fourteenth century. Tapestry itself is too thick and heavy for use in
vestments; yet this cloth of Areste was light enough for tunicles, and
when worn out was sometimes condemned at St. Paul’s to be put aside for
lining other ritual garments--“ad armaturam faciendam.”[280] The term
“Areste” has little or nothing in it common to the word “Arras,” as
written either in French, or under its Latin appellation “Atrebatum.”

Among the three meanings for the mediæval “Aresta,” one is, any kind of
covering. To us, then, it seems as if these cloths of Areste took their
name not from the place whereat they had been wove, but from the use to
which, if not always, for the most part, we put them--that of hangings
about our churches, since in the St. Paul’s inventory they are usually
spoken of as such--“culcitræ pendules, panni penduli.”[281] Moreover,
tapestry, or Arras work, being thick and heavy, could never have been
employed for such light use as that of apparels, nor would it have been
diapered like silk, yet we find it to have been so fashioned and so
used--“maniculariis apparatis quodam panno rubeo diasperato de Laret,
&c.”[282]

 [277] Excerpta Historica, p. 404.

 [278] St. Paul’s Cathedral, ed. Dugdale, p. 322.

 [279] Ibid. p. 329.

 [280] St. Paul’s Cathedral, ed. Dugdale, p. 329.

 [281] Ibid. p. 329.

 [282] Ibid. p. 335.

For not a few it would be hard to understand some at least among those
epithets meant in by-gone days to tell how


SILKS WERE DISTINGUISHED THROUGH THEIR COLOURS AND SHADES OF COLOUR.

To the inventories of vestments and church-stuffs of all sorts must we
go to gather the information which we want about the textiles in use in
this country at any particular period during by-gone days. The men who
had, in the thirteenth century, the drawing up of such lists, seem to
have been gifted with a keen eye for the varieties of shade and tints
in the colour of silks then before them. For instance, a chasuble at
St. Paul’s, London, A.D. 1295, is set down thus:--“De sameto purpureo
aliquantulum sanguineo”--that is, made of samit (a thick silk) dyed
in a purple somewhat bordering on a blood-red tone. Such language is
unmistakable; not so, however, many other terms at the time in common
use, and though well understood then, are now not so intelligible.
We are told in the same inventory[283] several times of a “pannus
Tarsicus,” a Tarsus cloth, and of a “pannus Tarsici coloris,” a Tarsus
coloured cloth. What may have been the distinctive qualities of the
stuffs woven at Tarsus, what the peculiar beauty in that tint to which
that once so celebrated city had given its own name, we cannot say.
We think, however, those Tarsus textiles were partly of silk, partly
of fine goats’ hair, and for this reason Varro tells[284]--“Tondentur
(capræ) quod magnis villis sunt, in magna parte Phrygiæ; unde Cilicia,
et cætera ejus generis ferri solent. Sed, quod primum ea tonsura in
Cilicia sit instituta, nomen id Cilicas adjecisse dicunt.” Goats are
shorn in a great part of Phrygia, because there they have long shaggy
hair. Cilicia (the Latin for hair cloths) and other things of the
same sort, are usually brought from that country. For the reason that
in Cilicia such a shearing of goats arose, they say that the name of
Cilician was given to such stuffs woven of goats’ hair. As Tarsus is,
so always was it, the head city in all that part of Asia Minor known of
old as Phrygia. Hence then we think that--

 [283] Pp. 322, 323.

 [284] De Re Rustica, lii. cap. xi.

_Cloth of Tarsus_, _of Tars_, &c., was woven of fine goats’ hair and
silk. But this web was in several colours, and always looked upon as
very costly.

The _Tarsus colour_ itself was, as we take it, some shade of purple
differing from, and perhaps to some eyes more beautiful than, the
Tyrian dye. The people of Tarsus no doubt got from their murex, a
shell-fish of the class mollusca and purpurifera family to be found on
their coast, their dyeing matter; and when it is borne in mind what
changes are wrought in the animal itself by the food it eats, and
what strong effects are made by slight variations in climate, even
atmosphere, upon materials for colouring in the moments of application,
we may easily understand how the difference arose between the two tints
of purple.

We are strengthened in our conjecture that not only was the cloth of
Tarsus of a rare and costly kind, but its tint some shade of royal
purple, from the fact that while noticing the robes worn on a grand
public occasion by a king, Chaucer thus sketches the prince:--

    The gret Emetrius, the king of Inde,
    Upon a stede bay, trapped in stele,
    Covered with cloth of gold diapred wele,
    Came riding like the god of armes Mars.
    His cote armure was of a cloth of Tars,
    Couched with perles, &c.[285]

 [285] Knightes Tale, Poems, ed. Nicolas, ii. 64-5.

_Sky-blue_ was a liturgical colour everywhere in use for certain
festivals throughout England, as we have shown in another place.[286]
In the early inventories the name for that tint is “Indicus,” “Indus,”
reminding us of our present _indigo_. In later lists it is called
“Blodius,” not sanguinary, but blue.

 [286] Church of our Fathers, t. ii. p. 259.

_Murrey_, or a reddish brown, is often specified; and a good specimen
of the tint is given us, No. 709, p. 9. Old St. Paul’s, London, had
several pieces of baudekin of this colour: “baudekynus murretus cum
griffonibus datus pro anima. Alphonsi filii regis E.”[287]

Going far down, and much below the middle ages, Purple, in all its
tones, and tints, and shades, was spoken of and looked upon as
allowable to be worn in garments only to worshipful, ennobled, or royal
personages. Whether it glowed with the brightness it seemed to have
stolen from the rose, or wore its darkest tone it could borrow from
the violet, whether it put on any one of those hundred shades to be
found between those two extremes, it mattered not; it was gazed at with
an admiring, a respectful eye. Eagerly sought out, and bought at high
price, were those textiles that showed this colour, and had been dyed
at Tyre, Antioch, Tarsus, Alexandria, Byzantium, or Naples. All these
places were at one time or another, in days of old, famous for their
looms, no less than their ability in the dyeing, especially of purple,
among the nations living on the shores of the Mediterranean; and each
of them had in its own tone a shade which distinguished it from that
of all the others. What the tint of purple was which established this
difference we cannot at this distance of time, and with our means
of knowing, justly say. Of this, however, we are perfectly aware,
that silks of purple usually bore their specific name from those
above-named cities, as we perceive while reading the old inventories
of our churches and cathedrals. Moreover, our native writers let us
know that, if not always from Greece, it was through that country
that purple textiles were brought to England. Besides speaking of a
conversation held about, beside other things, the produce of Greece in
purple silks--“Græcorum purpuris, et pannis holosericis”--Gerald Barry
gives us to understand that in his days not only were our churches
sumptuously hung with costly palls and purple silks, but that these
textiles were the work of Grecian looms--“rex (Willielmus Rufus)
ecclesiam quandam (in nova foresta) intraret quam adeo pulchram et
decentius ornatam auletis historicis, et pretiosis Græcorum palliis,
pannis holosericis et purpureis undique vestitam,” &c.[288]

Silks woven of two colours, so that one of them showed itself unmixed
and quite distinct on one side, and the second appeared equally clean
on the other--a thing sometimes now looked upon as a wonder in modern
weaving--might occasionally be met with here at the mediæval period:
Exeter Cathedral had, A.D. 1327:--“Unus pannus sericus curtus rubei
coloris interius et crocei coloris exterius.”[289]

 [287] St. Paul’s, ed. Dugdale, p. 328, &c.

 [288] Giraldus Cambrensis, De Instructione Principum, pp. 168-173.

 [289] Oliver, p. 316.

_Shot_, or, as they were then called, _changeable_ silks, were
fashionable in England during the sixteenth century, for when the
King’s (Edward VI.) Lord of Misrule rode forth with great pageantry,
among other personages there came “afor xx. of ys consell on horsbake
in gownes of chanabulle lynyd with blue taffata and capes of the sam,
like sage (men); then cam my lord with a gowne of gold furyd,” &c.[290]
At York Cathedral, A.D. 1543, there was “a vestment of changeable
silke,”[291] “besides one of changeable taffety for Good Friday.”[292]

 [290] Diary of Henry Machyn, ed. Nichols for the Camden Society, p. 13.

 [291] Fabric Rolls, p. 301.

 [292] Ibid. p. 311.

_Marble_ silk had a weft of several colours so put together and woven
as to make the whole web look like marble, stained with a variety of
tints; hence it got its name. In the year 1295 St. Paul’s had “paruram
de serico marmoreo”[293]--an apparel of marble silk; “tunica de quodam
panno marmoreo spisso”[7]--a tunicle of a certain thick marble cloth;
“tunica de diaspro marmoreo spisso”[294]--a tunicle of thick diaper
marble; “casula marmorei coloris”[295]--a chasuble of marble colour.
During full three centuries this marble silk found great favour among
us since H. Machyn, in his very valuable and curious Diary tells his
readers how “the old Qwyne of Schottes rod thrught London,” and how
“then cam the Lord Tresorer with a C. gret horsse and ther cotes of
marbull,”[9] &c., to meet her the 6th of November, A.D. 1551.[296]

 [293] Ibid. p. 320.

 [294] Ibid. p. 322.

 [295] Ibid. p. 323.

 [296] Pp. 11, 12.



SECTION II.--EMBROIDERY.


The art of working with the needle flowers, fruits, human and animal
forms, or any fanciful design, upon webs woven of silk, linen, cotton,
wool, hemp, besides other kinds of stuff, is so old that it reaches far
into the prehistoric ages.

Those patterns, after so many fashions, which we see figured upon the
garments worn by men and women in Egyptian and Assyrian monuments, but
especially on the burned-clay vases made and painted by the Greeks
during their most archaic as well as later times, or we read about in
the writings of that people, were not wrought in the loom, but done by
the needle.

The old Egyptian loom--and that of the Jews must have been like
it--was, as we know from paintings, of the simplest shape, and seems
to have never been able to do anything more diversified in the
designs of its patterns than straight lines in different colours,
and at best nothing higher in execution than checker-work: beyond
this, all else was put in by hand with the needle. In Paris, at the
Louvre, are several pieces of early Egyptian webs coloured, drawings
of which have been published by Sir Gardner Wilkinson in his short
work “The Egyptians in the time of the Pharaohs.”[297] There are two
pieces of the same textile scarlet, with one brede woven of narrow
red stripes on a broad yellow stripe, the other border being a broad
yellow stripe edged by a narrow scarlet one, both wrought up and down
with needlework; the second piece of blue is figured all over in
white embroidery with a pattern of netting, the meshes of which shut
in irregular cubic shapes, and in the lines of the reticulation the
mystic “gammadion” or “fylfot” is seen. Of them Sir J. G. Wilkinson
says:--“They are mostly cotton, and, though their date is uncertain,
they suffice to show that the manufacture was Egyptian; and the many
dresses painted on the monuments of the eighteenth dynasty show that
the most varied patterns were used by the Egyptians more than 3000
years ago, as they were at a later period by the Babylonians, who
became noted for their needlework.”[298] Other specimens of Egyptian
embroidery were on those corslets sent to Grecian temples by Amasis,
about which we have before spoken (p. xiv.)

 [297] P. 42.

 [298] Ibid. p. 41.

That the Israelites embroidered their garments, especially those worn
in public worship, is clear from several passages in the Book of
Exodus. The words “embroidery” and “embroidered” that come there so
frequently in our English versions are not to be understood always to
mean needlework, but on occasions the tasteful weaving in stripes of
the gold, violet, and purple, and scarlet twice dyed, and fine twisted
linen; the pomegranates at the bottom of Aaron’s tunic between the
golden bells, and wrought of four of these stuffs, were, it is likely,
made out of such coloured shreds, and of that kind which is now called
cut-work.

Picking up from Greek and Latin writers only, as was his wont, those
scraps of which his Natural History is made, Pliny tells us, even in
Homer, mention is made of embroidered cloths, which originated such
as by the Romans are called “triumphal.” To do this with the needle
was found out by the Phrygians, hence such garments took the name
Phrygionic: “Pictas vestes jam apud Homerum fuisse unde triumphales
natæ. Acu facere id, Phryges invenerunt ideoque Phrygioniæ appellatæ
sunt.”[299] He might have added that the only word the Romans had to
mean an embroiderer was “Phrygio,” which arose from the same cause.
Many passages in Virgil show that from Western Asia the Romans learned
their knowledge of embroidery, and borrowed the employment of it on
their garments of State; besides, “those art-wrought vests of splendid
purple tint:”--“arte laboratæ vestes ostroque superbo,”[300] brought
forth for the feast by the Sidonian Dido, the Phrygian Andromache
bestows upon Ascanius, as a token of her own handicraft, garments shot
with gold and pictured, as well as a Phrygian cloak, along with other
woven stuffs--

    Fert picturatas auri subtemine vestes,
    Et Phrygiam Ascanio chlamydem, &c.[301]

and Æneas veils his head for prayer with the embroidered hem of his
raiment--

 Et capita ante aras Phrygio velamur amictu.[302]

 [299] Lib. viii. c. 47.

 [300] Æneid i. 643.

 [301] Ibid. iii. 482.

 [302] Ibid. iii. 545.

In Latin while an embroiderer was called a Phrygian, “Phrygio,”
needlework was denominated “Phrygium,” or Phrygian stuff; hence,
when, as often happened, the design was wrought in solid gold wire or
golden thread, the embroidery so worked got named “auriphrygium.” From
this term comes our own old English word “orphrey.” Though deformed
after so many guises by the witless writers of many an inventory of
church goods, or by the sorry cleric who in a moment of needful haste
had been called upon to draw up a will; other men, however small
their learning, always spelled the word “orphrey,” in English, and
“auriphrygium,” in Latin. In the Exeter inventory, given by Oliver,
“cum orphrey de panno aureo, &c. cum orphrais, &c.”[303] are found;
and the cope bequeathed by Henry Lord de Scrope, A.D. 1415, had its
“orphreis” “embraudata nobiliter cum imaginibus,” &c.[304] The many
beautiful orphreys on the Lincoln vestments are fully described in
the “Monasticon Anglicanum:”[305] no one could be more earnest in
commanding the use on vestments of the auriphrygium, or embroidered
“orphrey” than St. Charles Borromeo.[306]

While Phrygia in general, Babylon in particular became celebrated for
the beauty of its embroideries: “colores diversos picturæ intexere
Babylon maxime celebravit et nomen imposuit;”[307] and those who have
seen the sculptures in the British Museum brought from Nineveh, and
described and figured by Layard, must have witnessed how lavishly the
Assyrians must have adorned their dress with that sort of needlework
for which one of their greatest cities was so famous.

Up to the first century of our era, the reputation which Babylon had
won for her textiles and needlework still lived. Josephus, himself
a Jew, who had often been to worship at Jerusalem, tells us that
the veils of its Temple given by Herod were Babylonian, and of the
outer one that writer says:--“there was a veil of equal largeness
with the door. It was a Babylonian curtain, embroidered with blue
and fine linen, and scarlet and purple, and of a texture that was
wonderful.”[308]

 [303] Pp. 330, 335-336.

 [304] Rymer’s Fœdera, t. ix. p. 272.

 [305] T. viii. pp. 1290, new edition.

 [306] Church of our Fathers, t. i. p. 453.

 [307] Pliny, lib. viii. c. 47.

 [308] Wars of the Jews, b. v. c. 5; Works translated by Weston, t. 4,
    p. 121.

What the Jews did for the Temple we may be sure was done by Christians
for the Church. The faithful, however, went even further, and wore
garments figured all over with passages from Holy Writ wrought in
embroidery. From a stirring sermon preached by St. Asterius, bishop of
Amasia in Pontus, in the fourth century, we learn this. Taking for his
text, “a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen,”
this father of the Church, while upbraiding the world for its follies
in dress, lets us know that some people went about arrayed like painted
walls, with beasts and flowers all over them; while others, pretending
a more serious tone of thought, dressed in clothes figured with a
sketch of all the doings and wonders of our Lord. “Strive,” thunders
forth St. Asterius, “to follow in your lives the teachings of the
Gospel, rather than have the miracles of our Redeemer embroidered upon
your outward dress.”[309]

To have had so many subjects shown upon one garment, it is clear that
each must have been done very small, and all wrought in outline;
a style which is being brought back, with great effect, into
ecclesiastical use.

Of the embroidery done by Christian ladies abroad during the Lower
Roman Empire, we have already spoken, p. xxxv. Coming to our own land,
and its mediæval times, we find how at the beginning of that period
our Anglo-Saxon sisters knew so well to handle their needle. The many
proofs of this we have brought forward in another place.[310]

The discriminating accuracy with which our old writers sought to follow
while noting down the several kinds of textile gifts bestowed upon a
church is as instructive as praiseworthy. Ingulph did not think it
enough to say that abbot Egelric had given many hangings to the Church
of Croyland, the great number of which were silken, but he must tell
us, too, that some were ornamented with birds wrought in gold, and
sewed on--in fact, of cut-work--other some with those birds woven
into the stuff, other some quite plain:--“Dedit etiam multa pallia
suspendenda in parietibus ad altaria sanctorum in festis, quorum
plurima de serico erant, aureis volucribus quædam insita,
quædam intexta, quædam plana.”[311]

So also the care often taken by the writers of inventories, like him
who wrote out the Exeter one, to mention how some of the vestments had
nothing about them but true needlework, or, as they at times express
it, “operata per totum opere acuali,” may be witnessed in that useful
work, “The Lives of the Bishops of Exeter,” by Oliver.[312]

By the latter end of the thirteenth century embroidery, as well
as its imitation, got for its several styles and various sorts
of ornamentation mixed up with it a distinguishing and technical
nomenclature; and the earliest document in which we meet with
this set of terms is the inventory drawn up, A.D. 1295, of the
vestments belonging to our London St. Paul’s Cathedral: herein,
the “opus plumarium,”[313] the “opus pectineum,”[314] the “opus
pulvinarium,”[315] cut-work, “consutum de serico,”[316] “de serico
consuto,”[317] may be severally found in Dugdale’s “History of St.
Paul’s.”

 [309] Ceillier, Hist. Gen. des Auteurs Sacrés et Ecclesiastiques, t.
    viii. p. 488.

 [310] The Church of our Fathers, t. ii. p. 267, &c. &c.

 [311] Ingulphi Hist. ed. Savile, p. 505, b.

 [312] Pp. 336, 344, &c.

 [313] P. 320.

 [314] P. 316.

 [315] P. 319.

 [316] P. 320.

 [317] P. 319.

The “opus plumarium” was the then usual general term for what is now
commonly called embroidery; and hence, in some old inventories, we
meet with such notices as this:--“capæ opere plumario factæ id est,
brudatæ.”

This term was given to embroidery needlework because the stitches were
laid down never across but longwise, and so put together that they
seemed to overlap one another like the feathers in the plumage of a
bird. Not inaptly then was this style called “feather-stitch” work,
in contradistinction to that done in cross and tent stitch, or the
“cushion-style,” as we shall, a little further on, have occasion to
notice next.

Among the many specimens here done in feather-stitch, in all ages, we
would especially instance No. 84, p. 3.

The “opus pulvinarium,” or “cushion style,” was that sort of embroidery
like the present so-called Berlin-work. As now, so then it was done in
the same stitchery, with pretty much the same materials, and put if not
always, at least often, to the same purpose of being used for cushions,
upon which to sit or to kneel in church, or uphold the mass-book at
the altar; hence its name of “cushion-style.” In working it, silken
thread is known to have been often used. Among other specimens, and in
silk, the rare and beautiful liturgical cushion of a date corresponding
to the London inventory, is to be seen here, No. 1324, p. 59. Being
so well adapted for working heraldry, from an early period till now,
this stitch has been mostly used for the purpose; and the emblazoned
orphreys, like the narrow hem on the Syon cope, are wrought in it.

The oldest, the most elaborate, the best known sample in the world,
and what to us is more interesting still from being in reality not
French but English needlework, is the so-called, but misnamed, Bayeux
tapestry, a shred of which is in this collection, No. 675, p. 6. Of all
this more anon, § IV.

The “opus pectineum” was a kind of woven-work imitative of embroidery,
and used as such, in truth, about which we have a description in the
Dictionary of the Londoner, John Garland, who thus speaks of the
process: “Textrices ducunt pectines cum trama quæ trahitur a spola et
pano,” &c.[318] From this use of a comb-like instrument--“pecten”--in
the manufacture the work itself received the distinctive appellation
of “pectineum,” or comb-wrought. Before John Garland forsook England
for France, to teach a school there, he must have often seen, while
at home, his countrywomen sitting down to such an occupation; and the
“amictus de dono dominæ Kathærinæ de Lovell de opere pectineo,”[319]
may perhaps have been the doing of that same lady’s own hands.

 [318] Ed. H. Geraud, Paris sous Philippe le Bel. p. 607.

 [319] Dugdale’s Hist. of St. Paul’s, p. 319.

Of such work as this “opus pectineum,” or comb-drawn, wrought by
English women here at home, we have several specimens in this
collection, pp. 24, 33, 38, &c.

Foreign ones are plentifully represented in the many samples of such
webs from Germany, especially from Cologne, pp. 61, 62, 63, &c.

Likely is it that Helisend, the bold young lady from the south of
England, and one of the waiting maids to the English Maud, queen of
David, king of Scotland, _circa_ A.D. 1150, got, from her cunning
in such work, the reputation of being so skilful in weaving and
church-embroidery:--“operis texturæ scientia purpuraria nobilis
extiterat, et aurifrixoria artificiosæ compositionis peroptima super
omnes Angliæ mulieres tunc temporis principaliter enituerat.”[320]

Our mediæval countrywomen were so quick at the needle that they could
make their embroidery look as if it had been done in the loom--really
woven. Not long ago, a shred of crimson cendal, figured in gold and
silver thread with a knight on horseback, armed as of the latter time
of Edward I., was shown us. At the moment we took the mounted warrior
to have been, not hand-worked, but woven, so flat, so even was every
thread. Looking at it however through a glass and turning it about, we
found it to have been unmistakably embroidered by the finger in such a
way that the stitches for laying down upon the surface, and not drawing
through the gold threads and thus saving expense, were carried right
into the canvas lining at the back of this thin silk. After this same
manner was really done, to our thinking, all the design, both before
and behind upon that fine English-wrought chasuble, No. 673, p. 5.

At the latter end of the thirteenth century our women struck out for
themselves a new way of embroidery. Without leaving aside the old and
usual “opus plumarium,” or feather-stitch, they mixed it with a new
style, both of needlework and mechanism. So beautiful and telling was
the novel method deemed abroad, that it won for itself from admiring
Christendom the complimentary appellation of “opus Anglicum,” or
English work. In what its peculiarity consisted has long been a
question and a puzzle among foreign archæological writers; and a living
one of eminence, the Canon Voisin, vicar general to the bishop of
Tournai, while noticing a cope of English work given to that church,
says:--“Il serait curieux de savoir quelle broderie ou quel tissu on
designait sous le nom de _opus Anglicum_.”[321]

 [320] Reginaldi Dunelmensis Libellus, &c. Ed. Surtees Society, p. 152.

 [321] Notice sur les Anciennes Tapisseries de la Cathedral de Tournai,
    p. 16.

But the reader may ask what is


THE OPUS ANGLICUM, OR ENGLISH WORK,

about which one heard so much of old?

Happily, we have before us in the present collection, as well as
elsewhere in this country, the means of helping our continental friends
with an answer to their question.

Looking well into that very fine and invaluable piece of English
needlework, the Syon cope, No. 9182, p. 275, we find that for the human
face, all over it, the first stitches were begun in the centre of the
cheek, and worked in circular, not straight lines, into which, however,
after the further side had been made, they fell, and were so carried
on through the rest of the fleshes; in some instances, too, even all
through the figure, draperies and all. But this was done in a sort of
chain stitch, and a newly practised mechanical appliance was brought
into use. After the whole figure had thus been wrought with this kind
of chain stitch in circles and straight lines, then with a little thin
iron rod ending in a small bulb or smooth knob slightly heated, were
pressed down those middle spots in the faces that had been worked in
circular lines; as well, too, as that deep wide dimple in the throat,
especially of an aged person. By the hollows thus lastingly sunk, a
play of light and shadow is brought out, that, at a short distance,
lends to the portion so treated a look of being done in low relief.
Chain stitch, then, worked in circular lines, and relief given to parts
by hollows sunk into the faces, and other portions of the persons,
constitute the elements of the “opus Anglicum,” or embroidery after the
English manner. How the chain-stitch was worked into circles for the
faces, and straight lines for the rest of the figures, is well shown by
a wood-cut, after a portion of the Steeple Aston embroideries, given in
the Archæological Journal, t. iv. p. 285.

Though, indeed, not merely the faces and the extremities, but the dress
too of the persons figured, were sometimes wrought in chain-stitch, and
afterwards treated as we have just described, the more general practice
was to work the draperies in our so-called feather-stitch, which used
to be also employed for the grounding, but diapered after a pretty,
though simple, zig-zag design, as we find in the Syon cope.

Apart from its stitching in circles, and those hollows, there are
elements in the design for sacred art-work almost peculiar to mediæval
England. Upon the rood loft in old Westminster Abbey, stood hard by the
cross two six-winged seraphim, each with his feet upon a wheel; so,
too, in the Syon cope, as well as in English needlework on chasubles
and copes, wrought even late in the fifteenth century. When, therefore,
such angel-figures are found on embroideries, still to be seen in
foreign hands, a presumption exists that the work is of English
production.

How highly English embroideries were at one period appreciated by
foreigners may be gathered from the especial notice taken of them
abroad; and spoken of in continental documents. Matilda, the first
Norman William’s queen, stooped to the meanness of filching from
the affrighted Anglo-Saxon monks of Abingdon their richest church
vestments, and would not be put off with inferior ones.[322] Other
instances we have given.[323] In his will, dated A.D. 1360, Cardinal
Talairand, bishop of Albano, speaks of the English embroideries on
a costly set of white vestments.[324] Ghini, by birth a Florentine,
but, in the year 1343, bishop of Tournai, bequeathed to that cathedral
an old English cope, as well as a beautiful corporal of English
work--“cappam veterem cum imaginibus et frixio operis Anglicani. Item
unum corporale de opere Anglicano pulchrum,” &c.[325] Among the copes
reserved for prelates’ use in the chapel of Charles, Duke of Bourgogne,
brother-in-law to our John Duke of Bedford, there was one of English
work, very elaborately fraught with many figures, as appears from this
description of it: “une chappe de brodeure d’or, façon d’Engleterre,
à plusieurs histoires de N.D. et anges et autres ymages, estans en
laceures escriptes, garnie d’un orfroir d’icelle façon fait à apostres,
desquelles les manteulx sont tous couvers de perles, et leur diadesmes
pourphiler de perles, estans en manière de tabernacles, faits de deux
arbres, dont les tiges sont toutes couvertes de perles et à la dite
chappe y a une bille des dites armes, garnie de perles comme la dessus
dicte.”[326]

Besides textiles, leather was at one time the material upon which our
embroiderers exercised the needle; and the Exeter inventory, drawn
up A.D. 1277, mentions, for its bier, a large pillow covered with
leather figured with flowers: “magnum cervical co-opertum coreo cum
floribus.”[327]

 [322] Chronicon Monasterii de Abingdon, p. 491.

 [323] Church of our Fathers, t. iv. p. 271, &c.

 [324] Texier, Dictionnaire, d’Orfeverie, p. 195.

 [325] Voisin, Notice sur les Anciennes Tapisseries, p. 17.

 [326] Les Ducs de Bourgogne, t. ii. p. 244, ed. Le Comte de Laborde.

 [327] Ed. Oliver, p. 298.

While so coveted abroad, our English embroidery was highly prized and
well paid for here at home. Henry III. had a chasuble embroidered
by Mabilia of Bury St. Edmund’s;[328] and Edward II. paid a hundred
marks--a good round sum in those days--to Rose, the wife of John de
Bureford, a citizen and mercer of London, for a choir-cope of her
embroidering, and which was to be sent to Rome for the Pope as an
offering from the queen.[329]

Though English embroidery fell on a sudden from its high estate, it
never died. All along through those years, wasted with the wars of
the Roses, the work of the English needle was very poor, very coarse,
and, so to say, ragged; as, for instance, the chasuble here, No. 4045,
p. 88. Nothing whatsoever of the celebrated chain-stitch with dimpled
faces in the figures can be found about it. Every part was done in the
feather-stitch, slovenly put down, with some few exceptions, among
which may be enumerated the three rich English copes with pointed
hoods running, like one here, p. 207, through the orphreys, still to
be seen in the Chapter Library at Durham, and other vestments of the
period in private hands. During the early part of the seventeenth
century our embroiderers again struck out for themselves a new style,
which consisted in throwing up their figures a good height above
the grounding. Of this raised work there is a fine specimen in the
fourth of those Durham copes. It is said to have been wrought for and
given by Charles I. to that cathedral. This red silk vestment is well
sprinkled with bodiless cherubic heads crowned with rays and borne up
by wings; while upon the hood is shown David, who is holding in one
hand Goliath’s severed head; and the whole is done in highly raised
embroidery. Belonging to a few of our aristocracy are bibles of the
large folio size, covered in rich white silk or satin, and embroidered
with the royal arms done in bold raised-work. Each of such volumes is
said to have been a gift from that prince to a forefather of the man
who now owns it; and a very fine one we lately saw at Ham House.

This style of raised embroidery remained in use for many years; and
even yet to be found are certain quaint old looking-glasses, the broad
frames of which are overlaid with this kind of raised embroidery,
sometimes setting forth, as in the specimen No. 892, p. 319, of the
Brooke collection here, the story of Ahasuerus and Esther, or a passage
in some courtship carried on after the manners of Arcadia.[330]

 [328] Issue Rolls, p. 23.

 [329] Issue Rolls, p. 133.

 [330] Archæological Journal, t. xviii. 191.

Occasionally on work of an earlier period, some element or another of
this raised style may be found; for instance, in that fine Rhenish
embroidery, Nos. 1194-5, p. 21, the bushiness of hair on all the
angels’ heads, is striking, but this is done with little locks of
auburn coloured silk.

But a very few people, at the present moment, have the faintest idea
about the labour, the money, the length of time often bestowed of old
upon embroideries which had been sketched as well as wrought by the
hands of men, each in his own craft the ablest and most cunning of that
day. In behalf of this our own land, we may gather evidences strewed
all over the present Introduction: as a proof of the self-same doings
elsewhere, may be set forth a remarkable passage given, in his life
of Antonio Pollaiuolo, by Vasari, where he says: “For San Giovanni in
Florence there were made certain very rich vestments after the design
of this master, namely, two dalmatics, a chasuble, and a cope, all
of gold-wove velvet with pile upon pile--di broccato riccio sopra
riccio--each woven of one entire piece and without seam, the bordering
and ornaments being stories from the life of St. John, embroidered with
the most subtile mastery of that art by Paolo da Verona, a man most
eminent of his calling, and of incomparable ingenuity: the figures are
no less ably executed with the needle than they would have been if
Antonio had painted them with the pencil; and for this we are largely
indebted to the one master for his design, as well as to the other
for his patience in embroidering it. This work took twenty-six years
for its completion, being wholly in close stitch--questi ricami fatti
con punto serrato--which, to say nothing of its durability, makes the
work appear as if it were a real picture limned with the pencil; but
the excellent method of which is now all but lost, the custom being
in these days to make the stitches much wider--il punteggiare piu
largo--whereby the work is rendered less durable and much less pleasing
to the eye.”[331] These vestments may yet be seen framed and glazed in
presses around the sacristy of San Giovanni.[332] Antonio died A.D.
1498. The magnificent cope once belonging to Westminster Abbey, and
now at Stonyhurst and exhibited here, A.D. 1862, is of one seamless
piece of gorgeous gold tissue figured with bold wide-spreading foliage
in crimson velvet, pile upon pile, and dotted with small gold spots;
it came, it is likely, from the same loom that threw off these San
Giovanni vestments, at Florence.”

 [331] Vite de’ piu Eccellenti Pittori, &c., di G. Vasari, Firenze, F.
    Le Monnier, 1849. t. v. pp. 101, 102; English translation, by Mrs.
    Foster, t. ii. p. 229.

 [332] Ib.


OUR OLD ENGLISH OPUS CONSUTUM, OR CUT WORK,

in French, “appliqué,” is a term of rather wide meaning, as it takes in
several sorts of decorative accompaniments to needlework.

When anything--flower, fruit, or figure--is wrought by itself upon
a separate piece of silk or canvas, and afterwards sewed on to the
vestment for church use, or article for domestic purpose, it comes to
be known as “cut-work.” Though often mixed with embroidery, and oftener
still employed by itself upon liturgical garments; oftenest of all, it
is to be found in bed-curtains, hangings for rooms and halls, hence
called “hallings,” and other items in household furniture.

Of cut-work in embroidery, those pieces of splendid Rhenish needlework
with the blazonment of Cleves, all sewed upon a ground of crimson silk,
as we see, Nos. 1194-5, p. 21. The chasuble of crimson double-pile
velvet, No. 78, p. 1, affords another good example. The niches in which
the saints stand are loom-wrought, but those personages themselves are
exquisitely done on separate pieces of fine canvass, and afterwards let
into the unwoven spaces left open for them.

A Florentine piece of cut-work, No. 5788, p. 111, is alike remarkable
for its great beauty, and the skill shown in bringing together so
nicely, weaving and embroidery. Much of the architectural accessories
is loom-wrought, while the extremities of the evangelists are all
done by the needle; but the head, neck, and long beard are worked by
themselves upon very fine linen, and afterwards put together after
such a way that the full white beard overlaps the tunic. Another and
a larger example, from Florence, of the same sort, is furnished us at
No. 78, p. 1. Quite noteworthy too is the old and valuable vestment,
No. 673, p. 5, in this regard, for parts of the web in the back orphrey
were left open, in the looms for the heads, and extremities of the
figures there, to be done afterwards in needlework. Such a method of
weaving was practised in parts of Germany, and the web from the looms
of Cologne, No. 1329, p. 61, exhibits an example.

Other methods were bade to come and yield a quicker help in this
cut-work. To be more expeditious, all the figures were at once shaped
out of woven silk, satin, velvet, linen, or woollen cloth as wanted,
and sewed upon the grounding of the article. Upon the personages thus
fashioned in silk, satin, or linen, the features of the face and the
contours of the body were wrought by the needle in very narrow lines
done in brown silk thread. At times, even thus much of embroidery
was set aside for the painting brush, and instances are to be found
in which the spaces left uncovered by the loom for the heads and
extremities of the human figures, are filled in by lines from the brush.

Often, too, the cut-work done in these ways is framed, as it were, with
an edging, either in plain or gilt leather, hempen, or silken cord,
exactly like the leadings of a stained glass window.

Belonging to ourselves is an old English chasuble, the broad cross,
at the back of which is figured with “The Resurrection of the Body.”
The dead are arising from their graves, and each is wrought in satin,
upon which the features on the face, and the lineaments of the rest of
the body, are shown by thin lines worked with the needle in dark brown
silk; and the edge, where each figure is sewed on the grounding, is
covered with a narrow black silk cord, after much the same fashion as
the lectern-veil here, No. 7468, p. 141, of silk and gold cut work.
Instances there are wherein, instead of needlework, painting was
resorted to; No. 8315, p. 189, shows us a fine art-work in its way,
upon which we see the folds of the white linen garment worn by our
Lord, marked by brown lines put in with the brush, while the head and
extremities, and the ground strewed with flowers, are wrought with
the needle. No. 8687, p. 258, gives us a figure where the whole of
the person, the fleshes and clothing, are done in woven silk cut out,
shaded and featured in colours by the brush with some little needlework
here and there upon the garments. In that old specimen, No. 8713,
p. 270, such parts of the design as were meant to be white are left
uncovered upon the linen, and the shading is indicated by brown lines.

Perhaps in no collection open anywhere to public view could be found a
piece of cut-work so full of teaching about the process, and its easy
way of execution, as the one here, No. 1370, p. 76; to it we earnestly
recommend the attention of such of our readers as may wish to learn all
about this method.

For the invention of cut-work or “di commesso,” as Vasari calls
it, that writer tells us we are indebted to one of his Florentine
countrymen: “It was by Sandro Botticelli that the method of preparing
banners and standards in what is called cut-work, was invented; and
this he did that the colours might not sink through, showing the tint
of the cloth on each side. The baldachino of Orsanmichele is by this
master, and is so treated,” &c., and this work serves to show how much
more effectually that mode of proceeding preserves the cloth than do
those mordants, which, corroding the surface, allow but a short life to
the work; but as the mordants cost less, they are more frequently used
in our day than the first-mentioned method.[333]

However accurate such a statement may be regarding Italy in general,
and Tuscany in particular, it is, nevertheless, utterly untrue as
applicable to the rest of the world. In this collection may be seen a
valuable piece of this same cut-work--or as Vasari would call it “di
commesso”--by French hands, fraught with a story out of our English
Romance, and done towards the end of the fourteenth century, No. 1370,
p. 76. Now, as Botticelli was born A.D. 1457, and died A.D. 1515, he
came into being almost a whole century too late to have originated such
a process of ornamental needlework, which was well known and practised
in these parts so many years before the birth of that Florentine
painter.

 [333] Vite de’ piu Eccellenti Pittori, &c., di G. Vasari, t. v. p. 121;
    English translation, t. ii. p. 239.

There are some accessories, in mediæval embroidery, which ought not to
be overlooked here.

In some few instances,


GOLD, AND SILVER GILT,

in very many more, wrought after the smith’s cunning into little
star-like flowers--broader, bigger, and more craftily fashioned than
our modern spangles--are to be found sewed upon the silks or amid the
embroidery in the specimens before us, particularly those from Venice
and its main-land provinces in Italy, and from Southern Germany. At No.
8274, pp. 168-9, we have a part of an orphrey embroidered on parchment,
and having along with its coral, gold beads, and seed pearls, small
bosses and ornaments in gilded silver stars; it is Venetian, and of
the second half of the twelfth century. No. 8307, pp. 185-6 is a linen
amice, the silken apparel of which has sewed to it large spangle-like
plates in gilded silver struck with a variety of patterns, showing
how the goldsmith’s hand had been sought by the Germans of the
fifteenth century to give beauty to this silken stuff. The fine piece
of ruby-tinted Genoa velvet, which was once the apparel for the lower
hem of an alb, is sprinkled somewhat thickly with six-rayed stars of
gold and silver; but those made of the latter metal have turned almost
black: here we have a sample of Lombard taste in this matter, of the
ending of the fifteenth century. Silver-gilt spangles wrought to figure
six-petalled flowers on a fine example of gold tissue, under No. 8588,
pp. 222-3, present us with a German craftsman’s work, in the fourteenth
century. No. 8612, p. 233, is not without its value in reference to
Italian taste. All over, this curious now fragmental piece of silk
damask, has at one time been thickly strewed with trefoils cut out of
gilt metal, but very thin, and not sewed but glued on to the silk: many
of these leaves have fallen off, and those remaining turned black.

From among these examples a few will show the reader how the goldsmith
had been tasked to work upon them as jeweller also, and gem the
liturgical garments to which these shreds belong, with real or imitated
precious stones. In the orphrey upon the back of that very rich fine
crimson velvet chasuble, No. 1375, pp. 81-2, the crossed nimb about
our Lord’s head is gemmed with stones set in silver gilt; and the
sockets still left on the piece of crimson velvet, No. 8334, p. 199,
unmistakably speak for themselves.

Besides precious stones, coral, and seed-pearls,


GLASS,

coloured and wrought into small beads and bugles, is another of those
hard materials, the presence of which we find in this collection. As
now, so far back during the mediæval period, the Venetians, at the
island of Murano, wrought small glass beads and bugles of all colours,
as well as pastes--smalti--in every tint for mosaics, and imitations of
jewels. This art, which they had learned from the Greeks, they followed
with signal success; and likely is it that from Venice came the several
specimens of glass--blue, like lapis lazuli--which we still see on
that beautiful frontal in Westminster Abbey,[334]--the work of our
countryman Peter de Ispagna,[335] the member of an old Essex family.
At No. 8276, pp. 168-9, is a piece of an orphrey for a chasuble,
plentifully embroidered with glass beads and bugles, which shows how
much such a style of ornament was used towards the latter end of the
twelfth century, at least in Lower Germany, and some of the Italian
provinces. Belonging to St. Paul’s, London, A.D. 1295, among many other
amices, there was one having glass stones upon it; “amictus ... ornatus
lapidibus vitreis magnis et parvis per totum in capsis argenteis
deauratis, &c.”[336]

 [334] Church of our Fathers, 1, p. 235.

 [335] Monumenta Vetusta, vi. p. 26.

 [336] Dugdale’s St. Paul’s, p. 318.

ENAMEL.

Another form of glass fastened by heat to gold and copper--enamel,
the invention neither of Egypt, Greece, nor Italy, but of our own old
Britons,[337] was extensively employed as an adornment upon textiles.
Besides the examples we have given,[338] that gorgeous “chesable of red
cloth of gold with orphreys before and behind set with pearls, blue,
white and red, with plates of gold enamelled, wanting fifteen plates,
&c.”[339] bestowed by John of Gaunt’s duchess of Lancaster, upon
Lincoln Cathedral, is another instance to show how such a kind of rich
ornamentation was sewed to garments, especially for church use, in such
large quantities.

 [337] Philostratus, Icon. L. 1. cap. 528.

 [338] Church of our Fathers, t. i. p. 469.

 [339] Dugdale’s Mon. Anglic. t. VIII. p. 1281.

Here, in England, the old custom was to sew a great deal of goldsmith’s
work, for enrichment, upon articles meant for personal wear, as well
as on ritual garments. When our first Edward’s grave, in Westminster
Abbey, was opened, A.D. 1774, on the body of the king, besides other
silken robes, was seen, a stole-like band of rich white tissue put
about the neck, and crossed upon his breast: it was studded with
gilt quatrefoils in filigree work and embroidered with pearls. From
the knees downwards the body was wrapped in a pall of cloth of gold.
Concerning attire for liturgical use, the fact may be verified in those
instances we have elsewhere given.[340] When Henry III., in the latter
end of his reign, bestowed a frontal on the high altar in Westminster
Abbey, besides carbuncles in golden settings, as we have just read, p.
xxxvi, we may have observed that along with several larger pieces of
enamel, there were as many as 866 smaller ones--the “esmaux de plique”
of the French--all fastened on this liturgical embroidery.

A good instance of the appliance of figured solid gold or silver, upon
church vestments, is the following one of a cope beaten all over with
lions in silver, given by a well-wisher to Glastonbury Abbey:--“dederat
unam capam rubeam cum leonibus laminis argenteis capæ infixis, &c.”[341]

In the Norman-French, for so long a period in use at our Court, silken
stuffs thus ornamented were said to be “batuz,” or as we now say beaten
with hammered-up gold. Among the liturgical furniture provided by
Richard II. for the chapel in the castle of Haverford, were “ii rydell
batuz”--two altar-curtains beaten (no doubt with ornaments in gilt
silver.)[342]

 [340] Church of Our Fathers, i. 360, 362, 469, &c.

 [341] Johannes Glastoniensis, p. 203.

 [342] Kalendars of the Treasury, &c. ed. Palgrave, t. iii. p. 359.

For the secular employment of this same sort of decoration, we have
several curious examples. Our ladies’ dresses for grand occasions were
so adorned, as we may see in the verses following:--

    In a robe ryght ryall bowne,
    Of a redd syclatowne,
        Be hur fadur syde;

    A coronell on hur hedd sett,
    Hur clothys wyth bestes and byrdes wer bete,
      All abowte for pryde.[343]

A.D. 1215 our King John sent an order to Reginald de Cornhull and
William Cook to have made for him, besides five tunics, five banners
with his arms upon them, well beaten in gold: “quinque banerias de
armis nostris bene auro bacuatas” (_sic_).[344] The _c_ for _t_ must be
a misprint in the last word.

An amice at St. Paul’s had on it the figures of two bishops and a king
hammered up out of gilt silver: “amictus ornatus cum duobus magnis
episcopis et uno rege stantibus argenteis deauratis.”[345]

From the original bill for fitting out one of the ships in which
Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, during the reign of Henry VI., went over to
France, where he had been appointed to a high command, we gather hints
which throw light upon this as well as several matters belonging to
this Introduction. Among other items for the above-named equipage are
these:--“Four hundred pencils (long narrow strips, may be of silk, used
as flags), beat with the Raggedstaff in silver; the other pavys (one
of two shields, likely of wood, and fastened outside the ship at its
bows), painted with black, and a Raggedstaff beat with silver occupying
all the field; one coat (perhaps of silk, but no doubt blazoned with
the Beauchamp’s arms,) for my Lord’s body, beat with fine gold; two
coats (like the foregoing) for heralds, beat with demi gold; a great
streamer for a ship of forty yeards in length and eight yeards in
breadth, with a great Bear and Griffin holding a Raggedstaff poudred
full of Raggedstaffs; three penons (small flags) of satten; sixteen
standards of worsted entailed with the Bear and a chain.”[346] The
quatrefoils on the robe of our First Edward, the silver lions on the
Glastonbury cope, the beasts and birds on the lady’s gown, the Bear,
and Griffin, and Raggedstaff belonging to the Beauchamp’s blazoning,
and all such like enrichments--mostly heraldic--put upon silken stuffs,
were cut out of very thin plates of gold or silver, so as to hang upon
them lightly, and were hammered up to show in low relief the fashion
of the flower and the lineaments of the beast or bird meant to be
represented.

In fact, such a style of ornamentation done in gold or silver, stitched
on silken stuffs made up into liturgical garments, knights’ coats of
arms, ladies’ dresses, heralds’ tabards, or flags and penoncels, was
far more common once than is now thought. It had struck out for itself
a technical expression. In speaking of it men would either write
or say, “silk beaten with gold or silver,” as the case might be--a
meaning, by the way, for the word “beat,” quite overlooked by our
lexicographers; yet, making her will as late as the year 1538, Barbara
Mason bequeathed to a church “a vestment of grene sylke betyn with
goold.”[347]

 [343] Ancient English Metrical Romances, t. iii. pp. 8, 9.

 [344] Close Rolls, ed. D. Hardy, p. 193.

 [345] Dugdale, p. 318.

 [346] Dugdale’s Baronage of England, i. 246.

 [347] Bury Wills, p. 134.

The badge on the arm of the livery coat once commonly worn, and
yet rowed for by the Thames watermen, as well as the armorials
figured, before and behind, upon the fine old picturesque frocks
of our buffetiers--the yeomen of the Royal guard, called in London
“beefeaters,”--help to keep up the tradition of such a style of
ornament in dress.

_Spangles_, when they happened to be used, were not like such as are
now employed, but fashioned after another and artistic shape, and put
on in a different manner. Before me lies a shred from the chasuble
belonging to the set of vestments wrought, it is said, by Isabella of
Spain and her maids of honour, and worn the first time high mass was
sung in Granada, after it had been taken by the Spaniards from the
Moors. Upon this shred are flowers, well thrown up in relief, done in
spangles on a crimson velvet ground. These spangles--some in gold, some
in silver--are, though small, in several sizes; all are voided--that
is, hollow in the middle--with the circumference not flat, but convex,
and are sewed on like tiles one overlapping the other, and thus produce
a rich and pleasing effect. Our present spangles, in the flat shape,
are quite modern.

Sadly overlooked, or but scantily employed on modern embroideries, is
the process of


DIAPERING,

after so many graceful and ever-varying forms to be found almost always
upon mediæval works of the needle.

The garments worn by high personages in the embroidery, and meant to
imitate a golden textile, were done in gold _passing_ sometimes by
itself, sometimes with coloured silk thread laid down alternately aside
it, so as to lend a tinge of green, crimson, pink, or blue, to the
imagined tissue of the robe, as if it were made of a golden stuff shot
with the adopted tint.

For putting on this gold passing, it was of course required to sew it
down. Now, from this very needful and mechanical requirement, those
mediæval needlewomen sought and got an admirable as well as ingenious
element of ornamentation, and so truthful too. Of this our ladies at
this day, seem, from their work, to have a very narrow, short idea.
Taking thin (usually red) silk, and while fastening the golden or
silver passing, they dotted it all over in small stitches set exactly
after a way that showed the one same pattern. So teeming were their
brains in this matter that hardly the same design in diapering is twice
to be found upon the same embroidered picture. With no other appliance
they were thus enabled to lend to their draperies the appearance of
having been, not wrought by the needle, but actually cut out of a piece
of textile, and for which they have been sometimes mistaken.

Of the many samples here of this kind of diapering we select one or
two--Nos. 1194-5, p. 21, which is so very fine, and of itself quite
enough for showing what we wish to point out, and to warrant our
praises of the method; No. 8837, p. 200, is another worth attention.


THREAD EMBROIDERY,

after several of its modes, is represented here; and though the
specimens are not many, some of them are splendid.

By our English women, hundreds of years gone by, among other
applications of the needle, one was to darn upon linen netting or
work thereon with other kinds of stitchery, religious subjects for
Church-use; or flowers and animals for household furniture.

In this country such a sort of embroidering was called
net-work--filatorium--as we learn from the Exeter Inventory, where
we read that its cathedral possessed, A.D. 1327, three pieces of
it, for use at the altar--one in particular for throwing over the
desk: “tria filatoria linea, unde unum pro desco.”[348] From their
liturgical use, as we have noticed, p. 212, they were more generally
named lectern-veils, and as such are spoken of, in the same Devonshire
document: “i lectionale de panno lineo operato de opere acuali,
&c.”[349] Of those narrow, light, and moveable lecterns over which
these linen embroideries were cast, Exeter had three--two of wood,
another which folded up (see p. 212 here,) of iron: “i descus volubilis
de ferro, pro Evangelio supra legendo; ii alia lectrina lignea.”[350]

Almost every one of these thread embroideries were wrought during
the fourteenth century, and several of them for the service of the
sanctuary, either as reredos, frontal, or lectern-veil; and while those
described at pp. 19, 20, 31, 53, 60, 71, 99, 120, 242-3, 249, 261-7,
deserve consideration, a more complete and an especial notice is due
to those two very fine ones under Nos. 8358, p. 210, and 8618, p. 235.
As early as A.D. 1295, St. Paul’s had a cushion covered with knotted
thread: “pulvinar opertum de albo filo nodato.”[351]

 [348] Ed. Oliver, p. 312.

 [349] Ib. p. 356.

 [350] Ib. p. 329.

 [351] Dugdale, p. 316.


QUILTING,

too, must not be forgotten here; and a short look at Nos. 727, p. 14,
and 786, p. 16, will be sufficient to make us understand how, in hands
guided by taste, a work of real, though humble art, may be brought out
and shewn upon any article, from a lady’s skirt to a gentleman’s daily
skull-cap, by such a use of the needle.

_Crochet_, knitting done with linen thread, and in the convents
throughout Flanders, as well as the thick kinds of lace wrought there
upon the cushion with bobbins, came, under the name of nun’s lace, to
be everywhere much employed, from the sixteenth century and upwards,
for bordering altar-cloths, albs, and every sort of towel required in
the celebration of the liturgy. No. 1358, p. 72, is a good example.



SECTION III.--TAPESTRY.


Though regarding actual time so very old, still in comparison with
weaving and embroidery, the art of tapestry is, it would seem, the
youngest of the three.

It is neither real weaving, nor true embroidery, but unites in its
working those two processes into one. Though wrought in a loom and upon
a warp stretched out along its frame, it has no woof thrown across
those threads with a shuttle or any like appliance, but its weft is
done with many short threads, all variously coloured, and put in by
a kind of needle. It is not embroidery, though so very like it, for
tapestry is not worked upon what is really a web--having both warp and
woof--but upon a series of closely set fine strings.

From the way in which tapestry is spoken of in Holy Writ, we are
sure the art must be very old; but if it did not take its first rise
in Egypt, we are led by the same authority to conclude that it soon
became much and successfully cultivated by the people of that land.
The woman in Proverbs vii. 16, says:--“I have woven my bed with cords.
I have covered it with painted tapestry, brought from Egypt.” While,
therefore, in those words we hear how it used to be employed as an
article of household furniture among the Israelites, by them are we
also told that the Egyptians were the makers.

Like weaving and fine needlework, the art of tapestry came from Egypt
and Asia, westward; and in the days of Virgil our old British sires
were employed in the theatres at Rome as scene-shifters, where they had
to take away those tapestries on which they themselves, as examples of
imperial triumph, had been figured:--

                                  Juvat ...
    Vel scena ut versis discedat frontibus, utque
    Purpurea intexti tollant aulæa Britanni.[352]

From Egypt through Western Asia the art of tapestry-making found its
way to Europe, and at last to us; and among the other manual labours
followed by their rule in religious houses, this handicraft was one,
and the monks became some of its best workmen. The altars and the walls
of their churches were hung with such an ornamentation. Matthew Paris
tells us, that among other ornaments which, in the reign of Henry I,
Abbot Geoffrey had made for his church of St. Alban’s monastery, were
three reredoses, the first a large one wrought with the finding of
England’s protomartyr’s body; the other two smaller-ones figured with
the gospel story of the man who fell among thieves, the other with that
of the prodigal son: “dedit quoque dossale magnum in quo intexitur
inventio Sancti Albani, cujus campus est aerius, et aliud minus ubi
effigiatur Evangelium de sauciato qui incidit in latrones, et tertium
ubi historia de filio prodigo figuratur.”[353] While in London, A.D.
1316, Simon Abbot, of Ramsey, bought for his monks’ use looms, staves,
shuttles and a slay: “pro weblomes emptis xx^s. Et pro staves ad easdem
vj^d. Item pro iiij shittles pro eodem opere ij^s vj^d. Item in j. slay
pro textoribus viij^d.”[354]

What was done in one monastery was but the reflex of every other;
hence, Giffard, one of the commissioners for the suppression of the
smaller houses, in the reign of Henry VIII., thus writes to Cromwell,
while speaking of the monastery of Wolstrope, in Lincolnshire:--“Not
one religious person there but that he can and doth use either
imbrothering, writing books with very fair hand, making their own
garments, carving, painting, or graving, &c.”[355]

 [352] Georg. L. iii. 24, &c.

 [353] Vitæ S. Albani Abbatum, p. 40.

 [354] Mon. Anglic. ii. p. 585.

 [355] Collier, Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain, ed. Lathbury,
    t. v. p. 3.

Pieces of English-made tapestry still remain. That fine, though
mutilated specimen at St. Mary’s Hall, Coventry, is one; a second is
the curious reredos for an altar, belonging to the London Vintners’
Company; it is figured with St. Martin on horseback cutting with his
sword his cloak in two, that he might give one-half to a beggar man;
and with St. Dunstan singing mass, and wrought by the monks of St.
Alban’s.

Though practised far and wide, the art of weaving tapestry became
most successfully followed in many parts of France and throughout
ancient Flanders where secular trade-gilds were formed for its especial
manufacture, in many of its towns. Several of these cities won for
themselves an especial fame; but so far, at last, did Arras outrun
them all that arras-work came, in the end, to be the common word, both
here and on the Continent, to mean all sorts of tapestry, whether
wrought in England or abroad. Thus is it, we think, that those fine
hangings for the choir of Canterbury Cathedral, now at Aix-en-Provence,
though made at home, perhaps too by his own monks, and given to that
church by Prior Goldston, A.D. 1595, are spoken of as, not indeed from
Arras, but arras-work--“pannos pulcherrimos opere de arysse subtiliter
intextos.”[356]

Arras is but one among several other terms by which, during the middle
ages, tapestry was called.

From the Saracens, it is likely Western Europe learned the art: at
all events its earliest name in Christendom was Saracenic work--“opus
Saracenicum”--and as our teachers, we too wrought in a low or
horizontal loom. The artizans of France and Flanders were the first
to bring forwards the upright or vertical frame, afterwards known
abroad as “de haute lisse,” in contradistinction to the low or
horizontal frame called “de basse lisse.” Those who went on with the
latter unimproved loom, though thorough good Christians, came to be
known, in the trade, as Saracens, for keeping to the method of their
paynim teachers; and their produce, Saracenic. In year 1339 John de
Croisettes, a Saracen-tapestry worker, living at Arras, sells to the
Duke of Touraine a piece of gold Saracenic tapestry figured with the
story of Charlemaine: “Jean de Croisettes, tapissier Sarrazinois
demeurant à Arras, vend au Duc de Touraine un tapis Sarrazinois à or de
l’histoire de Charlemaine.”[357] Soon however the high frame put out
of use the low one; and among the many pieces of tapestry belonging
to Philippe Duke of Bourgogne and Brabant, very many are especially
entered as of the high frame, and one of them is thus described:--“ung
grant tapiz de haulte lice, sauz or, de l’istoire du duc Guillaume de
Normandie comment il conquist Engleterre.”[358]

 [356] Anglia Sacra, t. i. p. 148.

 [357] Voisin, p. 4.

 [358] Les Ducs de Bourgogne, par le Comte de Laboure, t. ii. p. 270.

With the upright, as with the flat frame, the workman went the same
road to his labours; but, in either of these ways, had to grope in the
dark a great deal on his path. In both, he was obliged to put in the
threads on the back or wrong side of the piece following his sketch as
best he could behind the fixings or warp. As the face was downward in
the flat frame he had no means of looking at it to correct a fault. In
the upright frame he might go in front, and with his own doings in open
view on one hand, and the original design full before him on the other,
he could mend as he went on, step by step, the smallest mistake, were
it but a single thread. Put side by side, when done, the pieces from
the upright frame were, in beauty and perfection, far beyond those that
had come from the flat one. In what that superiority consisted we do
not know with certitude, for not one single flat sample, truly such, is
recognizable from evidence within our reach.

To us it seems that the Saracenic work was in texture light and thin,
so that it might be, as it often was, employed for making vestments
themselves, or sewed instead of needlework embroidered on those
liturgical appliances. In the inventory of St. Paul’s, London, A.D.
1295, mention is made of it thus: “Duo amicti veteres quorum unus de
opere Saraceno.”[359] “Stola de opere Saraceno.”[360] “Vestimentum de
opere Saraceno.”[361] “Tunica et Dalmatica de indico sendato afforciato
cum bordura operis Saraceni.”[362] “Quatuor offertoria de rubeo serico
quorum duo habent extremitates de opere Saraceno.”[363]

 [359] Dugdale, p. 319.

 [360] Ib. p. 319.

 [361] Ib. p. 320.

 [362] Ib. p. 322.

 [363] Ib. p. 324.

Of the tapestries in this collection, perhaps Nos. 1296, p. 296, and
1465, p. 298, may be of the so-called Saracenic kind, because wrought
in the low flat loom, or, “de basse lisse,” while all the rest are
assuredly of the “dehaute lisse,” or done in the upright frame.

When the illuminators of MSS. began--and it was mostly in
Flanders--to put in golden shadings all over their painting, their
fellow-countrymen, the tapestry-workers, did the same.

Such a manner, in consequence, cannot be relied on as any criterion
whereby to judge of the exact place where any specimen of tapestry had
been wrought, or to tell its precise age. To work figures on a golden
ground, and to shade garments, buildings, and landscapes with gold, are
two different things.

Upon several pieces here gold thread has been very plentifully used,
but the metal is of so debased a quality that it has become almost
black.

For Church decoration and household furniture the use of tapestry, both
here and abroad, was--nay, on the Continent still is--very great.
The many large pieces, mostly of a scriptural character, provided
by Cardinal Wolsey for his palace at Hampton Court, were very fine.
The most beautiful collection in the world--the Arazzi--now in the
Vatican at Rome, may be judged of by looking at a few of the original
cartoons at present in the Museum, drawn and coloured by Raffael’s own
hand. Duke Cosimo tried to set up tapestry work at Florence, but did
not succeed. Later, Rome produced some good things; among others, the
fine copy of Da Vinci’s Last Supper still hung up on Maundy Thursday.
England herself made like attempts--first at Mortlake, then years
afterwards in London, at Soho. Works from these two establishments
may be met with. At Northumberland House there is a room all hung
with large pieces of tapestry wrought at Soho, and for that place, in
the year 1758. The designs were done by Francesco Zuccherelli, and
consist of landscapes composed of hills crowned here and there with the
standing ruins of temples, or strewed with broken columns, among which
are wandering and amusing themselves groups of country folks. Mortlake
and Soho were failures. Not so the Gobelins at Paris, as may be
observed in the beautifully executed specimens in the Museum. As now,
so in ages gone by, pieces of tapestry were laid down for carpeting.

In many of our old-fashioned houses--in the country in particular--good
samples of Flemish tapestry may be found. Close to London, Holland
House is adorned with some curious specimens, especially in the raised
style.

Imitated tapestry--if paintings on canvas may be so called--existed
here hundreds of years ago under the name of “stayned cloth,” and the
workers of it were embodied into a London civic gild. Of this “stayned
cloth” we have lately found hangings upon the walls of a dining-room in
one mansion; in another ornamenting, with great effect, the top of a
stair-case.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century Exeter Cathedral had several
pieces of old painted or “stayned” cloth: “i pannus veteratus depictus
cum ymaginibus Sancti Andree in medio et Petri et Pauli ex lateribus;
i front stayned cum crucifixo, Maria et Johanne, Petro et Paulo; viij
parvi panni linei stayned, &c.”[364]

The very great use at that time of such articles in household furniture
may be witnessed in the will, A.D. 1503, of Katherine Lady Hastings,
who bequeaths, besides several other such pieces, “an old hangin of
counterfeit arres of Knollys, which now hangeth in the hall, and all
such hangyings of old bawdekyn, or lynen paynted as now hang in the
chappell.”[365]

 [364] Ed. Oliver, p. 359.

 [365] Testamenta Vetusta, ii. 453.


CARPETS

are somewhat akin to tapestry, and though the use of them may perhaps
be not so ancient, yet is very old. Here, again, to the people of
Asia, must we look for the finest as well as earliest examples of this
textile. Few are the mediæval specimens of it anywhere, and we are glad
to recommend attention to two pieces of that period fortunately in the
collection, No. 8649, p. 248, of the fourteenth century, and No. 8357,
p. 209, of the sixteenth, both of Spanish make.

As even the antechambers of our royal palaces, so the chancels in most
of our country parish churches used to be strewed with rushes. When,
however, they could afford it, the authorities of our cathedrals, even
in Anglo-Saxon times, sought to spread the sanctuary with carpets; and
at last old tapestry came to be so employed, as now in Italy. Among
such coverings for the floor before the altar, Exeter had a large
piece of Arras cloth figured with the life of the Duke of Burgundy,
the gift of one of its bishops, Edmund Lacy, A.D. 1420, besides two
large carpets, one bestowed by Bishop Nevill, A.D. 1456, the other,
of a chequered pattern, by Lady Elizabeth Courtney: “Carpet et panni
coram altari sternendi--i pannus de Arys de historia Ducis Burgundie--i
larga carpeta, &c.”[366] In an earlier inventory, we find that among
the “bancaria,” or bench-coverings, in the choir of the same cathedral,
A.D. 1327, one was a large piece of English-made tapestry, with a
fretted pattern--“unum tapetum magnum Anglicanum frettatum.”[367] And
we think that as the Record Commission goes on under the Master of the
Rolls, to print our ancient historians, evidences will turn up showing
that the looms at work in all our great monasteries, among other webs,
wrought carpets. From existing printed testimony we know that, in
all likelihood, such must have been the practice at Croyland, where
Abbot Egelric, the second of the name bestowed before the year 992,
when he died, upon his church: “two large foot-cloths
(so carpets were then called) woven with lions to be laid out before
the high altar on great festivals, and two shorter ones trailed all
over with flowers, for the feast days of the Apostles: “Dedit etiam
duo magna pedalia leonibus intexta, ponenda ante magnum altare in
festis principalibus et duo breviora floribus respersa pro festis
Apostolorum.”[368] The quantity of carpeting in our palaces may be seen
by the way in which “my lady the queen’s rooms were strewed with them
‘when she took her chamber.’”[369]

 [366] Ed. Oliver, p. 32.

 [367] Ib. p. 317.

 [368] Ingulphi Hist. ed. Savile, p. 505, b.

 [369] Leland’s Collectanea, t. iv. pp. 179, 186, &c.



SECTION IV.


While telling of a coronation, a royal marriage, the queen’s ‘taking
her chamber,’ her after-churching, a baptism, a progress, or a
funeral, the historian or the painter cannot bring before his own
mind, much less set forth to ours, a fit idea of the circumstances in
the splendour shown on any one of these imperial occasions, unless he
can see old samples of those cloths of gold, figured velvets, curious
embroidery, and silken stuffs, such as are gathered in this collection,
and used to be worn of old for those functions.

Of the many valuable, though indirect uses to which this curious
collection of textiles may, on occasions, be turned, a few there are to
which we call particular attention, for the ready help it is likely to
afford. In the first place, to


THE HISTORIAN,

in some at least of his researches, as he not only writes of bloodshed
and of wars, that make or unmake kings, but follows his countrymen in
private life through their several ways onward to civilization and the
cultivation of the arts of peace.

Besides a tiny shred (No. 675, p. 6) of the very needlework itself,
we have here a coloured plaster-cast of one of the figures in the
so-called Bayeux Tapestry, which, among some, it has of late been a
fashion to look upon as a great historic document, because it was, they
say, worked by no less a personage than William’s own queen, Matilda,
helped by her handmaids.

Its present and modern title is altogether a misnomer. It is
needlework, and no tapestry. Not Normandy, but England, is most likely
to have been the country; not Bayeux, but London, the place wherein it
was wrought. Probabilities forbid us from believing that either Matilda
herself, or her waiting ladies, ever did a stitch on this canvas; nay,
it is likely she never as much as saw it.

Coarse white linen and common worsted would never have been the
materials which any queen would have chosen for such a work by which
her husband’s great achievement was to be celebrated.

But three women are seen upon the work, and Matilda is not one of
them. Surely the dullest courtier would never have forgotten such an
opportunity for a compliment to his royal mistress by putting in her
person.

A piece, nineteen inches broad and two hundred and twenty-six feet
long, crowded with fighting men--some on foot, some on horseback--with
buildings and castles, must have taken much time and busied many hands
for its working. Yet of all this, nought has ever turned up in any
notice of Matilda’s life. She was not, like the Anglo-Saxon Margaret
queen of Scotland, known to fill up her time amidst her maids with
needlework, nor ever stood out a parallel to an older Anglo-Saxon
high-born lady, the noble Ælfleda, of whom we now speak. Her husband
was the famous Northumbrian chieftain, Brithnoth, who had so often
fought and so sorely worsted the invading Danes, by whom he was at last
slain. His loving wife and her women wrought his deeds of daring in
needlework upon a curtain which she gave to the minster church at Ely,
wherein the headless body of her Brithnoth lay buried: “cortinam gestis
viri sui (Brithnothi) intextam atque depictam in memoriam probitatis
ejus, huic ecclesiæ (Eliensi) donavit (Ælfleda).”[370] Surely when
Ælfleda’s handiwork found a chronicler, that of a queen would never
have gone without one. Moreover, had such a piece any-wise or ever
belonged to William’s wife, we must think that, instead of being let
to stray away to Bayeux, towards which place she bore no particular
affection, she would have bequeathed it, like other things, to her
beloved church at Caen. Yet in her will no notice of it comes, and
the only mention of any needlework is of two English specimens, one a
chasuble bought of Aldaret’s wife at Winchester, and a vestment then
being wrought for her in England: “casulam quam apud Wintoniam operatur
uxor Aldereti ... atque aliud vestimentum quod operatur in Anglia,”
both of which she leaves to the Church of the Holy Trinity at Caen.

 [370] Historia Eliensis, Lib. Secund. ed. Stewart, p. 183.

But there is the tradition that it is Matilda’s doing. True, but it is
barely a hundred years old, and its first appearance was in the year
1730 or so: tradition so young goes then for nothing. Who then got it
worked, and why did it find its way to Bayeux?

Odo, bishop of Bayeux, and own brother to William came himself, and,
like other rich and powerful Norman Lords, brought vassals who fought
at Hastings. Of all the great chiefs, but one, at most but two, are
pointed out by name on this piece. Odo, however, is figured in no less
than three of its compartments; furthermore, three men quite unknown to
fame, Turold, Vital, and Wadard, receive as many times as the bishop
this same honourable distinction. Rich and influential in Normandy,
Odo, after being made Earl of Kent by his victorious brother, became
richer and more influential in England; hence the three above-mentioned
individuals, the prelate’s feudatories, by their master’s favour, got
possession of wide landed estates in many parts of England, as appears
from Domesday. Coming from Bayeux itself, and owing service to its
bishop, through whom they had become rich lords in England, these three
men may have very naturally wished to make a joint offering to the
cathedral of their native city. Hence they had this piece of needlework
done in London, and on it caused, neither Matilda nor any of the great
chiefs of the Norman expedition, but instead, the bishop of Bayeux and
themselves its citizens to be so conspicuously set forth upon what was
meant to be, for Bayeux itself, a memorial of the part that the bishop
and three men of Bayeux had taken in the Norman conquest of England.

On second thoughts, we look upon this curious piece as the work of the
early part of the twelfth century, perhaps as an offering to the new
church (the old one having been burned down by our Henry I. A.D. 1106)
of Bayeux, as in measurement it exactly fits for hanging both sides of
the present nave, its original as well as recent purpose.

In future, then, our writers may be led to use with caution this
so-called Bayeux Tapestry, as a document contemporaneous with the
Norman conquest.

Though, in the reign of our Henry II. London was the head city of this
kingdom, and the chief home of royalty, some reader may perhaps be
startled on hearing that while its churches were 120, the inhabitants
amounted only to the number of 40,000, as we learn from Peter, its then
archdeacon: “nam quum sint in illa civitate (Londinensi) quadra-ginta
millia hominum, atque centum et viginti ecclesiæ,” &c.[371]--yet, at
that very time, the capital of Sicily--Palermo--by itself was yielding
to its king a yearly revenue quite equal in amount to the whole income
of England’s sovereign, as we are told by Gerald Barry the learned
Welsh writer then living: “Urbs etenim una Siciliæ, Palernica scilicet,
plus certi redditus regi Siculo singulis annis reddere solet, quam
Anglorum regi nunc reddit Anglia tota.”[372] This great wealth was
gathered to Sicily by her trade in silken textiles, first with the
Byzantines and the coasts of Asia Minor and Alexandria, where those
stuffs were at the time wrought; and secondly, with Europe, and the
products of her own looms somewhat later. Many of the pieces in this
collection were woven at Palermo and other cities in that island.
She herself was not the least consumer of her own industry, and of
the profuse employment of silk for royal awnings, during the twelfth
century in the kingdom of the two Sicilies. We have an example in
the silken tent, made for queen Joan, and given her by her husband
king William, large enough to hold two hundred knights sitting down
to dinner; and which, along with her chair of gold, and golden table
twelve feet long and a foot and a-half wide, her brother, our Richard
I. got back for his sister from Tancred: “Ipse (Richardus rex) enim a
rege Tancredo exigebat--cathedram auream ad opus ejusdem Johannæ de
consuetudine reginarum illius regni et ad opus sui ipsius mensam auream
de longitudine duodecim pedum, et de latitudine unius pedis et semis
et quoddam tentorium de serico magnum adeo quod ducenti milites in eo
possint simul manducare.”[373]

Among the old copes, dalmatics and chasubles which, one after the
other, find their way at last to collections such as this, must the
historian seek for what remains of those gorgeous robes worn at some
interesting ceremony, or on some stirring occasion, by personages
celebrated in our national annals. For example, along with the several
gifts bestowed upon the church of Ely, by king Edgar, we find mentioned
his mantle of costly purple and gold, of which was made a vestment:
“Enimvero chlamydem suam de insigni purpura ad modum loricæ auro
undique contextam illuc (ecclesiæ Eliensi) contulit rex Ædgarus.”[374]
Of a whole set of mass vestments at Windsor made out of the crimson and
gold cloth powdered with birds, once the array worn by a royal princess
when she was married, we have already spoken.

 [371] Petri Blesensis Opera, ed. Giles, t. ii. p. 85.

 [372] Geraldi Cambrensis De Instructione Principum, ed. J. S. Brewer,
    p. 168.

 [373] Rog. Hoveden Annal. ed. Savile, p. 384, b.

 [374] Hist. Elien. Lib. Secund. ed. Stewart, p. 160.

Queen Philippa gave to Symon, bishop of Ely, the gown she wore at her
churching after the birth of her eldest son the Black Prince. The
garment was of murrey-coloured velvet, powdered with golden squirrels,
and so ample that it furnished forth three copes for choir use:
“Contulit sibi (Symoni de Monte Acuto) Domina regina quandam robam
preciosam cum omnibus garniamentis de velvet murreo squirrillis aureis
pulverizato; qua induta erat in die Purificationis suæ post partum
Principis excellentissimi Domini Edwardi filii sui primogeniti. De
quibus garniamentis tres capæ efficiuntur,” &c.[375] To St. Alban’s
Abbey was sent by Elizabeth Lady Beauchamp the splendid mantle made
of cloth of gold lined with crimson velvet which Henry V. had on as
he rode in state on horseback through London, the day before his
coronation. Also another gown of green and gold velvet out of both
of which vestments were made: “Elizabeth Beauchamp mulier nobilis
... contulit monasterio S. Albani quandam togam pretiosissimam auro
textam duplicatam cum panno de velvetto rubeo resperso cum rosis
aureis quæ quondam erat indumentum regis Henrici quinti dum regaliter
equitaret per Londonias pridie ante coronationem suam. Item dedit et
aliam gounam de viridi velvetto auro texto unde fieri posset integrum
vestimentum quæ similiter fuit ejusdem regis.”[376] Naturally wishful
to know something about such costly stuffs, the historian will have
to come hither, where he may find specimens in the gorgeous velvet
and gold chasubles in this collection. Whilst here perchance his eye
may wander toward such pieces as those Nos. 1310, p. 53, and 8624,
p. 239, whereon he sees figured, stags with tall branching horns,
couchant, chained, upturning their antlered heads to sunbeams darting
down upon them amid a shower of rain; and beneath the stags are
eagles; p. 239. This Sicilian textile, woven about the end of the
fourteenth century, brings to his mind that bronze cumbent figure of
a king in Westminster Abbey. It is of Richard II. made for him before
his downfal, and by two coppersmiths of London, Nicholas Broker and
Godfrey Prest. This effigy, once finely gilt, is as remarkable for its
beautiful workmanship, as for the elaborate manner in which the cloak
and kirtle worn by the king are diapered all over with the pattern
(now hid under coats of dirt) on that silken stuff out of which those
garments must have been cut for his personal wear while living; and it
consists of a sprig of the Planta genesta, the humble broom plant--the
haughty Plantagenets’ device--along with a couchant hart chained and
gazing straight forwards, and above it a cloud with rays darting up
from behind. With Edward III. Richard’s grandfather, “sunbeams issuing
from a cloud” was a favourite cognizance. The white hart he got from
the white hind, the cognizance of his mother Joan, the fair maid of
Kent, and rendered remarkable by the unflinching steadfastness of
the faithful Jenico in wearing it as his royal master’s badge after
Richard’s downfal. Sometimes, did that king take as a device a white
falcon, for, at a tournament held by him at Windsor, forty of his
knights came clothed in green with a white falcon on the stuff. During
a foppish reign, Richard was the greatest fop. When he sat to those
two London citizens for his monument, which they so ably wrought, and
which still is at Westminster, our own belief is that he wore a dress
of silk which had been expressly woven for him at Palermo. We think,
too, that the couple of specimens here, Nos. 1310, p. 53, and 8624, p.
239, were originally wrought in Sicily, after designs from England, and
for the court of Richard: they quite answer the period, and show those
favourite devices, the chained hart, sunbeams issuing from a cloud, the
falcon or eagle--a group in itself quite peculiar to that monarch. For
the slight variations in these stuffs from those upon the Westminster
monument, we will account, a little further on, while treating the
subject of symbolism, Section VII.

 [375] Anglia Sacra, ed. Wharton, t. i. p. 650.

 [376] Mon. Anglic. ed. Caley, t. ii. p. 223.

The seemliness, not to say comfort, of private life, was improved by
the use, after several ways, of textiles. Let the historian contrast
the manners, even in a royal palace during the twelfth century, with
those that are now followed in every tradesman’s home. Then, rich
barons and titled courtiers would sprawl amid the straw and rushes,
strewed in the houses even of the king, upon the floor in every room,
which, as Wendover says: “junco solent domorum areæ operiri;”[377]
and, platting knots with the litter, fling them with a gibe at the man
who had been slighted by the prince.[378] Not quite a hundred years
later, when Eleanor of Castile came to London for her marriage with our
first Edward, she found her lodgings furnished, under the directions
of the Spanish courtiers who had arrived before her, with hangings and
curtains of silk around the walls, and carpets spread upon the ground.
This sorrowed some of our people; more of them giggled at the thought
that some of these costly things were laid down to be walked upon,
as we learn from Matthew Paris: “Cum venisset illa nurus nobilissima
(Alienora) ad hospitium sibi assignatum invenit illud ... holosericis
palliis et tapetiis, ad similitudinem templi appensis; etiam pavimentum
aulæis redimitum, Hispanis, secundum patriæ suæ forte consuetudinem
hoc procurantibus.”[379] Now, our houses have a carpet for every room
as well as on its stair-case, and not a few of our shops are carpeted
throughout.

 [377] T. iii. p. 109.

 [378] Vita S. Thomæ, auct. Eduardo Grim. ed. Giles, p. 47.

 [379] Hist. Ang. in A.D. 1255, p. 612, col. b.

The Emperor Aurelian’s wife once tried to coax out of her imperial
husband a silk cloak--only one silk cloak. “No,” was the answer; “I
could never think,” said that lord of the earth, “of buying such a
thing; it sells for its weight in gold;” as we showed before, p.
xix. Now, however, little does the woman of the nineteenth century
suspect, when she goes forth pranked out in all her bravery of dress,
that an Egyptian Cleopatra equally with a Roman empress would have
looked with a grudging eye upon her gay silk gown and satin ribbons;
or that, as late as three hundred years ago, even her silken hose
would have been an offering worthy of an English queen’s (Elizabeth’s)
acceptance. Little, too, does that tall young man who, as he stands
behind the lady’s chariot going to a Drawing-room, ever and anon lets
drop a stealthy but complaisant look upon his own legs shining in soft
blushing silk--ah! little does he dream that in that old palace before
him there once dwelt a king (James I.) of Great Britain, who would
have envied him his bright new stockings; and who, before he came to
the throne of England, was fain to wear some borrowed ones, when in
Scotland he had to receive an English ambassador. If we take this loan,
for the nonce, from the Earl of Mar to his royal master, to have been
as shapeless and befrilled as are the yellow pair (Blue Coat School
boys’ as yet) once Queen Elizabeth’s, now among the curiosities at
Hatfield; then were those stockings--the first woven in England, and
presented by Lord Hunsdon--funny things, indeed.

Though so small a thing, there is in this collection a little cushion,
No. 9047, p. 273, which bears in it much more than what shows itself
at first, and is likely to awaken the curiosity of some who may have
hereafter to write about the doings of our Court in the early part of
the seventeenth century. This cushion is needle-wrought and figured
all over with animals, armorial bearings, flowers, and love-knots,
together with the letters I and R royally crowned with a strawberry
leaf, and the strawberry fruit close by each of those capitals, as well
as plentifully sprinkled all over the work.

In Scotland, several noble families, whether they spell their name
FRASER or FRAZER, use as a canting charge--“arme che cantano”--of
the Italians; the French “frasier,” or strawberry, leafed, flowered,
fructed proper; the buck too, figured here, comes in or about their
armorial shields. Hence then we are fairly warranted in thinking that
it was a Fraser’s lady hand which wrought this small, but elaborate
cushion, most likely as a gift, and with a strong meaning about it,
to our King James I., whose unicorn is not forgotten here; and, in
all probability, whilst she also wished to indicate that an S was the
first letter in her own baptismal name. Siren too is another term for
mermaid--that emblem so conspicuously figured by the lady’s side. All
this, with the love-knot so plentifully broadcast and interwoven after
many ways, and sprinkled everywhere as such a favourite device, perhaps
may help some future biographer of James to throw a light over a few
hidden passages in the life of that sovereign.

Human hair, or something very like it, was put into the embroidery on
parts of this small cushion. On the under side, to the left, stands a
lady with her hair lying in rolls about her forehead. After looking
well into them, through a glass, these rolls seem to be real human
hair--may be the lady’s own--it is yellow. Peering narrowly into those
red roses close by, seeded and barbed, the seeded part or middle is
found to be worked with two distinct sorts of human hair--one the very
same as the golden hair on the lady’s brow, the other of a light sandy
shade: could this have been king James’s? His son, Charles I., used,
as it would seem, to send from his prison locks of his own hair to some
few of the gentry favourable to his cause, so that the ladies of that
house, while working his royal portraiture in coloured silks, might
be able to do the head of hair on it, in the very hair itself of that
sovereign. One or two of such wrought likenesses of king Charles were,
not long ago, shown in the exhibition of miniatures which took place in
this Museum.

For verifying passages in early as well as mediæval times, little does
the historian think of finding in these specimens such a help for the
purpose.

Quintus Curtius tells us, that, reaching India, the Greeks under
Alexander found there a famous breed of dogs for lion-hunting more
especially. On beholding a wild beast they hush their yelpings, and
hold their prey by the teeth with so much stubbornness that sooner than
let go their bite they would suffer one of their own limbs to be cut
off: “Nobiles ad venandum canes in ea regione sunt: latratu abstinere
dicuntur, quum viderunt feram, leonibus maxime, infesti,” &c.[380]
Such is the animal now known as the cheetah, which, as of old so all
through the middle ages, up to the present time, has been trained
everywhere in Persia and over India for hunting purposes; and called by
our countryman, Sir John Mandeville, a “papyonn,” as we have noticed in
this catalogue, p. 178. This far-famed hunting-dog of Quintus Curtius,
now known as the cheetah or hunting-lion, may be often met with on
silken textiles here from Asiatic looms, especially in Nos. 7083, p.
136; 7086, p. 137; 8233, p. 154; 8288, p. 178.

 [380] Lib. ix. cap. i. sect. 6.



SECTION V.--LITURGY.


For a sight of some liturgical appliances which, though once so common
and everywhere employed have become rare from having one by one dropped
into disuse, ritualists, foreign ones among the rest, will have to come
hither. A few more of such articles, though still in common use, are
remarkable for the antiquity or the costliness of those stuffs out of
which they happen to be made.

For its age, and the beauty of its needlework, the Syon cope is in
itself a remarkable treasure, while its emblazoned orphreys, like the
vestments on the person of a Percy in Beverley minster, make it, at
least according to present custom, singular. Several chasubles here
so noteworthy for their gorgeousness, have their fellows equal in
splendour, elsewhere; but in this museum are a few articles which till
now we might have sought for in vain throughout Christendom in any
other private or public collection.

Such liturgical boxes as those two--No. 5958, p. 112, and No. 8327, p.
193--are of the kind known of old as the “capsella cum serico decenter
ornata”--a little box beseemingly fitted up with silk--of the mediæval
writers; or the “capsula corporalium”--the box in which are kept the
corporals or square pieces of fine linen, a fine mediæval specimen of
which is here, No. 8329, p. 195, of the rubrics which, to this day,
require its employment for a particular service, during holy week. Like
its use the name of this appliance is very old, and both are spoken
of in those ancient “Ordines Romani,” in the first of which, drawn up
now more than a thousand years ago, it is directed: “tunc duo acolythi
tenentes capsas cum Sanctis apertas, &c.;”[381] and again, in another
“Ordo,” written out some little time before A.D. 1143, a part of the
rubric for Good Friday requires the Pope to go barefoot during the
procession in which a cardinal carries the Host consecrated the day
before, and preserved in the corporals’ chest or box: “discalceatus
(papa) pergit cum processione.... Quidam cardinalis honorifice portat
corpus Domini præteriti diei conservatum, in capsula corporalium.”[382]
About the mass of the presanctified, before the beginning of which this
procession took as it yet takes place, we have said a few words at pp.
112, 113. What is meant by the word “corporal,” we have explained, p.
194. Here in England, such small wooden boxes covered with silks and
velvets richly embroidered, were once employed for the same liturgical
uses. The Exeter inventories specify them thus: “unum repositorium
ligneum pro corporalibus co-opertum cum saccis de serico;”[383] “tria
corporalia in casa lignea co-operta cum panno serico, operata cum
diversis armis.”[384]

 [381] Ed. Mabillon, Museum Italicum, t. ii. p. 8.

 [382] Ib. p. 137.

 [383] Oliver’s Exeter Cathedral, p. 314.

 [384] Ib. p. 327.

Good Friday brings to mind a religious practice followed wherever the
Greek ritual is observed, and the appliance for which, No. 8278, p.
170, we have there spoken of at such length as to save us here any
further notice of this interesting kind of frontal, upon which is shown
our dead Lord lying stretched out upon the sindon or winding-sheet.
Of the Cyrillian character in which the Greek sentences upon it are
written, we shall have a more fitting opportunity for speaking a
little further on. At Rome, in the Pope’s chapel, the frontal set
before the altar for the function of Maundy Thursday, is of gold cloth
figured, amid other subjects suitable to the time, with our Lord lying
dead between two angels who are upholding His head, as we learn from
the industrious Cancellieri’s description, in his “Settimana Santa
nella cappella pontificia.”[385]

In Greece may be still found several churches built with a dome, all
around which is figured, in painting or in mosaics, what is there known
as and called the “Divine Liturgy,” after this manner. On the eastern
side, and before an altar, but facing the west, stands our Lord, robed
as a patriarch, about to offer up the mass. The rest of the round in
the cupola is filled with a crowd of angels,--some arrayed in chasubles
like priests, some as deacons, but each bearing in his hands either one
of the several vestments or some liturgical vessel or appliance needed
at the celebration of the sacred mysteries,--all walking, as it were,
to the spot where stands the divine pontiff. But amid this angel-throng
may be seen six of these winged ministers who are carrying between them
a sindon exactly figured as is the one of which we are now speaking.
How, according to the Greek ritual, this subject ought to be done, is
given in the Painter’s Guide, edited by Didron.[386] Though of yore as
now a somewhat similar ceremonial was always observed according to the
Latin rite, in carrying his vestments to a bishop when he pontificated,
never in such a procession here, in the west, was any frontal or sindon
borne, as in the east.

With regard to “red” as the mourning colour, in the sindon, our own
old English use joined it with “black” upon vestments especially
intended to be worn in services for the dead. For especial use on Good
Friday Bishop Grandison gave to his cathedral (Exeter) a black silk
chasuble, the red orphrey at the back of which had embroidered on it
our Lord hanging upon a green cross: “j casula de nigro serico, pro Die
Paraschive, cum j orfrey quasi rubii coloris, cum crucifixo pendente
in viridi cruce, ex dono Johannis Grandissono;”[387] and in the same
document, among the black copes and chasubles, we find that they had
their orphreys made of red: “cape nigre cum casulis--j casula de nigro
velvete cum rubeo velvete in le orfrey. ij tuniculi ejusdem panni et
secte. iij cape ejusdem panni et secte.”[388]

 [385] P. 58.

 [386] Manuel d’Iconographie Chretienne, pp. xxxvi. 229.

 [387] Oliver, p. 344.

 [388] Ib. p. 349.

At Lincoln cathedral there were “a chesable of black cloth of gold of
bawdkin with a red orphrey, &c.; a black cope of cloth of silver with
an orphrey of red velvet broidered with flowers, &c.; a black cope of
camlet broidered with flowers of woodbine with an orphrey of red cloth
of gold,” &c.; two copes of black satin with orphreys of red damask,
broidered with flowers of gold, having, in the back, souls rising to
their doom, &c., besides other vestments of the same kind.[389] Green,
sometimes along with red, sometimes taking the latter’s place in the
orphreys, may be seen on some of our old vestments.

Those two pyx-cloths at No. 8342, p. 202, and No. 8691, p. 260, will
have an interest for the student of mediæval liturgy as we have already
pointed out, p. 202. While in Italy the custom, during the middle
ages at least, never prevailed, here in England as well as all over
France, and several countries on the Continent, it did, of keeping
the Eucharist under one form, hung up over the high altar beneath a
beautiful canopy within a pyx of gold, silver, ivory, or enamel, and
mantled with a fine linen embroidered cloth or veil. At present this
“velum pyidis” overspreading the ciborium or pyx in the tabernacle, is
of silk.

In olden days the veil for the pyx was, here in England, beautifully
embroidered with golden thread and coloured silks, and usually carried
three crowns of gold or silver, as is shown in the woodcut, “Church
of our Fathers,”[390] and often mentioned in many of our national
documents which, without some such notice as this, could not be rightly
understood. Among the things once belonging to Richard II. in Haverford
castle and sent by the sheriff of Hereford to the exchequer, at the
beginning of Henry IV.’s reign, are three crowns of gold, a gold cup,
and one of the pyx-veils like these: “iij corones d’or pour le Corps
Ihu Cryst. i coupe d’or pour le Corps Ihu Cryst. i towayll ove (avec) i
longe parure de mesure la suyte.”[391]

 [389] Monasticon Anglicanum, t. viii. p. 1285, ed. Caley.

 [390] T. iv. p. 206.

 [391] The Ancient Kalendars and Inventories of His Majesty’s Exchequer,
    t. iii. p. 361. ed. Palgrave.

By different people, and at various periods, a variety of names was
given to this fine linen covering. Describing in his will, one made in
this country and so valuable for its English needlework, a bishop of
Tournay (see before p. xcix) calls it a corporal: in the inventory of
things taken from Dr. Caius, and in the college of his own founding
at Cambridge, are: “corporas clothes, with the pix and ‘sindon’ and
canopie,” &c.[392] This variety in nomenclature doubtless led writers
unacquainted with ritual matters to state that before Mary Queen of
Scots bent her head upon the block, she had a “corporal,” properly so
called, bound over her eyes. What to our seeming this bandage really
was, must have been a large piece of fine linen embroidered by her own
hands--Mary wrought much with her needle, as specimens of her doing yet
remain at Chatsworth, and at Greystock show--meant for, perhaps too
once used as a pyx-cloth, and not an altar corporal.

 [392] Munk’s Roll of the Royal College of Physicians, t. i. p. 37.

Whilst these pages were going through the press, one of these old
English pyx, or Corpus Christi cloths, was found at the bottom of a
chest in Hessett church, Suffolk. As it is a remarkable and unique
specimen of the ingenious handicraft done by our mediæval countrywomen,
we notice it. To make this pyx-cloth, a piece of thick linen, about two
feet square, was chosen, and being marked off into small equal widths
on all its four edges, the threads at every other space were, both in
the warp and woof, pulled out. The checquers or squares so produced
all over it were then drawn in by threads tied on the under side, so
as to have the shape of stars, so well and nicely given that, till
this piece had been narrowly looked into, it was thought to be guipure
lace. Of a textile so admirably wrought, it is to be regretted that
there is, as yet, no sample in this collection. This curious liturgical
appliance is figured in the April number, for the year 1868, of the
“Ecclesiologist,” page 86.

For the several very curious sorts of ornamental needlework about it,
and the somewhat intricate manner after which it is cut out, the old
alb, No. 8710, p. 268, as well as the amice, No. 8307, p. 185, having
both of them the apparels yet remaining sewed on to these church
garments, must draw the attention of every inquirer after such rare
existing samples of the kind.

Some very fine threaden cloths--now become rare--for liturgical
purposes, deserve attention. In the old inventories of church furniture
in England, they are known under the name of “filatoria,” about which
we have spoken just now, p. cix. At No. 4457, p. 99, is a towel which,
it is likely, was spread under the tapers for Candlemass-day, and the
twigs of the sallow, or willow (our so-called palm), and slips of
the box-tree, for Palm-Sunday, while they were being hallowed before
distribution. For several lectern veils, we shall have to go to No.
7029, p. 120; No. 8358, p. 210; and No. 8693, p. 261.

Those two linen napkins, formerly kept hanging down from just below the
crook on a pastoral staff or crozier are become so excessively rare,
that we unhesitatingly believe that none of our countrymen have ever
been able to find, either in England or abroad, a single other sample;
they are to be seen, No. 8279A, p. 174, and No. 8662, p. 250.

Those who have ever witnessed on a Sunday morning in any of the great
churches at Paris, the blessing of the French “pain beni”--our old
English “holy loaf”--the “eulogia” of antiquity--will call to mind
how a fair white linen cloth, like the one here, No. 8698, p. 263,
overspread, and fell in graceful folds down from two sides of the board
upon which, borne on the shoulders of four youthful acolytes, a large
round cake garnished with flowers and wax-tapers was carried through
the chancel, and halting at the altar’s foot got its blessing from the
celebrant.

The rich crimson velvet cope, No. 79, p. 2, has a fine hood figured
with the coming down, after the usual manner, of the Holy Ghost upon
the infant church. No. 8595, p. 226, presents us with a shred merely
of what must have been once a large hanging for the chancel walls,
or perhaps one of the two curtains at the altar’s sides, having such
fragments of some Latin sentences as these:--“et tui amoris in eis
... tus. Re ... le tuoru.” The subject on the cope’s hood tells of
Pentecost Sunday; so too does the second article, for those broken
sentences are parts of particular words: “Veni Sancte Spiritus, reple
tuorum corda fidelium: et tui amoris in eis ignem accende,” to be found
both in our own old English Salisbury missal, and breviary, but in
every like service-book in use during the mediæval period throughout
western Christendom. Be it kept in mind that both these liturgical
appliances are red or crimson; and as now, so heretofore, as well
in old England, as elsewhere this very colour has been employed for
the church’s vestments, thus to remind us of those parted tongues,
as it were, of fire that sat upon every one of the Apostles.[393] We
mention all this with a view to correct an error in lexicography.
In our dictionaries we are told that “Whitsuntide” is a contracted
form of White Sunday tide, so called from the white vestments worn on
that day by the candidates for baptism. Nothing of the sort; but the
word “wits,” our intellect or understanding, is the root of the term,
for a curious and valuable old English book of sermons called “The
Festival,” tells us:--“This day is called Wytsonday by cause the Holy
Ghoost brought wytte and wysdom in to Cristis dyscyples; and so by her
preachyng after in to all Cristendom.”[394]

 [393] Acts ii. 1-11.

 [394] In die Penthecostes, fol. xlvi. verso.

Somewhat akin to this subject, are those several christening cloaks
here, pp. 8, 9, 10, 11. Not long ago the custom was to carry to church
for baptism the baby wrapped up in some such a silken covering which
was called a bearing-cloth. Of old, that used to be a conspicuous
article in all royal christenings; and amongst our gentry was looked
upon as worthy enough of being made a testamentary bequest. At the
christening of Arthur Prince of Wales, eldest son of Henry VII. “my
Lady Cecill, the Queen’s eldest sister, bare the prince wrapped in a
Mantell of Cremesyn Clothe of Golde furred with Ermyn,” &c.[395] Such
ceremonial garments varied, according to the owner’s position of life,
in costliness; hence Shakespeare makes the shepherd, in the “Winter’s
Tale,” cry out, “Here’s a sight for thee; look thee, a bearing cloth
for a squire’s child!”[396] A well-to-do tradesman bequeathed, A.D.
1648, to his daughter Rose his “beareing cloath such ... linnen as is
belonginge to infants at their tyme of baptisme.”[397]

Very often in our old country houses are found, thrown aside in some
antique chest, certain small square pieces of nice embroidery, the
former use for which nobody now knows, and about which one is asked. If
their owners would look at those several cradle-quilts here--pp. 4, 13,
66, 67, 100, 103, 104, 110--they might find out such ancient household
stuff was wrought for their forefathers’ comfort and adornment, when
mere babies. The evangelists’ emblems figured on several among these
coverlets: such as No. 1344, p. 67, No. 4459, p. 100, No. 4644, p. 103,
will call to mind those old nursery-rhymes we referred to at p. 103. Of
yore, not only little children, but grown-up, ay, aged men too loved to
think about those verses, when they went to sleep, for the inventory
of furniture taken, A.D. 1446, in the Priory of Durham, tells us that
in the upper chamber there was a bed-quilt embroidered with the four
Evangelists--one in each corner: “j culcitrum cum iiij or Evangelistis
in corneriis.”[398]

The bag or purse, No. 8313, p. 188, is of a kind which not only were
used for those liturgical purposes which we have already enumerated,
but served for private devotional practices. In that very interesting
will made by Henry, Lord de Scrope, A.D. 1415, among other pious
bequests, is the following one, of the little bag having in it a piece
of our Lord’s cross, which he always wore about his neck;--“j bursa
parva quæ semper pendet circa collum meum cum cruce Domini.”[399]

 [395] Leland’s Collectanea, t. iv. pp. 205, 180, 181, 183.

 [396] Act iii. scene iii.

 [397] Bury Wills, &c. p. 186.

 [398] Hist. Dunelm. Scriptores Tres, ed. Surtees Society, p. cclxxxvii.

 [399] Rymer’s Fœdera, t. ix. p. 278.

The crimson velvet mitre,--No. 4015, p. 85,--for the boy-bishop,
bairn-bishop, or Nicholas-tide bishop, as the little boy was severally
called in England, is a liturgical curiosity, as the ceremonies in
which it was formerly worn are everywhere laid aside. Among the things
given for the use of the chapel in the college--All Souls--of his
founding at Oxford by Archbishop Chicheley, are a cope and mitre for
this boy, there named the Nicholas-tide bishope:--“i cap. et mitre pro
episcopo Nicholao.”[400] To make good his election to such a dignity,
at Eton College, a boy had to study hard and show at the examination
for it, that he was the ablest there at his books: his success almost
ennobled him among his schoolfellows:--“In die Sti Hugonis pontificis”
(17 Nov.) “solebat Ætonæ fieri electio Episcopi Nihilensis, sed
consuetudo obsolevit. Olim episcopus ille puerorum habebatur nobilis,
in cujus electione, et literata et laudatissima exercitatio, ad
ingeniorum vires et motos exercendos, Ætonæ celebris erat.”[401] The
colour, crimson, in this boy’s mitre, was to distinguish it from that
of bishops.

Of the episcopal bairn-cloth--the Gremiale of foreign liturgists--we
have two specimens here,--Nos. 1031, 1032, pp. 19, 20. The rich one of
crimson cloth of gold, once belonging to Bowet, Archbishop of York, who
died A.D. 1423, brought more money than even a chasuble of the same
stuff:--“Et de xxvj_s._ viij_d._ receptis pro j. bairnecloth de rubeo
panno auri. Et de xx_s._ receptis pro j casula de rubeo beaudkyn, &c.
Inventorium,” &c.[402]

Old episcopal shoes are now become great liturgical rarities, but there
is one here,--No. 1290, p. 46. At one time they were called “sandals;”
and among the episcopal ornaments that went by usage to Durham
cathedral at the death of any of its bishops, were “mitra et baculum
et sandalia et cætera episcopalia,” of Hugh Pudsey, A.D. 1195.[403]
Later was given them the name of “sabatines;” and Archbishop Bowet’s
inventory mentions two pairs:--“pro j pare de sabbatones, brouddird,
et couch’ cum perell’; pro j pare de sabbatones de albo panno auri,”
&c.[404]

 [400] Collectanea Curiosa, ed. Gutch, t. ii. p 265.

 [401] King’s College, Cambridge, and Eton College Statutes, ed. Wright,
    p. 632.

 [402] Test. Ebor. t. iii. p. 76, ed. Surtees Society.

 [403] Wills of the Northern Counties, ed. Surtees Society, t. i. p. 3.

 [404] Ib. p. 76.



SECTION VI.--ARTISTS AND MANUFACTURERS


Will, on many occasions, heartily rejoice to have, within easy reach,
such an extensive, varied, and curious collection of textiles gathered
from many lands, and wrought in different ages.

For the painter and the decorator it must have a peculiar value.

Until this collection of silken and other kinds of woven stuffs had
been brought to England, and opened for the world’s inspection and
study, an artist had not, either in this country or abroad, any
available means of being correctly true in the patterns of those silks
and velvets with which he wished to array his personages, or of the
hangings for garnishing the walls of the hall in which he laid the
scene of his subject. In such a need, right glad was he if he might go
to any small collection of scanty odds and ends belonging to a friend,
or kept in private hands. So keenly was this want felt, that, but a
few years ago, works of beautiful execution, but of costly price, were
undertaken upon the dress of olden times, and mediæval furniture; yet
those who got up such books could do nothing better than set out in
drawings, as their authorities for both the branches of their subject,
such few specimens as they could pick up figured in illuminated MSS.
and the works of the early masters. Here, however, our own and foreign
artists see before them, not copies, but those very self-same stuffs.

If we go to our National Gallery and look at the mediæval pictures
there, taking note of the stuffs in which those old men who did them
clothed their personages; if, then, we step hither, we shall be struck
by the fact of seeing in these very textiles, duplicates, as far as
pattern is sought, of those same painted garments. For example, in
Orcagna’s Coronation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the blue silk diapered
in gold, with flowers and birds, hung as a back ground; our Lord’s
white tunic diapered in gold with foliage; the mantle of His mother
made of the same stuff; St. Stephen’s dalmatic of green samit, diapered
with golden foliage, are all quite Sicilian in design, and copied from
those rich silks which came, at the middle of the fourteenth century,
from the looms of Palermo. While standing before Jacopo di Casentino’s
St. John, our eye is drawn, on the instant, to the orphrey on that
evangelist’s chasuble, embroidered, after the Tuscan style, with barbed
quatrefoils, shutting in the busts of Apostles. Isotta da Rimini, in
her portrait by Pietro della Francesca, wears a gown made of velvet and
gold, much like some cut velvets here.

In the patterns followed by the Sicilian looms, and those of Italy in
general, may almost always be found the same especial elements. Of
these, one is the artichoke in flower; and in F. Francia’s painting of
the Blessed Virgin Mary with our Lord in her arms, and saints standing
about them,--No. 179,--St. Laurence’s rich cloth of gold is diapered
all over with the artichoke marked out in thin red lines. So, too, in
the picture of V. Cappaccio, No. 750, the cloth-of-gold mantle worn by
our Lord’s mother, as well as the dress of the Doge, are both diapered
with this favourite Italian vegetable. Often is this artichoke shut in
by an oval, made sometimes of ogee arches, with their finials shooting
forwards outside: thus is diapered the cloak of the Madonna, in
Crivelli’s Inthronement--No. 724. Much more frequently, however, this
oval is put together out of architectural cusps--six or eight--turned
inside, and their featherings sprouting out into a trefoil, as in our
own Early English style. Such ovals round an artichoke are well shown
in each of the four pictures by Melozzo da Forli, on the pede-cloth
with which the steps in each of them are covered. Of such a patterned
stuff here we select from several such, for the reader, Nos. 1352, p.
70; 1352A, p. 70.

Stained and patterned papers for wall-hanging are even yet unknown
but in a very few places on the Continent. The employment of them as
furniture among ourselves is comparatively very modern, and came to
England, it is likely, through our trade with China. Though in Italy
the state apartment and the reception rooms of a palace are hung
always with rich damasks, and often with fine tapestry, while some
old examples of gilt and beautifully-wrought leather trailed all over
with coloured flowers and leaves are still to be found, the rooms
for domestic use have their whitewashed walls adorned at best with
a coloured ornamentation, bestowed upon them by the cheap and ready
process of stencilling.

From early times up to the middle of the sixteenth century, our
cathedrals and parish churches, our castles, manorial houses, and
granges, the dwellings of the wealthy everywhere, used to be ornamented
with wall-painting done, not in “fresco,” but in “secco;” that
is, distemper. Upon high festivals the walls of the churches were
overspread with tapestry and needlework; so, too, those in the halls of
the gentry, for some solemn ceremonial.

Our high-born ladies used to spend their leisure hours in working these
“hallings,” as they were called; and while Bradshaw, a monk of St.
Werburgh’s monastery at Chester, sings the praises of the patron-saint
of his church, he gives us a charming picture of how a large hall was
arrayed here in England with needlework, for a solemn feast some time
about the latter end of the fifteenth century.

First of all, according to the then wont, when great folks were bidden
to a feast:--

    All herbes and flowers, fragraunt, fayre and swete
    Were strawed in halles, and layd under theyr fete.
    Clothes of gold and arras were hanged in the hall
    Depaynted with pyctures and hystoryes manyfolde,
    Well wroughte and craftely.

The story of Adam, Noe, and his shyppe; the twelve sones of Jacob; the
ten plages of Egypt, and--

    Duke Josue was joyned after them in pycture,

           *       *       *       *       *

    Theyr noble actes and tryumphes marcyall
    Fresshly were browdred in these clothes royall.

           *       *       *       *       *

    But over the hye desse in pryncypall place
    Where the sayd thre Kynges sat crowned all
    The best hallynge hanged as reason was,
    Whereon were wrought the ix orders angelicall,
    Dyvyded in thre ierarchyses, not cessynge to call,
    _Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus_, blessed be the Trynite,
    _Dominus Deus Sabaoth_, thre persons in one deyte.[405]

The tapestries here will afford much help to the artist if he have to
paint a dining room with festive doings going on, any time during the
latter portion of the mediæval period; but such “hallings” are by no
means scarce. Not so, however, such pieces of room hangings as he may
find here at No. 1370, p. 76; No. 1297, p. 296; No. 1465 p. 298. Their
fellows are nowhere else to be met with.

At a certain period, gloves were a much more ornamented and decorative
article of dress than now; and, when meant for ladies’ wear, a somewhat
lasting perfume was bestowed upon them. Among the new year’s day
presents to Tudor Queen Mary, some years before she came to the throne,
was “a payr of gloves embrawret with gold.”[406] A year afterwards, “x
payr of Spanyneshe gloves from a Duches in Spayne,” came to her;[407]
and but a month before, Mrs. Whellers had sent to her highness “a pair
of swete gloves.” Shakespeare, true to manners of his days, after
making the pretended pedler, Autolycus, thus chant the praises of his--

    Laura, as white as driven snow;
    Cyprus, black as e’er was crow;
    Gloves, as sweet as damask roses;

puts this into Mopsa, the shepherdess’, mouth, as she speaks to her
swain:--“Come, you promised me a tawdry lace, and a pair of sweet
gloves.”[408] Here, in this collection, we may find a pair of such
gloves, No. 4665, p. 105. What, though the fragrance that once, no
doubt, hung about them, be all gone, yet their shape and embroideries
will render them a valuable item to the artist for some painting.

 [405] Warton’s History of English Poetry, ed. 1840, t. ii. p. 375, &c.

 [406] Privy Purse Expenses of the Princess Mary, ed. Madden, p. 144.

 [407] Ib. p. 164.

 [408] “A Winter’s Tale,” act iv. scene iii.

Manufacturers and master-weavers of every kind of textile, as well as
their workmen, may gather some useful hints for their trade, by a look
at the various specimens set out here before them.

They will, no doubt, congratulate themselves, as they fairly may, that
their better knowledge of chemistry enables them to give to silk, wool,
and cotton, tints and tones of tints, and shades, nay, entire colours
quite unknown to the olden times, even to their elders of a few years
ago: our new-found chemicals are carrying the dyeing art to a high
point of beauty and perfection.

Among the several boasts of the present age one is, that of making
machinery, as a working power in delicate operations, so true, as if
it had been quickened with a life and will and power all its own:
mechanism applied to weaving is, at least for the speed of plain work,
most marvellous; and the improvements of the morrow over those of
yesterday make the wonder grow. But, though having such appliances at
hand, let an able well-taught designer for silken stuffs come hither,
along with a skilled weaver, from Coventry, Glasgow, or Manchester, and
the two will say, that for truthfulness and beauty in the drawing of
the patterns, and their good renderings in the weaving, nothing of the
present day is better, while much is often not so good. Yet these old
stuffs before our eyes were wrought in looms so clumsy, and awkward,
and helpless, that a weaver of the present day laughs at them in scorn.
The man, however, who should happen to be asked to make the working
drawings for several of such textiles, would fain acknowledge that he
had been taught much by their study, and must strive hard before he
might surpass many of them in the often crowded, yet generally clear
combination of parts borrowed from beasts, birds, and flowers, all
rendered with beauty and fittingness.

What has been, may be done again. We know better how to dye; we have
more handy mechanism. Let, then, all those who belong any-wise to the
weaving trade and come hither, go home resolved to stand for the future
behind no nation, either of past or present time, in the ability of
weaving not only useful, but beautiful and artistic textiles.

Before leaving the South Kensington Museum the master weaver may, if
he wishes, convince himself that the so-called tricks of the trade are
not evils of this age’s growth, but, it is likely, older than history
herself. For mediæval instances of fraud in his own line of business,
he will find not a few among the silks from Syria, Palermo, and the
South of Spain.

What we said just now about Lettered Silks, p. lix. should be borne
here in mind. With the Saracens, wherever they spread themselves, the
usage was to weave upon their textiles, very often, either the title
of the prince who was to wear them or give them away, or some short
form of prayer or benediction. By Christian eyes, such Arabic words
were looked upon as the true unerring sign that the stuffs that showed
them came from Saracenic looms--the best of those times--or, in other
terms, were the trade-mark of the Moslem. The Christian and Jewish
weavers in many parts of the East, to make their own webs pass as
Saracenic goods, wrought the Paynim trade-mark, as then understood,
upon them. The forgery is clumsy: the letters are poor imitations of
the Arabic character, and the pretended word runs, as it should, first
correctly, or from right to left, then wrong or backward from left to
right, just as if this part of the pattern--and it is nothing more--had
been intended, like every other element in it, to confront itself
by immediate repetition on the self-same line. Our young folks who
sometimes amuse themselves by writing a name on paper, and while the
ink is wet fold the sheet so that the word is shown again as if written
backwards, get such a kind of scroll.

In many Oriental silk textiles the warp is either of hemp, flax, or
cotton; but this is so easily discoverable that it could hardly have
been done for fraud’ sake. There is however a Saracenic trick, learned
from that people, and afterwards practised by the Spaniards of the
South, for imitating a woof of gold. It is rather ingenious, and we
presume unknown among collectors and writers until now.

For the purpose, the finer sort of parchment was sought out, sometimes
as thin as that now rare kind of vellum called, among manuscript
collectors, “uterine.” Such skins were well gilt and then cut into very
narrow shreds, which were afterwards, instead of gold, woven, as the
woof to the silken warp, to show those portions of the pattern which
should be wrought in golden thread. But as these strips of gilded
parchment were flat, they necessarily gave the stuffs in which they
came all the look of being that costly and much used web called by us
in the fifteenth century “tyssewys,” as we have before noticed, p.
xxxi. Specimens of such a fraudulent textile are to be seen here, Nos.
7067, p. 132; 7095, p. 140; 8590, p. 224; 8601, p. 229; 8639, p. 243,
&c.



SECTION VII.--SYMBOLISM.


A metaphor or figurative speech is the utterance to the understanding
through the ear of words which have other and further meanings in
them than their first one. Symbolism is the bringing to our thoughts,
through the eye, some natural object, some human personage, some
art-wrought figure, which is meant to set forth a some one, or a
something else besides itself.

The use of both arose among men when they first began to dwell on earth
and live together. Through symbolism, and the phonetic system, Egypt
struck out for herself her three alphabets--the hieroglyphic or picture
writing; the hieratic or priestly characters, or shortened form of
the hieroglyphics; and the enchorial or people’s alphabet, a further
abridgment still. The Hebrew letters are the conventional symbols of
things in nature or art; and even yet, each keeps the name of the
object which at first it represented; as “aleph” or “ox,” “beth” or
“house,” “gimel” or “camel,” &c.

Holy Writ is full of symbolism; and from the moment that we begin to
read those words--“I will set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be
the sign of a covenant,”[409] till we reach the last chapter in the
New Testament, we shall, all throughout, come upon many most beautiful
and appropriate examples. The blood sprinkled upon the door-posts of
the Israelites; the brazen serpent in the wilderness; that sign--that
mystic and saving sign (Tau) of Ezekiel, were, each and every one of
them symbols.

 [409] Gen. ix. 13.

Being given to understand that things which happened to the Jews were
so many symbols for us, the early Christian Church figured on the
walls of the catacombs many passages from ancient Jewish history as
applicable to itself, while its writers bestowed much attention on the
study of symbolism. S. Melito, bishop of Sardes, A.D. 170, drew out of
scripture a great many texts which would bear a symbolical meaning, and
gave to his work the name of “The Key.” Almost quite forgotten, and
well nigh lost, this valuable book, after long and unwearied labour,
was at last found and printed by Dom (now Cardinal) Pitra in his
Spicilegium Solesmense, t. ii. Among other works from the pen of St.
Epiphanius, born A.D. 310, we have his annotations on a book, then old,
and called “The Physiologist,” and a work of his own--a treatise on the
twelve stones worn by Aaron,[410] in both of which, the Saint speaks
much about symbolism. But the fourth century witnessed the production
of the two great works on Scriptural Symbolism; that of St. Basil in
his homilies on the six days’ creation;[411] which sermons in Greek
were styled by their writer “Hexæmeron;” and the other by St. Ambrose,
in Latin, longer and more elaborated, on the same subject and bearing
the same title. A love for such a study grew up with the church’s
growth everywhere, from the far east to the utmost west, amid Greeks
as well as Latins, all of whom beheld, in their several liturgies,
many illustrations of the system. It was not confined to clerics, but
laymen warmly followed it. The artist, whether he had to set forth
his work in painting or mosaic; the architects, whether they were
entrusted with the raising of a church, or building a royal palace, nay
a dwelling-house, were, each of them, but too glad to avail themselves,
under clerical guidance, of such a powerful help for beautiful variety
and happy illustration as was afforded them by Christian Symbolism.
So systematized at last became this subject that by the eleventh
century we find it separated into three branches--beasts, birds, and
stones--and works were written upon each. Those upon beasts were, as
they still are, known by the title of “Bestiaria,” or books on beasts;
“Volucraria,” on birds, and “Lapideria,” on stones. About the same
period, as an offset from symbolism, heraldry sprang up; whether the
crusaders were the first to bethink themselves of such a method for
personal recognition and distinction; or whether they borrowed the
idea from the peoples in the east, and while adopting, much improved
upon it, matters not; heraldry grew out of symbolism. Very soon it was
made to tell about secular as well as sacred things; and poets, nay
political partizans were quick in their learning of its language. The
weaver too of silken webs was often bade, while gearing his loom, to be
directed by its teaching, as several specimens in this collection will
testify. That some of the patterns, made up of beasts and birds, upon
silken stuffs from Sicilian, or Italian looms and here before us, were
sketched by a partizan pencil and advisedly meant to carry about them
an historic, if not political signification, we do not for a moment
doubt. Several instances of sacred symbolism here, have been specified,
and some explanation of it given.

 [410] Exod. xxviii.

 [411] Gen. i.

The “gammadion,” or the cross made thus 卐 a figure which, as we said
before, is to be seen traced upon the earliest heathenish art-works, as
well as the latest mediæval ones for Christian use, may be often found
wrought on textiles here.

Knowing, as we do, that the first time this symbol shows itself to our
eyes, is in the pattern figured on a web of the Pharaonic period, it is
to the early history of Egypt we ought to go, if we wish to learn its
origin and meaning.

The most astounding event of the world’s annals was the going out of
Israel from Egypt. The blood of the lamb slain and sacrificed the
evening before, and put upon both the door-posts, as well as sprinkled
at the threshold of the house wherein any Hebrew dwelt--a sign of
safety from all harm and death to man and beast, within its walls, on
that awful night when throughout all Egypt the first-born of everything
else was killed--must have caught the sight of every wonder-stricken
Egyptian father and mother who, while weeping over their loss, heard
that death had not gone in to do the work of slaughter where the blood
had signed the gates of every Israelite.

Among the Hebrew traditions, handed down to us by the Rabbins, one is
that the mark made by the Israelites upon their door-posts with the
blood of the sacrificed lamb, the night before starting out of Egypt,
was fashioned like the letter Tau made after its olden form, that is,
in the shape of a cross, thus +.

What is still more curious, we are told that the lamb itself was
spitted as if it had been meant to bear about its body, an unmistakable
likeness to a kind of crucifixion. Treating of the passover, the Talmud
says:--The ram or kid was roasted in an oven whole, with two spits made
of pomegranate wood thrust through it, the one lengthwise, the other
transversely (crossing the longitudinal one near the fore-legs) thus
forming a cross.[412] Precisely the same thing is said by St. Justin,
martyr, born A.D. 103, in his Dialogue with Tryphon the Jew. This very
mode of roasting is expressed in Arabic by the verb “to crucify;”
according to Jahn, in his “Biblical Antiquities,” § 142, as quoted by
Kitto, under the word Passover.[413]

 [412] Pesachim, c. 3.

 [413] T. ii. p. 477 of the “Cyclopædia of Biblical Literature.”

From the words of St. Jerome, it would seem that that learned hebraist,
well knowing, as he did, the traditions of the rabbins of his day, had
understood from them that the mark of the lamb’s blood sprinkled on the
doors of the Israelites going out of Egypt, had been so made as to take
the shape of a cross.

Deeply smitten as the whole of Egypt must have been at the woe that
befel them and theirs, the night before the great exode of the
Israelites from among them, those Egyptians could not help seeing
how all the Hebrews, their children, and their flocks had gone forth
scatheless out of that death-stricken land. At peep of dawn, the blood
upon the door-posts of every house where an Israelite had lately
dwelt, told the secret; for the destroyer had not been there. From
that hour, a Tau was thought by them to be the symbol of health and
safety, of happiness, and future life. St. Epiphanius, born A.D. 310,
in Palestine, for many years Archbishop of Salamis in Cyprus, and a
great traveller in Egypt, tells us, that being mindful of that day on
which the Israelites who had besmeared the door-posts of their houses
with the blood of the lamb, had been spared the angel’s death-stroke,
the Egyptian people were accustomed, at every vernal equinox--their new
year--to daub, with red paint, their doors, their trees, and animals,
the while they cried out that, “once at this time fire blighted every
thing;” against such a plague, they think that the remedy is a spell in
the colour of blood: “Egyptios memores illius diei quo a cæde angeli
liberati sunt Israelitæ qui agni sanguine postes domorum illinierant,
solitos esse, intrante æquinoctio vernanti, accipere rubricam et
illinere omnes arbores domosque clamantes ‘quia in tempore hoc ignis
vastavit omnia’ contra quam luem remedium putant ignis colorem
sanguineum rubricæ.”[414]

 [414] Hæreses, xviii.

While they found blood upon the departed and unharmed Israelites’
door-posts, the sorrowing Egyptians must have seen that it had been
sprinkled there, not at hazard, but with the studied purpose of making
therewith the Egyptian letter Tau, as it used to be fashioned at the
time. But what was then its common shape? That the old Tau was a cross,
we are told by written authority, and learn from monumental evidence.
Learned as he was in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, Moses, no doubt,
wrote with the letters of their alphabet. Now, the oldest shape of the
Tau in the Hebrew alphabet, and still kept up among the Samaritans in
St. Jerome’s days, was in the form of a cross: “Antiquis Hebræorum
literis, quibus usque hodie Samaritæ utuntur, extrema Tau crucis habet
similitudinem, quæ in Christianorum frontibus pingitur et frequentius
manus inscriptione signatur.”[415] For monumental testimony we refer
the reader to the proofs we have given, at large, in “Hierurgia,”
pp. 352-355, second edition. Strengthening our idea that the lamb’s
blood had been put on the door-post in the shape of a cross, and that
hence the old Egyptians had borrowed it as a spell against evil hap,
and a symbol of a life hereafter, is a passage set forth, first by
Rufinus, A.D. 397, and then by Socrates, A.D. 440:--“On demolishing
at Alexandria a temple dedicated to Serapis, were observed several
stones sculptured with letters called hieroglyphics, which showed the
figure of a cross. Certain Gentile inhabitants of the city who had
lately been converted to the Christian faith, initiated in the method
of interpreting these enigmatic characters, declared that the figure of
the cross was considered as the symbol of future life.”[416] We know
that, while the old Tau kept the shape of a cross, it took at least
three modifications of that form on those monuments which, up to this
time, have been brought to light: others may turn up with that letter
traced exactly like the so-called “gammadion” found upon an Egyptian
stuff of such an early date. Most probably this was the very shape, but
with shorter arms, of the letter found traced upon the door-posts.

 [415] Hier. in cap. ix. Ezech.

 [416] Hist. Eccles. lib. v. c. 17.

The recurrence of the gammadion upon Christian monuments is curious.
We find it shown upon the tunic of a gravedigger in the catacombs; it
comes in among the ornamentation wrought upon the gold and parcel-gilt
altar-frontal dome by our Anglo-Saxon countryman Walwin for the
Ambrosian basilican church at Milan; it is seen upon the narrow border
round some embroidery of the twelfth century, lately found within
a shrine in Belgium, and figured by that untiring archæologist the
Canon Voisin of Tournay; and upon a piece of English needlework of the
latter half of the same twelfth century--the mitre of our St. Thomas,
figured by Shaw, and still kept at Sens cathedral. As a favourite
element in the pattern worked upon our ecclesiastical embroideries,
this “gammadion” is as conspicuously shown upon the apparel round the
shoulders, and on the one in front of his alb, in the effigy of Bishop
Edington, at Winchester cathedral, as upon the vestments of a priest
in a grave-brass at Shottesbrook church, Berks, given by Waller in his
fine work.

Always keeping up its heathenish signification of a “future life,”
Christianity widened the meaning of this symbol, and made it teach
the doctrine of the Atonement through the death of our Lord upon a
cross. Furthermore, it set forth that He is our corner-stone. About
the thirteenth century, it was taken to be an apt memorial of His
five wounds; and remembering the stigmata or five impressions in the
hands, feet, and side of St. Francis of Assisi, this gammadion became
the favourite device of such as bore that famous saint’s name, and was
called in England, after its partial likeness to the ensigne of the
Isle of Man--three feet--a fylfot.[417]

 [417] M. S. Harley, 874, p. 190.

To the symbolic meaning affixed unto some animals, we have pointed in
the catalogue, wherein, at p. 156, the reader will find that Christ,
as God, is typified under the figure of a lion, under that again of
the unicorn, as God-man. Man’s soul, at pp. 237, 311, is figured as
the hare; mischief and lubricity are, at p. 311, shadowed forth in the
likeness of the monkey.

Birds often come in here as symbols; and of course we behold the lordly
eagle very frequently. Bearing in mind how struggled the two great
factions of the Guelphs whose armorial arms were “un’ Aquila con un
Drago sotto i piedi”--an eagle with a dragon under its feet--and the
Ghibellini, we do not wonder at finding the noble bird, sometimes
single, sometimes double-headed, so frequently figured on silks woven
in Sicily, or on the Italian peninsula, triumphing over his enemy, the
dragon or Ghibelline stretched down before him. About the emblematic
eagle of classic times we have already spoken.

If the Roman Quintus Curtius, like the Greeks before him, was in
amazement at certain birds in India, so quick in mimicking the human
voice: “aves ad imitandum humanæ vocis sonum dociles,”[418] we
naturally expect to find the parrot figured, as we do here, upon stuffs
from Asia, or imitations of such webs.

Famous, in eastern story, are those knowing birds--and they were
parrots--that, on coming home at evening, used to whisper unto
Æthiopia’s queen (whom Englishmen not till the sixteenth century began
to call Sheba, but all the world besides called and yet calls Saba)
each word and doing, that day, of the far-off Solomon, or brought
round their necks letters from him. Out of this Talmudic fable grew
the method with artists during the fifteenth century of figuring
one of the wise men as very swarthy--an Æthiopian--under the name
of Balthasar, taking as their warrant, a work called “Collectaneæ,”
erroneously assigned to our own Beda; and because our Salisbury books
for the liturgy, sang, as all the old liturgies yet sing, on the feast
of the Epiphany:--“All shall come from Saba”--the name of the country
as well as of that queen who once governed it--“bringing gold and
frankincense,” &c. those mediæval artists deemed it proper to show
somewhere about the wise men, parrots, as sure to have been brought
among the other gifts, especially from the land of Saba. Upon a cope,
belonging now to Mount St. Mary’s, Chesterfield, made of very rich
crimson velvet, there is beautifully embroidered by English hands,
the arrival at Bethlehem of the three wise men. In the orphrey, on
that part just above the hood, are figured in their proper colours two
parrots, as those may remember who saw it in the Exhibition here of
1862; on textiles before us this bird is often shown. The appearance of
the parrot on the vestments at old St. Paul’s is very frequent.[419]

 [418] Lib. viii. cap. 9.

 [419] Dugdale, p. 317.

But of the feathered tribe which we meet with figured on these
textiles, there are three that merit an especial mention through the
important part they were made to take, whilom in England at many a
high festival and regal celebration--we mean the so-called “_Vow of
the Swan, the Peacock and the Pheasant_.” From the graceful ease--the
almost royal dignity with which it walks the waters, the swan with its
plumage spotless and white as driven snow, has everywhere been looked
upon with admiring eyes; and its flesh while yet a cygnet used to be
esteemed a dainty for a royal board, on some extraordinary occasions.
To make it the symbol of majestic beauty in a woman, it had sometimes
given it a female’s head. Among the gifts bestowed on his son, Richard
II. by the Black Prince, in his will were bed-hangings embroidered with
white swans having women’s heads. To raise this bird still higher, in
ecclesiastical symbolism, it is put forth to indicate a stainless, more
than royal purity; and as such, is often linked with and figured under
the Blessed Virgin Mary, as is shown upon an enamelled morse given in
the “Church of our Fathers.”[420]

Besides all this, the swan owns a curious legend of its own, set
forth by some raving troubadour in the wildest dream that minstrel
ever dreamed. “The life and myraculous hystory of the most noble
and illustryous Helyas, knight of the swanne, and the birth of y^e
excellent knight Godfrey of Boulyon,” &c., was once a book in great
favour throughout Europe; and was “newly translated and printed by
Robert Copland, out of Frensshe in to Englisshe at thinstigacion of y^e
Puyssaunt and Illustryous Prynce Lorde Edwarde Duke of Buckyngham--of
whom lynyally is dyscended my sayde lorde.”[421]

 [420] T. ii. p. 41.

 [421] Typographical Antiquities of Great Britain, ed. Dibdin, t. iii.
    pp. 152-3.

While our noble countryman boasted of an offspring from this fabled
swan, so did the greatest houses abroad. In private hands in England
is a precious ivory casket wrought on its five panels, before us in
photography, with this history of the swan. Helyas’s shield and flag
are ensigned with St. George’s cross; the armour tells of England and
its military appliances, about the end of the fourteenth century; and
the whole seems the work of English hands. At the great exhibition
of loans in this museum, A.D. 1862, one of the many fine textiles
then shown was a fine but cut-down chasuble of blue Sicilian silk,
upon which was, curiously enough for what we have said about the
birds before which the “Vow” was made, figured, amid other fowls the
pheasant. The handsome orphreys upon this vestment were wrought in this
country, and good specimens they are of English needlework during the
fourteenth century. These orphreys, before and behind, are embroidered
on a bright red silk ground, with golden flower and leaf-bearing
branches, so trailed as, in their twinings, to form Stafford knots in
places, and to embower shields of arms each supported by gold swans
all once ducally gorged. From these and other bearings on it, this
chasuble would seem to have been worked for the Staffords, Dukes of
Buckingham. At Corby Castle there is an altar frontal of crimson velvet
made for and figured with the great Buckingham and his Duchess both
on their knees at the foot of a crucifix. Amid a sprinkling of the
Stafford knot, for the Duke (Henry VIII. beheaded him) was Earl of
Stafford, the swan is shown, and the Lord Stafford of Cossey, in whose
veins the blood of the old Buckingham still runs, gives a silver swan
as one of his armorial supporters. At Lincoln cathedral there were:--A
cope of red cloth of gold with swans of gold;[422] and a cope of purple
velvet having a good orphrey set with swans.[423]

In mediæval symbolism, as read by Englishmen, the swan was deemed
not only a royal bird, but, more than that, one of the tokens of
royal prowess. Hence we may easily understand why our great warrior
king, Edward I., as he sat feasting in Westminster Hall, amid all the
chivalry, old and young of the kingdom, on such a memorable day, should
have had brought before him the two swans in their golden cages:--“tunc
allati sunt in pompatica gloria duo cygni vel olores, ante regem,
phalerati retibus aureis, vel fistulis deauratis, desiderabile
spectaculum, intuentibus. Quibus visis, rex votum vovit Deo cœli et
cygnis, se proficisci in Scotiam,” &c.[424] And then solemnly made the
“Vow of the Swan,” as we described, p. 287 of the Catalogue.

 [422] Mon. Anglic. t. viii. p. 1282.

 [423] Ibid.

 [424] Flores Historiarum, per Matt. Westmonast. Collectæ, p. 454.

In the pride of place, on such occasions, abreast with the swan stood
the peacock, “with his angel fethers bright;” and was at all times and
everywhere looked upon as the emblem of beauty. Not a formal banquet
was ever given, at one period, without this bird being among the
dishes; in fact, the principal one. To prepare it for the table, it
had been killed and skinned with studious care. When roasted, it was
sewed up in its skin after such an artistic way that its crested head
and azure neck were kept, as in nature, quite upright; and its fan-like
tail outspread; and then, put in a sitting position on a large broad
silver dish parcel gilt, used to be brought into the hall with much
solemnity.

On the last day of a tournament, its gay festivities ended in a more
than usual sumptuous banqueting. The large baronial hall was hung all
over with hangings, sometimes figured with a romance, sometimes with
scenes such as we read of in “The Flower and the Leaf;” and because
trees abounded on them, were known as tapestry of “verd.” At top of and
all along the travers ran the minstrel-gallery, and thither--

        Come first all in their clokes white,
    A company, that ware for their delite,
    Chapelets fresh of okes seriall,
    Newly sprong, and trumpets they were all.
    On every trumpe hanging a broad banere
    Of fine tartarium were full richely bete,
    Every trumpet his lordes arms bare,
    About their neckes with great pearles sete
    Collers brode, for cost they would not lete, &c.[425]

From among those high-born damosels who had crowded thither, one was
chosen as the queen of beauty. When all the guests had gathered in that
dining-hall, and been marshalled in their places by the herald, and the
almoner had said grace, and set the “grete almes disshe of silver and
overgilt, made in manner of a shippe full of men of armes feyghtyng
upon the shippe syde weyng in all lxvii lb ix un[=c] of troye,”[426] at
the high board under the dais, a bold fanfar was flourished upon silver
trumpets, from which drooped silken flags embroidered with the blazon
of that castle’s lord, or--

 Of gold ful riche, in which ther was ybete

some quaint device. Then a burst of music from the minstrel-gallery
arose as came in the queen of beauty. Her kirtle was of ciclatoun,
cloth of pall, or sparkling tissue:--

    To don honour (to that day)
    Yclothed was she fresshe for to devise.
    Hire yelwe here was broided in a tresse,
    Behind hire back a yerde long I gesse;
    And in the gardin at the sonne uprist,
    She walketh up and doun wher as her list.
    She gathereth floures, partie white and red,
    To make a sotel gerlond for hire hed.[427]

One at each side of her, walked two of the youngest bachelors in
chivalry. These youths did not wear their harness, but came arrayed in
gay attire, having on white hoods, perhaps embroidered with dancing men
in blue habits, like the one given by Edward III. to the Lord Grey of
Rotherfield, to be worn at a tournament; or looking,[428] each of them,
like the “yonge Squier,” of whom Chaucer said:--

    Embrouded was he, as it were a mede,
    Alle ful of fresshe floures, white and red.[429]

 [425] Chaucer, The Flower and the Leaf, v. 207, &c.

 [426] Antient Kalendars of the Exchequers, ed. Palgrave, ii. p. 184.

 [427] Chaucer, The Knightes Tale, v. 1050.

 [428] Dugdale’s Baronage, i. 723.

 [429] The Prologue, v. 79.

Treading out sweetness from the bay leaves strewed among the rushes on
the floor, and with step as stately as the peacock’s own, the queen of
beauty for the nonce, bearing in both her hands the splendid charger
with the bird--the symbol of herself--slowly paced the hall. Halting on
a sudden, she set it down before the knight who, by general accord, had
borne him best throughout that tournament; such was the ladies’ token
of their praises. To carve well at table was one of the accomplishments
of ancient chivalry; and our own King Arthur was so able in that gentle
craft, that on one occasion he is said to have cut up a peacock so
cleverly that every one among the one hundred and fifty guests had a
morsel of the fowl. To show himself as good a knight at a feast as at
a passage of arms, the lady bade him carve the bird. What the lances
of his antagonists could not do, this meed of praise from the ladies
did--it overcame him. With deference, he humbly pleaded that many a
doughty knight there present was more worthy of the honour: all his
words were wasted. The queen of beauty would brook no gainsaying to her
behest. He therefore bowed obedience, and she went away. Ere applying
himself to his devoir, outstretching his right hand on high above the
dish before him, amid the deepest silence, and in a ringing voice, so
as to be well heard by all that noble presence, the knight vowed his
vow of the peacock. Almost always this vow was half religious, half
military; and he who took it bound himself to go on pilgrimage to the
Holy Land, and, on his road thither or homeward, to join, as he might,
any crusade against the Paynim.

Hardly had the words of such a plight been uttered, when other knights
started up at every table, and bound themselves by his or some like vow.

The dinner done, the feast was not quite over. Plucking from its tail
the best and brightest of the peacock’s feathers, the beauty-queen wove
them into a diadem; the minstrel who had long distinguished himself,
was summoned by a pursuivant and brought before her; and she crowned
him as he knelt lowly down. Ever afterwards, at festival or tournament,
this music king wore this crown about his hat as blithely as did the
knight his lady’s glove or favour on his helmet, at a joust. Such was--

 Vowis of Pecok, with all ther proude chere.

Sometimes a pheasant, on account of its next beautiful plumage, used to
be employed, instead of the larger, grander peacock.

With these facts set before him, any visitor to this collection will
take a much more lively interest in so precious a piece of English
embroidery as is the Syon cope, for while looking at it in admiration
of the art-work shown in such a splendid church vestment, he finds,
where he never thought of coming on, a curious record of our ancient
national manners.

Besides all that has been said in reference to this cope, at pp. 289-90
of the Catalogue, we would remind our reader that at easy distances
from Coventry might be found such lordly castles as those of Warwick,
Kenilworth, Chartley, Minster Lovel, Tamworth. The holding of a
tournament within their spacious walls, or in the fields beside them,
was, we may be certain, of frequent occurrence at some one or other of
them. The tilting was followed by the banquet and the “vow;” and the
vow by its fulfilment from those barons bold, who bore in their own
day the stirring names of Beauchamp, Warwick, Ferrers, Geneville, or
Mortimer. Of one or other of them might be said:--

    At Alisandre he was whan it was wonne.
    Ful often time he hadde the bord begonne
    No cristen man so ofte of his degre.
    In Gernade at the siege eke hadde he be
    Of Algesir, and ridden in Belmarie.
    At mortal batailles hadde he ben fiftene,
    And foughten for our faith at Tramissene
    In listes thries, and ay slain his fo.[430]

 [430] Chaucer, The Prologue, vv. 51, &c.

At Warwick itself, and again at Temple Balsall, not far off, the
Knights Templars held a preceptory, and, as it is likely, aggregated
to the Coventry gild, had their badge--the Holy Lamb--figured on its
vestment. Proud of all its brotherhood, proud of those high lords
who had gone on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, figured by the Star of
Bethlehem, and had done battle with the Moslem, according to the vow
signified by the swan and peacock, the Coventry gild caused to be
embroidered on the orphrey of their fine old cope, the several armorial
bearings of those among their brotherhood who had swelled the fame of
England abroad; and by putting those symbols--the swan and the peacock,
the star and crescent--close by their blazons, meant to remind the
world of those festive doings which led each of them to work such deeds
of hardihood.

In the fourteenth century a fashion grew up here in England of figuring
symbolism--heraldic and religious--upon the articles of dress, as we
gather from specimens here, as well as from other sources. The ostrich
feather, first assumed by our Black Prince, was a favourite device
with his son Richard II. for his flags and personal garments. This
is well shown in the illumination given, p. 31, of the “Deposition
of Richard II.,” published by the Antiquarian Society. That king’s
mother had bequeathed to him a new bed of red velvet, embroidered with
ostrich feathers of silver, and heads of leopards of gold, with boughs
and leaves issuing out of their mouths.[431] Through family feeling,
not merely the white swan, but this cognizance of the Yorkists--the
ostrich feather--was sometimes figured on orphreys for church copes and
chasubles, since in the Exeter, A.D. 1506, we find mentioned a cope,
“le orfrey de rubeo damasco operato de opere acuali cum rosis aureis
ac ostryge fethers insertis in rosis,” &c.;[432] and again, “le orfrey
de blodio serico operata de opere acuali cum cignis albis et ostryge
fethers--i casula de blodio serico operata opere acuali cum ostryge
fethers sericis, le orfrey de rubeo serico operato cum ostryge fethers
aureis.”[433] Lincoln Cathedral, too, had a cope of red damask, with
ostriges feathers of silver.[434] This somewhat odd element of design
for a textile is to be found on one here, No. 7058, p. 129.

 [431] Testamenta Vetusta, i. 14.

 [432] Ed. Oliver, p. 347.

 [433] Ibid. p. 365.

 [434] Mon. Anglic. t. viii. p. 1282, ed. Caley.

To eyes like our own, accustomed to see nowhere but in English
heraldry, and English devices, harts figured as lodged beneath green
trees in a park as in Nos. 1283-4, p. 43, or stags couchant, with a
chain about the neck, as at pp. 53, 239, and in both samples gazing
upward to the sun behind a cloud, it would appear that they were but
varieties of the pattern sketched for the silken stuffs worn by Richard
II., and admirably shown on that valuable, yet hitherto overlooked
specimen of English mediæval workmanship in copper and engraving still
to be found in Westminster Abbey, as we before observed,[435] and the
symbolism of which we now explain. The pattern of the silken textile
worn by the king consists of but three elements--the broom-pod, the
sun’s rays darting upwards from behind a cloud, and a stag lying down
on the grass, looking right forward, with about its neck a royal crown,
down from which falls a long chain. The broom tells, of course, that
Richard was a Plantagenet. His grandfather’s favourite cognizance was
that of sunbeams issuing from clouds; his mother’s--Joan, the fair maid
of Kent--the white hart. The latter two were evidently meant to bring
to mind the words of the Psalmist, who says:--“The heavens show forth
the glory of God. He hath set His tabernacle in the sun. The Lord is
my light, and His throne as the sun.” The white hind brings to our
thoughts how the hart panting for the water-fountains, is likened to
the soul that pants after God. This symbolism is unfolded into a wider
breadth upon the design for the stuffs here, No. 1310, p. 53; No.
8624, p. 239. Here, instead of the sunbeams shooting upwards, as if to
light the whole heavens, they dart downward, as if for the individual
stag with upturned gaze, amid a gentle shower of rain; as if to say
that if man look heavenward by prayer, light will be sent down to him,
and helping grace, like rain, like the shower upon the grass to slake
his ghostly thirst.

 [435] P. cxx.

About the time of Richard II. the white hart seems to have been a
favourite element in ornamental needlework here in England, for Lincoln
cathedral had “a red velvet cope set with white harts lying, colours
(with collars?) full of these letters S S ... the harts having crowns
upon their necks with chains, silver and gilt,” &c.[436] So thoroughly
national at the time was this emblem that we believe every piece of
silken textile to be found here or elsewhere had its design sketched
in this country and sent to Palermo to be woven there in stuffs for
the use of the English court. When his order had been done, the weaver
having his loom geared at our king’s expense, threw off a certain
quantity of the same pattern for home use or his trade with Germany;
and hence we see such a beautiful variation figured on the apparels
upon the old alb, No. 8710, p. 268 of the catalogue. The eagle shown
all in gold, with a crown not on but above its head, may refer to one
of Richard’s ancestors, the King of the Romans, who never reigned as
such. The hart, collared and lodged in its park, is Richard’s own
emblem. That dog, collared and courant, has a story of its own in
Richard’s eventful life. Dogs when petted and great favourites, were
always arrayed in ornamented collars; hence we must not be surprised
to find put down among the things of value kept in the Treasury of the
Exchequer:--“ii grehondes colers of silk enbrouded with lettres of gold
and garnyssed with silver and overgilt.”[437] Telling of Richard’s
capture in Flint castle by the Earl of Derby, soon afterwards Henry
IV., Froissart says:--“King Richard had a greyhound called Math,
beautiful beyond measure who would not notice nor follow any one but
the king. Whenever the king rode abroad the greyhound was loosed by
the person who had him in charge, and ran instantly to caress him, by
placing his two fore feet on his shoulders. It fell out that as the
king and the Duke of Lancaster were conversing in the court of the
castle, their horses being ready for them to mount, the greyhound was
untied, but instead of running as usual to the king, he left him, and
leaped to the Duke of Lancaster’s shoulders, paying him every court,
and caressing him as he was formerly used to caress the king. The duke
asked the king, ‘What does this mean?’ ‘Cousin,’ replied the king, ‘it
means a great deal for you, and very little for me. This greyhound
fondles and pays his court to you this day as King of England.’”[438]
That such a pet as Math once so given to fawn upon his royal master
should, with other emblematic animals, have been figured in the pattern
on a textile meant for its master’s wear, or that of his court, seems
very likely: and thus the piece before us possesses a more than
ordinary interest.

 [436] Mon. Anglic. t. viii. p. 1281, ed. Caley.

 [437] Antient Kalendars and Inventories, ed. Palgrave, t. ii. p. 252.

 [438] Froissart’s Chronicles, by Johnes, t. ii. chap. cxiii. p. 692.

Respecting ecclesiastical symbolism, we have to observe that with
regard to the subjects figured upon these liturgical embroideries, we
may see at a glance, that the one untiring wish, both of the designer
and of those who had to wear those vestments, was to set before the
people’s eyes and to bring as often as possible to their mind the
divinity of Christ, strongly and unmistakably, along with the grand
doctrine of the Atonement. Whether it be cope, or chasuble, or reredos,
or altar-frontal such a teaching is put forth upon it. Beginning with
the divinity of our Saviour’s manhood, sometimes we have shown us how,
with such lowly reverence, Gabriel spoke his message to the Blessed
Virgin Mary with the mystic three-flowered lily standing up between
them; or the Nativity with the shepherds or the wise men kneeling in
adoration to acknowledge the divinity of our Lord even as a child
just born; then some event in His life, His passion, His scourging at
the pillar, the bearing of His cross, His being crowned with thorns,
always His crucifixion, often above that, His upraised person like
a king enthroned and crowning her of whom He had taken flesh; while
everywhere about the vestment are represented apostles, martyrs,
and saints all nimbed with glory, and among them, winged seraphim
standing upon wheels, signifying that heaven is now thrown open to
fallen but redeemed man, who, by the atonement wrought for him by our
Divine Redeemer, is made to become the fellow-companion of angels and
cherubim. To this same end, the black vestments worn at the services
for the dead were, according to the old English rite, marked; the
chasubles on the back with a green cross upon a red ground, the copes
with a red orphrey at their sides, to remind those present that while
they mourned their departed friend, they must believe that his soul
could never enter heaven unless made clean and regenerated by the
atoning blood shed for it on the cross.

At his dubbing, “unto a knight is given a sword, which is made in the
semblance of the cross, for to signify how our Lord God vanquished in
the cross the death of human lineage, to the which he was judged for
the sin of our first father Adam.” This we are told in the “Order of
Chivalry,” translated by Caxton.[439] While stretched wounded and dying
on the battle-field, some friendly hand would stick a sword into the
ground before the expiring knight, that as in its handle he beheld this
symbol of the cross, he might forgive him who had struck him down, as
he hoped forgiveness for himself, through the atonement paid for him on
the cross at Calvary.

 [439] Typographical Antiquities, ed. Dibdin, t. i. p. 234.

The ages of chivalry were times of poetry, and we therefore feel no
surprise on finding that each young knight was taught to learn that
belonging to every article of his armour, to every colour of his
silken array, there was a symbolism which he ought to know. All these
emblematic significations are set forth in the “Order of Chivalry,”
which we just now quoted. The work is very rare, but the chapter on
this subject is given by Ames in his “Typographical Antiquities of
Great Britain;”[440] as well as in “Lancelot du Lac” modernized and
printed in the “Bibliothèque Bleu,” pp. 11, 12. In that black silk
chasuble with a red orphrey upon which our Lord is figured hanging upon
a green cross--“cum crucifixo pendente in viridi cruce,”[441] it was
for a particular reason that the colour of this wood for the cross is
specified: as green is the tint of dress put on by the new-born budding
year, which thus foretells of flowers and fruits in after months, so
was this same colour the symbol of regeneration for mankind, and the
promise of paradise hereafter. For such a symbolic reason is it that,
upon the wall painting lately brought again to light in West Somerton
Church, Norfolk, our uprisen Lord is shown stepping out of the grave,
mantled in green, with the banner of the resurrection in His left hand,
and giving a blessing with His upraised right. At all times, and in
every land, the “Language of Flowers” has been cultivated, and those
who now make it their study will find much to their purpose in Chaucer,
especially in his “Flower and the Leaf.” There speaking of “Diane,
goddesse of chastite,” the poet says:--

    And for because that she a maiden is,
    In her hond the braunch she beareth this,
    That agnus castus men call properly;

           *       *       *       *       *

    And tho that weare chapelets on their hede
    Of fresh woodbind, be such as never were
    Of love untrue in word, thought ne dede,
    But aye stedfast, &c.[442]

 [440] Ibid.

 [441] Oliver, p. 134.

 [442] Works, ed. Nicolas, t. vi. p. 259.

Were it not for this symbolism for the woodbine, we had been quite
unable to understand why in our old testamentary bequests, the flower
should have been so especially mentioned as we find in the will of Joan
Lady Bergavenny who, A.D. 1434, leaves to one of her friends, a “bed
of silk, black and red, embroidered with woodbined flowers of silver,”
&c.[443] Besides its symbolism of those colours--black and red--for
which we have but this moment given the reasons, p. cxlix., the funeral
cope which we noticed before, p. cxxvi., showed a symbolism of flowers
in the woodbine wrought upon it. Sure may we be that the donor’s
wish--perhaps the fingers of a weeping widow had worked it for Lincoln
Cathedral--was to tell for her in after days the unfaltering love she
ever bore towards her husband, and to say so every time this vestment
happened to be worn at the services sounded for him. May be that quaint
old likeness of Anne Vavasour, exhibited here A.D. 1868 among the
“National Portraits,” and numbered 680, p. 138 of the Catalogue, had
its background trailed all over with branches of the woodbine in leaf,
at the particular behest of a fond spouse Sir H. Lee, and so managed
that the plant’s only cyme of flower should hang just below her bosom.
By Shakespeare floral symbolism was well understood; and he often shows
his knowledge of it in “A Winter’s Tale,” act iv. scene iii. He gives
us several meanings of flower-speech, and when he makes (Henry VIII.
act iv. scene ii.) Queen Katherine say to Griffith “Farewell--when I am
dead--strew me over with maiden flowers, that all the world may know I
was a chaste wife to my grave,” he tells of an olden custom still kept
up among us, and more fully carried out in Wales and the Western parts
of England, where the grave of a dear departed one is weekly dressed by
loving hands with the prettiest flowers that may be had. The symbolism
of colours is learnedly treated by Portal in his “Couleurs Symboliques.”

The readers of those valuable inventories of the chasubles, copes,
and other liturgical silk garments which belonged to Exeter cathedral
and that of London, about the middle of the thirteenth century, will
not fail to observe that some of them bore, amongst other animals,
the horse, and fish of different sorts, nay, porpoises figured on
them: “una capa de palla cum porphesiis et leonibus deauratis,”[444]
“due cape de palla cum equis et avibus,”[445] “unum pulvinar
breudatum avibus, piscibus et bestiis,”[446] “capa de quodam panno
Tarsico, viridis coloris cum pluribus piscibus et rosis aurifilo
contextis.”[447] Even here, under No. 8229, p. 151, we have from the
East a small shred of crimson silk, which shows on it a flat-shaped
fish. If to some minds it be a subject of wonderment that, amid flowers
and fruits, not only birds and beasts--elephants included--but such odd
things as fish, even the porpoise, are to be found represented upon
textiles chosen for the service of the altar, they should learn that
all such stuffs were gladly put to this very use for the symbolism they
carried, by accident, about them. Then, as now, the clergy had to say,
and the people to listen daily to that canticle: “O all ye works of
the Lord, bless ye the Lord; O ye angels of the Lord, O ye whales, and
all that move in the waters, O ye fowls of the air, O all ye beasts
and cattle, bless ye the Lord and magnify Him for ever!” Not merely
churchmen, but the lay folks, deemed it but fitting that while the
prayer above was being offered up, an emphasis should be given to its
words by the very garment worn by the celebrant as he uttered them.

 [443] Test. Vet. i. 228.

 [444] Oliver’s Exeter, p. 299.

 [445] Ibid.

 [446] St. Paul’s, p. 316.

 [447] Ibid. p. 318.



SECTION VIII.--LITERATURE AND LANGUAGES.


For those who bestow their attention upon Literature and Languages,
this collection must have, at times, an especial value, whichever way
their choice may lead them, whether towards subjects of biblical,
classic or mediæval study: proofs of this, we think, may be gathered,
up and down the whole of this “Introduction.” With regard to our own
country, we deem it quite impossible for any one among us to properly
know the doings, in private and in public, throughout this land in
by-gone days, or to take in all the beauty of many a passage in our
prose writers, much less understand several particulars in the poetry
of the middle ages, without an acquaintance, such as may be made here,
with the textiles and needlework of that period.

To the student of languages, it may seem, at first sight, that he will
have nothing to learn by coming hither. When he looks at those two
very curious and interesting pieces, Nos. 1297, p. 296; 1465, p. 298,
and has read the scrolls traced upon them, he may perhaps, if he be in
search of the older forms of German speech, have to change his mind: of
the words, so often to be met with here, in real or pretended Arabic,
we say nothing. To almost every one among our English students of
languages there is one inscription done in needlework quite unreadable.
At No. 8278, p. 170, going round the four sides of this liturgical
appliance, are sentences in Greek, borrowed from the ritual, but hidden
to the Greek scholar’s eye, under the so-called Cyrillian character.

Toward the second half of the ninth century, a monk, known in his
cloister under the name of Constantine, but afterwards, when a bishop,
as Cyrillus, became earnestly wishful of bringing all the many tribes
of the Sclavonic race to a knowledge of Christianity; and warming in
the heart of his brother Methodius a like hope, they both bethought
themselves, the sooner to succeed, of inventing an alphabet which
should be better adapted for that purpose than either the Greek or the
Latin one; and because its invention is owing, for the greater part,
to St. Cyril, it immediately took, and still keeps, its name from him,
and is now denominated Cyrillian. Of this invention we are told by Pope
John VIII. to whom the two brothers had gone together, to ask authority
and crave his blessing for their undertaking: “Letteras Sclavonicas,
a Constantino quodam philosopho repertas, quibus Deo laudes debitæ
resonant. Ep. ad Svaplukum, apud Dobrowsky, Institutiones Linguæ
Slavicæ.” This great and successful missionary took not any Gothic,
but a Greek model for his letters, as is shown by Dobrowsky. The
Sclaves who follow the Greek rite, use the Cyrillian letters in their
liturgical books, while those of the same people who use the Latin rite
employ, in their service, the Glagolitic alphabet, which was drawn
up in the thirteenth century. The probability is that this latter--a
modification of the Cyrillian, is no older than that period, and is not
from the hand, as supposed by some, of St. Jerom.

A short time ago, the Sclaves celebrated with great splendour
the thousandth anniversary of St. Cyril, to whom they owe their
Christianity and their alphabet; and among the beautiful wall paintings
lately brought to light in the lower church of St. Clement at Rome,
by the zealous labours of Father Malooly, an Irish Dominican, the
translation of St. Cyril’s body from the Vatican, to that church, is
figured.



SECTION IX.--HERALDRY,


And how the appearance of it, real or imagined, under any shape, and
upon vestments, was made available, after different ways, in our
law-courts, ask for and shall have a passing notice.

At the end of the fourteenth century, there arose, between the noble
houses of Scrope and Grosvenor, a difference about the legal right
of bearing on their respective shields the bend _or_ on a field
_azure_; and the suit was carried to the Court of Honour which sat at
Westminster, and commissioners were sent about the country for the
purpose of gathering evidence.

Besides a numerous body of the nobility, several distinguished
churchmen were examined; and their depositions are curious. John,
Abbot of St. Agatha, in Richmondshire, said the arms (_Azure_, a
bend _or_, the bearing of the Scrope family who contended against
its assumption by the Grosvenors) were on a corporas case belonging
to the church of his monastery, of which the Scropes were deemed the
second founders.[448] John de Cloworthe, sub-prior of Wartre, exhibited
before the commissioners an amice embroidered on red velvet with
leopards and griffons _or_, between which are sewn in silk, in three
pieces, three escochens with the entire arms of Sir Richard Scrope
therein, viz.--_azure_ a bend _or_.[449] William, Prior of Lanercost,
said they had in their church the same arms embroidered on the morse
of a cope.[450] Sir Simon, parson of Wenslay (whose fine grave brass
may be seen in the “Church of Our Fathers,”[451]) placed before the
commissioners an albe with flaps, upon which were embroidered the arms
of the Scropes entire, &c.[452] The Scropes were the patrons of that
living. Thomas de Cotyngham, prior of the Abbey of St. Mary, York, said
that they had vestments with the Scrope arms upon them.[453] Sir John
de Manfeld, parson of the Church of St. Mary sur Rychille, in York,
said that in the church were diverse vestments on which were sewn, in
silk, the entire arms of Scrope.[454] Sir Bertram Mountboucher said
that these arms of the Scropes were to be seen on vestments, &c., in
the abbey and churches where Sir R. Scrope was born.[455] Not the least
remarkable individual who bore evidence on the subject was the poet
Chaucer, who was produced on behalf of Sir Richard Scrope. When asked
whether the arms _azure_, a bend _or_, belonged, or ought to belong
to the said Sir Richard? said yes, for he saw him so armed in France,
&c., and that all his time he had seen the said arms in banners, glass,
paintings and vestments, and commonly called the Arms of Scrope.[456]
For the better understanding of all these evidences the reader should
look at No. 8307, p. 185, an amice with its old apparel still on it.
The “flaps” of an alb are now called apparels; and an old one, with
these ornaments upon it, both at the cuffs as well as before and
behind, is in this collection, No. 8710, p. 268 of the Catalogue. The
two fine old English apparels here, No. 8128, p. 146, show how shields
with heraldry could be put along with Scriptural subjects in these
embroideries. The monumental effigy of a priest --a Percy by birth--in
Beverley Minster, exhibits how these apparels, on an amice, were
sometimes wrought with armorial bearings. Of “corporas cases,” there
are several here, and pointed out at pp. 112, 144, 145, and 194 of the
Catalogue.

 [448] Scrope and Grosvenor Rolls, ed. Sir H. Nicolas, t. ii. p. 275.

 [449] Ibid. p. 278.

 [450] Ibid. p. 279.

 [451] T. i. p. 325.

 [452] Scrope and Grosvenor Rolls, ed. Sir H. Nicolas, t. ii. p 330.

 [453] Ibid. p. 344.

 [454] Ibid. p. 346.

 [455] Ibid. p. 384.

 [456] Ibid. p. 411.

Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, the last of the Plantagenets, and
mother of Lord Montague and Cardinal Pole, was, like her son the peer,
beheaded, and at the age of seventy, by their kinsman Henry VIII. This
fact is recorded by Collier;[457] but Miss A. Strickland mentions
it more at length in these words:--Cromwell produced in the House
of Lords, May 10th, by way of evidence against the aged Countess of
Salisbury, a vestment (a chasuble no doubt) of white silk that had
been found in her wardrobe, embroidered in front with the arms of
England, surrounded with a wreath of pansies and marigolds, and on the
back the representation of the host with the five wounds of our Lord,
and the name of Jesus written in the midst. The peers permitted the
unprincipled minister to persuade them that this was a treasonable
ensign, and as the Countess had corresponded with her absent son
(Cardinal Pole) she was for no other crime attainted of high treason,
and condemned to death without the privilege of being heard in her own
defence.[458] The arms of England, amid the quarterings of some great
families, are even now to be found upon vestments; a beautiful one
was exhibited here, A.D. 1862, and described in the Loan Catalogue,
p. 266; another fine one is at present at Abergavenny. With regard to
the representation of the “Host with the five wounds of our Lord,” &c.
this is of very common occurrence in ecclesiastical embroidery; and in
this very collection, on the back orphrey to the splendid chasuble, No.
8704, p. 264 of this Catalogue, we find embroidered the crucifixion,
and a shield _gules_, with a chalice _or_ and a host _argent_ at top,
done in Flanders full half a century before the “Pilgrimage of Grace”
in our northern counties had adopted such a common device upon their
banner when the people there arose up against Henry VIII.

 [457] Eccles. Hist. t. v. p. 51, ed. Lathbury.

 [458] Queens of England, iii. p. 68.

To a Surrey, for winning the day at Flodden Field, King Henry VIII.
gave the tressured lion of the royal arms of Scotland to be borne upon
the Howard bend as arms of augmentation. In after years, the same
Henry VIII. cut off a Surrey’s head because he bore, as his House had
borne from the time of one of their forefathers, Thomas de Brotherton,
Edward I.’s son, the arms of the Confessor, the use of which had been
confirmed to it by Richard II. If, like Scrope, Surrey had bethought
himself of vestments, even of the few we have with the royal arms upon
them, and assumed by other English noblemen, perhaps those liturgic
embroideries might have stood him in some good stead to save his life.
Had the poor aged Countess of Salisbury been heard, she might have
shamed her kinsman the king not to take her life for using upon her
church furniture emblems, then as now, employed upon such appliances
throughout all Christendom.

For the genealogist, the lawyer, the herald, the historian, such of
these old liturgical garments as, like the Syon cope, bear armorial
shields embroidered upon them, will have a peculiar value, and a more
than ordinary interest. Those emblazonries not only recall the names of
men bound up for ever with this land’s history, but may again serve,
as they once before have served, to furnish the lost link in a broken
pedigree, or unravel an entangled point before a law tribunal.



SECTION X.--BOTANY AND ZOOLOGY.


By all those for whom, among other allurements drawing them on in their
studies of Botany and Zoology, one is the gratification they feel in
learning how many of the subjects belonging to these two sections of
the natural sciences were known, and how they used to be depicted
during the middle ages, this large collection of textiles figured so
often with birds, beasts and flowers, will be heartily welcomed.

Our Zoological Society prides itself, and in justice, with treating
the Londoners with the first sight of a live giraffe; but here its
members themselves may behold, Nos. 8591-91A, p. 224; 8599, p. 228,
the earliest known portrait of that curious quadruped sketched upon
Sicilian silks of the fourteenth century.

We once listened to a discussion between English sportsmen about the
travels of the pheasant from its native home by the banks of the river
Phasis at Colchis, and the time when it reached this island. Both
parties agreed in believing its coming hither to have been somewhat
late. Be that as it may, our country gentlemen will see their favourite
bird figured here, No. 1325, p. 60.

About the far-famed hunting cheetahs of India, we have heard, and
still hear much; and on pieces of silk from eastern looms, in this
collection, they are often to be seen figured.

With regard to the way in which all kinds of fowl, as well as animals
are represented on these stuffs, there is one thing which we think will
strike most observers who compare the drawing of them here with that
of the same objects among the illuminations in old MSS. The birds and
beasts on the textiles are always very much better rendered than in the
wood-cuts to be found in our old black-letter books, from Caxton’s days
upwards, especially in such works as that of Æsop and the rest. Figures
of animals and of birds in manuscripts are hardly better, as we may see
in the prints of our own Sir John Maundevile’s Travels, and the French
“Bestiaire d’Amour,” par R. de Fournival, lately edited by C. Hippeau.
Scarcely better does their design fare in illuminated MSS. Belonging to
the Duke of Northumberland, and now in the library at Alnwick castle is
the finest Salisbury missal we have ever beheld. This tall thick folio
volume was, some time during the end of the fourteenth century, begun
to be written and illuminated by a Benedictine monk--one John Whas--who
carried on this gorgeous book as far as page 661. From the two Leonine
verses which we read there, it would seem that this labour of love
carried on for years at early morn in the scriptorium belonging to
Sherbourne Abbey, Dorsetshire, had broken, as well it might, the health
of the monk artist, of whom it is said:--

    “Librum scribendo Ion Whas monachus laborabat;
    Et mane surgendo multum corpus macerabat.”

Among his other tastes, this Benedictine had that for Natural History,
and in the beautifully illuminated Kalendar at the beginning of this
full missal, almost every month is pointed out by the presence of
some bird, or fish, or flower, peculiar to that season, with its name
beneath it,--for instance, “Ys is a throstle,” &c. However much the
thrush’s song may have cheered him at his work at Spring-tide peep
of day, Whas did not draw his bird with half the individuality and
truthfulness which we find in birds of all sorts that are figured upon
Sicilian stuffs woven at the very period when the English Benedictine
was at work within the cloisters of his house in Dorsetshire--a fact
which may lead the ornithologist to look with more complacency upon
those textiles here patterned with Italian birds.

For Botany, it has not gone so well; yet, notwithstanding this
drawback, there are to be seen figured upon these textiles plants and
trees which, though strangers to this land and to Europe, and their
forms no doubt, oddly and clumsily represented, yet, as they keep about
them the same character, we may safely believe to have a true type in
nature, which at last by their help we shall be able to find out. Such
is the famous “homa,” or “hom,”--the sacred tree--among the ancient
followers of Zoroaster, as well as the later Persians. It is to be seen
figured on many silks in this collection of real or imitated Persian
textiles, woven at various periods during the middle ages.

From the earliest antiquity a tradition came down throughout middle
Asia, of some holy tree--perhaps the tree of life spoken of as growing
in Paradise.--Gen. ii. 9. Some such a tree is very often to be seen
sculptured on Assyrian monuments; and, by the place which it holds
there, must have been held in peculiar, nay religious veneration. Upon
those important remains from Nineveh, now in the British Museum, and
figured in Mr. Layard’s fine work, it appears as the object of homage
for the two men symbolized as sacerdotal or as kingly personages,
between whom it invariably stands. It is to be found equally figured
upon the small bucket meant for religious rites,[459] as embroidered
upon the upper sleeve of the monarch’s tunic.[460] From Fergusson’s
“Palaces of Nineveh, and Persepolis restored,” we learn that it was
frequently to be found sculptured as an architectural ornament. When
seen done in needlework upon dresses, the two animals--sometimes
winged bulls, sometimes gazelles--which its umbel of seven flowers
is separating, are shown with bended knees, as if in worship of it.
Always this plant is represented as a shrub, sometimes bearing a series
of umbels with seven flowers sprouting, each at the end of a tangled
bough; sometimes as a stunted tree with branches growing all the way
up right out of a thick trunk with ovated leaves; but the height never
looks beyond that of a good sized man. Never for one moment can it be
taken as any conventionalism for a tree, since it is as distinct an
imitation of a particular plant, as is the figure of the palm which
occurs along with it. To us, it has every look of belonging to the
family of Asclepiadeæ, or one of its near kindred.

The few Parsees still to be found in East India, are the only followers
of Persia’s olden religious practices; and in his “Essays on the sacred
writings, language, and religion of the Parsees,” Haug tells us,[461]
that those people yet hold a certain plant--the Homa, or hom?--to
be sacred, and from it squeeze a juice to be used by them in their
religious services. To our seeming, those buckets in the left hand of
many an Assyrian figure were for holding this same liquor.

Can the “hom” of the old Persians be the same as the famous Sidral
Almuntaha which bears as many leaves inscribed with names as there are
men living on the earth? At each birth a fresh leaf bearing the name of
the newly born bursts out, and, when any one has reached the end of his
life, the leaf withers and falls off.[462]

Though unable to identify among the plants of Asia, which was the “hom”
or tree of life, held so sacred by the Assyrians and later Persians, we
know enough about that king of fruits--the “pine-apple”--as to correct
a great mistake into which those have fallen who hitherto have had to
write about the patterns figured on ancient or mediæval textiles. In
their descriptions, we are perpetually told of the pine-apple appearing
there; and at a period when the Ananas, so far from having been even
once beheld in the old world, had never been dreamed of. Among the
Peruvians our pine-apple, the “Nanas,” was first found and seen by
Europeans. Hardly more than two hundred years ago was a single fruit
of it brought to any place in the old world. A little over a century
has it been cultivated here in England; and, as far as our memory goes,
a pine-apple, fifty years ago, had never been planted in any part of
Italy or Sicily, nor so much as seen. Writing, October 17, 1716, from
Blankenburg, and telling her friend all about a royal dinner at which
she had just been, Lady Mary Wortley Montague says:--“What I thought
worth all the rest (were) two ripe Ananasses, which, to my taste, are
a fruit perfectly delicious. You know they are naturally the growth of
Brazil, and I could not imagine how they came here, but by enchantment.
Upon enquiry, I learned that they have brought their stoves to such
perfection, &c. I am surprised we do not practise in England so useful
an invention.”[463] As turnips grow in England, so do artichokes all
over middle and south Italy, as well as Sicily, large fields are full
of them. Put side by side with the pine-apple, and its narrow stiff
leaves, the artichoke in bloom amid its graceful foliage, shows well;
and every artistic eye will see that the Sicilian weaver, so fond of
flowers and nice foliage for his patterns, must have chosen his own
vegetable, unfolding its beauties to him at every step he took, and not
a fruit of which he had never heard, and which he had never looked upon.

In his description of fruits or flowers woven on a textile, let not the
youthful or unwary writer be led astray by older men with a reputation
howsoever high for learning other than botanical. Some years ago we
were reading with great delight a tale about some things that happened
in the third century, and near Carthage. Though avowedly a fiction,
most of its incidents were facts, so admirably put together that they
seemed to have been drawn by the pen of one who had lived upon the
spot. But taking one of his personages to a walk amid the hills running
down to the shores of North Africa, the writer leads him through a
narrow glen tangled over head, and shaded with sweet smelling creepers
and climbers, among which he sees the passion-flower in full bloom.
Now, as every species--save one from China of late introduction--that
we have of this genus of plants, came to the old world from the new
one, to speak of them as growing wild in Africa, quite fourteen hundred
years before they could have been seen there, and America was known, is
spoiling a picture otherwise beautifully sketched.

 [459] Layard’s Discoveries at Nineveh, abridged, p. 46.

 [460] Ibid. p. 245.

 [461] Pp. 132, 239.

 [462] The Bible, the Koran, and the Talmud, or Biblical Legends of
    Mussulmans compiled, &c., by Dr. G. Weil, pp. 183, 184.

 [463] Letters, t. i. p. 105, London, 1763.

       *       *       *       *       *

With some, there perhaps may be a wish to know what was the origin of
this collection.

As is set forth, in the “Church of Our Fathers,”[464] some thirty years
ago there began to grow up, amid a few, a strong desire to behold a
better taste in the building of churches, and the design of every
ecclesiastical accessory. Our common sympathies on all these points
brought together the late Mr. A. Welby Pugin, and him who writes these
lines, and they became warm friends. What were the results to Pugin
through our intercourse he himself has acknowledged in his “Principles
of Pointed or Christian Architecture,” p. 67. To think of anything and
do it, were, with Pugin, two consecutive actions which followed one
another speedily. While at Birmingham Hardman was working in metal,
after drawings by Pugin, and putting together a stained-glass window
from one of his cartoons, a loom at Manchester, which had been geared
after his idea, was throwing off textiles for church use, and orphreys,
broad and narrow, were being wove in London: the mediæval court at Hyde
Park, in the year 1851, was the gem of our first Exhibition. Going
back, a German lady took from England a cope made of the textiles that
had been designed by Pugin. This vestment got into the hands of Dr.
Bock, whose feelings were, as they still are, akin to our own in a
love for all the beauties of the mediæval period. While so glad of his
new gift, it set this worthy canon of Aix-la-Chapelle thinking that
other and better patterns were to be seen upon stuffs of an old and
good period, could they be but found. He gave himself to the search,
and took along with him, over the length and breadth of Europe, that
energy and speed for which he is so conspicuous; and the gatherings
from his many journeys, put together, made up the bulk of a most
curious and valuable collection--the only one of its kind--which has
found an abiding home in England, at the South Kensington Museum. Thus
have these beautiful art-works of the loom become, after a manner, a
recompense most gratefully received, to the native land of those men
whose action, some thirty years ago, indirectly originated their being
brought together.

Before laying down his pen, the writer of this Catalogue must put on
record his grateful remembrances of the kindness shown so readily
by M. Octave Delepierre, Secretary of Legation and Consul-General
for Belgium, in rendering those inscriptions of old German upon that
curious piece of hanging, No. 1297, p. 296, as well as upon another
piece of the same kind, No. 1465, p. 298. For the like help afforded
about the same, together with those several long inscriptions upon No.
4456, p. 92, the writer is equally indebted to Dr. Appell; and, without
the ready courtesy of the Rev. Eugene Popoff, the writer could not have
been able to have given the Greek readings, hidden under Cyrillian
characters, worked by the needle all around the Ruthenic Sindon, No.
8278, p. 170.

  17, Essex Villas,
  Kensington.

 [464] T. i. pp. 348, &c.

[Illustration]



[Illustration]



A DESCRIPTIVE CATALOGUE

OF THE COLLECTION OF CHURCH VESTMENTS, DRESSES,

SILK STUFFS, NEEDLEWORK, AND TAPESTRIES

IN THE SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM.

[Illustration]



[Illustration]

CONTENTS OF THE BOOK.


_Part the First._

                                                             Page

CHURCH-VESTMENTS, SILK-STUFFS, NEEDLEWORK AND DRESSES           1


_Part the Second._

 TAPESTRY                                                      294


_The Brooke Collection._

 NEEDLEWORK AND DRESSES                                        312


_Lent by Her Majesty, and by the Board of Works._

 TAPESTRY                                                      324

 INDEX I.  Alphabetical                                        339
 INDEX II.  Geography of Textiles                              355



[Illustration]



ILLUSTRATIONS.


   No.                                                        Page

   84. HOOD OF A COPE. Embroidered (Coloured plate).
         _Flemish, 16th century_            _Frontispiece_       3

 1269. SILK AND GOLD DAMASK.
         _Sicilian, 14th century_                               37

 1362. SILK DAMASK. (Coloured plate.)
         _North Italian, 16th century_                          74

 1376. PART OF THE ORPHREY OF A CHASUBLE.
         _German, 15th century_                                 82

 1376. PART OF THE ORPHREY OF THE SAME CHASUBLE.
          _German, 15th century_                                82

 4068. STRIP OF RAISED VELVET. (Coloured plate.)
          _North Italian, 16th century_                         90

 7004. SILK DAMASK. _Italian, late 16th century_                113

 7039. SILK DAMASK. _Byzantine, 14th century_                   123

 7043. SILK DAMASK. _Sicilian, 15th century_                    125

 7795. SILK DAMASK (BACK OF A BURSE). _Italian, 16th century_   145

 8264. SILK AND GOLD TISSUE. _Sicilian, early 14th century_     166

 8265. LINEN AND SILK TEXTILE. _Spanish, late 14th century_     166

 8331. LACE EMBROIDERY. _Milanese, late 16th century_           197

 8605. SILK DAMASK. _Italian, 14th century_                     230

 8607. SILK DAMASK. _Sicilian, 14th century_                    231

 8626. SILK DAMASK. _Italian, end of 14th century_              239

 8667. SILK AND GOLD EMBROIDERY. PORTION OF AN ORPHREY.
          (Coloured plate.) _German, 15th century_              252

 8702. SILK AND LINEN DAMASK. _Florentine, 16th century_        264

 8704. PART OF THE ORPHREY OF A CHASUBLE. _Flemish,
          very late 15th century_                               264

 9182. PART OF THE ORPHREY OF THE SYON MONASTERY COPE.
          _English, 13th century_                               275

[Illustration]



[Illustration]

PART THE FIRST.


_Church-vestments, Silk-stuffs, Needlework, and Dresses._


64.

Chinese Mandarin’s Tunic of Ceremony embroidered in various coloured
flos-silks and gold upon an orange-red satin. Chinese. 4 feet high by 6
feet round, modern.

 Sprawling all in gold and lively colours, both before and behind, upon
 this rich garment of state, is figured, with all its hideousness, the
 imperial five-clawed dragon, before which, according to the royal
 fancies of that land, the lion turns pale and the tiger is struck with
 dumbness. In the ornamentation the light blue quantity of silk is very
 conspicuous, more especially upon the broad lower hem of this robe.


78.

Chasuble of crimson velvet, with both orphreys embroidered; the velvet,
pile upon pile, and figured with large and small flowers in gold and
colour, and other smaller flowers in green and white; the orphreys
figured with the Apostles and the Annunciation. Florentine, late 15th
century. 4 feet 3½ inches by 2 feet 5½ inches.

 Like most other chasubles, this has been narrowed, at no late period,
 across the shoulders. The velvet is very soft and rich, and of that
 peculiar kind that shows a double pile or the pattern in velvet upon
 velvet, now so seldom to be found. On the back orphrey, which is quite
 straight, is shown St. Peter with his keys; St. Paul with a sword; St.
 John blessing with one hand, and holding a chalice, out of which comes
 a serpent, in the other; St. James with a pilgrim’s hat and staff:
 on the front orphrey the Annunciation, and St. Simon holding a club,
 but his person so placed, that, by separating the archangel Gabriel
 from the Blessed Virgin Mary, a tau-cross is made upon the breast; St.
 Bartholomew with a knife, and St. James the Less with the fuller’s
 bat. For their greater part, the Gothic niches in which these figures
 stand, are loom-wrought; but these personages themselves are done
 on separate pieces of fine canvas and are applied over spaces left
 uncovered for them. Another curious thing is that in these applied
 figures the golden parts of the draperies are woven, and the spaces
 for the heads and hands left bare to be filled in by hand; and most
 exquisitely are they wrought, for some of them are truly beautiful as
 works of art.


79.

Cope, crimson velvet, with hood and orphrey embroidered, &c.
Florentine, late 15th century. 9 feet 5½ inches by 4 feet 6 inches.

 This fine cope is of the same set a part of which was the beautiful
 chasuble No. 78, and, while made of precisely the same costly
 materials, is wrought with equal care and art. Its large fine hood is
 figured with the coming down of the Holy Ghost upon the infant Church,
 represented by the Blessed Virgin Mary amid the Apostles, and not
 merely this subject itself, but the crimson colour of the velvet would
 lead us to think that the whole set of vestments was intended for use
 on Witsunday. On the orphrey, on the right hand, the first saint is
 St. John the Baptist, with the Holy Lamb; then, Pope St. Gregory the
 Great; afterwards, an archbishop, may be St. Antoninus; after him a
 layman-saint with an arrow, and seemingly clad in armour, perhaps
 St. Sebastian; on the left side, St. George with banner and shield;
 under him St. Jerome, below whom, a bishop; and lowermost of all St.
 Onuphrius, hermit, holding in one hand a cross on a staff, in the
 other a walkingstick, and quite naked, saving his loins, round which
 he wears a wreath of leaves. All these subjects are admirably treated,
 and the heads done with the delicacy and truth of miniatures.


84.

Hood of a Cope, figured with the Adoration of the Wise Men. Flemish,
16th century. 1 foot 8½ inches wide, 1 foot 4½ inches deep.

 This is one of the best preserved and the most beautiful works of the
 period in the collection, and is remarkable for the goodness of the
 gold, which is so plentifully bestowed upon it. It is somewhat large,
 and the three long hooks by which it used to hang are still attached,
 while its fine green and yellow silk fringe is a pleasing specimen of
 such a kind of decoration.


540.

Purse in crimson velvet, embroidered with comic masks, and mounted in
chased steel damascened in gold. Attached is a crimson Band with a
Buckle of cut and gilt steel. Milanese, 16th century. 11½ inches by
11 inches.

 The rich crimson velvet is Genoese; the frame, an art-work of the
 Milan school, is figured with two monsters’ heads, and two medallions,
 one containing a naked youth seated, the other a nude female figure
 standing. On the front of the bag are applied two embroideries in gold
 and coloured silk, one an owl’s head, the other that of a full-faced
 grotesque satyr; on the back is another satyr’s side-face. At one
 time, such bags or ornamental purses, under the name of “gibecières”
 in France and England, but known in Italy as “borsa,” were articles
 of dress worn by most people; and “the varlet with the velvet pouch”
 will not be forgotten by those who have read Walter Scott’s novel of
 “Quentin Durward.” The expressions, in English of “cut-purse,” in
 Italian “taglia borse,” for a pickpocket, are well illustrated by this
 gay personal appendage.


623.

Piece of Edging; ground, purple thread-net; pattern, bunches of
flowers, of two sorts alternated, in various coloured flos-silks.
Italian, 18th century. 5 feet 5 inches by 5 inches.

 Intended for a border to a dress or to a bed-quilt, and no attention
 shown to the botanical exactness of the flowers, most of which are
 seemingly tulips. A large coverlet is edged with a broad piece of
 needlework, after this manner, in the collection.


624.

Piece of Edging; ground, purple thread-net; pattern, large flowers,
mostly the same, embroidered in various coloured flos-silks, within
scrolls and foliage. Italian, 18th century. 8 feet 3 inches by 11
inches.

 Probably by the same hand as the foregoing piece, and equally
 care-less of botanical exactness in the flowers.


625.

Cushion-cover, oblong, centre in striped cherry-coloured silk, the
border of open work embroidered in various coloured flos-silks upon a
net of purple thread. Italian, 18th century. 2 feet 6 inches by 2 feet.

 The only difference in the way of the stitchery is that the
 geometrical pattern shows the same on both sides.


626.

Quilt for a Bed; ground, an amber-coloured cotton, figured with a
net-work of ovals and squares in diapered raised crimson velvet, the
ovals filled in with a floriation of crimson and green raised velvet;
the squares, with a small vase having a flower-bearing tree, crimson
raised velvet. This is the centre, which is bordered by a like kind
of stuff 11 inches deep; the ground, primrose yellow; the pattern,
ovals, enclosing a foliage bearing crimson and amber-tinted flowers,
and placed amid boughs bearing the same coloured flowers; on both edges
this border has three stripes--two crimson raised velvet, the third
and broader one a pattern in shades of purple--all on a light yellow
ground; at the ends of the quilt hangs a long party-coloured fringe
of linen thread; the lining of it is fine Chinese silk of a bright
amber, figured with sprigs of crimson flowers, shaded yellow and white.
Genoese, 17th century. 5 feet 11 inches by 3 feet 10½ inches.


627.

Quilt for a Bed; ground, brown canvas; pattern, all embroidered scales
or scollops jagged like a saw, and overlapping each other in lines,
some blue and green shaded white or yellow, some amber. The border
is a broad scroll of large flowers, among which one at each corner,
the fleur-de-lis, is conspicuous. This again has a scollop edging of
flowers separated by what seem two Cs interlaced. French, 17th century.
7 feet 8 inches by 5 feet 8 inches.


673.

Chasuble of green silk, figured with animals and scrolls in gold, with
an embroidered orphrey at back, and a plain orphrey in front. Sicilian,
early 13th century. 3 feet 9¾ inches by 2 feet 2 inches.

 This very valuable chasuble is very important for the beauty of its
 stuff; but by no means to be taken as a sample in width of the fine
 old majestic garment of that name, as it has been sadly cut down from
 its former large shape, and that, too, at no very distant period.
 Though now almost blue, its original colour was green. The warp is
 cotton, the woof silk, and that somewhat sparingly put in; the design
 showing heraldic animals, amid gracefully twining branches all in gold
 and woven, is remarkably good and free. The front piece is closely
 resembling the back, but, on a near and keen examination, may be
 found to differ in its design from the part behind; on this we see
 that it must have consisted of a lioncel passant gardant, langued,
 and a griffin; on that on the part in front, a lioncel passant, and
 a lioncel passant regardant. When the chasuble was in its first old
 fulness, the design on both parts came out in all its minuteness;
 now, it is so broken as not to be discernible at first. In front the
 orphrey is very narrow, and of a sort of open lace-work in green and
 gold; on the back the orphrey is very broad, 1 foot 1½ inches, and
 figured with the Crucifixion, the Blessed Virgin Mary standing on our
 Lord’s right hand, St. John the Evangelist on His left; below, the
 Blessed Virgin Mary crowned as a queen and seated on a royal throne,
 with our Lord as a child sitting on her lap; lower still, St. Peter
 with two keys--one silver, the other gold--in his left hand, and a
 book in the right; and St. Paul holding a drawn sword in his right,
 and a book in his left; and, last of all, the stoning of St. Stephen.
 All the subjects are large, and within quatrefoils; as much of the
 body of our Lord as is uncovered on the Cross, and the heads, hands,
 and feet in the other figures, as well as those parts of the draperies
 not gold, are wrought by needle, while the golden garments of the
 personages are woven in the loom.

 This very interesting chasuble has a history belonging to it, given
 in “The Gentleman’s Magazine,” t. lvi. pp. 298, 473, 584, by which we
 are taught to believe that it has always been in England; belonging
 once to it were a stole and maniple, upon which latter appliance
 were four armorial shields, which would lead to the idea that it had
 been expressly made for the chapel of Margaret de Clare, Countess of
 Cornwall, who is known to have been alive A.D. 1294. That time quite
 tallies with the style of the stuff of which this chasuble is made;
 and though now so worn and cut away, it is one of the most curious in
 this or any other country, and particularly valuable to an English
 collection.


675.

Piece of the Bayeux Tapestry; ground, white linen; design, two narrow
bands in green edged with crimson (now much faded) with a very thin
undulating scroll in faded crimson, and green between them. English,
11th century. 3¼ inches by 2½ inches.

 Though done in worsted, and such a tiny fragment of that great but
 debated historical work, it is so far a valuable specimen as it shows
 the sort of material as well as style and form of stitch in which
 the whole was wrought. In the “Vetusta Monimenta,” published by the
 Society of Antiquaries, plate 17, shows, in large, a portion of this
 embroidery where the piece before us is figured; and, from the writing
 under it, we learn that it was brought away from Bayeux by Mrs.
 Stothard, when her husband was occupied in making drawings of that
 interesting record. There is not the slightest reason for believing
 that this embroidery was the work of Matilda, or any of her ladies of
 honour, or waiting maids; but all the probabilities are that it was
 done by English hands, may be in London by order, and at the cost, of
 one or other of three knights from Bayeux, who came over with William,
 on whom he bestowed much land in England, as we have already shown in
 the Introduction to this Catalogue, § 4.


698.

Door-curtain, ground, yellow and gold; pattern, in rich raised green
velvet, two small eagles with wings displayed, and between them a
large vase, out of which issues a conventional flower showing the
pomegranate, surmounted by a modification of the same fruit amid
wide-spreading foliations. Milanese, 16th century. 8 feet 8 inches by 6
feet 6 inches.

 Though the golden threads of the ground in this magnificent stuff
 are much tarnished, still this piece is very fine, and may have been
 part of some household furniture wrought at the order of the Emperor
 Charles V, whose German eagle is so conspicuous in the design, while
 the pomegranate brings to mind Spain and Granada.


699.

Piece of Embroidery; ground, a brown fine linen, backed with strong
canvas; pattern, female figures, monkeys, flowers, shells, &c. in
coloured worsteds. French, late 17th century. 8 feet 9 inches by 8 feet
3 inches.

 This large work is admirably done, and a fine specimen both of the
 taste with which the colours are matched, and the stitchery executed;
 and it may have been intended as the hanging for the wall of a small
 room.


700.

Lady’s dress, white silk; embroidered with flowers in coloured silks
and gold and silver threads. Chinese, 18th century. 4 feet 2½ inches.

 Worked by order, very probably of some European dame, at Macao or
 Canton, and exactly like No. 713 in design and execution. The gold and
 silver, as in that, so in this specimen, are much tarnished.


701.

Lady’s Dress, sky-blue satin; brocaded with white flowers, in small
bunches. French, late 18th century. 4 feet 7 inches.


702.

Christening Cloak of green satin, lined with rose-coloured satin.
Chinese. 5 feet 8½ inches by 3 feet 6¾ inches.

 A fine specimen, in every respect, of Chinese manufacture; the satin
 itself is of the finest, softest kind; whether we look at the green or
 the light rose-colour, nothing can surpass either of them in tone and
 clearness. Few European dyers could give those tints.

 In its present form this piece constituted an article to be found,
 and even yet seen, in very many families in Italy, Germany, and
 France, and was employed for christening occasions, when the nurse or
 midwife wore it over her shoulders, like a mantle, for muffling up the
 new-born babe, as she carried it, in state, to church for baptism.
 In this, as in other specimens of the Museum, there was a running
 string at top by which it might be drawn tight to the neck. Those who
 have lived abroad for even a short time must have observed how the
 nurse took care to let a little of this sort of scarf hang out of the
 carriage-window as she rode with baby to church. The christening cloth
 or cloak was, not long since, in use among ourselves.


703.

Christening Cloak of bright red satin. Italian, 18th century. 5 feet by
5 feet 11 inches.

 The material is rich, and of a colour rather affected for the purpose
 in Italy.


704.

Christening Cloth or Cloak of murrey-coloured velvet. Italian, 17th
century. 8 feet by 5 feet 5 inches.

 The pile is soft and rich, and its colour, once such a favourite in
 the by-gone days of England, of a delicious mellow tone. Like Nos. 702
 and 703, it robed the nurse as she went to the baptismal font with the
 new-born child, and has the string round the neck by which it could be
 drawn, like a mantle, about her shoulders.


705.

Lady’s Dress of brocaded satin; ground, dull red; pattern, slips of
yellow flowers and green leaves. Italian, late 18th century. 4 feet
10½ inches.

 The satin is rich, but the tinsel, in white silver, tawdry.


706.

Skirt of a Lady’s Dress of brocaded silk; ground, white; pattern,
bunches of flowers in pink, blue, yellow, and purple, amid a diapering
of interlaced strap-design in white flos-silk. French, 18th century. 3
feet 3 inches.

 Good in material, but in pattern like many of the stuffs which came
 from the looms of the period at Lyons.


707.

Christening Scarf of white brocaded silk. Lucca, 17th century. 5 feet
square.

 Of a fine material and pleasing design.


708.

Piece of green Silk Brocade; pattern, lyres, flowers, ribbons with
tassels. French, 18th century. 5 feet 6 inches by 1 foot 8 inches.


709.

Skirt of a Lady’s Dress; ground, bright yellow, barred white; pattern,
a brocade in small flowers in gold, green, and red sparingly sprinkled
about. Italian, 18th century. 7 feet 8 inches by 3 feet 4 inches.

 A pleasing specimen of the time.


710.

Piece of White Silk, brocaded with flowers in white flos-silk, and
in silver, between bands consisting of three narrow slips in white.
French, 17th century. 5 feet by 4 feet 6 inches.

 When the silver was bright and untarnished, the pattern, so quiet in
 itself, must have had a pleasing effect.


711.

Christening Scarf of silk damask; ground, light blue; pattern, flowers
in pink, white, and yellow. Levant, 18th century. 5 feet 5 inches by 5
feet.

 Garish in look, still it has a value as a specimen of the loom in the
 eastern parts of the Mediterranean; the blue diapering on the blue
 ground shows, in the architectural design, a Saracenic influence.


712.

Piece of Damask Silk; ground, crimson; pattern, flowers and vases in
white and green. Italian, 17th century. 8 feet 9 inches by 1 foot 9
inches.

 Rich in substance, and intended for hangings in state rooms.


713.

Skirt of a Lady’s Dress; white silk embroidered with flowers in
coloured silks, and gold and silver. Chinese, 18th century. 3 feet.

 Though well done, and by a Chinese hand, very likely at Canton or
 Macao, for some European lady, it is far behind, in beauty, the
 Chinese piece No. 792.


714.

Christening Cloak of yellow silk damask; pattern, bunches of flowers.
Lucca, 17th century. 7 feet 10 inches by 5 feet.

 Like other such cloaks, or scarves, it has its running string, and is
 of a fine rich texture.


715.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, dove-coloured white; pattern, large
foliage in pale green. Italian, 18th century. 4 feet 8 inches by 3 feet
8 inches.

 A fine material, and the bold design well brought out.


716.

Christening Cloak of pink satin damask. Italian, 18th century. 4 feet 8
inches by 4 feet 6 inches.

 The little sprigs of fruits and flowers are well arranged; and the
 pomegranate is discernible among them.


717.

Piece of Silk Brocade; ground, stone-white chequered silk; pattern,
deep blue garlands and bunches of flowers, both dotted with smaller
flowers in silver. Italian, 17th century. 3 feet 8 inches by 3 feet.


718.

Piece of Embroidered Silk; ground, sky-blue; pattern, leaves, flowers,
and fruit, in white silk. Italian, 18th century. 3 feet 8 inches by 3
feet.

 The embroidery is admirably done, and the pomegranate is there among
 the fruit.


719.

Door-curtain, crimson worsted velvet; pattern, flowers and foliage.
Italian, 17th century. 10 feet 3 inches by 4 feet 3 inches.

 A very fine and rich specimen of its kind, and most likely wrought at
 Genoa.


720.

Piece of Silk; ground, white; pattern, flowers and foliage, embroidered
in gold thread and coloured silks. Chinese, 18th century. 3 feet 2½
inches by 1 foot 6½ inches.

 Another specimen of Chinese work done for Europeans, and most likely
 after an European design; in character resembling other examples in
 this collection from the same part of the world.


721.

Piece of Silk; ground, white; pattern, flowers and pomegranates
embroidered in gold and coloured silks. Neapolitan, 17th century. 3
feet 3 inches by 1 foot 5 inches.

 The design is rich, the flowers well-raised, and the gold unsparingly
 employed.


722.

Cradle-coverlet; white satin quilted, after a design of fruits, and
branches of leaves upon a chequer pattern. French, 18th century. 3 feet
2½ inches by 3 feet.

 Among the fruits the symbolic pomegranate is not forgotten, perhaps as
 expressive of the wish that the young mother to whom this quilt may
 have been given by a lady friend, might have a numerous offspring,
 hinted at by the many pips in the fruit.


723.

Door-curtain of silk damask; ground, crimson; pattern, scrolls in gold
foliage, and flowers in coloured silks. Italian, early 17th century. 6
feet 7 inches by 3 feet 5 inches.

 This is a fine rich stuff; it is lined with purple satin, and must
 have been very effective when in use.


724.

Chasuble of woven silk; ground, white; pattern, floral scrolls in
green, and lined pink; the cross at the back and the two stripes in
front in gold lace of an open design. French, 18th century. 4 feet 2
inches by 2 feet 5 inches.

 The open-worked lace is good of its kind.


725.

Altar-frontal of crimson velvet, ornamented on three sides with a
scroll ornamentation in gold, and applied; and with seven armorial
bearings all the same. French, 17th century. 6 feet 1 inch by 2 feet
6½ inches.

 The armorial shield, as it stands at present, is--_azure_ a cross
 ankred _sable_ between two fleur-de-lis _argent_. On looking narrowly
 at the azure velvet on which these charges are worked, it is evident
 that something has been picked out, and, in its place, the sable-cross
 has been afterwards wrought in, thus explaining the anomaly of colour
 upon colour not in the original bearing. The applied ornaments in
 gold are in flowers and narrow gold lace, and of a rich and effective
 manner.


726.

Cradle-coverlet of white satin; embroidered in white, with a roving
border of flowers, and fringed. French, 18th century. 3 feet 5½
inches by 2 feet 8 inches.

 Rich in its material, and nicely wrought.


727.

Skirt of a Lady’s Dress; sky-blue satin, quilted round the lower border
with a scroll of large palmate leaves, and bunches of flowers, with an
edging of fruits, in which the pomegranate may be seen. Italian, 18th
century. 8 feet 9 inches by 3 feet.

 The pattern in which the quilting comes out is very tasteful; and the
 body of this skirt has an ornamentation in quilting of a cinquefoil
 shape, and made to lap one over the other in the manner of tiles.


728.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, bright yellow silk ribbed; pattern, white
plumes twined with brown ribbons, and bunches of white flowers. Lucca,
17th century. 8 feet 10 inches by 7 feet.

 Of rich material and wrought for household use.


729.

Door-curtain of yellow silk damask; pattern, strap-work and
conventional foliage. Italian, 17th century. 7 feet 2 inches by 5 feet.

 A bold design, and wrought in a good material.


730.

Cope of brocaded silk; ground, orange-red; pattern, foliage, and
bunches of flowers amid white garlands, in coloured silks. French, 18th
century. 10 feet 10 inches by 5 feet 6 inches.

 The hood and morse are of the same stuff, which was evidently meant to
 be for secular, not liturgical, use.


731.

Door-curtain of crimson damask silk; pattern, a large broad
conventional floriation. Italian, 17th century. 10 feet by 8 feet 10
inches.


732.

Curtain of pale sea-green damask; pattern, large leaves and flowers.
Italian. 17 feet 8 inches by 13 feet 7 inches.

 The satiny ground throws up the design in its dull tone extremely
 well; and the whole is edged with a border of narrow pale yellow lace,
 figured with small green sprigs.


750.

Table-cover; ground, fine ribbed cream-coloured linen; pattern,
flowers, butterflies, and birds, embroidered in various-coloured
flos-silks. Indian, 17th century. 7 feet by 5 feet 6 inches; fringe 3
inches deep.

 The curiosity of this piece is that, like many such works of the
 needle from India, the embroidery shows the same on both sides; and
 there is evidently a Gothic feeling in the edgings on the borders of
 the inner square.


786.

Scull-cap of white satin; quilted after an elaborate running design.
English, 17th century, 10½ inches diameter.

 Tradition tells us that this scull-cap belonged to our King Charles
 the First, and says, moreover, that, at his beheading, it was worn
 by that unfortunate King. The style of design would not, as far
 as art-worth can speak, invalidate such a history of this royal
 ownership. Its lining is now quite gone.


792.

Piece of Chinese Embroidery; ground, greyish white satin; pattern,
girls, flowers, birds, fruits, and insects in various-coloured flos and
thread silks, and gold. 11 feet by 1 foot 7 inches.

 Justly may we look upon this specimen as one among the best and most
 beautiful embroideries wrought by the Chinese needle known, not merely
 in this country, but in any part of Europe. Putting aside the utter
 want of perspective, and other Chinese defective notions of art, it
 is impossible not to admire the skilful way in which the whole of the
 piece before us is executed. In the female figures there seems to
 be much truthfulness with regard to the costume and manners of that
 country; and the sharp talon-like length of finger-nails affected
 by the ladies there is conspicuously shown in almost every hand.
 The birds, the insects, the flowers are all admirably done; and the
 tones of colour are so soft and well assorted, and there is such a
 thorough Chinese taste displayed in the choice of tints--tints almost
 unknown to European dyers--that the eye is instantly pleased with the
 production. The embroidery itself is almost entirely well raised.


839.

Piece of Velvet Hanging; ground, crimson velvet; pattern, large
conventional flowers and branches in yellow applied silk. Italian, 17th
century. 6 feet 4 inches by 1 foot 8 inches.

 This piece is rather a curiosity for the way in which its design is
 done. On the plain length of velvet a pattern was cut, and the void
 spaces were filled in with yellow silk, and the edges covered with
 a rather broad and flat cording, and the whole--that is, velvet and
 silk--gummed on to a lining of strong canvas, having the cord only
 stitched to it.


840.

Piece of Applied Work; ground, crimson velvet; pattern, large
conventional flowers in yellow satin. Italian, 17th century. 2 feet 6
inches by 2 feet 3 inches.

 Here the same system is followed, but the ground is yellow satin
 uncut, the crimson velvet being cut out so as to make it look the
 ground, and the real ground the design, both are, as above, gummed on
 coarse canvas.


841.

Piece of Velvet Hanging; ground, yellow silk; pattern, scrolls and
flowers in applied crimson velvet. Italian, 17th century. 6 feet 4
inches by 1 foot 9 inches.

 Executed exactly as No. 840. In all likelihood these three pieces
 served as hangings to be put at open windows on festival days--a
 custom yet followed in Italy.


842.

Piece of Raised Velvet; ground, pale yellow silk; pattern, in raised
velvet, a fan-like floriation in crimson and green. Florentine, 16th
century. 3 feet 2 inches by 2 feet 1 inch.

 A specimen of rich household decoration.


843.

Raised Velvet; ground, creamy white satin; pattern, the artichoke amid
wide-spreading ramifications in crimson raised velvet. Genoese, 17th
century. 2 feet 1 inch by 1 foot 8½ inches.

 Intended for household furniture. When hung upon the walls of a large
 room this stuff must have had a fine effect.


882.

Skirt of Female Attire; ground, coarse white linen; pattern, a broad
band of blue worsted, figured with flowers and animals in white thread,
and the broad edging of crochet work. German, 17th century. 3 feet
8½ inches by 2 feet 8 inches deep.

 This piece of embroidery must have been for secular personal use, and
 not for any ecclesiastical employment, and very likely was part of the
 holyday dress of some country girl in Germany or Switzerland. The blue
 embroidery, though of a bold well-raised character, is coarse; so,
 too, is the lace below it.


1029.

An Algerine Embroidered Scarf; ground, very thin canvas; pattern,
a modification of the artichoke form, and ramifications in
various-coloured flos-silks, and parted by short bands of brace-like
work in white flos-silk. 2 feet 3¾ inches by 1 foot 3¾ inches.

 Neither old, nor remarkable as an art-work.


1030.

Table-cover of linen, embroidered in white thread, with flowers, vases,
trophies, and monograms. French, 18th century. 4 feet 4 inches by 3
feet 10 inches.

 This beautifully-executed piece of needlework is richly deserving a
 notice from those who admire well-finished stitchery, which is here
 seen to advantage. In the centre is a basket with wide-spreading
 flowers, upon each side of which is a military trophy consisting of
 cannon-balls, kettle-drums, other drums, knights’ tilting-lances,
 halberts, swords, cannon, trumpets, all gracefully heaped together
 and upholding a herald’s tabard blazoned with a leopard rampant, by
 the side of which, and drooping above, are two flags, one showing
 the three fleurs-de-lis of France, and the other with a charge that
 is indistinct; and the whole is surmounted by a full-faced barred
 helmet wreathed with a ducal coronet, out of which arises a plume of
 ostrich feathers; on the other sides are two elegantly-shaped vases
 full of flowers. At each of the four corners of this inner square is
 the monogram A. M. V. P. T. between boughs, and surmounted by a ducal
 coronet; and at every corner of the border below is a flaming heart
 pierced by two arrows, while all about are eagles with wings displayed
 and heads regardant, seemingly heraldic.


1031.

Piece of Silk Brocade; ground, white; pattern, large red flowers seeded
yellow, and foliage mostly light green. Lyons, 18th century. 2 feet 10
inches by 1 foot 9 inches.

 A specimen of one of those large showy flowered tissues in such favour
 all over Europe during the last century, as well as in the earlier
 portion of the present one, for church use. The example before us, in
 all probability, served as a bishop’s lap-cloth at solemn high mass;
 for which rite, see “The Church of our Fathers,” i. 409.


1032.

Piece of Silk and Silver Brocade; ground, a brown olive; pattern, large
flowers, some lilac, but mostly bright crimson, intermixed with much
silver ornamentation. Lyons, 18th century. 2 feet 8½ inches, by 1
foot 8½ inches.

 Another specimen of the same taste as No. 1031, but even more
 garish. Like it, it seems to have served the purpose of a liturgical
 lap-cloth, or, as it used to be called, a barm-cloth.


1033.

Lectern-veil; ground, yellow satin; pattern, conventional flowers
in applied velvet in blue, green, and crimson. Italian, early 17th
century. 6 feet 6 inches by 1 foot 8 inches.

 In fact the whole of this liturgical veil for the deacon’s book-stand
 is of the so-called “applied style;” that is, of pieces of satin and
 of velvet cut out to the required shape, and sewed on the canvas
 ground, and the edges bordered with a cord of silk, mostly white; and
 altogether it has a rich appearance.


1035.

Bed-coverlet; ground, white thread net; pattern, flowers in white
thread. Spanish, 17th century. 6 feet 5 inches by 5 feet 3½ inches.

 This specimen of netting and crochet needlework displays much taste in
 its design of flowers, among which the rose and the pomegranate are
 very conspicuous. It was wrought in four strips joined together by
 narrow linen bands, and the whole edged with a shallow fringe.


1037, 1037A.

Pieces of Stuff for Silk Sashes; pattern, perpendicular bars,
some whity-brown figured with gold and silver flowers, some plain
olive green, and bordered on both edges of the stuff with bands of
whity-brown ornamented with sprigs of gold flowers. Oriental, 16th
century. 2 feet 4½ inches, by 11 inches.

 The trimming and cross, done in tinsel, show that its last European
 use was for the church; in the East, such silken stuffs, in long
 lengths, are worn about the waist by men and women as a sash or girdle.


1038.

Chasuble-back; ground, green satin; design, scrolls in raised red silk
thread. 18th century. Satin, French. 3 feet 8 inches by 2 feet 2 inches.

 Very likely the satin formed some part of a lady’s gown, and for its
 richness was given to the church for making vestments. As a ritual
 garment it could not have looked well, nor is its gaudy red embroidery
 in good taste for any ecclesiastical purpose.


1039.

Waistcoat-pattern, embroidered and spangled. Second half of the 18th
century. French. 10 inches by 7½ inches.

 Of such stuffs were gentlemen’s vests made in Paris under Louis XV.,
 and in London at the beginning of George III.’s reign.


1194, 1195.

Orphreys for a Chasuble; ground, crimson silk; design, an angel-choir
in two rows amid wreaths, of which the flowers are silver and the
leaves gold, some shaded green; on the back orphrey are two heraldic
bearings. German, very late 15th century.

 This beautifully-wrought specimen of Rhenish needlework, most likely
 done at Cologne, consists of twenty-six small figures of winged angels
 robed in various liturgical vestments, and playing musical instruments
 of all sorts--some wind, some stringed. Of these celestial beings
 several wear copes over their white albs; others have over their albs
 narrow stoles, in some instances crossed upon the breast as priests,
 but mostly belt-wise as deacons: other some are arrayed in the
 sub-deacon’s tunicle, and the deacon’s dalmatic: thus vested they hold
 the instrument which each is playing; and no one but a German would
 have thought of putting into angels’ hands such a thing as the long
 coarse aurochs’ horn wherewith to breathe out heavenly music. On the
 front orphrey are ten of such angels; on the one made in the shape of
 a cross, for the back of the chasuble, there are sixteen. At both ends
 of the short beam or transom of this cross we find admirably-executed
 armorial bearings. The first blazon--that to the left--shows a shield
 _gules_ an inescutcheon _argent_, over all an escarbuncle of eight
 rays _or_, for CLEVES; dimidiated by, _or_ a fess checky _argent_
 and _gules_, for MARCK; surmounted by a helmet _argent_ crested with
 a buffalo’s head cabosed _gules_, having the shut-down bars of the
 helmet’s vizor thrust out through the mouth of the animal, which is
 crowned ducally _or_ the attire _argent_ passing up within the crown;
 and the mantlings _gules_. As if for supporters, this shield has
 holding it two angels, one in a tunicle, the other in a cope. The
 second shield--that on the right hand,--shows _gules_ an inescutcheon
 _argent_, over all, an escarbuncle of eight rays _or_, crested and
 supported as the one to the left, thus giving, undimidiated, the
 blazon of the then sovereign ducal house of CLEVES.

 All these ornaments, armorial bearings, angels, flowers, and foliage,
 are not worked into, but wrought each piece separately, and afterwards
 sewed on the crimson silk ground, which is the original one; they
 are “cut work.” The angels’ figures are beautifully done, and their
 liturgic garments richly formed in gold, as are the leaves and stems
 of the wreaths bearing large silver flowers. From its heraldry we may
 fairly assume that the chasuble, from which these handsome orphreys
 were stripped, belonged to the domestic chapel in the palace of the
 Dukes of Cleves, and had been made for one of those sovereigns whose
 wife was of the then princely stirring house of De la Marck.

 As was observed, while describing the beautiful Syon Cope, No.
 9182, the nine choirs of angels separated into three hierarchies is
 indicated here also; and the distinction marked by the garments which
 they are made to wear in these embroideries; some are clothed in
 copes, others in tunicles, the remainder, besides their narrow stoles,
 in long-flowing white albs only--that emblem of spotless holiness
 in which all of them are garmented, as with a robe of light. The
 bushiness of the auburn hair on all of them is remarkable, and done in
 little locks of silk.

 For a student of mediæval music, this angel-choir will have an
 especial interest; but, to our thinking, neither this, nor any other
 production of the subject, whether wrought in sculpture, painting, or
 needlework, hitherto found out on the Continent, at all comes up in
 beauty, gracefulness, or value, to our own lovely minstrel-gallery in
 Exeter Cathedral, or the far more splendid and truly noble angel-choir
 sculptured in the spandrils of the triforium arches in the matchless
 presbytery at Lincoln Minster. A cast of the Exeter minstrel-gallery
 is put up here on the western wall of the north court, and among the
 casts lent by the Architectural Society are those of the angels in
 Lincoln.

 Of the musical instruments themselves, we see several in these two
 pieces of cut-work. Beginning with the back orphrey, marked No. 1194
 at top, the first of the two angels is playing with the fingers of
 both hands an instrument now indiscernible; the second, the lute;
 below them one is beating a tabour with a stick; the other is turning
 the handle of the gita, our hurdy-gurdy. After these we have an angel
 blowing a short horn, while his fellow angel strikes the psaltery.
 Then an angel robed as a deacon in alb, and stole worn like a belt
 falling from his right shoulder to under his left arm, sounding the
 sistrum or Jew’s harp, and his companion fingers with his right hand a
 one-stringed instrument or ancient monochord. In the last couple, one
 with a large bow is playing the viol, a long narrow instrument with
 several silver strings.

 On the orphrey,--made in the shape of a cross and worn on the back
 of the chasuble, No. 1195,--the first angel plays the pan-pipes; the
 second, a gittern, or the modern guitar; the next two show one angel,
 as a deacon in dalmatic, jingling an instrument which he holds by two
 straps, hung all round with little round ball-like bells; and his
 companion, robed in alb and stole crossed at the breast like a priest,
 ringing two large hand-bells; lower down, of the two angels both
 vested as deacons, one blowing a large, long curved-horn, like that
 of the aurochs, the other, the shalmes or double-reeded pipe. Below
 these, one in alb and stole, belt-wise as a deacon, blows a cornamuse
 or bag-pipe; the other, as deacon, the aurochs’ horn. Then a deacon
 angel has a trumpet; his fellow, a priest in alb and crossed stole,
 is playing a triangle; last of all, one plays a tabour, the other the
 monochord. So noteworthy are these admirable embroideries, that they
 merit particular attention.


1233.

A stole; ground, very pale yellow silk; design, an interlacing
strap-work in the greater part; for the expanding ends, a diamond in
gold thread, with a fringe of silk knots alternately crimson and green;
the lining, thin crimson silk. English or French, 13th century. 9 feet
9 inches by 1¾ inches in the narrow parts, and 2½ inches in the
expanded ends.

 Another of those specimens of weaving in small looms worked by young
 women in London and Paris, during the 13th century, which we have met
 in this collection. As the expanded ends are formed of small pieces
 of gold web they were wrought apart, and afterwards sewed on to the
 crimson silk ground. The design of the narrow part has all along its
 length, at its two edges, a pair of very small lines, now brown,
 enclosing a dented ornament. As a liturgical appliance, this stole,
 for its perfect state of preservation, is valuable; Dr. Bock says
 that a stole called St. Bernhard’s, now in the church of our Lady at
 Treves, as well as another curious one in the former cathedral at
 Aschaffenburg, are in length and breadth, just like this.


1234.

Tissue of Silk and Cotton; the warp, cotton; the woof, silk; ground,
green; design, so imperfect that it can hardly be made out, but
apparently a monster bird in yellow, lined and dotted in crimson;
standing on a border of a yellow ground marked with crosses and mullets
of four points. Syrian, late 12th century. 6¾ inches by 4½ inches.

 When perfect this stuff must have been somewhat garish, from its
 colours being so bright and not well contrasted.


1235.

Tissue of Silk and Cotton; the warp, silks of different colours; the
woof, fawn-coloured fine cotton; design, stripes, the broader ones
charged with wild beasts, eagles, and a monster animal having a human
head; the narrow bands showing a pretended Arabic inscription. Syrian,
13th century. 13 inches by 2 inches.

 So very torn and worn away is this piece that the whole of its
 elaborate design cannot be made out; but enough is discernible to
 prove an Asiatic influence. The monster, with the human face staring
 at us, calls to mind the Nineveh sculptures in the British Museum.


1236.

Silk Damask; ground, crimson silk; pattern, in gold thread, two very
large lions, and two pairs, one of very small birds, the other of
equally small dragons, and an ornament not unlike a hand looking-glass.
Oriental, 14th century. 2 feet 5½ inches by 2 feet ½ inch.

 A piece of this same stuff is described under No. 7034 in this
 catalogue; and Dr. Bock, in his useful work, “Geschichte der
 Liturgischen Gewänder des Mittelalters,” t. i. plate iv. has figured
 it.


1237.

Tissue of Silk; ground, dull reddish deep purple; design, a lozenged
diapering. South Italian, 13th century. 6½ inches by 5½ inches.

 So thin is this web that we may presume it was meant as a stuff for
 lining garments of a richer texture.


1238.

Piece of Linen, or the finest byssus of antiquity. Egyptian. 5½
inches by 3 inches.

 Whether this very curious example of that rare and fine tissue known
 in classic times, and later, as byssus, was of mediæval production in
 Egypt, or found in one of the ancient tombs of that land, would be
 hard to determine. Another equally fine and no less valuable specimen
 may be seen in this collection, No. 8230.

 From Dr. Bock we learn that the sudary of our Lord, given to the Abbey
 of Cornelimünster, near Aix-la-Chapelle, by the Emperor Louis the
 Pious, circa A.D. 820, was much like the present example.


1239.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, creamy white; design, broad-banded
lozenges, enclosing a two-headed displayed eagle, and a pair of birds
addorsed, each within an oval. Greek, 11th century. 10¾ inches by
7½ inches.

 It is said to have been a fragment of the imperial tunic belonging
 to Henry II, Emperor of Germany; and not unlikely. If wrought for
 the occasion, and a gift from his imperial brother-Emperors of
 Constantinople, Basil and Constantine, worthy was it for their sending
 and of his acceptance, since the silk is rich, the texture thick,
 and the design in accordance with the ensigns of German royalty. In
 shreds, and ragged as it is, we may prize it as a valuable piece.


1240.

Piece of Silk and Cotton Damask; ground, a yellowish green; design,
large elliptical spaces filled in with Saracenic figurations. The warp
is of green cotton, the woof, of pale yellow silk. South of Spain, 14th
century. 16½ inches by 4¾ inches.

 This strong stuff most likely came from the looms of Granada.


1240A.

Piece of Silk and Cotton.

 Another piece of the same texture.


1241.

Silk and Cotton Damask; ground, blue; design, circles filled in with
conventional ornamentation in crimson (now faded). Greek, 13th century.
15¼ inches by 7½ inches.

 In some very small parts of the pattern, at first sight, indications
 appear of four-footed animals, but the outlines are a fortuitous
 combination. This stuff is poor in material, and the design not very
 artistic.


1242.

Silk and Cotton Damask; ground, light green; design, a Saracenic
pattern formed by lines in long lozenges. South of Spain, 14th century.
9¾ inches by 7 inches.

 Much like in tint and style of pattern the fine specimen at No. 1240.
 In both the Moslem’s sacred colour of green may be noticed, and the
 two pieces may have been woven at Granada.


1243.

Damask, silk and linen; ground, crimson and yellow stripes; design, on
the crimson stripes, circles enclosing a lion rampant, and six-petaled
flowers, in yellow; on the yellow, one stripe with flowers in white
silk, the other with flowers in gold, now faded black. Syrian, 14th
century. 7½ inches by 6¾ inches.

 The quality of this damask is coarse, from the great quantity of
 thread of a thick size wrought up in it. The design has no particular
 merit.


1244-1244C.

Pieces of Damask; ground, gold; design, in crimson silk, broad round
hoops, marked with a golden floriation, and enclosing a lion passant,
the spaces between the hoops filled in with a floriated square topped
by fleur-de-lis. Sicilian, 14th century. Each piece about 4½ inches
square.

 When whole the design of this rich stuff must have been effective, and
 the fragments we here have prove it to have been sketched in a bold
 free style. Unfortunately, so bad was the gold that, in places, it
 has turned green. The warp is of a thick linen thread, but, though it
 gives a strength to the texture, is not to be perceived upon its face.


1245.

Piece of Silk and Gold Damask; ground, crimson silk; design, a net-work
formed by cords twined into circles enclosing four V’s, put so as to
form a cross, and the meshes filled in alternately with a flower and a
leaf, each surrounded by a line like an eight-petaled floriation, all
in gold thick thread. Sicilian, 14th century. 5 inches by 4¾ inches.

 The way in which the pattern affects the form of a cross in its design
 is remarkable.


1246.

Silk Damask; ground, brick-red; design, within broad-banded squares,
ornamented with stars and flowers, a large double-headed eagle with
wings displayed. Greek, 13th century. 12½ inches by 8 inches.

 Being so very thin in texture, it is not surprising that this stuff
 is in such a tattered condition. When new, it must have been meant,
 not for personal wear, but rather for church purposes, or household
 use, as the hanging of walls. Its design is not happy, and the
 ornamentation about the eagle thick and heavy.


1247.

Narrow Web for Orphreys; ground, a broad stripe of crimson silk between
two narrow ones of green; design, a succession of oblong six-sided
spaces in gold, filled in with a sort of floriated cross having
sprouting from both ends of the upright beam, stalks bending inwards
and ending in a fleur-de-lis, all in red silk. French, 13th century.
3¾ inches by 1-⅞ inches.

 Of this kind of textile, wrought by women in a small loom, we have
 before us in this collection several specimens; and what was done
 by poor females at the time in England and France, it is likely was
 performed by industrious women elsewhere. The fleur-de-lis upon this
 fragment leads us to think of France; but Dr. Bock informs us that
 laces much like this in pattern were observed upon the royal robes in
 which two princes of the imperial house of the Hohenstaufen were clad
 for their burial, when their graves were opened in the cathedral of
 Palermo.


1248.

Piece of Silk and Gold Brocade; ground, blue silk; design, a broad
border with large pretended Arabic letters, and a griffin(?) segreant,
both in gold. Sicilian, early 13th century. 8¼ inches by 4-⅞
inches.

 The heraldic monster-bird here, supposed to be a griffin, is drawn and
 executed in a very spirited manner.


1249.

Linen, embroidered, in gold and silk, with the figure of a king.
German, late 12th century. Diameter 6¾ inches.

 The figure of this grim-bearded personage is carefully worked, and the
 gold employed is good though thin. Upon his head he wears a crown,
 such as are figured upon the monuments of the time; the face is badly
 drawn, but the ermine lining of his mantle is carefully represented.


1250.

An Orphrey; ground, gold; design, various subjects from Holy Writ, with
borders; the whole length figured with monsters, floriations, and an
inscription. French, 13th century. 4 feet 2 inches by 7 inches.

 In all probability this orphrey belonged to the back of a chasuble,
 and, as such, the subjects figured in it would find an appropriate
 place there; but it ought to be observed that, in reality, it is
 made up of four portions, the two narrow bands, besides the long and
 the short lengths of the middle or broad parts which they border.
 At top we have the Crucifixion, wherein each of our Lord’s feet is
 fastened by its own separate nail. On one side of His head is the
 sun, on the other the moon; St. Mary and St. John are standing on the
 ground beside Him; and, at the cross’s foot, looks out a head, that
 of Adam, which, whether from accident or design, has very much the
 shape of a lion’s with a shaggy mane; one of the symbols belonging
 to our Lord is a lion, in token of the resurrection. Some way down
 a female, crowned and wimpled, bears in both her hands, which are
 muffled in a veil, a golden-covered cup,--very likely Mary Magdalen,
 with her vessel full of costly spikenard for anointing our Saviour’s
 feet against the day of His burying. Opposite to her is St. Michael,
 spearing Satan, an emblem of the great atonement, as is shown under
 No. 9182, while describing the Syon Cope. Lower down we have the
 three women or, as they are sometimes called, Maries, with their
 sweet spices, and the angel telling them of the uprising of our
 Redeemer. Lower yet, our Lord’s Ascension is represented by showing
 Him seated in majesty with both His arms outstretched, within an
 almond-shaped glory. On the second or shorter length, and, as far as
 the Gospel history is concerned, out of its due place, we behold the
 Annunciation, and a little under that subject a row of four nimbed and
 seemingly winged heads, like those of the cherubim, may be symbols of
 the four evangelists. At each side of these subjects runs a border of
 gold wrought with lions crowned, and imaginary winged monster-animals
 separated by graceful floriations; and on one of these borders, at the
 lower end, is worked this inscription--“Odilia me fecit,” in nicely
 shaped letters. This female name was common in Auvergne, where St.
 Odilo, the sixth abbot of Cluni, was born, a son of the noble house
 of Mercœur, and, to our thinking, it is very likely this Odilia was a
 daughter of one of the lords of that once great family in the South of
 France.

 So worn away is this curious orphrey that often the several subjects
 figured on in the loom, and not by the needle, can be hardly made out
 till held in various lights.


1251.

Printed Silk Taffeta; ground, very light purple; design, a scroll,
block-printed in deeper purple, and edged black. Sicilian, 13th
century. 8¾ inches by 6 inches.

 The boughs, sprouting into a sort of trefoil, are gracefully twined
 with a bold free hand; and the scroll reminds us of much of the like
 sort of ornament found, in this country, on various art-works of its
 time. As an early specimen of block-printing upon silk, it is valuable
 and rare.


1252.

Part of an Altar-Frontal, embroidered, in coloured threads, upon coarse
canvas; design, within a medallion, the ground, light blue and broad
border, fawn-colour, a figure, seated, holding in his left-hand a
staff, and having on his knee an open book inscribed,--“Ego sum Liber
Vite.” The figure is clothed in a girded white tunic, and a mantle now
fawn-coloured; but the head is so damaged that the personage cannot be
recognized; the probability is that it represents our Lord in majesty,
having the staff of a cross in one hand and giving His blessing with
the other. German, early 12th century, 12¾ inches by 10 inches.


1252A.

Part of an Altar-Frontal; design, the busts of two winged and nimbed
angels, within round arches, bearing between them a white scroll
with these words--“Deus Sabaoth.” This was a portion of the frontal
mentioned above. German, early 12th century. 17 inches by 7¼ inches.
In both pieces the parts now fawn-coloured have faded into such from
crimson.


1253.

Silk Damask; ground, fawn-colour; design, in light green, a sprinkling
of fleur-de-lis amid griffins, in pairs, rampant, regardant. Sicilian,
14th century. 10 inches by 8 inches.

 The pattern is not of that spirited character found on many of the
 earlier specimens of the Sicilian loom; the griffins, especially, are
 weakly drawn. The fleur-de-lis would signify that it was wrought for
 some French family or follower of the house of Anjou.


1254.

Silk Damask; ground, crimson; design, a diapering of birds pecking at a
cone-like ornament ending in a fleur-de-lis, all in yellow. Sicilian,
14th century. 5 inches by 4 inches.

 A very thin stuff with a pattern of a small but pretty design. What
 the birds are with their long square tails is hard to guess; so, too,
 with respect to the ornament between them, like a fir-cone purfled at
 its sides with crockets, and made to end in a flower, which may have
 some reference to the French family of Anjou, once reigning in Sicily.
 The stuff itself is poor and may have been woven for linings to richer
 silks.


1255.

Shred of Silk Damask; ground crimson; design, seemingly horsemen
separated by a large circular ornament in one row, and the gable of
a building in the other, in yellow and blue. Greek, 12th century. 8
inches by 6¼ inches.

 Though this stuff be thin and poor, the design, could it be well seen,
 would be curious. The circle seems a leafless but branchy tree, with a
 low wall round it; and the gable is full of low pillared arches with
 voids for windows in them.


1256.

Fragments of Narrow Orphrey Web; ground, crimson; design, in gold
ramified scrolls, with beasts and birds. English or French, 13th
century, 10½ inches by 3 inches.

 This very handsome piece is another specimen of the small loom
 worked by young women, as before noticed; and may have served either
 for sacred or secular use. The band is parted into spaces by a
 thin chevron, and each division so made is filled in with tiny but
 gracefully-twined boughs, among which some times we have a pair of
 birds, at others a pair of collared dogs; at top another arrangement
 took place, but no more of it remains than the body of a lion.


1257.

Silk and Thread Tissue; ground, stripes of red, green, and yellow;
design, rows of circles, large and small, with a conventional flower
between, the large circles red, the small ones merely outlined in
white. Greek, 13th century. 8¼ inches by 6 inches.

 Even when new it must have been flimsy, and could have served but
 for a lining. Of exactly the same design, but done in other and
 fewer colours, a specimen now at Paris is figured in the “Mélanges
 d’Archéologie,” tome iii. plate 15.


1258.

Silk and Cotton Damask; ground, yellow; design, a net-work with
six-sided meshes, each filled in with flowers and foliage in deep dull
purple. Italian, late 13th century. 14 inches by 10 inches.

 The well-turned and graceful foliation to be seen in architectural
 scroll-work, on monuments raised at the period, enters largely into
 the design; and for its pattern, though poor for the quantity of its
 silk, this specimen is very good.


1259.

Piece of a Napkin; ground, nicely diapered in lozenges, all white;
design, horizontal dark brown stripes, with a lined pattern in white
upon them. Flemish, 16th century. 24 inches by 13 inches.

 Most likely Yprès sent forth this pleasing example of fine towel linen.


1260.

Embroidery for liturgical use; ground, dark blue silk; design, our
Lord, as the “Man of Sorrows,” within a quatrefoil flowered at the
barbs in gold thread sewed on with crimson silk. Italian, 15th century.
6 inches square.

 The figure of our Redeemer, wrought upon linen with white silk, much
 of which is worn away, is holding His wounded hands cross-wise, and
 a scourge under each arm. From His brows, wreathed with thorns,
 trickle long drops of blood; and the whole, with the large bleeding
 gaping wound in His side, strikingly reminds us of the wood-cut to be
 found at the beginning of our Salisbury Grails, or choir-books, with
 those anthems sung at high mass, called graduals. In England such
 representations were usually known under the name of “S. Gregory’s
 Pity,” as may be seen in “The Church of our Fathers,” t. i. p. 53.
 This embroidery is figured by Dr. Bock, in his “Geschichte der
 Liturgischen Gewänder des Mittelalters,” I. Band, 11. Lieferung, pl.
 14.


1261.

The Embroidered Apparel for an Amice; ground, crimson flos-silk, now
faded; design, large and small squares, green, blue, and purple, filled
in with gold, and modifications of the gammadion, in white or crimson
silks. German, 14th century. 14 inches by 5¼ inches.

 This apparel is made out of three pieces, and stiffened with
 parchment; and is bordered by a narrow but effective lace of a green
 ground, bearing circles of white and red, parted by yellow. The brown
 canvas upon which it is worked is very fine of its kind; and the gold,
 which is of a good quality, is of narrow tinsel strips. From age, or
 use, the design is worn away from a great portion of the ground, and
 the pattern was a favourite one for liturgical appliances up to the
 16th century.


1262.

Maniple; embroidered, in various-coloured silk, upon brown canvas;
design, a net-work in bright crimson, the lozenge-shaped meshes
of which, braced together by a fret, are filled in with a ground
alternately yellow charged with modifications of the gammadion in
blue, and green, with the same figure in white voided crimson. The
extremities are cloth of gold, both edged with a parti-coloured fringe,
and one figured with a lion in gold on a crimson field. German, 14th
century. 3 feet 11 inches by 3 inches.


1263.

Napkin of linen embroidered in white thread; ground, plain white linen;
design, a conventional rectangular floriation, filled in with other
floriations, and in the middle an eight-petaled flower, and in the
square intervening spaces outside a fleur-de-lis shooting out of each
corner, all in white broad thread. German, late 14th century. 23 inches
by 13¼ inches.

 Like many other examples of the kind, the present one can show its
 elaborate and beautifully-executed design only by being held up to the
 light, when it comes forth in perfection.


1264.

Silk Damask; ground, crimson; design, a net-work in broad bands of
yellow silk and gold wrought like twisted cords, and the meshes, which
are wreathed inside with a green garland bearing green and white
flowers, filled in with a conventional artichoke in yellow silk mixed
with gold thread, and edged with a green and white border. Spanish,
early 16th century. 17 inches by 15½ inches.

 As a furniture-stuff, this must have been very effective; and from the
 under side being thickly plastered with strong glue, the last service
 of the present piece would seem to have been for the decoration of the
 wall of some room.


1265.

Silk Damask; ground, deep blue, or violet; design, a sprinkling of
small stars and rows of large angels, some issuing from clouds and
swinging thuribles in the left hand, others kneeling in worship with
uplifted hands, bearing crowns of thorns, and the last row kneeling and
holding up before them a cross of the Latin shape. Florentine, late
14th century. 21½ inches by 13 inches.

 From its form this piece seems to have been cut off from a chasuble;
 and the stuff itself, it is likely, was woven expressly for the purple
 vestments worn in Lent, and more particularly during Passion time. At
 No. 7072 another portion of the same damask is described.


1266.

Triangular Piece of Yellow Silk; ground, light yellow; design, a
netting filled in with eight-petaled roses and circles enclosing other
flowers, all in white. Greek, 14th century. 9½ inches.

 Lined as it is with stout blue canvas, this piece may have been in
 liturgical use, and, in all likelihood, served as the hood to some
 boy-bishop’s cope.

 About the boy-bishop himself and his functions, according to our old
 Salisbury Rite, see “Church of Our Fathers,” t. iv. p. 215.


1267.

Tissue, silk upon linen; ground, white; design, broad circles filled
in with floriated ornamentation, bearing in the middle a five-petaled
purple flower. Italian, early 14th century. 7 inches by 3 inches.


1267A.

Another Piece of the same Tissue. 12¼ inches by 2¼ inches.

 The thread in the warp of this stuff is more than usually thick; and
 so sparingly is the silk employed on its pattern, that in its best
 days it could have looked but poor.


1268.

Silk and Cotton Damask; ground, yellow silk mixed with cotton; design,
a sprinkling of eight-rayed voided stars, in dusky purple. Italian,
14th century. 5 inches by 2½ inches.

 A thin stuff for linings.


1269.

Silk and Gold Damask; ground, light fawn-colour in silk; design,
a large conventional flower enclosing another flower of the same
character, which is filled in with a double-headed eagle displayed, and
the spaces between the large flowers diapered with foliage shooting
from a sort of fir-cone, at the top of which are birds in pairs
hovering over the plant and having a long feather drooping from the
head, all in gold thread. Sicilian, early 14th century. 10¾ inches
by 9¾ inches.

[Illustration: 1269.

SILK AND GOLD DAMASK. Sicilian, 14th century.

  Vincent Brooks Day & Son, Lith.

]

 Though not so spirited in the drawing of its pattern, and the gold so
 poor and bad that it has become almost lost to the eye, this stuff
 is a valuable item in the collection. The eagle, with its double
 head, and wings displayed, would lead to the belief that it had been
 wrought to the order of some emperor of Germany, or for some Sicilian
 nobleman who cherished a love for the house of Hohenstaufen.


1270.

Part of a Maniple; ground, cloth of gold; design, in needlework, St.
Blase and St. Stephen. English or French, 13th century. 12 inches by
6½ inches.

 Both with regard to its golden cloth, and the figures upon it,
 this piece is very valuable. The stuff is of that kind which our
 countryman, John Garland, tells us was wrought by young women at his
 time, and shows, in its grounding, a pretty zig-zag pattern. The
 two kneeling figures, though done in mere outline of the scantiest
 sort, display an ease and gracefulness peculiar to the sculpture and
 illuminations in England and France of that period. St. Blase is
 shown us vested in his chasuble and mitre--low in form--with a very
 long grey beard, and holding a comb in one hand--the instrument of
 his martyrdom; St. Stephen is robed as a deacon, and kneeling amid a
 shower of large round stones, pelted at him on all sides.


1271.

Silk and Gold Damask; ground, light green silk; design, griffins
passant and fleur-de-lis in one row, fleur-de-lis and slipped
vine-leaves arising from two tendrils formed like the letter C, and put
back to back, all in gold. Sicilian, 14th century. 12 inches by 7½
inches.

 The whole of this pattern is thrown off with great freedom, and an
 heraldic eye will see the boldness of the griffins. The vine-leaves
 are as crispy as any ever seen upon such stuffs, and the whole does
 credit to the royal looms of Palermo, where it was probably wrought at
 the command of the prince, for himself, or as a gift to some French
 royalty. An exactly similar stuff to this may be found at No. 7061;
 and it is said that the robes now shown at Neuburg, near Vienna, are
 traditionally believed to have been worn, at his marriage, by Leopold
 the Holy.


1272.

Silk and Cotton Stuff; ground, light purple cotton; design, small but
thick foliage, interspersed with birds of various kinds, in pairs and
face to face, in amber-coloured silk. Sicilian, 14th century. 9½
inches by 7 inches.

 Though so small in its elements, this is a pleasing design, and
 extremely well drawn, like all those from Palermo.


1273.

Silk and Cotton Damask; ground, of cotton, a light orange; design,
within a ten-cusped circle, and divided by the thin trunk of a tree,
two cocks, face to face, all in gold thread, upon a purplish crimson
ground, and between the circles an ornamentation in which a small crown
tipped with fleur-de-lis, over a lion passant gardant, is very frequent
in gold. Sicilian, late 14th century, 10¼ inches by 3 inches.

 Though such a mere rag, this piece is so far valuable, as it shows
 that France then got her silken stuffs from Sicily, and, in this
 instance, perhaps sent her own design with her Gallic cock, and her
 fleur-de-lis mingled so plentifully in it. How or why the lion is
 there cannot be explained.


1274.

Silk Damask; ground, fawn-colour; design, parrots, and giraffes in
pairs, amid floriated ornamentation, all, excepting the parts done in
gold, of the tint of the ground. Sicilian, 13th century. 20½ inches
by 10½ inches.

 Upon an egg-shaped figure, nicely filled in with graceful floriated
 ornaments, stand two parrots, breast to breast, but with heads
 averted, which (as well as their pinion-joints, marked by a broad
 circle crowded with little rings on their wings, and legs and claws)
 are wrought in threads of gold, all now so tarnished as to look as if
 first worked in some dull purple silk. Their long broad perpendicular
 tails have the feathers shown by U shaped lines, looking much like
 the kind of ornamentation noticed under Nos. 8591, 8596, 8599. Below,
 and back to back, or--as some may choose to see them--affronted,
 and biting the stems of the foliage, are two giraffes, with one leg
 raised--may be better described as tripping. They are specked all
 over with quatrefoil spots, and have head and hoofs done in gold, now
 faded to black. This stuff is as beautiful in design as substantial in
 its material, being all of good fine silk; though so poor and sparing
 was the gold upon the thread, that it has quite faded. From the curve
 at the upper end, this piece seems to have been cut out of an old
 chasuble.


1275.

Silk Damask (made up of four pieces); ground, brown, once purple;
design, in gold thread and coloured silks, griffins, eagles, and
flowers. Sicilian, early 13th century. 19½ inches by 19¼ inches.

 At top we have a row of griffins looking to the east, mostly
 wrought in gold, but relieved on coloured silks, and having at the
 pinion-joints of the wing that singular circle, filled in with a small
 design; then a row of conventional flowers in red, crimson, green, and
 white, and, last of all, a row of eagles at rest, done mostly in gold,
 slightly shaded with green, and looking west. The beasts and birds are
 admirably drawn, and when the stuff was new it must have been very
 fine and effective, though now the gold looks shabby.


1276.

Stole, of silk and gold damask; ground, purple silk; design, mostly
in gold, pricked out with green silk, a floriated oval, filled in
with a pair of young parded leopards, addorsed regardant, and wyverns
regardant in couples. Sicilian, late 13th century. 8 feet 4 inches by 3
inches, not including the expanded ends.

 This is a magnificent stuff; but the stole itself could have been made
 out of it only in the middle of the 17th century.


1277.

The Hood of a Cope; silk and gold; ground, fawn-coloured silk; design,
bands, in gold thread, alternately broad, figured with harts couchant,
and flowers with an oblique pencil of rays darting down; and narrow,
marked with rayless flowers. Underlying the latter gold band is a very
broad one of silk, figured in green, with collared dogs running at
speed towards a small swan, with sprigs of flowers, green and white,
between them. Sicilian, late 13th century. 14½ inches by 13½
inches.

 The very pointed shape of this hood is somewhat unusual in the form
 of this part of a cope, as made during mediæval times, in England.
 The stuff is of a spirited design, and shows a curious element in its
 pattern, in those golden flowers with their pencils of rays.


1278.

Silk and Cotton Damask; ground, black; design, a lion rampant amid
trees, all in light green. Sicilian, 14th century. 15 inches by 7¾
inches.

 Very few examples occur with ground coloured black, yet the bright
 green of the design goes well upon its sombre grounding. The animal
 and also the leaves and trees around him are all admirably and
 spiritedly drawn, and one regrets that a pattern of such merit should
 have been lost upon such poor materials.


1279.

Silk and Gold Damask; ground, bright green silk; design, in gold,
conventional artichokes, large and small, and harts, and demi-dogs with
very large wings, both animals having remarkably long manes streaming
far behind them. Sicilian, 14th century. 27 inches by 14 inches.

 This beautifully and richly wrought stuff, with its fantastic design
 drawn with such spirit, must have been, when seen in a large piece,
 very pleasing. Its last use was in a chasuble of rather modern cut, to
 judge from its present shape.


1280.

Small Bag to hold relics; ground, gold; design, all embroidered by
needle, white rabbits(?) segreant, peacocks in couples, face to face,
with the rabbits between them, two hearts and rows of black or purple
spots, like women’s heads, one in the middle surrounded by a wreath of
eight crimson stars, with small green flower-bearing trees, and the
whole field sprinkled with letters, now, from the ill condition of the
embroidery, not to be read. German, 16th century. 4½ inches square.


1281.

Part of a Liturgical Ornament; silk upon linen; ground, crimson, faded;
design, in yellow flos-silk, beasts and birds. Syrian, late 13th
century. 2 feet 6 inches by 7½ inches.

 It does not seem to have last served as either stole or maniple, but,
 apparently, was part of an altar curtain of which two were hung, one
 at each side of the sacred table. Lions and dogs seated and eagles
 perched amid flowers and foliage form the pattern, which is not as
 well figured as those usually are which came from the eastern shores
 of the Mediterranean.


1282.

Silk and Cotton Damask; ground, green; design, large ovals filled in
with foliation, enclosed with a net-work of garlands, the fruits of
which might be mistaken for half-moons. North Italy, 14th century.
13½ inches by 7½ inches.

 On better material, for the quantity of its silk is small, and in
 happier colours, this stuff might have been very pretty.


1283.

Silk Damask; ground, amber yellow; design, a hart, in gold, lodged
beneath green trees in a park, the paling of which is light green,
with a bunch of the corn-flower, centaurea, before it. Sicilian, 14th
century. 7½ inches by 5½ inches.


1283A.

Silk Damask; ground, amber yellow; design, the sun in its splendour, an
eagle in gold, a green tree. Sicilian, 14th century. 7¼ inches by
5½ inches.


1284.

Silk Damask; ground, amber yellow; design, a hart, in gold, lodged
beneath green trees in a park, the paling of which is light green, with
a bunch of the corn-flower before it. Sicilian, 14th century. 7 inches
by 6½ inches.


1284A.

Silk Damask; ground, amber yellow; design, a running hart, in gold,
amid foliage. Sicilian, 14th century. 8 inches by 4½ inches.

 The last four pieces are, in fact, but fragments of the same stuff,
 and when put together make up its original pattern, and beautiful it
 must have seemed when beheld as a whole; the bird and animals are done
 with much freedom and spirit; so likewise the foliage: but two of the
 portions, by being more exposed to the light, are much faded, in such
 a manner that the green in them has almost fled. As usual, so poor was
 the golden thread that the bird and animals now look almost black, but
 here and there, with a good glass, shimmerings of gold may be found
 upon them. To some eyes the sun may look like a rose surrounded by
 rays. At one time or another an unfeeling hand has most plentifully
 sprinkled all these four pieces with flowers made from gilt paper
 stamped out, and pasted on the staff with stiff glue. The silk,
 especially the yellow, of this tissue was mixed with very fine threads
 of cotton.


1285.

One of the Ends of a Stole, embroidered in beads; ground, dark blue;
design, very likely the head of an apostle, in various coloured and
gold beads. Venetian, late 12th century.

 So like both in design, execution, and materials to the portion of an
 orphrey, No. 8274, that it would seem this piece was not only worked
 by the self-same hand, but formed a part of the self-same set of
 vestments. The places, now bare, in the nimb and neck, were, no doubt,
 once filled in with fine seed-pearls that have been wantonly picked
 out. The other end of the same stole to which this belonged is the
 following.


1286.

Exactly like the foregoing; but if in its fellow piece seed-pearls are
not to be seen, here they are left in part of the nimb, but especially
over the left eye. Of the large piece with the head of the Blessed
Virgin Mary, we have spoken at length, No. 8274.


1287.

Silk and Cotton Damask; ground, light yellow silk; design, a
reticulation of vine-branches bearing grapes and leaves, and enclosing
butterflies, an armorial shield having a royal crown over it, all in
light purple cotton. Sicilian, early 14th century. 17½ inches by
15½ inches.

 The design in all its elements is so like many other specimens
 wrought by the looms of Palermo at the period, that we are warranted
 to presume it came from that great mart of silken stuffs during the
 middle ages. So thin in its texture, it must have been meant for the
 lining of a heavier material. Père Martin has figured, in his very
 valuable “Mélanges d’Archéologie,” t. iv. plate xxii, a piece of silk,
 now in the Museum of the Louvre, almost the same in pattern, but
 differing much in colour, from the specimen before us. In the specimen
 at Paris little dogs and dragons, both in pairs, come in, but here
 they are wanting; so that we may learn that, to give variety to the
 pattern, parts were changed. Upon the shield there is a charge not
 unlike a star, rather oblong, of six points.


1288.

Damask, silk and cotton; ground, deep bluish green; design, pairs of
monsters, half griffin, half elephant, in gold, a conventional flower
in light green, enclosing a pair of wings in gold, and pairs of birds
amid foliation, with short sentences of imitated Arabic here and there.
Sicilian, early 14th century. 14 inches by 11 inches.

 This is a fine and noteworthy production of the Palermitan loom, and
 shows in its pattern much fancy and great freedom of drawing; for
 whether we look at those very singular griffin elephants, sitting
 in pairs--and gazing at one another, or the two birds of the hoopoe
 family, with a long feather on the head, or the two gold wings
 conjoined and erect, so heraldically tricked, with that well-devised
 flower ending in a honeysuckle scroll, an ornament sprinkled all
 about, we cannot but be pleased with the whole arrangement. The
 combination of elephant and griffin in ornamentation is almost,
 perhaps quite, unique. The pretended Arabic points to a locality
 where once Saracenic workmen laboured, and left behind them their
 traditions of excellency of handicraft. In Dr. Bock’s “Geschichte der
 Liturgischen Gewänder des Mittelalters,” 4 Lieferung, pl. ix. may be
 seen this curious stuff figured.


1289.

Part of a Maniple, silk damask; ground, fawn-coloured; design, an
ovate foliation amid monster beasts and birds, all in light blue silk,
excepting the heads of the birds; the feet and heads of the animals
done in gold. Sicilian, late 13th century. 13¼ inches by 7 inches.


1289A.

Part of a Maniple, silk damask; ground, fawn-coloured; design, an ovate
foliation amid small lions and large monster beasts and birds, in light
blue silk, excepting the small lions all in gold, and the heads and
claws of the others in the same metal. Sicilian, late 13th century.
21½ inches by 6½ inches.

 The two articles were evidently parts of the same maniple; a
 liturgical appliance of such narrow dimensions that we cannot make
 out the entire composition of the very fine and admirably drawn
 design upon the stuff, out of which it was cut originally. From what
 is before us we perceive that there were a pair of small lions, face
 to face, all in gold, a pair of wyverns segreant in green, a pair
 of griffins passant, with heads of gold, and a pair of other large
 animals, antelopes, with their horned heads and cloven hoofs in the
 same metal; slight indications of the fleur-de-lis here and there
 occur.


1290.

A bishop’s Liturgical Shoe, of silk and gold damask; ground, crimson
silk; design, eagles, in couples, at rest, in gold, amid foliations in
green silk; a small piece on the left side of the heel is of another
rich stuff in gold and light green. Italian stuff, 14th century. 11½
inches.

 Such old episcopal liturgic shoes are now great rarities; and a
 specimen once belonging to one of our English worthies, Waneflete, is
 given in the “Church of our Fathers,” t. ii. p. 250; it is of rich
 silk velvet, wrought with flowers, and still kept at Magdalen College,
 Oxford, built and endowed by that good bishop of Winchester. In the
 present example we have, in its thin leather sole for the right foot,
 a proof that making shoes right and left was well known then.


1291.

Silk and Gold Damask; ground (now very faded), crimson silk; design,
animals, all in gold, and flowers in gold, pricked out, some in green,
others in purple silk. Sicilian, 14th century. 14½ inches by 8½
inches.

 The animals are large antelopes couchant, and smaller ones in the like
 posture, within flowers, along with large oddly-shaped wyverns with
 the head bent down; the flowers are roses, and a modification of the
 centaurea, or corn-flower. Though the gold be tarnished, the pattern
 is still rich.


1292.

Taffeta, silk and cotton; ground, dull crimson cotton; design,
reticulated foliage with a conventional artichoke in the meshes, all in
pale blue. Spanish, 15th century. 7½ inches by 6¾ inches.


1292A.

Taffeta, silk and cotton; ground, dull crimson cotton; design,
reticulated foliage with a conventional artichoke in the meshes, all in
pale blue. Spanish, 15th century. 5½ inches by 5¼ inches.

 As poor in material as in design, and evidently manufactured for
 linings to silks of richer substances.


1293.

Silk and Cotton Damask; ground, bright crimson silk; design, floriated
circles filled in with a pair of griffins rampant, addorsed, regardant,
and the spaces between the circles ornamented with a floriated cross,
all in yellow cotton. Sicilian, 14th century. 9¼ inches by 7 inches.

 A good design bestowed upon somewhat poor materials. At first the
 yellow parts of the pattern had their cotton thread covered with
 gold, but of such a debased quality and so sparingly, too, that it
 has almost all disappeared, and, where seen, has tarnished to a dusky
 black.


1294.

Silk Damask; ground, purple; design, large fan-like leaves, between
small fruits of the pomegranate, in dead purple. Spanish, late 15th
century.

 Upon this specimen there was sewed an inscription, now so broken as
 not to make sense, and from the style of letter, of the floriated
 form, done in red and gold thread upon purple canvas, as is all the
 scroll-work about it, some German hand must have wrought it.


1295.

Tissue of Cotton Warp and Silk and Gold Woof; ground, now yellow;
design, eagles in pairs, divided by rayed orbs, amid foliage all in
gold. Sicilian, middle 14th century. 6½ inches by 5½ inches.

 The eagles are about to take wing, and are pecking at the rays of,
 seemingly, the sun which separates them. The foliage is much like,
 in form, that which so often occurs on works from the looms of
 Palermo; and, in all likelihood, the ground, now yellow, was once
 of a fawn-colour. Though good in design, this stuff is made of poor
 materials, the silk in it is small, and the gold of such a base
 quality that it has become a dusky brown.


1296.

Tissue of Flaxen Thread Warp and Silk and Gold Woof; ground,
fawn-coloured; design, eagles in pairs affronted, with a pencil of
sun-rays darting down upon their heads, and resting amid flowers all in
gold. Sicilian, middle 14th century. 8 inches by 4¼ inches.

 What we said of No. 1295 is equally applicable to this specimen, in
 which, however, may be seen, the corn-flower, centaurea, so often met
 with in Palermitan textures of the time.


1297.

Silk Damask; ground, light green; design, within a heart-shaped
figure, a large vine-leaf, at which two very small hoopoes, one at
each side, are pecking; outside the ovals, from which large bunches
of small-fruited grapes are hanging, runs a scroll with little
vine-leaves, all now of a fawn-colour, but at first in a rosy crimson
hue. Italian, late 14th century. 15 inches by 5¼ inches.

 The design for this tasteful stuff was thrown off by an easy flowing
 hand; and Dr. Bock has given a good plate, in his “Dessinateur des
 Etoffes,” 3 Livraison, of a silk almost the very same, the differences
 being some very slight variations in parts of its colours.


1298, 1298A.

Silk Damask; ground, purple; design, amid foliage and small geometrical
figures, birds in pairs, all in rosy red, and beasts in gold. Sicilian,
14th century. 9½ inches by 3¾ inches, and 4½ inches by 4
inches.

 Putting these two pieces together we make out this beautiful,
 elaborate, though small pattern. What the birds may be is hard
 to guess, but the beasts seem lionesses, with bushy tails, and
 bold spirited griffins. Dr. Bock has figured this stuff in the
 before-mentioned large work.


1299.

Damask, gold, silk, and thread; ground, dull purple; design, two broad
horizontal bands, the first charged with a hound, green, collared,
armed, and langued white, lying down with head upturned to a large swan
in gold, with foliage all about them; on the second, a dog chasing a
hart, both in gold, and between two cable ornaments in gold, and two
scrolls of roving foliage, in light green pricked with white. Sicilian,
late 14th century. 18 inches by 12 inches.

 The beautiful and boldly-drawn pattern of these beasts and birds
 in pairs, and succeeding each other, is not duly honoured by the
 materials used in it; the quantity of thread is large, and the gold of
 the poorest sort.


1300.

Silk Damask; ground, blue; design, in yellow, a net-work done in
ovate geometrical scrolls, and the meshes filled in with geometrical
lozenges, and others showing an ornamentation of singular occurrence,
somewhat like the heraldic nebule. Lucca, early 15th century, 10½
inches by 7½ inches.

 After a pattern that seldom is to be found on mediæval stuffs.


1301.

Silk and Gold Damask; ground, bright crimson silk; design, in gold,
fruit of the pomegranate, mingled with flowers and leaves of another
plant. South of Spain, 15th century. 9 inches by 8¾ inches.

 At a distance this stuff must have shown well, but its materials are
 not of the first class; though lively in tone, the silk is poor, and
 its gold made of that thin gilt parchment cut into flat shreds, like
 other examples here--Nos. 8590, 8601, 8639, &c.


1302.

Silk and Gold Damask; ground, fawn-coloured faded from crimson, in
silk; design, large eagles perched in pairs, with a radiating sun
between them, and beneath the rays dogs in pairs, running with heads
turned back and looking on the foliage separating them, all in gold.
Sicilian, 14th century. 17 inches by 8½ inches.

 The fine and spirited pattern of this piece is now very indistinct,
 owing to the bad colour of the ground, which has so much faded, and
 the inferior quality of the gold upon the thread.


1303.

Silk Damask; ground, a rose-coloured tint; pattern, in a dull tone
of the same, broad strap-work, in reticulations enclosing a circular
conventional floriation. Moresco-Spanish, 14th century. 6 inches by
5½ inches.

 The tone of the colour has changed from its first brightness, and the
 stuff is of a very thin texture.


1304.

Silk and Gold Damask; ground, crimson silk much faded; design, harts
collared and flying eagles amid foliage, all in gold. Sicilian, 14th
century. 2 feet 8 inches by 1 foot.

 In this spirited pattern the running harts in the upper row have
 caught one of their hind-legs in the cord tied to their collar, and
 an eagle swoops down upon them; in the second row, the same animal
 has switched its tail into the last link of the chain fastened to its
 collar, and an eagle seems flying at its head, as it screams with
 gaping beak. The last use of this specimen of so magnificent a stuff
 appears to have been as part of a curtain (with its 15th century poor
 parti-coloured thread fringe) for hanging at the sides of an altar.


1305.

Embroidered Lappet of a Mitre; ground, linen; design, beneath a tall
niche, a female in various coloured silks and gold; and under her,
within a lower-headed niche, a male figure after the same style.
German, late 14th century. 17½ inches by 3 inches.

 The high-peaked canopy, with its crocketing and finial well formed
 and once all covered with gold, holds a female figure, crowned like a
 queen, with the banner of the Resurrection in one hand and a chalice,
 having on it the sacred host, in the other, which may be taken for the
 person of the Church, while the majestic prophet beneath her seems to
 be Malachi holding a long unfolded scroll significative of those words
 of his relating to the sacrifice in the New Law. In the embroidery of
 the figures this piece very much resembles the style of needlework in
 the part of an orphrey, No. 1313. In his “Geschichte der Liturgischen
 Gewänder des Mittelalters,” 2 Lieferung, pl. xii. Dr. Bock has given
 figures of this curious lappet.


1306, 1306A.

Silk Damask; ground, fawn-coloured; design, amid sunbeams, raindrops,
and foliage, large birds clutching in their talons a scroll charged
with a capital letter R thrice repeated, all in light green. Sicilian,
late 14th century. 13 inches by 6½ inches; and 8 inches by 3¾
inches.

 The design of this stuff is rather curious from the inscribed scroll,
 the letter R of which is very Italian.


1307.

Silk and Gold Damask; ground, fawn-colour; design, amid a conventional
foliation shooting out in places with large fan-like flowers in gold,
braces of small birds on the wing and pairs of running dogs with two
antelopes, couchant, biting a bough, both in gold. Sicilian, 14th
century. 12½ inches by 8½ inches.

 A very good design well drawn, but unfortunately not quite perfect in
 the specimen, the golden parts of which are much tarnished.


1308.

Silk Damask; ground, rosy fawn-coloured; design, within a wreath made
up mostly of myrtle-leaves and trefoils, a lion’s head cabosed, above
which is a bunch of vine-leaves shutting in a blue corn-flower, and
at each side, in white, a word in imitated Arabic; excepting the blue
centaurea and two white flowers in the wreath, all the rest is in light
green. Sicilian, 14th century. 22 inches by 10¾ inches.

 This well-varied pattern is nicely drawn, and shows the traditions of
 the Saracenic workmen who once flourished at Palermo.


1309.

Embroidery of Thread upon Linen; design, in raised stitchery, the
hunting of the unicorn. German, late 14th century. 26½ inches by
13½ inches.

 This fine piece of needlework shows us a forest where a groom is
 holding three horses, on two of which the high-peaked saddles are
 well given; running towards him are two hunting dogs, collared. In
 the midst of the wood sits a virgin with her long hair falling down
 her back, and on her lap an unicorn is resting his fore-feet; behind
 this group is coming a man with a stick upon his shoulder, from which
 hangs, by its coupled hind-legs, a dead hare. Not only the lady, but
 the men wear shoes with remarkably long toes, and the gracefulness
 with which the foliage is everywhere twined speaks of the period as
 marked in the architectural decoration of the period here in England.
 In another number (8618) the same subject is noticed as significative
 of the Incarnation, and fully explained. No doubt, like the other
 piece of fine Rhenish needlework, this also formed but a part of a
 large cloth to hang behind an altar as a reredos. Those very long-toed
 shoes brought into fashion here by Ann of Bohemia, our Richard II.’s
 queen, were called “cracowes.”


1310.

Maniple of Crimson and Gold Damask; ground, bright crimson; design,
stags and sunbeams. Sicilian, late 14th century. 3 feet 7½ inches by
4 inches.

 Under No. 8624 there is a specimen of silk damask, without gold in
 it, of a pattern so like this that, were the present piece perfect in
 its design, we might presume both had come from the same loom, and
 differed only in materials. In that, as in this, we have a couple of
 stags well attired, with their heads upturned to a large pencil of
 sunbeams darting down upon them amid a shower of raindrops.


1311.

Silk and Gold Damask; ground, deep violet; design, St. Mary of Egypt,
with her own hair falling all over her, as her only garment, on her
knees before an altar on which stands a cross; behind her, a tree, upon
which hovers a bird with a long bough in its beak; and high up over
against her an arm coming from a cloud with the hand in benediction,
and rays darting from the fingers, between two stars, one of eight, the
other of six points, all mostly in gold. Venetian, 15th century. 12
inches by 11½ inches.

 The materials and the weaving of this valuable tissue are both good,
 and figure a saint once in great repute in Oriental Christendom as
 well as among those Europeans who traded with the East, as an example
 of true repentance. A part of the design is, so to say, ante-dated,
 and to understand the whole of it we ought to know something of the
 life of this second Magdalen.

 In the latter half of the fourth century St. Mary of Egypt, then a
 girl of twelve, fled to Alexandria, where she led an abandoned life.

 It chanced that she went in a certain ship full of pilgrims to
 Jerusalem, where, on the feast of the Elevation of the Cross, she
 was hindered by a miracle from entering the church. Then, coming to
 herself, she made a vow of penance, and withdrew to the desert beyond
 the Jordan. There she lived unseen for forty years, till all her
 garments fell away and she had nothing wherewith to clothe herself but
 her own long hair.

 On the stuff before us the anachronism of its design will be soon
 perceived from this rapid sketch of St. Mary’s life. Instead of being,
 as she must have been, arrayed in the female fashion of the time when
 she went to Jerusalem, the great penitent is represented so far quite
 naked that her own long tresses, falling all around her, are her only
 mantle--just as she used to be more than forty years afterwards. But
 yet the design well unfolds her story; the hand darting rays of light
 signifies the revelation given her from heaven, and the blessing that
 followed it; while the two stars tell of Jerusalem, as also does the
 elaborately-fashioned cross that is standing on the altar, the frontal
 to which, in the upper border, seems ornamented in purple, with an
 inscription, now unreadable, but the last letters of which look as if
 they are R L I. The bird, perhaps a dove, has no part in the saint’s
 history, but is a fancy of the artist. In Dr. Bock’s “Geschichte der
 Liturgischen Gewänder des Mittelalters,” 1 Band, 1 Lieferung, pl. xi.
 is a figure of this stuff.


1312.

Silk Damask; ground, crimson; design, a complication of geometric lines
and figures in yellow, blue, green and white. Moresque, 15th century.
22½ inches by 18½ inches.

 Those who know the ornamentation on the burned clay tiles and the gilt
 plaster ceilings in the Alhambra at Granada will recognize the same
 feeling and style in this showy stuff, the silk of which is so good,
 and the colours, particularly the crimson, so warm.


1313.

Part of an Orphrey; ground, deep crimson satin, edged with a narrow
green band; design, three apostolic figures beneath Gothic canopies,
all wrought in gold thread and coloured silks upon canvas and applied.
German, early 15th century. 30 inches by 7¼ inches.

 Each figure is nicely worked; and the first, beginning at the top,
 holding a sword erect in his right hand, is St. James the Greater;
 beneath him, with a halbert, St. Matthew; and last of all, holding
 in one hand a book, in the other a sword, St. Paul. The flowery
 crocketing running up the arches of the niches is particularly good.


1314.

Silk Damask; ground, crimson (now faded); design, two golden lions with
their fore-paws resting on a white scroll, looking down upon an orb
darting straight down its rays upon the heads of two perched eagles,
amid foliation, all in green. Italian, late 14th century. 26 inches by
9¾ inches.

 A fine design, and sketched with great freedom; but the silk and gold
 employed in it are not of the best.


1315.

Silk Taffeta; ground, brown; design, broad bands made up of eight
red-edged orange stripes within two white ones. Egyptian, 10th century.
26 inches by 9¾ inches.


1316.

Silk Taffeta; ground, purple; design, narrow stripes made up of white
purple and green lines. Egyptian, 10th century. 24 inches by 3½
inches.

 These scarce examples of Oriental ability in the production of very
 thin substances for personal adornment and dress, under such a sun as
 even the north of Africa has, were originally wrought for ordinary,
 not religious use. They were brought to Europe as precious stuffs, and
 given as such to the Church and used for casting over the tombs of the
 saints, as palls, or as linings for thicker silken vestments. That
 these or any of the following specimens of gauze or taffeta were ever
 put to the purpose of making stockings, or rather leggings like boots,
 still worn by bishops on solemn occasions during the celebrations of
 the liturgy, cannot for a moment be thought of. Such appliances are,
 and always were, made either of velvet or strong cloth of gold or
 silver.


1317.

Silk Gauze; ground, light green; design, broad bands composed of white,
black, and orange stripes. Egyptian, 10th century. 13 inches by 4
inches.


1318.

Taffeta, Silk and Cotton; ground and design, broad stripes of crimson,
green, crimson and orange, separated by narrow lines of white; the warp
is of brown fine cotton. Egyptian, 10th century. 12 inches by 2½
inches.

 Of such stuffs the Orientals make their girdles to this day; and for
 such a purpose we presume this taffeta was woven at Cairo and for
 Moslem use, as the green of the so-called prophet is one among its
 colours.


1319.

Silk Gauze; ground, a light green. Egyptian, 10th century. 10 inches by
3½ inches.

 Though without any pattern, such a specimen is very valuable for
 letting us see the delicate texture which the Saracens, like the
 ancient Egyptians, knew how to give to the works of the loom. This,
 like No. 1317, if ever used for church purposes, could only have been
 employed for spreading over shrines, or the lining of vestments;
 specimens like these are sometimes found between the leaves in
 illuminated MSS, to protect the paintings.


1320.

Silk and Gold Damask; ground, crimson (now faded) silk; design, lions
in pairs addorsed, regardant, each with a swan swung upon its back,
and held by the neck in its mouth, bounding from out a small space
surrounded by a low circular paling, and amid two large conventional
floriations; at the top of one of these are two squirrels sitting
upright, or sejant, all in gold. Italian, late 14th century. 17½
inches by 10¾ inches.

 Unfortunately this curious well-figured and interesting design is
 somewhat wasted upon materials so faded, as scarcely to show it
 now. The foliation is rather thick and heavy. In Dr. Bock’s work,
 “Geschichte der Liturgischen Gewänder des Mittelalters,” 1 Band, 1
 Lieferung, pl. xiv. may be found this stuff, nicely figured.


1321.

Small Piece of Embroidery; background, canvas diapered with lozenges
in brown thread; foreground, once partly strewed with streaks of gold;
design, two men bearded and clad in long garments, seemingly personages
of the Old Law, talking to each other. Florentine, 15th century.

 With quite an Italian and Florentine character about them, these two
 figures, both worked in silk, have no great merit; though there are
 some good folds in the brown mantle, shot with green, of the hooded
 individual standing on the left-hand. That it has been cut away from
 some larger piece is evident, but what the original served for,
 whether a sacred or secular purpose, it is impossible now to say.


1322.

Stole; ground, light blue silk; design, a thin bough roving along
the stole’s whole length in an undulating line, and sprouting out
into fan-like leaves, and small flowers, and in a white raised cord,
narrowly edged with crimson silk and gold thread. At one expanded end
is the Holy Lamb upon a golden ground; at the other, the dove, emblem
of the Holy Ghost, alighting upon flowers. German, 15th century. 8 feet
6½ inches by 3¾ inches.

 Though the work upon this stole is rather coarse, still from its
 raised style it must have been effective; but its chief value is from
 having been a liturgic ornament. The diapering at the end figured with
 the Holy Lamb, done upon a yellow canvas ground, with its thin golden
 threads worked into three circles, with their radiations not straight
 but wavy, is remarkable, and may be found upon another work wrought by
 a German needle in this collection. Not only the Lamb and the Dove,
 but the floriation, are thrown up into a sort of low relief.


1323.

Embroidered Linen; design, barbed quatrefoils filled in with armorial
birds and beasts, and the spaces between wrought with vine-leaves.
German, 15th century. 16 inches by 11¾ inches.

 This is but a piece of a much larger work, the pattern of which,
 in its entire form, can only be guessed at from a few remains. One
 quatrefoil is occupied by a pair of eagles (as they seem to be)
 addorsed regardant; and the two legs of another three-toed creature
 remaining near them prove that other things besides the eagles were
 figured. The whole is coarsely done in coarse materials, and, in
 workmanship, far below very many specimens here. It appears to have
 served for household not for church use.


1324.

Embroidered Cushion for the missal at the altar; ground, crimson
silk; design, our Infant Lord in the arms of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
with St. Joseph and four angels worshipping, on the upper side, in
various-coloured silk; on the under side, a reticulation filled in with
a pair of birds and a flowering plant alternately. German, late 13th
century. 19 inches by 13 inches.

 Such cushions, and of so remote a period, are great liturgical
 curiosities, and, fortunately, the present one is in very good
 preservation, and quite a work of art. Throned within a Gothic
 building, rather than beneath a canopy, sits the mother of the Divine
 Babe, who is outstretching His little hands towards the lily-branch
 which the approaching St. Joseph is holding in one hand, while in
 the other he carries a basket of doves. Outside, and on the green
 sward, are kneeling four angels robed as deacons, three of whom bear
 lily flowers, a fourth the liturgical fan; the whole is encircled by
 a garland of lilies. The under-side is worked with white doves in
 pairs, and a green tree blooming with red flowers; and though much of
 the needlework is gone, this cushion is a good example for such an
 appliance. Dr. Bock has figured it in his “Geschichte der Liturgischen
 Gewänder des Mittelalters,” 1 Band, 2 Lieferung, p. xiii.


1325.

Part of an Altar-cloth; ground, linen; design, amid foliage sparingly
heightened with yellow silk, birds, and beasts, and one end figured
with the gammadion. German, 14th century. 6 feet 4½ inches by 2 feet
2½ inches.

 This altar-cloth, now shortened and without one of its ends figured
 with the gammadion, is made up of two different pieces, of which one
 showing two large-headed pheasants, put one above the other, amid
 foliage plentifully flowered with the fleur-de-lis and roses, is quite
 perfect in its pattern; but the other, marked with alternate griffins
 and lions, has been cut in two so as to give us but the hinder half of
 each animal, amid a foliage of oak-leaves. The whole design, however,
 is boldly drawn and spiritedly executed.


1326.

Damask, silk and cotton; ground, green; design, large and small
conventional artichokes, in gold and yellow silk, amid garlands in
white silk. Italian, 15th century. 2 feet 10 inches by 1 foot 3¼
inches.

 Though much cotton is mixed up with the silk, and its gold was of
 an inferior quality, still the crowded and elaborate design of its
 pattern makes this stuff very pleasing.


1327.

Silk Net; green. Turkish, 16th century (?). 11½ inches by 4½
inches.

 Such productions of the loom are used among the Moslem inhabitants of
 the East in various ways, for concealing their females when they go
 abroad in carriages, &c.


1328.

Linen Diaper. Flemish, 15th century. 2¾ inches square.

 Very likely from the looms of Yprès, then famous for its napery, and
 which gave its name, “d’ypres,” to this sort of wrought linen.


1329.

Part of an Orphrey Web; ground, crimson silk; design, straight branches
bearing flowers and boughs, in gold thread; and amid them St. Dorothy
and St. Stephen. German, 15th century. 23 inches by 2¾ inches.

 St. Dorothy is figured holding in her right hand a golden chalice-like
 cup filled with flowers, and in her left, a tall green branch blooming
 with white roses; St. Stephen carries a palm-branch, emblem of his
 martyrdom. Both saints are standing upon green turf sprinkled with
 crimson daisies, and beneath each is the saint’s name, written
 in gold. Though the persons of the saints are woven, the heads,
 hands, and emblems are wrought with the needle. The dalmatic of the
 proto-martyr is nicely shown, in light green, with its orphreys in
 gold. This piece is a favourable specimen of its kind, and very likely
 was produced at Cologne.


1330.

Frontlet to an Altar-cloth; ground, diapered white linen; design,
embroidery of two large flower-bearing trees, with an uncharged shield
between them, and under them inscriptions. German, 16th century. 15¾
inches by 5 inches.

 So very like the piece No. 8864 that it would seem to have been
 wrought by the same hand. To the left we read--“Spes unica, stabat
 mater;” to the right--“Mater dolorosa juxta crucem,” &c.


1331.

Web for Orphreys; ground, crimson silk; design, two boughs with leaves
and flowers twined in an oval form, all in gold thread. German, late
15th century. 10 inches by 4¼ inches.

 Graceful in its design, but poor in both its silk and gold, the latter
 having become almost black.


1332.

Piece of Raised Velvet, brocaded in gold; ground, dark blue; design,
a diapering in cut velvet on the blue ground, and large leaves and
small artichokes in gold. Italian, early 16th century. 16½ inches by
15¾ inches.

 This nicely diapered velvet, of a good pile and sprinkled with
 a gold brocade, may have been wrought either at Lucca or Genoa.
 Unfortunately, the gold thread was of an inferior quality.


1333.

Silk and Gold Damask; ground, crimson silk; design, broad garlands
twined into a net-work, the almost round meshes of which are filled
in with a conventional artichoke wreathed with corn-flowers, all in
pure good gold, upon a ground specked with gold. Spanish, late 15th
century. 22½ inches by 9 inches.

 This is a fine rich specimen of an article of the Spanish loom, very
 likely from Almeria; its crimson tone is fresh and warm, while its
 gold is as bright now as when first woven into its present graceful
 pattern.


1334.

Web for Orphreys; ground, gold thread; design, two branches twined
into large oval spaces, and bearing leaves and red and white flowers,
having, in one space, the name Gumprecht and a shield, applied,
_or_, a spread-eagle _sable_, langued and armed _gules_, (may be for
Brandenburg); and under this, in the web itself, another shield _or_,
a lion rampant _gules_, armed langued and crowned _or_, and double
tailed, seemingly for Bohemia. German, 15th century. 16 inches by 5½
inches.

 Though of poor materials, this piece is interesting from showing a
 name and armorial bearings.


1335.

Web for Orphreys; ground, fawn-coloured silk; design, almost all in
gold, sitting on a throne beneath a Gothic canopy the Blessed Virgin
Mary, crowned and nimbed, with our Lord as a child upon her lap,
alternating with a circle bearing within it the sacred monogram (worked
the wrong way) done in blue silk, surrounded by golden rays. German,
middle of 15th century. 11¼ inches by 4½ inches.

 The design of this orphrey-web is good, but the gold so amalgamated
 with copper that it has become quite brown. Though the monogram is
 that usually seen in the hands of St. Bernardinus of Sienna, and the
 drawing of the group of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the sacred Child
 is somewhat Italian, this was not the work of any Italians loom; for
 in no part of Italy would the monogram have had given it letters of
 such a German type.


1336.

Silk Damask; ground and pattern in rich crimson; design, eight-cusped
ovals, each cusp tipped not with a flower, but tendrils; the ovals
enclose a conventional artichoke purfled with flowers; and the spaces
between the ovals are filled in with small artichokes in bloom.
Spanish, 15th century. 20 inches by 14¾ inches.

 This is a fine specimen both for the richness of its silk and the warm
 and mellow tint of its ground, upon which the pattern comes out in a
 duller tone. Further on we shall meet with another stuff, No. 1345,
 which must have proceeded from the same loom, and shows in its design
 many elements of the one in this. Either Granada or Almeria produced
 this fine piece, which affords us, in the brilliancy of its colour, an
 apt sample of our old poet Chaucer’s dress for one of his characters,
 of whom he tells us,--

 “In sanguin and in perse he clad was alle;”

and helps us to understand Spenser’s allusion to the young maiden’s
blushes:--

    “How the red roses flush up in her cheekes
                   ... with goodly vermill stayne,
    Like crimson dyde in grayne.”



1337.

Web for Orphreys; ground, crimson silk; design, in gold thread, a
straight branch of a tree bearing pairs of boughs with flowers,
alternating with other boughs with sprigs of leaves. German, early 16th
century. 14½ inches by 2½ inches.

 The warp of this web is thick linen thread, and where the woof of
 crimson silk is worn away, this thread, as if part of the design,
 shows itself; and, as the gold is poor and sparingly put on, the
 specimen now looks shabby. Like many other samples of the kind, woven,
 probably, at Cologne, this was intended as the narrow orphrey on
 liturgical garments.


1338.

An Apparel to an Alb; ground, strong linen; design, within twining
boughs bearing flowers and leaves, a dove and a lamb, all in
various-coloured silks and outlined in narrow strips of leather.
Spanish, early 15th century. 13 inches square.

 That the last liturgic use of this piece was as an apparel to an alb
 there can be little doubt, though, in all likelihood, it may have been
 cut off a larger piece of needlework wrought for the front border of
 an altar-cloth. The outline in leather is rather singular; though now
 black, it was once gilt, like those strips we see cut into very narrow
 shreds, and worked up, instead of gold thread, into silken stuffs
 from the looms of Almeria or Granada, specimens of which are in this
 collection. As an art-production of the needle, this is but a poor one.


1339.

Raised Gold Brocaded Velvet; ground, green silk; design, within an oval
in crimson raised velvet of a floriated pattern, dotted with flowers
and grapes in white, a large trefoil on raised crimson velvet, bearing
inside an artichoke in green and gold, springing from a white flower.
Italian, 16th century, 11¾ inches by 8 inches.

 This tasteful and pleasing design is wrought in rich materials; and
 large state-chairs are yet to be seen in the palaces of Rome covered
 with such beautiful and costly velvets.


1340.

Silk and Gold Damask; ground, blue silk; design, ogee arches, over the
finial of each a large conventional flower, and within and without
the arches a slip of the mulberry-leaf and fruit, all in bright gold.
Lucca, 16th century. 3 feet 5 inches by 2 feet 4 inches.

 This fine rich stuff must have been most effective for wall-hangings.
 The blue silk ground is tastefully diapered in bright and dull shades
 of the silk itself; and in the fine gold design the artichoke is
 judiciously brought in upon the ogee arches. When nicely managed,
 nothing is better than a ground in one shade and a design in a deeper
 tone of the same colour.


1341.

Silk and Gold Damask; ground, fawn-coloured silk; design, pomegranates
piled together in threes, all gold, and flowers in silk alternately
crimson and green. Spanish, 16th century. 16¼ inches by 12 inches.

 The rich ground of this fine stuff has a well-designed and rather
 raised diapering of geometrical scroll-work; the pomegranates are
 wrought in pure gold thread, and the tones of the flowers are bright.


1342.

Worsted Work; ground, black; design, flowers. German, 16th century.
21¼ inches square.

 Very likely this was part of a carpet, embroidered by hand, for
 covering the top of the higher step at the altar, called by some a
 pede-cloth; the ground is of a black worsted warp, with a woof of
 thick brown thread. The flowers are mostly crimson-shaded pink, some
 are, or were, partly white, and seem to be made for sorts of the
 pentstemon, digitalis, and fritillaria; a butterfly, too, is not
 forgotten.


1343.

Cradle-quilt, linen, embroidered in coloured silks with flowers and
names. German, late 15th century. 3 feet 4¼ inches by 1 foot 8¼
inches.

 At each of its four corners, as well as in the middle, is wrought a
 large bunch of our “meadow pink;” between the flowers are worked these
 names,--“Jhesus, Maria, Johanes, Jaspar, Baltasar, Maria, Melchior,
 Johanes.” From the names assigned to the three wise men, whose relics
 are enshrined in the cathedral at Cologne, being so conspicuously
 wrought upon this piece, we may presume that the needlework was done
 in that great German city. By wear, the greens of the leaves have
 turned brown, and the pink of the flowers become pale. Those pieces of
 printed linen with which the holes in two places are mended will not
 be without an interest for those who are curious in tracing out the
 origin of such manufactures. Other examples of these cradle-quilts are
 in this collection.


1344.

Cradle-quilt, linen, embroidered in coloured silks; design, within a
broad border of scroll-work in simple lines, the emblems of the four
Evangelists, one at each corner; of the Crucifixion, with the Blessed
Virgin Mary on the right, and St. John to the left, only a small part
of the young apostle’s figure is to be found at present. German, early
16th century, 2 feet 6 inches by 2 feet 2 inches.

 Though in mere outline, the whole design was well drawn, and the
 emblems at the corners have great freedom about them. On the popular
 use of the evangelists’ emblems upon such baby’s furniture, some
 observations are given on another good sample, No. 4644, in this
 collection. A cradle-quilt like the present one occurs at No. 4459.


1345.

Silk Damask; ground and pattern in reddish crimson; design,
eight-cusped ovals,--each cusp tipped with a flower, ending in a
fleur-de-lis above a crown, at top, and enclosing a conventional
artichoke purfled with flowers. Spanish, 15th century. 14 inches by 13
inches.

 From its present shape, this piece was evidently last in use as the
 hood to a liturgical cope.


1346.

Part of an Embroidered Orphrey; ground (now faded), crimson silk;
design, a green silk bough so twined as to end in a long pinnatified
leaf or flower, now white but once gold, with little rounds of gold
sprouting from parts of the outside branches. German, 16th century.
16¾ inches by 3 inches.

 A specimen as meagre in design as it is poor in materials.


1347.

Part of an Embroidered Orphrey; ground, crimson silk; design, a green
silk bough, &c. German, 16th century. 17½ inches by 5 inches.

 In all likelihood a part of the broader orphrey wrought for the same
 vestment as the one just before mentioned.


1348.

Web for Orphreys; ground, gold thread; design, the fleur-de-lis
composed into a geometric pattern, outlined in dark brown silk. German,
late 15th century. 14½ inches by 4¼ inches.

 Both the brown colour and the design are somewhat rare, as found upon
 ecclesiastical appliances. Here, as elsewhere, the gold is so poor
 that it is hardly discernible. Under the canvas lining is a piece of
 parchment, on which is written some theological matter.


1349.

Web for Orphreys; ground, cloth of gold pricked with crimson; design,
the names--“Jhesus,” “Maria,” done in blue silk, between two trees, one
bearing heads of crimson fruit, the other lilies, parti-coloured white
with crimson; and the green sward, from which both spring, covered
with full-blown daisies in one instance, with unexpanded daisies in the
other. German, late 15th century. 17½ inches by 4½ inches.

 Like several other specimens in the collection, and most probably
 woven to be the orphreys sewed, before and behind, in a horizontal
 stripe, upon the dalmatics and tunicles for high mass. The student
 of symbolism will not fail to see in the tree to the right hand the
 mystic vine, bearing bunches of crimson grapes; while, to the left,
 the tree covered with parti-coloured lilies--white for purity, red
 for a bleeding-heart--is referrible to the Blessed Virgin Mary, whose
 heart, as she stood at the foot of the cross, underwent all the pains
 of martyrdom foretold her by Simeon when he said,--“And thine own soul
 a sword shall pierce,” _Luke_ ii. 35.


1350.

Web for Orphreys; ground, narrow blue spaces alternating with wider
crimson ones; design, the name of “Jhesus,” in gold upon the blue,
between two borders checkered crimson blue and yellow, the crimson
spaces charged with a floriation, alternately gold and yellow; the next
blue space inscribed with the name “Maria” in gold. In the names, as
well as the floriation, the metal has become tarnished so as to look a
dull brown. German, late 15th century. 19 inches by 2¼ inches.

 Of such webs there are several specimens in the collection; and their
 use was to ornament liturgical vestments, in those long perpendicular
 lines found upon tunicles and dalmatics.


1351.

Piece of Raised Velvet; ground, crimson; design, a conventional
artichoke, wreathed with small flowers in green and yellow within a
garland of the same colours. Italian, 16th century. 11½ inches by 11
inches.


1351A.

Piece of Raised Velvet. A part of the same stuff. Italian, 16th
century. 9¾ inches by 1¾ by inches.


1351B.

Piece of Raised Velvet. A part of the same stuff. Italian, 16th
century. 12½ inches by 1¾ inches.

 These three pieces are portions of a material made of excellent rich
 silk, and of good tones in colour.


1352.

Piece of Raised Velvet, brocaded in gold; ground, crimson; design,
an oval with cusps inside and enclosing a large artichoke, the whole
wreathed with a garland, and in gold. Italian, 16th century. 2 feet
3¾ inches by 8¼ inches.

 This magnificent stuff is rendered still more valuable, as a specimen,
 from having much of its design of that rare kind of velvet upon
 velvet, or one pile put over, in design, another but lower pile. The
 state-rooms of a palace could alone have been hung with such sumptuous
 wall-coverings. Perhaps church vestments and hangings about the altar
 may have been sometimes made of such a heavy material.


1352A.

Piece of Raised Velvet, brocaded in gold; ground, crimson; design, a
cusped oval enclosing a conventional artichoke, and the whole wreathed
with a broad garland, all in gold. Italian, 16th century. 18 inches by
7 inches.

 This differs both in design and quality from the former, having no
 pile upon pile in it.


1352B.

Piece of Raised Velvet, brocaded in gold; ground, crimson; design, not
very clear: though, from what can be observed, it is the same with No.
1352.


1353.

Web for Orphreys; ground, crimson silk; design, in yellow silk and gold
thread, between two floriated borders, a series of foliated scrolls,
with the open round spaces filled in with the Blessed Virgin holding
our Lord as a naked child in her arms, and a saint-bishop wearing his
mitre and cope, giving his blessing with one hand, and holding his
pastoral staff in the other. Venetian, 16th century. 25 inches by 8¼
inches.

 The materials are good, excepting the gold thread, which has turned
 black, though the large quantity of rich yellow silk used along with
 it somewhat hides its tarnish. In gearing his loom the weaver has made
 the mistake of showing the bishop as bestowing his benediction with
 his left, instead of his right hand.


1354.

Embroidered Linen; ground, very fine linen; design, separated by a
saltire or St. Andrew’s cross, lozenges filled in with a Greek cross,
and half lozenges, the whole ornamented with circles enclosing other
small crosses. Italian, 16th century. 10¾ inches by 3½ inches.

 This elaborate design is as delicately worked as it is beautiful in
 pattern.


1355.

Silk Damask; ground, sea-green; design, in the same tint, a
conventional foliation of the pomegranate, surrounding a wide
broad-banded oval filled in with a large fruit of the same kind.
Spanish, early 16th century. 33 inches by 12½ inches.

 In the beauty of its design, the rich softness of its silk, and its
 grateful tone, this is a pleasing specimen of the loom from the south
 of Spain.


1356.

Piece of Raised Velvet; black; design, foliated branches joined at
intervals by royal crowns alternating with vases, and large artichokes
in the intervening spaces. Italian, late 15th century. 25½ inches by
21¾ inches.

 This truly beautiful velvet was, no doubt, meant for personal attire.


1357.

Raised Velvet; ground, olive-green silk; design, slips with flowers and
leaves of a somewhat deeper tone, and outlined in a lighter coloured
raised velvet. Lucca, 16th century. 8-⅞ inches by 8¾ inches.

 This nicely-wrought stuff of pleasing pattern must have been made for
 personal attire.


1358.

Linen Crochet Work; design, saltires, between crosses formed of leaves,
and a modification of the Greek meander. Flemish, 16th century. 21
inches by 7½ inches.

 The convents in France, but more particularly in Flanders, were at all
 times famous for this kind of work; hence it is often called nun’s
 lace, because wrought by them for trimming altar-cloths and albs. The
 present one is a good specimen of a geometrical pattern, and the two
 borders are neatly done by the needle upon linen. In all likelihood
 this piece was the hem of an altar-cloth.


1359.

Linen Damask; design, scrolls and foliage, with a deep border showing
ducal coronets, armorial shields, and the letters L and K. Flemish,
early 17th century. 28¼ inches by 11½ inches.

 An elaborate specimen of the way they geared their looms in Flanders,
 and more especially at Yprès, where most likely, this fine damask was
 woven. The shield is party per pale, 1st, two chevronels embattled;
 2nd, three turreted towers, two and one. Seemingly this piece of
 Flemish napery was made for some nobleman whose wife was, or claimed
 to be, of the ancient blood of the royal house of Castile.


1360.

Silk Damask; ground, crimson; design, bunches of flowers, artichokes,
and pomegranates, in yellow. Spanish, 16th century. 20 inches by 11¼
inches.

 A rich stuff, whether colour or material be considered; and quite
 agreeing with other specimens in the love of the southern Spanish loom
 for the pomegranate, the emblem of Granada, where probably it was
 wrought.


1361.

Silk Damask; ground, dull violet; design, within reticulated squares, a
conventional bunch of flowers much in the honeysuckle shape, in white
and yellow. Italian, 16th century. 6 inches by 7½ inches.

 Though the silk is good, the weaving is rather coarse and rough.


1362.

Silk Damask; ground, bright crimson; design, a conventional floriation
in various-coloured silks. North Italian, 16th century. 9¼ inches by
6¾ inches.

[Illustration: 1362.

SILK DAMASK

Crimson ground with large branching pattern in coloured silk. Italian,
16th century.

  Vincent Brooks Day & Son, Lith.

]

 So thick is this somewhat showy stuff, that it must have been meant
 for furniture purposes.


1363.

Silk Damask; ground, reddish purple; design, slips of three kinds of
flower-bearing plants, one of which is the pomegranate. Spanish, late
15th century. 10¾ inches by 6-⅞ inches.

 From the south of Spain, and bearing a token, if not of the city, at
 least of the kingdom of Granada.


1364.

Damask, linen woof, silken warp; ground, yellow; design, a conventional
floriation, showing a strong likeness to the whole plant of the
artichoke, in white linen. Italian, 16th century. 10 inches by 9¾
inches.

 A poor stuff in respect to materials, colour, and design; which latter
 is the best element in it. Intended for household decorative purposes.


1365.

Damask, silk woof, linen warp; ground, light red, now faded; design,
vases filled with flowers, in yellow silk. Italian, late 16th century.
24 inches by 22 inches.

 No doubt this stuff was meant for hangings in a palace or
 dwelling-house; and among the flowers may be seen the bignonia or
 trumpet-flower, and the pomegranate opening and about to shed its seed.


1366.

Linen Diaper; design, square made out of four leaves. Flemish, late
16th century. 20 inches by 9 inches.

 The pattern, though so simple, is very pleasing, and the stuff itself
 speaks of Yprès as being the place of its origin.


1367.

Silk Taffeta; ground, purple; design, amid boughs, a pair of birds,
with an artichoke between them, all in orange-yellow. Sicilian, 14th
century. 9¾ inches square.

 This light thin stuff, quiet in its tones and simple in its pattern,
 must have been wrought for lining robes of rich stuffs.


1368.

Silk Damask; ground, white satin; design, amid flowers, among which
the chrysanthemum is very conspicuous, a group, consisting of a man
inside a low fence looking upwards upon a blue lion and a golden tiger,
seemingly at play, side by side, one of which is about to be struck by
a long spear held by a man standing above, within a walled building.
Just over him stands another man with a short mace in one hand, in
the other a small bottle, out of which comes a large bough of the
pomegranate tree in leaf, flower, and fruit. Chinese, 16th century. 2
feet 6¾ inches by 10¾ inches.

 For the soft warm tints of its several coloured flos-silks, the
 pureness of the gold thread upon the human faces, the animals and
 the flowers, the correctness of the drawing, and the well-arranged
 freedom of the whole pattern, there are few pieces that come up to
 this in the whole collection. In all likelihood it was brought from
 China, perhaps made up as a liturgical chasuble, by some Portuguese
 missionary priest, in the latter portion of the 16th or beginning of
 the 17th century.


1369.

Dalmatic; ground, blue silk; design, narrow bands charged with
circles enclosing a word in imitated Arabic, and conventional flowers
separating two hounds couchant, gardant, each within his own circle,
all in gold, and a large conventional floriation, at the foot of which
are two cheetahs collared, courant, face to face, all in white silk,
slightly specked with crimson, and between this group two eagles, in
white silk, flying down upon two small hounds, sejant, gardant, both
in gold. The orphreys, broad and narrow, are embroidered with heraldic
shields set upon a golden ground. Sicilian, 14th century. 3 feet 5½
inches by (across the sleeves) 4 feet 2¾ inches.

 Some ruthless hand has cut away from the back a large square piece of
 this vestment; and, to adopt it to modern fashion, its sleeves have
 been slit up at the under side. The armorial bearings are, on one
 shield, a chief _or_, _gules_, three stars, two, and one _argent_; on
 the other, _purpure_, two arrows in saltire _or_.

 The cheetahs are well marked by the round spots upon them; and when
 new, this stuff, with its pattern so boldly figured, must have been
 pleasing.


1370.

Piece of Cut-work, for wall-hanging; ground, square of blue and red,
with the upper border blue, the side one red; design, at top, knights
and ladies talking, and each within a separate arch; in the body of the
piece, the history of some dragon-slayer, figured in two horizontal
rows of compartments, every one of which is contained within an archway
with a head composed of three trefoil arches in a straight line, and
resting on trefoil-brackets, and having, all through, birds and flowers
in the spandrils. French, late 14th century. 7 feet 11 inches by 3 feet
4 inches.

 Though now so rough and tattered this almost unique piece of
 “cut-work” (which French people would call appliqué, but better
 described by the English words), of so large a size, is valuable for
 its use in showing how, with cheap materials and a little knowledge of
 drawing, a very pleasing, not to say useful, article of decoration may
 be made, either for church appliance or household furniture.

 Unfortunately the heads of the personages in the upper row are all
 cut away, but lower down we plainly see the history meant to be
 represented. Upon the first pane, to the left, we have a regal throne,
 upon which are sitting, evidently in earnest talk, a king, crowned
 and sceptred, and a knight, each belted with a splendid military
 girdle falling low down around the hips. Behind the knight stands his
 ’squire. In the next pane the enthroned king is giving his orders
 to the standing knight, toward whom his ’squire is bringing his
 sword, his shield, (_argent_ a fess _azure_, surmounted by a demi-ox
 _azure_,) and a bascinet mantled and crested with the head of the same
 demi-ox or aurochs and its tall horns. After this we behold the knight
 with lance and shield, and his ’squire on horseback riding forth
 from the castle, at the gate of which stands the king, outstretching
 his hand and bidding farewell to the knight, who is turning about
 to acknowledge the good-bye. Going first upon the road, the knight,
 followed by the ’squire, seems asking the way to the dragon’s lair,
 from a gentleman whom they meet. The monster is then found in a wood,
 and the knight is tilting his spear into its fire-red maw. The next
 pane carrying on the romance is the first to the left in the second
 or lower series. Here the knight is unhorsed, and his good grey steed
 is lying on the field; but the knight himself, wielding his sword in
 both hands, is about to smite the dragon breathing long flames of
 fire towards him. Afterwards he catches hold of his fiery tongue, and
 is cutting it off. It would look as if the dragon, though wounded to
 the loss of its tongue, had not been worsted; for in the following
 compartment we behold the same knight all unarmed, but well mounted,
 galloping forth from a castle gate with a hound and some sort of bird,
 both with strings to them, by his horse’s side, and having found the
 dragon again, appears holding an argument with the beast that, for
 answer, shows the fiery stump of his tongue in his gaping mouth. But
 the dragon will not give himself up and be led away captive. Now,
 however, comes the grand fight. In a forest, with a bird perched on
 high upon one of the trees, the knight, dismounted from his horse,
 cuts off the head of the dragon, which, to the last, is careful to
 show his much shortened yet still fiery tongue to his victor. Now have
 we the last passage but one in the story. Upon his bended knee the
 triumphant knight is presenting the open-mouthed, tongueless, cut-off
 dragon’s head to the king and queen, both throned and royally arrayed,
 the princess, their daughter, standing by her mother’s side. The young
 maiden, no doubt, is the victor’s prize; but now--and it is the last
 chapter--the knight and lady, dressed in the weeds of daily life and
 walking forth upon the flowery turf, seem happy with one another as
 man and wife. The two panes at this part, and serving as a border,
 seem out of place, and neither has a connection with the other; in the
 first, just outside a castle wall, rides a crowned king followed by
 a horseman, evidently of low degree; and a column separates him from
 a large bed, lying upon which we observe the upper part of a female
 figure, the head resting upon a rich cushion; next to this, but put in
 anglewise to fill up the space, we have a crowned lady and a girdled
 knight, sitting beneath a tree, each with a little dog beside them.

 The costume of both men and women in this curious piece of cut-work
 is that of the end of the 14th century. The parti-coloured dress of
 the men, their long pointed shoes, and the broad girdles, worn so low
 upon their hips by the king and knight, as well as the bascinet and
 helmet of the latter, with the horses’ trappings, all speak of that
 period; nor should we forget the sort of peaked head-dress, as well as
 the way in which the front hair of the ladies is thrown up into thick
 short curls. All the human figures, all the beasts, as well as the
 architecture, are outlined in thin leather or parchment once gilt, but
 now turned quite black. With the same leather, too, were studded the
 belts of the king and knight, and the spangles and golden enrichments
 of the ladies’ dress were of the same material. Saving here and there
 a few stitches of silk, everything else was of worsted, and that none
 of the finest texture. With such small means a good art-work was
 produced, as we see before us. The way in which each figure over the
 whole of this curious piece of cut-work is outlined by the leather
 edging strongly reminds us of the leadings in stained glass; in fact,
 both the one and the other are wrought after the same manner, and the
 principal difference between the window and the woollen hanging is
 the employment of an opaque instead of a transparent material. If the
 personages are dressed sometimes in blue, at others in crimson, it
 will be found that these colours alternate with the alternating tints
 of the panes upon which they are sewed.

 So often do the passages in the romance here figured correspond with
 certain parts in the wild legend of our own far-famed “Sir Guy of
 Warwick,” that, at first sight, one might be led to think that as his
 renowned story was carried all through Christendom, we had before us
 his mighty feats and triumph over the dragon in Northumberland, set
 forth in this handiwork of some lady-reader of his story.


1371.

Worsted Work; ground, green; design, conventional flowers in yellow,
with, at one end, a border of foliated boughs, the leaves of which are
partly green, partly red, and an edging of a band made up of white,
green, yellow, scarlet straight lines on the inner side; on three sides
there is a narrow listing of bluish-green lace. German, 15th century. 4
feet 3¼ inches by 1 foot 10 inches.

 In all probability this was intended and used as a carpet for some
 small altar-step. It is worked upon coarse canvas.


1372.

Piece of Needlework; pattern, upon bell-shaped spaces of silver thread,
flowers mostly white and shaded yellow, divided by a sort of imperial
high-peaked cap of blue shaded white, arising out of a royal crown.
17th century. 12½ inches by 7½ inches.


1372A.

Border to an Altar-cloth, embroidered; ground, crimson silk; design,
animals and birds amid branching foliage and fleurs-de-lis, well
raised in white and gold; the upper part linen, wrought into lozenges
alternately crimson and yellow, braced together by a fret, and filled
in with narrow bars saltire wise. German, 15th century. 3 feet 10¼
inches by 11½ inches.

 Among the animals is the symbolic lamb and flag, with a chalice
 underneath its head. From the exact similarity of style in the
 ornamentation and needlework, there can be no doubt but the same hand
 which wrought the stole, No. 1322, worked this piece, and probably
 both formed a portion of the same set of ornaments for the chantry
 chapel of some small family.


1373.

Cope; ground, green raised-velvet; design, amid leaves of a heart-shape
or cordate, freckled with a kind of check, large conventional
artichokes. The orphreys are of web, figured, on a golden ground, with
saints, inscription, and flower-bearing trees; the hood is ornamented
with applied cut-work and needle embroidery, and the morse is of plain
velvet. The raised velvet is Italian, 16th century; the orphrey web,
German, 16th century; the embroidery of the hood, 16th century. 9 feet
2 inches by 3 feet 11¼ inches.

 The raised velvet, though now so torn and stitched together, is of a
 very fine pile, and pleasing elaborate design. The hood is figured
 with the Annunciation, and the faces are applied pieces of white silk
 with the features and hair brought out by the needle in coloured
 silks; the other parts of the embroidery are coarse but effective. On
 the orphreys are shown, on one side, St. Peter and St. Katherine, on
 the other, St. Paul and St. Barbara. The ground for the name of the
 last saint looks very bright and fresh in its gold; but the gold is,
 so to say, a fraud. It is put, by the common gilding process, upon the
 web after being woven, and not twined about the thread itself. The
 fringe all round the lower part is rather unusual.


1374.

Applied Embroidery; ground, green silk; pattern, a flower-vase between
two horns of plenty with flowers coming out of them, and separated by
a conventional floral ornament, mostly done in amber-coloured cord.
French, late 17th century. 2 feet 3 inches by 6½ inches.

 Tame in its design, and easy in its execution.


1374A. ’64.

Chasuble of Silk Damask; ground, purple; design, a quatrefoil within
another charged with a cross-like floriation, having a square
white-lined centre, surmounted by two eagles with wings displayed and
upholding in their beaks a royal crown, all in green. Italian, early
15th century. 4 feet 6 inches by 2 feet 7 inches.

 By some unfeeling hand a large piece was, not long ago, cut out from
 the front of this fine old ample chasuble; and, very likely, the
 specimen of the same stuff, No. 7057, is that very portion.


1375. ’64.

Chasuble; ground, very rich velvet; design, in the middle of a large
five-petaled flower, a pomegranate, and another pomegranate in the
spaces between these flowers. The orphreys are, before and behind, of
rich diapered cloth of gold, the one behind of the Y form, figured in
embroidery with the Crucifixion; the one before on a piece of velvet of
a different diapering from the back, with the Blessed Virgin Mary and
our Lord, as a child, in her arms; and below, the figure of Religion.
Spanish, late 15th century. 3 feet 2 inches by 2 feet 4¾ inches.

 This chasuble must have been truly grand and majestic when new, and
 seen in all its sumptuous fulness, for it has been sadly cut away
 about the shoulders. It must, originally, have measured, on that part,
 at least some inches beyond four feet. The Y cross orphrey on the back
 is figured with the crucifixion, done after a large and effective
 manner, for the person of our Redeemer measures more than 1 foot 9
 inches in length, and His, as well as all the other faces are thrown
 up in low relief. At the ends of the transom of the cross are four
 winged angels--two at each side, of whom one is catching, in a golden
 chalice, the sacred blood spirting from the wounds in the hands, the
 other flying down in sorrow from the clouds. High above the cross are
 two angels with peacock-feather wings, swinging two golden thuribles,
 which are in low relief; and between these angelic spirits, a golden
 eagle in high relief, with wings displayed, armed and beaked _gules_
 and holding in his once crimson talons a scroll which, from the
 letters observable, may have been inscribed with the motto, “(Respice)
 in fi(nem).” The front of the chasuble is made of a piece of velvet
 of another and much broader design--a large flower of five petals and
 two stipulæ--but equally remarkable for its deep mellow ruby tone and
 soft deep pile. Its orphrey of fine diapered gold-thread embroidery,
 but much worn away through being long rubbed by its wearers against
 the altar, is worked with the Blessed Virgin Mary carrying in her arms
 our Saviour, as a naked child, caressing His mother’s face; and, lower
 down, with a female figure crowned and nimbed, bearing in her right
 hand a golden chalice, at the top of which is a large eucharistic
 particle marked with a cross-crosslet; this is the emblem of the
 Church. Both figures are large and of a telling effect; and, like the
 other figures, have more of a naturalistic than ideal type of beauty
 about them.


1376.

Chasuble; ground, raised crimson velvet with concentric circles in
cloth of gold, within garlands of which the leaves are green, the
flowers gold. The orphreys are woven in coloured silks on cloth of
gold, with inscriptions. The velvet, Florentine, late 15th century; the
orphrey web, German, late 15th century. 3 feet 10¾ inches by 2 feet
10¼ inches.

[Illustration: 1376.

PART OF THE ORPHREY OF A CHASUBLE. German 15th century.

  Vincent Brooks Day & Son, Lith.]

[Illustration: 1376.

PART OF THE ORPHREY OF A CHASUBLE. German 15th century.

  Vincent Brooks Day & Son, Lith.]

The very rich stuff of this vestment far surpasses in splendour the
orphreys, which ought to have been better. On the one behind, we
have the Crucifixion with the words below, in blue silk, “O Crux
Ave.” Further down an angel is holding a sheet figured with all the
instruments of the Passion. After the word Maria, a second angel is
shown with another sheet falling from his hands and figured with the
Holy Lamb, having, beneath it, the words “Ecce Agnus Dei;” then a third
angel, with the word, but belonging to another piece, “Johan.” On the
orphrey in front a fourth angel is displaying a chalice surmounted by
a cross and standing within a fenced garden, and beneath the sheet the
word “Maria.” Lower down a fifth angel is showing the column and two
bundles of rods, with “Jhesus.” Last of all there is an angel with
a napkin marked with the crown of green thorns and two reeds placed
saltire-wise, and the word “Maria.”


1375.

Saddle-bag of Persian carpeting; ground, deep crimson; pattern, stripes
in various colours running up the warp. Persian. 3 feet 4 inches by 1
foot 5 inches.

 The warp and weft are of a strong coarse texture, and not only at the
 corners but upon each pouch there are tassels.


1376.

Travelling-bag, of the same stuff, but varying in pattern. Persian. 1
foot 8 inches by 1 foot 7 inches.


1378.

Bag of woven worsted; ground, deep crimson; pattern, narrow stripes
figured with diversified squares in different colours. Persian. 1 foot
3¾ inches by 1 foot 2¼ inches.

 From the string of worsted lace attached to the side it would seem
 that this bag was meant to be slung across the person of the wearer.
 None of these three articles are very old.


1379.

Bag of woven silk and worsted; ground, deep crimson worsted; pattern,
horizontal bands in silk figured, in places, with four-legged beasts,
white, yellow, red, and green, and with vertical bands figured with a
green net-work filled in with what look like birds, crimson, separated
by a tree. Persian. 11¾ inches by 10 inches.

 Most Persian in look is this bag, which, from the thick cord attached
 to it, seems to have been for carrying in the hand. It is lined with
 brown linen, and has two strings for drawing the mouth close up. The
 two birds repeated so often on the lower part, and separated by what
 looks like a tree, may be an ornament traditionally handed down from
 the times when the Persian sacred “hom” was usual in the patterns of
 that country. No great antiquity can be claimed by the textile before
 us.


1547, 1548.

Two Escutcheons of the Arms of France, surmounted by a royal crown, and
encircled with the collars of two orders--one St. Michael, the other
the Holy Ghost--embroidered upon a black ground, in gold and silver,
and the proper blazon colours. French, 17th century.

 All well and heraldically done.


1622.

Piece of Printed Chintz. Old English, presented by F. Fellingham, Esq.


2864A.

Frame for enamels; ground, purple velvet; pattern, scrolls in raised
gold embroidery. French, late 17th century. 8 inches by 7 inches.

 The velvet is put on pasteboard. In the centre, left uncovered, a
 larger enamel must have been let in; upon the four small circular
 and unembroidered spaces of the velvet, lesser enamels, or precious
 stones, were sewed.


2865.

Frame for enamels; ground, crimson velvet; pattern, scrolls in raised
gold embroidery. French, late 17th century. 8 inches by 7 inches.

 Though differing in its colour, this is evidently the fellow to the
 one just mentioned.


4015.

Mitre; crimson and gold velvet. Florentine, 15th century. 1 foot 10½
inches by 11 inches.

 This liturgical curiosity is of that low graceful shape which we find
 in most mitres before the 16th century; in all probability this one
 was made not for real episcopal use, but to be employed in the service
 of the so-called boy-bishop who used, for centuries, to be chosen
 every year from among the boys who served in the cathedral, or the
 great churches of towns, at Christmas-tide, as well in England as all
 over Christendom; (see “Church of our Fathers,” t. iv. p. 215). As the
 rubrical colour for episcopal mitres is white, or of cloth of gold, a
 crimson mitre is of great rarity. The one before us is made of those
 rich stuffs for which Florence was so famous, as may be instanced in
 the gorgeous vestments given to Westminster Abbey by our Henry VII.
 The mitre itself is of crimson velvet, freckled with gold threads,
 raised in a rich pile upon a golden ground, with green fringed
 lappets; but the “titulus,” or upright stripe before and behind,
 along with the “corona,” or circular band, are all of a kind of lace
 or woven texture of raised velvet, green, white, and crimson, after
 a pretty design, upon a golden ground. The mitre is lined throughout
 with light-blue silk.


4016.

Bed-quilt; ground, cherry-coloured satin; pattern, birds amid flowers
and foliage, in the centre a double-headed eagle, displayed. East
Indian (?), early 17th century. 8 feet 6 inches by 6 feet 10 inches.

 The satin is poor, and its colour faded; but the embroidery, with
 which it is plentifully overspread, is of a rich, though not tasty,
 kind. Birds of extraordinary, and, no doubt, fanciful plumage are
 everywhere flitting about it, among flowers as unusual as themselves;
 but the glowing tones of the many-coloured silks in which they are
 wrought must strike every one’s eye. From the double-headed eagle,
 done in gold, with wings blue, yellow, and green, displayed, it would
 appear that this quilt was wrought for some (perhaps imperial) house
 in Europe.


4018.

State-cap, of crimson velvet turned up with white satin, which is faced
with crimson velvet, and all embroidered in gold and silver threads.
German (?), late 17th century. 14½ inches by 10 inches.

 By a very modern hand the words “King Charles” are written upon the
 green silk lining; what Charles, however, is not mentioned. There is
 much about the shape of the cap itself, and especially in the design
 of its embroidery, to induce the belief that it was wrought and
 fashioned by a German hand, and for German and not English use. In
 a piece of tapestry once belonging to the famous Bayard, and now in
 the Imperial Library at Paris, the same form of high-crowned crimson
 velvet cap is worn by Pyrrhus while he is being knighted, as may be
 seen, plate 42, in Shaw’s “Dresses and Decorations of the Middle
 Ages,” t. ii, borrowed from Jubinal’s fine work on “Early Tapestries.”


4024.

Altar-frontal; ground, crimson satin; subjects, five apostles, each
under a Gothic canopy, with bunches of flowers between them wrought in
coloured silks and gold thread. Italian, late 15th century. 7 feet 3
inches by 2 feet.

 Beginning at the left-hand we have St. Paul holding a sword, then St.
 James the Greater with the pilgrim-staff; in the middle, St. Thomas
 holding in one hand a spear, and giving his blessing with the right,
 St. Andrew with a cross of large size leaning against his shoulder;
 and, last of all, St. John with an eagle at his feet. The figures are
 better done than the niches about them, which are very heavy and bad
 in taste, as are the bunches of flowers. The whole is applied, and
 upon a more modern piece of crimson satin. The back is lined with
 leaves of a printed book relating to the Abbey of Vallombrosa, near
 Florence.

 Hanging behind this frontal, and put together as a background to it,
 are Numbers:--


4513-4516.

Fringed Panels of Domestic Furniture; ground, deep maroon velvet;
pattern, a small arabesque within a square of the same design, in cloth
of gold edged with gold cord. Italian, 16th century. Nos. 4513 and
4515, each 4 feet 6 inches by 1 foot 4 inches; Nos. 4514 and 4516, each
3 feet 7 inches by 1 foot 4 inches.

 Bedsteads in Italy are so large that these pieces look far too
 small to have ever been applied to such a purpose as bed-furniture.
 They were, probably, the hangings for the head of a canopy in the
 throne-room of a palace during the year of mourning for the death of
 its prince.


4045.

Chasuble; the ground, tawny-coloured velvet; pattern, angels and
flowers in coloured flos-silks and gold thread, the orphreys before and
behind figured with saints. English, 15th century. 7 feet by 3 feet.

 Though the needlework upon this chasuble is effective at a distance,
 like much of the embroidery of the time, both in this country and
 abroad, it is found to be very rude and coarse when seen near. The
 style of the whole ornamentation is so very English that there is no
 mistaking it. The back orphrey is in the shape of a cross; and on
 it, and figured at top, Melchisedek with three loaves in his hand;
 beneath him, the prophet Malachi, on the left of whom we have Abraham
 with a large broad sacrificial knife in his hand, on the right, King
 David and his harp; these three form the transom of the cross. Going
 downward, we see St. John the Evangelist with the chalice; below this
 apostle, David again; and, last of all, half the person of some saint.
 On the front orphrey are given St. James the Greater, and two prophets
 of the Old Law. This chasuble, with its stole and maniple, is said to
 have been found at Bath, hidden behind the wainscot of a house there.
 Certain it is that the chasuble has been much cut down. The original
 size was far larger.


4046, 4046A.

Stole and Maniple; ground, tawny-coloured velvet, embroidered with
flowers in gold and coloured silks. English, 15th century. Stole, 8
feet 6 inches by 2¾ inches; maniple, 3 feet 3 inches by 2¾ inches.

 The embroidery is quite of the style of the period, and in character
 with that usually found upon the commoner class of English vestments,
 done in flos-silk and gold thread, after a large design. The velvet is
 Italian, and this tone of colour seems to have been then in favour.


4059.

Piece of Woven Orphrey; ground, crimson silk; subject, the Assumption
of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in yellow silk. Florentine, 15th century. 2
feet 9 inches by 8¾ inches.

 This favourite subject of all art-schools in the mediæval period is
 treated here much after other examples in this collection, as No.
 8977, &c., but with some variations, and better design and drawing.
 The Eternal Father, with glory round Him, and two cherubim, is putting
 a crown upon the head of St. Mary, who is seated upon sunbeams
 surrounded by angels, while she drops her girdle to St. Thomas as
 he kneels at her late grave, now filled with new-blown lilies, and
 bearing on its front the words “Assunta est.” “Assunta” for “Assumpta”
 is the weaver’s own blunder. Dr. Bock gives a plate of it in his
 “Geschichte der Liturgischen Gewänder des Mittelalters,” 1 Band, 2
 Lieferung, pl. xvi.


4061.

Piece of Raised Velvet; ground, pale yellow silk; pattern, in raised
velvet, a large oblong square, having within a border of corn-flowers
a large star-like inflorescence, and each square separated by a border
or band charged with liliaceous flowers, in crimson raised velvet, in
part upon a silver ground, now blackened, surrounded by an ornament in
amber-streaked green in raised velvet. Italian, late 16th century. 4
feet by 1 foot 1 inch.

 Another of the several specimens of the rich raised velvet for
 furnishing purposes.


4062.

Purse in Green Velvet, embroidered with gold and silver threads, and at
bottom emblazoned with a ducal crown and two shields of arms. French,
18th century. 4½ inches in diameter, 3 inches high.

 Though so small, this little purse is tastefully and richly wrought,
 and has nicely worked double strings, with gold-covered knobs at their
 ends for drawing its mouth close, and two other like knobs for opening
 it. At bottom it is very richly ornamented with a golden mantle, upon
 which are two shields, the one on the man’s side is _azure_ two lions
 passant gardant, royally crowned _or_; that on the woman’s side,
 _azure_ a chevron _or_, between two four-petaled and barbed flowers,
 in chief, and a double transomed cross in base _argent_; over both
 shields is a ducal coronet. No doubt this purse, which is lined with
 white kid-leather, was one of those still used by ladies in France,
 and held in their hands as they stand at the doors or go about the
 church at service-time to collect the alms of the congregation, for
 the poor or other pious purposes; this one may have belonged to an
 heiress married to a duke.


4068.

Strip of Raised Velvet; ground, silver and white silk; pattern, a large
crimson and green flower seeded gold, alternating with a floriation
having flowers of crimson, tawny, and purple on green stems. North
Italy, 16th century.

[Illustration: 4068.

VELVET

Silver ground, raised floriated pattern, in various colours. Genoese,
16th century.]

 This fine specimen of raised velvet is of a deep pile and rich mellow
 colouring. The silver threads of the ground have become quite dimmed,
 while the gold in the flower is fresh and glowing. Seemingly, this
 piece last served as the hanging of a bed.


4069.

Piece of Raised Velvet on a gold ground; pattern, large conventional
flowers and ears of corn issuing out of a ducal coronet. Genoese, early
17th century. 8 feet by 4 feet.

 The gold of the ground is now so tarnished, and was, at first, so
 sparingly used that now it is almost invisible; but the pile of the
 velvet is deep and the pattern bold. Doubtless this stuff was for
 household decoration.


4070.

Piece of Silk Brocade; purple; pattern, in gold and silver, a large
vase out of which spring two ramifications and two eagles, one on
each side, alternating with a floriation bearing at top a pomegranate
seeded; in the narrow border at top and bottom the fleur-de-lis is the
chief ornament, while the tasseled fringe, designed at bottom, shows
that this texture must have been intended as a hanging for a frieze.
Lyons, late 16th century. 12 feet by 1 foot 10 inches.

 The occurrence of birds or animals of any sort in stuffs of the period
 is unusual; and, in all likelihood, the last use of this piece was as
 a hanging in some large hall.


4209, 4210.

Pieces of White Brocaded Silk. Lyons, 18th century, 1 foot 4 inches by
11 inches.

 The manufacture of this stuff is rather remarkable, not so much for
 that satin look, produced by flos-silk, in some parts of its design
 of flower-bearing branches, as by the way in which portions of it are
 thrown up in little seed-pearls.


4216.

Piece of Needlework figured with a female saint at her prayers before a
picture of our Saviour, and a crowd of men standing behind her near a
belfry, in which are swinging two bells. Italian, early 15th century. 1
foot 4½ inches by 11½ inches.

 By the costume this work would seem to have been done in Tuscany, and
 it shows the bed-room of some saintly noble dame, wimpled and clad in
 a crimson mantle embroidered with gold. At the foot of her bed there
 is, wrought and diapered in gold, a praying desk on which lies open a
 book in silver having a large M in red marked on its first page; above
 is a picture of our Redeemer, known by His crossed glory, in the act
 of giving His blessing, before whom the saint is praying. At her knees
 are two green snakes, and above her two angels are carrying her soul,
 under her human form, up to heaven. Behind her, and close to a belfry,
 where the bells are swinging and the ropes of which are hanging
 down, is a group of men, one a tonsured cleric, seemingly, from his
 dalmatic, a deacon, with both hands upraised in surprise; near him
 other clerics tonsured, two of whom are reading with amazement out
 of a book held by a noble layman. This work contains allusions to
 several events in the life of St. Frances, widow, known in Italy, as
 Santa Francesca Romana; but a very remarkable one is here especially
 sketched forth. She is said to have often beheld the presence of her
 guardian angel, clothed as a deacon, watching over her. Such was the
 obedience and condescension yielded by her to her husband that, though
 wrapped in prayer, or busied in any spiritual exercise, if called
 by him or anywise needed by the lowliest servant in her family, she
 hastened to obey at the moment. It is told of her, that one day, being
 asked for as many as four times in succession, just as she was, each
 time, beginning the same verse again, of a psalm in the Office of the
 Blessed Virgin, on coming back for the fifth time she found that verse
 written all in gold. Here then we have the loving husband showing this
 prayer-book, with its golden letters, to a crowd of friends, among
 whom is his wife’s angel hidden under a deacon’s dalmatic; while the
 saint herself is at her devotions, foreseeing in vision the evils that
 are to befall Italy, through civil strife, shown by those serpents and
 the swinging bells betokening alarm and fright.


4456.

Table-cover; ground, coarse canvas; design, armorial bearings,
symbolical subjects, fruits, and animals, besides five long
inscriptions in German, dated A.D. 1585. German. 6 feet by 6 feet 6
inches.

 The whole of this large undertaking was worked by some well-born
 German mother as an heirloom to her offspring. At the right hand
 corner, done upon a separate piece of finer canvas and afterwards
 applied to the ground, is a shield of arms, _sable_, three lions
 rampant _or_ armed and langued _gules_ two and one between a fess
 _argent_; at another corner, but worked upon the canvas ground
 itself, a shield, _gules_ three bars dancetté _argent_; upon a third
 shield, _argent_, a fess dancetté _sable_; on the last corner
 shield, quarterly _or_ and _gules_, a fess _argent_; upon a smaller
 shield in the middle of the border, _sable_ a pair of wings expanded
 _argent_; on the border opposite, party per fess _sable_ and _or_,
 two crescents _argent_; in the centre of the next border, _gules_ two
 bars (perhaps) _sable_ charged, the upper one with three, the lower
 with one, bezants or plates; and last of all, upon the other border,
 _or_, a lion rampant, _gules_ with chief vair, _sable_, and _or_.
 Repeated at various places are a vase surmounted by a cross with two
 birds, half-serpent, half-dove, sipping out of the vessel; and below
 this group another, consisting of two stags well “attired,” each with
 one hoof upon the brim of a fountain out of which they are about to
 drink. This latter symbol is evidently a reference to the Psalmist’s
 hart that panteth after the fountains of water, while the former one
 is a representation of the union of the serpent’s wisdom with the
 simplicity of the dove. In many ancient monuments the upper half of
 the bird is that of a dove, the lower ends in a snake-like shape
 with an eye shown at the extremity of the tail. There are five long
 rhythmical inscriptions on this cloth, in German, one at every corner,
 and the longest of all in the middle; considering the period at which
 they were written, these doggerel verses are very poor, and run nearly
 as follows:--

    “ALS . MAN . ZALT . FUNFZEHN . HUNDERT . JAHR.
    DARZU . NOCH . ACHTZIG . UND . FUNF . ZWAR.
    HAT . DER . EDEL . UND . VEST . HEINRICH.
    VON . GEISPITZHEIM . DIE . TUGENTREICH.
    ANNA . BLICKIN . ZUM . GMAL . ERKORN.
    WELCHE . VON . LIGTENBERG . GEBORN.
    BEID . ALTES . ADELICHS . GESCHLECHT.
    ZUSAMMEN . SICH . VERMEHLT . RECHT.
    DAMIT . NUHN . IN . IHREM . EHESTANDT.
    VLEISIG . HAUSHALTUNG . WURDT . ERKANDT.
    HAT . SIE . IHREM . TUNCKERN . ZU . EHRN.
    DEN . HAUSRAHT . WOLLEN . ZIRN . UND . MEHRN.
    DARUMB . MIT . IHRER . EIGNEN . HANDT.
    DIES . UND . NOCH . VIEL . ZIERLICHS . GEWANDT.
    ZU . IHRER . GEDACHTNIS . GEMACHT.
    MIT . BEIDER . NECHSTEN . ANGHEN . ACHT.
    MIT . GOTT . IHRH . TUNCKERN . D . KINDER . ZART.
    AUCH . SIE . ERHALTE . BEI . WOHLFAHRTH.
    DARNEBEN . VERLEIHEN . GEDULT.
    DAS . WIR . BEZAHLN . DER . NATUR . SCHULT.
    NACH . VOLLPRACHTEM . LANGEN . LEBEN.
    UNS . ALLEN . DIE . EWIG . FREUD . GEBEN.
                    AMEN.
    OBGMELTER . HEINRICH . DICHTET . MICH.

 “When one wrote the year Fifteen hundred and Eighty five, the noble
 and true Henry von Geispitzheim had chosen for his spouse the virtuous
 Anna Blickin von Lichtenberg. Both of them were of ancient noble
 descent. And she, to honour the esquire, her husband, wished to adorn
 and increase the house furniture, and there has worked with her own
 hand this and still many other pretty cloths, to her memory. Praying
 that God may preserve the esquire, and the tender children, and
 herself also, and that they may pay the debt of nature at the end of a
 long life, and eternal joy may be granted them.

    Amen.

 The aforesaid Henry has composed me (i.e. the doggerel verses).”

    “NUN . FOLGET . AUCH . BEI . DIE . ZEIT . UND . JAHR.
    DARIN . ICH . ZUR . WELT . GEPOHREN . WAR.
    DES . WEN . MEIN . DREI . DOCHTERLEIN.
    AUCH . SONN . ZUR . WELT . GEPOHREN . SEIN.
    ALS . MAN . ZALTT . FUNFF . ZEHEN . HUNDERT . LII.
    ERFREUWET . MEIN . MUTTER . MEIN . GESCHREI.
    AN . DEM . JAR . ACHTZIG . FUNFF . HER . NACH.
    ICH . MEINEM . JUNCKERN . EIN . DOCHTER . PRACHT.
    EMILIA . CATHARIENA . IST . IHR . NAHM.
    VON . JUGENT . GERECHT . UND . LOBESAM.
    ZWEI . JHAR . DAR . NACH . IM . JANNER . HART.
    MICH . GOT . WIEDERUM . ERFREUET . HAT.
    MIT . EINER . DOCHTER . ZART . UND . FEIN.
    SIE . DRINCKT . WASER . UND . KEINEN . WEIN.
    MAGDALENA . ELISABETH . GENNANT.
    JHREM . VATER . WERTH . GAR . WOHL . BEKANNT.
    NACH . GEHENTS . JAHR . ACHTZIG . ACHT.
    MEINEN . SON . REICHART . AN . DAS . LICHT . GEPRACHT
    DAS . WAR . DEM . VATER . GROSSE . FREUWDT.
      GOT . SEI . GELOBT . IN . EWIGKEIT.
    DAS . VOLGT . JAHR . ACHTZIG . UND . NEUN.
    BRACHT . ICH . ZUR . WELT . DIE . ZWILING . MEIN.
    HANS . CASPARN . ERST . DRAUFF . EMICHEN . BALDT.
    DAS . SICH . ERFREUDT . DER . VATER . ALT.
    DAS . GESCHACH . DEN . IZ . HORNUNGS . DAG.
    GOTS . ALLMACHT . NOCH . VIEL . MEHR . VERMAG.
    ZU . LETZ . IM . JAHR . NEUNTZIG . UND . DREI.
    ANNA . MARGARETHA . KAM . AUCH . HERBEI.
    DEN . ZWOLFFTEN . FEBRUARIUS.
    DAMIT . ICH . DISSE . SACH . BESCHLUSZ.
    O . IHR . HERTZ . LIEBE . KINDTER . MEIN.
    ICH . LASZ . EUCH . MIR . BEFOHLEN . SEIN.
    BEHTET . ALLENS . MORGENS . OHN . UNDER . LASZ.
    IN . FROLIGKEIT . HALT . GNAE . MASZ.
    ACH . IHR . HERTZ . LIEBE . KINDTER . MEIN.
    MACHT . EUCH . MIT . GOTTES . WORT . GEMEIN.
    SO . WIRT . EUCH . GOT . DER . HER . ERHALTEN.
    DAS . IHR . EWEREM . VATER . NOCH . MIT . EHRN . [some letters wanting]
    DISEN . SPRUCH . MERCKT . EBEN.
    SO . WIRT . EUCH . GOT . GLICK . UND . SGEN . GEBN.

 “Now follows here my own birthday. When one wrote 1552 my mother’s
 heart was gladdened by my first cry. In the year 1585 I gave birth
 myself to a daughter. Her name is Emilia Catharina, and she has been
 a proper and praiseworthy child. Two years later, in a cold January,
 has God again gratified me with a daughter tender and fine, she
 drinks water and no wine, her name is Magdalena Elizabeth. In 1588
 my son Richard came into this world, whose birth gave great pleasure
 to his father. In the following year, in February, I gave birth to
 my twins, Hans Caspar and Emich (Erich?). At last, in 1593, on the
 12th of February, my daughter Anna Margaretha was born.--O you truly
 beloved children, I commend myself to your memory. Do not forget your
 prayers in the morning. And be temperate in your pleasures. And make
 yourselves acquainted with the Word of God. Then God will preserve
 you, and will grant you happiness and bliss.”

    “DISZ . HAB . ICH . EUCH . LIEBE . KINDER . MEIN.
    IN . REIMEN . BRINGEN . LASZEN . FEIN.
    AUFF . DAS . IR . WUST . EUWERS . ALTERS . ZEIT.
    DURCH . DIESE . MEINER . HANDT . ARBEIT.
    WELCHS . ICH . EUCH . ZUR . GEDECHTNIS . LAS.
    UND . BITT . EUCH . FREUNDLICH . ALLER . MASS.
    SEIDT . UFFRICHTIG . IN . ALLEN . SACHEN.
    DAS . WIRT . EUCH . GOSZ . UND . HERLICH . MACHN.
    THUT . IEDEM . EHR . NACH . SEINEM . STANDT.
    DAS . WIRT . EUCH . RUMLICH . MACHEN . BEKANDT.
    UND . IHR . HERTZ . LIEBE . SONE . MEIN.
    WOLT . EUCH . HUTEN . VOR . VERIGEM (feurigem) . WEIN.
    DRINCKT . DEN . WEIN . MIT . BESCHEIDENHEIT.
    DA . SICHS . GEBURTT . DAS . PEHUT . VOR . LEIDT.
    UND . IHR . HERTZ . LIEBE . DOCHTER . MEIN.
    LAST . EUCH . ALLE . TUGENT . BETOLEN . SEIN.
    BEWART . EUHER . EHR . HAPT . EUHR . GUT . ACHT.
    BEDENCKT . ZU . VOR . JDE . SACH.
    DAN . VOR . GETHAN . UND . NACH . BEDRACHT.
    HAT . MANCHEN . WEIT . ZURUCK . GEBRACHT.
    DAS . MITELL . DIS . ALLES . ZU . GEPEN.
    IST . DIE . FORCHT . GOTTES . MERCKT . MICH . EBEN.
    GOTTS . FORCHT . BRINGT . WEISHEIT . UND . VERSTANT.
    DAR . DORCH . GESEGNET . WIRDT . DAS . LANDT.
    GOTS . FORCHT . MACHT . REICH . BRINGT . FRED . U . MUHT.
    ERFRISCHT . DAS . LEBEN . UND . DAS . BLUT.
    GOTES . FORCHT . BEHUTT . VOR . ALLEM . LEIDT.
    UND . IST . EIN . WEG . ZUR . SELIGKEIT.
    GOTTES . FORCHT . IST . DAS . RECHT . FUNDAMENT.
    DARUFF . DES . MENSCHEN . GLICK . BEWENDT.
    UND . IST . EIN . HAUPTMITTEL . ALLER . DUGENT.
    WER . SICH . DER . ANIMPT . IN . DER . JUGENT.
    DEM . GEHT . SEIN . ALTER . AN . MIT . EHREN.
    UND . SEIN . GLICK . WIRD . SICH . TAGLICH . MEHREN.
    DAR . DURCH . DER . MENSCH . ZUM . SELIG . ENDT.
    LETZLICH . GELANGT . ACH . HER . UNS . SENDT.
    DEIN . HEILIGER . GEIST . DER . UNS . THUT . EINFREN.
    ZU . SOLCHER . FORCHT . DIE . WOL . EUCH . RIHREN.
    EWER . HERTZ . UND . SIN . IHR . SOLICH . FORCHT.
    ERGREIFFEN . KONT . UND . GOT . GEHRCHT.
    AMEN . DAS . WERDT . WARH . G . GOTT . DIE . ERH.

 “This, O my dear children, has at my wish been put into rhymes, in
 order that you may know your age by this work of my own hand, which
 I leave to you as a memorial. I beseech you to be sincere in all
 matters; that will make you great and glorious. Honour everybody
 according to his station; it will make you honourably known. You, my
 truly beloved sons, beware of fiery wine, and drink with moderation;
 that will preserve you from evil. And you, my truly beloved daughters,
 let me recommend you to be virtuous. Preserve and guard your honour;
 and reflect before you do anything; for many have been led into evil
 by acting first and reflecting afterwards. The way to get to this
 end is the fear of God, mark me well! The fear of God brings wisdom
 and understanding. The fear of God makes rich, and gives joy and
 courage, refreshes life and blood. The fear of God protects us from
 all evil; and is the way to the state of bliss. The fear of God is the
 foundation on which the happiness of man rests; and is the chief way
 to all virtues. He who seeks it in his youth will live with honour
 till his old age; and his happiness will daily increase.

 “Amen. Give to God all honour.”

    “ALS . MAN . ZALT . FUFZEHN . HUNDERT . JAHR.
    UND . NEUNTZIG . NEUN . DARZU . JST . WAR.
    DEN . ERSTEN . APRIL . NACH . MITNACHT.
    GLEICH . UMB . EIN . UHR . OFFT . ICHS . BETRACHT.
    DER . ALLERLIEBSTE . JUNCKER . MEIN.
    GENANDT . HEINRICH . VON . GEISPITZHEIM.
    ZU . DIR . O . GOTT . AUS . DIESER . WELT.
    ERFORDERT . WIRT . ALS . DIRS . GEFELLT.
    SEIN . ALTER . WAR . SECHZIG . UND . ACHT.
    DIE . WASSER . SUCHT . IHN . UMGEPRACHT.
    DEN . WOLLEST . O . GOTT . GNED . GEBEN.
    SEIN . PFLEGEN . NACH . DEM . WILLEN . DEIN.
    JCH . SEIN . BETRUEBTE . NACHGELASSEN . ANN.
    BLICKIN . VON . LIECHTENPERG . GENANDT.
    HAB . MIT . NICHT . UNDER . LASSEN . WOLLEN.
    SONDERN . EIN . SOLICHES . HIE . MELDEN . SOLLEN.
    IN . DIESEM . TUCH . MIT . MEINER . HANDT.
    DAMIT . ES . WERD . MEINEN . KINDERN . BEKANDT.
    DIESES . MEIN . GROSSES . LEID.
    WELCHES . MIR . VON . GOTT . WARD . BEREIT.

 “When one wrote the year Fifteen hundred and ninety-nine, on the
 first of April after midnight, just at one o’clock--often I think
 of it--my truly beloved husband, the Squire Henry von Geispitzheim,
 was called to Thee, O God! from this world, according to Thy will.
 His age was sixty and eight years. The dropsy has killed him. To him
 grant, O God! Thy mercy, after Thy will. I, his afflicted Anna Blickin
 von Liechtenperg who was left behind, have related it with my hand
 in this cloth, that it might be known to my children--this my great
 sorrow, which God has sent me.”

    “DEN . FUNFFTEN . AUGUST . BALDT . HERNACH.
    WIEDERUM . SICH . FUGT . EIN . LEIDIG . SACH.
    MEIN . JUNGSTER . SON . EIMCH . EIN . ZWILLING.
    VON . DIESER . WELT . ABSCHIEDT . GAB . GEHLINGS.
    DARDURCH . WARDT . MIR . MEIN . LEID . GEMERT.
    UND . ALLE . HOFFNUNG . UMBGEKERTH.
    ACH . GOTT . LAS . DICHS . MIENER . ERBARMEN.
    UND . KOM . ZU . TROST . UND . HILFF . MIR . ARMEN.
    HILF . TREUWER . GOT . UND . STEH . BEI . MICH.
    TROST . MICH . MIT . DEINEM . GEIST . GNEDIGGLICH.
    UND . BEHUT . MIR . MEIN . LIEBE . KINDT.
    SO . BISZ . NOCH . GESUND . UEBRIG . SINT.
    UND . SCHAFF . O . GOT . DAS . WIR . ZUGLICH.
    DICH . SCHAU . DEN . IM . HIMMEL . EWIGLICH.
    DARZU . HILFF . UNS . GNEDIGKLICH.
    ACH . HER . VER . GIEB . ALL . UNSER . SCHULT.
    HILFF . DAS . WARTEN . MIT . GEDULT.
    BIES . UNSER . STUNTLIN . NACHT . HERBEI.
    AUCH . UNSER . GLAUBE . STETZ . WACKER . SEI.
    DEIN . WORT . ZU . DRAUWEN . TESTIGKLICH.
    BIS . WIR . ENDT . SCHLAFFEN . SELIGKLICH.

 “On the fifth of August soon afterwards another sorrowful event
 happened. My youngest son Eimah (Erich?), one of my twins, suddenly
 departed from this world; and therefore my sorrow was increased, and
 all hope overthrown. O God! have mercy upon me, and come to comfort
 and help me, poor one. Help, true God! and assist me, comfort me with
 Thy Spirit, and protect me and my dear children who are still left in
 good health. And grant, O God! that we then may behold Thee in Heaven
 eternally. O Lord! forgive us our trespasses, help that we may wait
 with patience until our last hour may come; and also that our faith
 may be true, to believe in Thy Word steadfastly until we sink into the
 slumber of death.”


4457.

Table-cover of white linen, figured in thread, with the “Agnus Dei,”
or “Holy Lamb,” in the middle, and the symbolic animals of the four
Evangelists, one at each corner. German, late 16th century. 6 feet 3
inches by 5 feet 8 inches.

 For its sort and time there is nothing superior to this fine piece
 of needlework. About the evangelic emblems, as well as the Lamb in
 the centre, there is a freedom and boldness of design only equalled
 by the beauty and nicety of execution, making the piece altogether
 quite an art-work. The little dogs chasing the young harts, as well
 as the rampant unicorns, but especially the bird of the stork-kind
 preening its feathers, and the stag looking back at the hound behind,
 all so admirably placed amid the branches so gracefully twining over
 the whole field, show a master’s spirited hand in their design.
 Unfortunately, however, none of its beauty can be seen unless, like a
 piece of stained glass, it be hung up to the light. Its use was most
 likely liturgic, and occasions for it not unfrequently occur in the
 year’s ritual round; and on Candlemas-day and Palm Sunday it might
 becomingly have been spread over the temporary table on the south
 side of the altar, upon which were put, for the especial occasion,
 the tapers for the one service, and the palm-branches for the other,
 during the ceremony of blessing them before their distribution.


4458.

Linen Napkin; the four corners embroidered in crimson thread. German,
17th century. 3 feet by 2 feet 6½ inches.

 The design consists of a stag at rest couchant, and an imaginary
 figure, half a winged human form, half a two-legged serpent, separated
 by a flower of the centaurea kind. This is repeated on the other side
 of the square, up the middle of which runs an ornamentation made out
 of a love-knot, surmounted by a heart, sprouting out of which is a
 stalk bearing a four-petaled flower, and then a stem with the usual
 corn-flower at the end of it. To all appearance, this linen napkin was
 for household use.


4459.

Linen Cradle-Coverlet; ground, fine white linen; pattern, the
Crucifixion, with Saints and the Evangelists’ emblems, all outlined in
various-coloured silk thread; dated 1590. German. 6 feet by 6 feet 6
inches.

 This piece of needlework is figured with the Crucifixion in the
 middle, and shows us, on one side, the Blessed Virgin Mary and
 St. Christopher; on the other, St. John and the Blessed Virgin
 Mary holding our Lord in her arms, and, at her feet, a youthful
 virgin-saint, most likely St. Catherine of Sienna. From the cross
 itself flowers are in some places sprouting out, and three angels
 are catching, in chalices, the sacred blood that is gushing from the
 wounds on the body of our Lord. At each corner is an evangelist’s
 symbol, and the whole is framed in a broad border in crimson and
 white silk, edged by crochet-work, and at the corners are the letters
 A. H. A. R. Though the figures are in mere outline they are well
 designed, but poorly, feebly executed by the needle. Another specimen
 of a cradle-quilt, much like this, is No. 1344, and under No. 4644
 notice is taken of feeling for the employment of the four Evangelists’
 symbols at the corners of this nursery furniture.


4460.

Linen Napkin; embroidered at one end with two wreaths of flowers above
a narrow floral border; it is edged with lace, and bears the date 1672,
and the initials A. M. W. German, 3 feet 6 inches by 1 foot 6 inches.

 Probably meant to hang in the sacristy for the priest to wipe his
 fingers on after washing the tips of them, before vesting for mass.


4461.

Linen Table-Cover; pattern, a wide floriation done in white and yellow
threads; in the centre, a flag couchant within a wreath. German, late
16th century. 5 feet 4 inches by 4 inches.

 Free in design and easy of execution.


4462.

Embroidery on Silk Net; ground, crimson; pattern, branches twined into
ovals, and bearing flowers and foliage, in various-coloured silks, and
heightened, in places, with gold and silver thread. Italian, late 17th
century. 2 feet 8 inches by 9 inches.

 A very pleasing and exceedingly well-wrought specimen of its style.
 Like in manner, but much better done than the examples at Nos. 623,
 624. No doubt it was meant for female adornment.


4522.

Altar-frontal; embroidered in the middle with nine representations of
the birth, &c. of our Lord; and four passages from the Saints’ lives
on each side, all in gold and various-coloured silks, upon fine linen.
Italian, 14th century. 4 feet 3 inches by 1 foot 8 inches.

 This frontal is said to have been brought from Orvieto; but in it
 there is nothing about the celebrated relic kept in the very beautiful
 and splendid shrine in that fine cathedral. So very worn is this piece
 of embroidery, that several panels of it are quite indistinct. It may
 be, however, distinguished into three parts--the centre and the two
 sides. In the first we have, in nine compartments, the Annunciation,
 the Nativity, the coming of the Wise Men, the Blessed Virgin Mary,
 with St. Joseph, going to the temple and carrying in a basket her
 pair of turtle-doves, which she is giving to Simeon; the Last Supper;
 our Lord being taken in the garden; the Crucifixion; the burial; the
 Resurrection of our Saviour; on the right side, the legend of St.
 Christopher, mixed up with that of St. Julian Hospitaler; on the left
 are passages from the life of St. Ubaldo, bishop of Gubbio in the
 middle of the 12th century. In the first square is the saint mildly
 forgiving the master-mason who carried the new walls of the city
 across a vineyard belonging to St. Ubaldo, and, when reproved about
 the wrong thus done to private property, knocked down the saint; in
 the second we behold the saint at the bedside of a converted sinner,
 whose soul, just breathed forth, an angel is about to waft to heaven;
 in the third we have before us the saint himself, upon his dying bed,
 surrounded by friends, one of whom--a lady--is throwing up both her
 arms in great affright at the sudden appearance of a possessed man who
 has cast himself upon his knees at the bedfoot, and, with one hand
 outstretched upon the bed, is freed from the evil spirit, which is
 flying off over head in shape of a devil-imp; in the last the saint
 is being drawn in an open bier, by two oxen, to church for burial,
 followed by a crowd, among whom is his deacon.

 From the subjects on this much-decayed frontal, figured, as it is,
 with the life of St. Ubaldo, known for his love of the poor, his
 kindness to wayfarers and pilgrims, and his healing of the sick, as
 well as with the legends of St. Julian and St. Christopher, remarkable
 for the same virtues, we may infer that this ecclesiastical appliance
 hung at the altar of some poor house or hospital, in by-gone days, at
 Orvieto.


4643.

Band of Gimp Openwork, crimson and gold thread. German (?), 18th
century. 1 foot 10 inches by 1 inch.

 Evidently for ladies’ use, but how employed is not so clear; from a
 little steel ring sewed to it, perhaps it may have been worn hanging
 from the hair behind the neck.


4644.

Cradle-quilt; ground, green satin, embroidered with armorial bearings,
the four Evangelists, and flowers, all in coloured silks, and dated
1612. German. 2 feet 5 inches by 1 foot 9 inches.

 Within a narrow wreath of leaves and flowers there are two shields,
 of which the first bears _gules_ a wheel _or_, surmounted by a closed
 helmet, having its mantlings of _or_ and _gules_, and on a wreath
 _gules_ a wheel _or_ as a crest; the second, _azure_, a cross couped
 _argent_ between a faced crescent and a ducal coronet, both _or_, and
 all placed in pile, surmounted by a closed helmet having its mantlings
 of _or_ and _azure_, and on a wreath _or_, a demy bear proper with a
 cross _argent_ on its breast, crowned with a ducal coronet _or_, and
 holding in its paws a faced crescent _or_. At each of the four corners
 is the emblem of an evangelist with his name, and shown as a human
 personage nimbed and coming out of a flower, with his appropriate
 emblem upholding an open volume which he has in his hands, thus
 calling to mind those nursery rhymes:--

    “Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
    Guard the bed I lie upon,” &c.;

 which seem to be as well known in Germany as they were, and yet are,
 in England. See “Church of Our Fathers,” t. iii. p. 230.


4645.

Cradle-quilt; centre, crimson silk, embroidered with flowers in
coloured silk, mostly outlined with gold thread, and here and there
sprinkled with gold ornamentations, and surrounded by a broad satin
quilting edged with a gold lace-like border. German, late 17th century.
2 feet 7 inches by 2 feet 2 inches.

 The cradle-cloths, or quilts, are of common occurrence, and afford
 occasions for much elegance of design.


4646.

Cradle-quilt; ground, brown silk; pattern, a wreath of green leaves
encircling two armorial shields, and filled in with flowers outside
the spandrils; the whole surrounded by a border of flowers, all in
various-coloured flos-silk. German, late 16th century. 3 feet by 2 feet
5 inches.

 Of the two shields the first is party per fess _azure_ and _sable_, a
 griffin rampant _or_ holding three ears of wheat; the shield itself
 surmounted by a helmet closed, having green mantlings and crested
 with a ducal coronet out of which issues a demi-griffin rampant
 holding three ears of wheat _or_. The second shield is party per fess
 _sable_ and _or_, a lion rampant _or_ noued, and langued _gules_,
 counterchanged _or_ and _sable_, surmounted by a closed helmet with
 green mantlings, and crested with a demy-lion rampant _or_, langued
 _gules_ issuing from a wreath _sable_ and _or_ (now faded). By means
 of a long slit with hooks and eyes to it a blanket might be introduced
 to make this coverlet warmer.


4647.

Satin Bed-quilt; the middle a silk brocade diapered with a large
floriation within a broad wreath-like band, all bright amber upon a
crimson ground; the broad border is of crimson satin, quilted, after
an elaborate pattern shown by a cording of blue and gold. French, 17th
century. 6 feet by 5 feet 6 inches.


4648.

Satin Bed-quilt; the middle, silk brocade diapered with a somewhat
small floriation, in bright amber and white upon a crimson ground. The
wide border, in crimson satin of rich material and brilliant tone,
is quilted after an agreeable design with yellow cord. French, 17th
century. 7 feet 10 inches by 5 feet 4 inches.


4649.

Liturgical Scarf; ground, white silk; pattern, bunches of leaves and
flowers, in various-coloured silk thread. French, 18th century. 11 feet
5 inches by 1 foot 4 inches.

 Such scarves are used for throwing on the lectern, and to be worn by
 the sub-deacon at high mass; and, from its appearance, this one must
 have seen much service. All its flowers, as well as its two edgings,
 are worked in braid, nicely sewed on and admirably done.


4661.

Long Piece of Silk Brocade; ground, light maroon; pattern, creamy white
scrolls, dotted with blue flowerets, and placed so as to form a wavy
line all up the warp amid bunches of red and blue flowers and leaves.
Lyons, late 17th century. 8 feet 6 inches by 1 foot 7 inches.

 The colours are faded somewhat, and though showy, this stuff is not so
 glaring in its design as were the silks that came, at a later period,
 from the same looms.

 If used in the liturgy, it must have been for covering the moveable
 lectern for holding the Book of the Gospels, out of which the deacon
 at high mass chants the gospel of the day. It might, too, have served
 as a veil for the sub-deacon for muffling his hands while he held the
 paten after the offertory.


4665.

Pair of Lady’s Gloves of kid leather, with richly embroidered cuffs.
French, late 17th century. 13 inches by 7½ inches.

 The hands are of a light olive tone, and embroidered on the under
 seams in gold; the cuffs are deep, and embroidered in gold and silver
 after a rich design upon crimson silk, and are united by the novelty
 of a gusset formed of three pieces of broad crimson ribbon.


4666.

Purse in gold tissue, embroidered with flowers in pots, and bound with
ribbons in silver and colours. French, 18th century. 5 inches by 4½
inches.

 Some of the flowers are springing up from silver baskets; others are
 tied up with silver ribbons, and the whole pleasingly done.


4667.

Purse in gold and silver embroidery, with gilt clasp. English, 19th
century. 4½ inches by 4 inches.

 The design of this is pretty, and consists of small gold and silver
 disks wrought in thread, and linked together by a strong green silk
 netting.


4894.

Velvet Hanging; ground, black; pattern, a frieze made up of a
flower-bearing vase between two broad horns of plenty, full of fruits,
and two imaginary heraldic monsters, one on each side, like supporters,
fashioned as red-tongued eagles, with wings displayed in the head,
but having a tailless haunch, and cloven-footed legs of an ox; the
fimbriations are edged with green fringe, and the spaces filled with a
conventional floriation; and the greater parts done in yellow satin,
smaller parts in other coloured satins, all edged with gold cording and
silver thread, and applied to the ground of black velvet. French, early
17th century. 25 inches by 12 inches.

 The whole of this curious piece is designed with great boldness and
 spirit, and most accurately wrought.


5662.

Four Pieces of Raised Velvet, sewed into one large square; ground,
yellow and crimson silk; pattern, a bold floriation in raised crimson
velvet. Genoese, 16th century.

 A fine specimen of the Genoese loom, showing a well-managed design
 composed of a modification of the artichoke, mixed with pomegranates,
 ears of corn (rather an unusual ornament), roses, and large liliacious
 flowers. Not unlikely this stuff was ordered by some Spanish nobleman
 for hangings in the state halls of his palace. Such stuffs are
 sometimes to be seen on the canopy in the throne-room of some Roman
 princely house, whose owners have the old feudal right to the cloth of
 estate.


5663.

Set of Bed Hangings complete, in green cut velvet raised upon a yellow
satin ground, diapered in gold. Genoese, 16th century.

 The foliated scroll pattern of this truly rich stuff is executed in a
 bold and telling manner; and the amber satin ground is marked with a
 small but pleasing kind of diaper, which is done in gold thread. To
 give a greater effect to the velvet, which is deep in its pile, a cord
 of green and gold stands stitched to it as an edging.


5664, 5664A.

Two Pieces of Embroidery; ground, light purple, thin net lined with
blue canvas; pattern, nosegays of white and red flowers and large
green branches tied up in bunches, with white and with yellow ribbons
alternately; the narrow borders, which are slightly scolloped, are
figured with sprigs of roses; and the whole is done in bright-coloured
untwisted silks, and has throughout a lining of thin white silk.
French, late 16th century. 10 feet 9½ inches by 2 feet 9¾ inches.

 Each piece consists of two lengths of the same embroidery sewed
 together all along the middle; and served for some household
 decoration.


5665.

Embroidered Table-cover; ground, green cloth; pattern, within a large
garland of fruits and flowers, separated into four parts by as many
cherubic heads, two armorial shields and a scroll bearing the date
1598, and the four sides bordered with an entablature filled in with
animals, fruits, flowers, and architectural tablets having about them
ornaments of the strap-like form, and each charged with a female face.
South Germany, 16th century. 5 feet 7 inches by 5 feet 3 inches.

 The design of the embroidery, done in various-coloured worsteds, is
 admirable, and quite in accordance with the best types of that period;
 nor ought we to overlook the artistic manner in which the colours are
 everywhere about it so well contrasted. The animals are several, not
 forgetting the unicorn and monkey; though, from the frequency of the
 Alpine deer kind, it looks as if this fine piece of work had been
 sketched and executed by those familiar with the Alps. The shields
 are, first, barry of six _argent_ and _azure_, with mantlings about a
 helmet closed and crested with a demi-bloodhound collared and langued,
 and, from the neck downward, barry like the shield; second, quarterly
 1 and 4 _or_ charged with a pair of pincers _sable_; 2 and 3 _sable_,
 a lion rampant _or_, and mantlings about a helmet closed and crested
 with a demi-lion rampant _or_, upon a wreath _sable_ and _argent_. The
 silver has now become quite black.


5666.

Table-cover; ground, dark green serge; pattern, embroidered in silk and
thread, the four seasons and their occupations, &c., and in the centre
the Annunciation. German, early 17th century. 5 feet 3 inches by 4
feet 6 inches.

 This piece, though much resembling the foregoing, No. 5665, is far
 below it as an art-work, and, by its style, betrays itself as the
 production of another period. Within a wreath, the Annunciation is
 figured, after the usual manner, but without gracefulness, in the
 middle of the cloth; at one corner Winter is shown, by men in a yard
 chopping up and stacking wood; then, by the inside of a room where
 a woman is warming herself before one of those large blind stoves
 still found in Germany, and a bearded man, seated in a large chair,
 doing the same at a brazier near his feet, while outside the house a
 couple are riding on a sledge drawn by a gaily caparisoned horse. At
 the corner opposite we have Spring--a farm-house, with its beehives,
 and a dame coming out with a jug of milk to a woman who is churning,
 near whom is a hedger at his work, and other men pruning, grafting,
 and sowing. For Summer, two gentlemen are snaring birds with a net;
 a woman and a man, each with a sickle in hand, are in a cornfield;
 two people are bathing in a duck-pond before a farm-house, on the
 roof of which is a nest with two storks sitting, one of which has
 caught a snake; and in a meadow hard by a man is mowing and a woman
 making hay. For Autumn, we see a vineyard where one man is gathering
 grapes and another carrying them in a long basket on his shoulders;
 and near, a man with a nimb, or glory, about his head, and lying on
 the ground with one leg outstretched, which a dog is licking above
 the thigh--perhaps the shepherd St. Rock, and, while a gentleman is
 walking past behind him, a girl, with a basket of fruit upon her
 head, is coming towards the spot. Between the seasons, and within
 circular garlands, are subjects akin to these parts of the year; in a
 boat, upon the water, a young couple are beginning the voyage of life
 together; a lady on a grey horse is, with hawk on hand, disporting
 herself in the flowery fields; a young lady is caressing a lamb with
 one hand and carries a basket of young birds in the other; last of
 all, another lady is kneeling at her prayers, with a book open before
 her on a table over-spread with a nicely worked cloth. A deep gold
 fringe runs all round the four sides of this table-cover.


5670-5676.

Seven Chair-seat Covers; ground, yellow satin; pattern, birds, flowers,
and a mask of an animal, all embroidered in various-coloured flos-silk.
French, late 17th century. 2 feet 6 inches by 2 feet.

 The satin is rich, and all the embroideries done in a bold effective
 manner; in some of these pieces the beak of each green parrot holds a
 strawberry or arbutus-fruit; and the lily and fleur-de-lis here and
 there betray a French feeling. It should be noticed, too, that much
 botanical knowledge is shown in the figuration of the flowers, which
 are more pleasing and effective from being thus done correctly.


5677.

Two Pieces of Raised Silk Brocade; ground, yellow; pattern, the
artichoke amid strap-work ornamentation, all of a large bold character,
in raised crimson. Italian, 16th century. 10 feet 1 inch by 4 feet 2
inches.

 A rich stuff, and made up for household decoration, perhaps for the
 throne-room of some palace.


5678.

Cradle-coverlet, green silk, brocaded in gold and silver; pattern,
imitation of Oriental design in gold and silver flowers, after a large
form, lined in red. French, 18th century. 3 feet 6 inches square.

 A specimen of a rich and telling, though not artistic, stuff.


5723.

Piece of Raised Velvet; green, on a light amber-coloured ground.
Genoese, late 16th century. 7 feet 10 inches by 1 foot 8 inches.

 The pattern, rich in its texture and pleasing in its colours, consists
 of large stalks of flowers springing out of royal open crowns, all in
 a fine pile of green velvet, and, no doubt, was meant for palatial
 furniture.


5728.

A Missal-Cushion; ground, white satin; pattern, flowers and fruit
embroidered in coloured silks, amid an ornamentation of net-work,
partly in gold; it has four tassels of green silk and gold thread.
French, 17th century. 1 foot 5 inches by 10 inches.

 One of those cushions once so generally used for supporting the Missal
 at the altar. It is figured only on the upper side, and underneath is
 lined with a silk diapered in a pleasing pattern, in amber-colour. Its
 tassels are rather large and made of several coloured silk threads and
 gold.


5788.

A figure of St. Mark, seated; embroidered, in part by the hand, in part
woven. Florentine, early 16th century. 1 foot 3 inches by 8½ inches.

 Beneath a circular-headed niche, with all its accessories in the style
 of the revival of classic architecture, sits St. Mark, known as such
 by the lions at his side. Within his right arm the Evangelist holds
 a large cross; and on his lap lies an open book, both pages of which
 are written with the words:--“Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in tēa.” Much
 of the architecture, as well as of the drapery of this personage, is
 loom-wrought, assisted in places by needle-embroidery. The head, the
 hands, the feet, are all done by the needle; but the head, neck, and
 beard are worked upon very fine linen by themselves, and afterwards
 applied, and in such a manner that the long white beard overlaps the
 tunic. His chair, instead of legs, is upheld upon the backs of two
 lions lying on the ground. The head is done with all the fineness
 and delicacy of a miniature on ivory, and the way in which the
 massive folds of his full wide garments are thrown over his knees is
 noteworthy and majestic.


5900.

Silk Damask Orphrey Web; ground, crimson; pattern, the Resurrection.
Venetian, 16th century. 1 foot 4 inches by 8¾ inches.

 One of those numerous examples of woven orphrey-work for vestments
 such as copes and chasubles. Our Lord is figured as uprising from
 the grave, treading upon clouds, giving, with His right hand, a
 blessing to the world, and holding the triumphal banner in the left.
 Glory streams from His person, and a wreath of Cherubim surrounds
 Him; while, from the top part of this piece, we know that two Roman
 soldiers were sitting on the ground by the side of the sepulchre,
 which they were charged to guard.


5958.

Box for keeping the linen corporals used at mass, in the vestry. It
is covered with fine linen, of a creamy brown tint, embroidered with
crimson silk and gold. Inside it is lined, in part green, on the lid
crimson, where a very rude print of the Crucifixion, daubed with
colour, has been let in. German, 17th century. 8½ inches by 7½
inches, 1¾ inches deep.

 Such boxes seem to have been much used, at one time, throughout
 Germany, for keeping, after service, the blessed pieces of square fine
 linen called corporals, and upon which, at mass, the host and chalice
 are placed.

 Before being employed all the year round as the daily repository
 for laying up the corporals after the morning’s masses, this sacred
 appliance, overlaid with such rich embroidery, and fitly ornamented
 with the illumination of the Crucifixion inside its lid, would seem
 to have been originally made and especially set aside for an use
 assigned it by those ancient rubrics, which we have noticed in our
 Introduction, § 5. As such, it is, like No. 8327 further on, a great
 liturgical rarity, now seldom to be found anywhere, and merits a place
 among other such curious objects which give a value to this collection.

 At the mass on Maundy Thursday, besides the host received by the
 officiating priest, another host is and always has been
 consecrated by him for the morrow’s (Good Friday’s) celebration; and
 because no consecration of the Holy Eucharist, either in the Latin or
 in the Greek part of the Church, ever did nor does take place on Good
 Friday, the service on that day is by the West called the “Mass of the
 Pre-sanctified,” by the East, “Λειτουργία τῶν προηγιασμενῶν.”

 Folded up in a corporal (a square piece of fine linen), the additional
 host consecrated on Maunday Thursday was put into this receptacle or
 “capsula corporalium” of the old rubrics, and afterwards carried in
 solemn procession to its temporary resting-place, known in England
 as the sepulchre, and there, amid many lights, flowers, and costly
 hangings of silk and palls of gold and silver tissue, was watched
 by the people the rest of that afternoon, and all the following
 night, till the morning of the next day, when, with another solemn
 procession, it was borne back to the high altar for the Good Friday’s
 celebration.


6998.

Piece of Green Satin; pattern, an arabesque stenciled in light yellow,
and finished by touches done by hand. Italian, very late 18th century.
3 feet 1½ inches by 1 foot 6½ inches. (Presented by Mr. J. Webb).

 This piece may have been part of a frieze, round the head of a bed;
 and have had a good effect at that height, though, in a manner, an
 artistic cheat, pretending to be either wrought in the loom or done
 by the needle. The design, in its imitative classicism, is bold and
 free, and the touches of the pencil effective. To this day stencil
 ornamentation upon house-walls is very much employed in Italy, where
 papering for rooms is seldom used even as yet, and not long ago was in
 many places almost unknown.


7004.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, crimson; pattern, wheat-ears, flowers,
and conventional foliage in gold, shaded white. Italian, late 16th
century. 11 inches by 10¾ inches.

[Illustration: 7004.

SILK DAMASK,

Italian, 16th century.

  Vincent Brooks Day & Son, Lith.

]

 A pleasing design, but the gold is very scant.


7005.

Woollen and Thread Stuff; ground, white; pattern, sprigs of artichokes
and pomegranates. Spanish, 16th century. 11 inches by 7½ inches.

 The warp is white linen thread, rather fine; and the weft of thick
 blue wool; and, altogether, it is a pleasing production, and the
 design nicely managed.


7006.

Satin Brocade; ground, bright green satin; pattern, sprigs of gold
flowers. Genoese, late 16th century. 7½ inches by 6½ inches.

 The flowers upon this rich and showy stuff are the lily, the
 pomegranate, and the artichoke in sprigs, each after a conventional
 form; and the gold in the thread is of the best, as it shows as bright
 now as almost on the first day of its being woven in the satin, which
 so seldom happens.


7007.

Silk Diaper; ground, creamy white; pattern, small bunches of leaves,
flowers, and fruit, in white, green, and brown silk. Spanish, 16th
century. 4¾ inches by 3½ inches.

 Though the warp is woollen, the silk in the weft is rich and the
 pattern after a pretty design, where the pomegranate comes in often.


7008.

Piece of Silk Damask of the very lightest olive-green; pattern, a
diaper of large sprigs of flowers. Italian, late 16th century. 1 foot
2¼ inches by 9¼ inches.

 Pleasing in its quiet tone, and good design.


7009.

Damasked Silk; ground, light red, with lines of gold; pattern, leaves
and flowers in deeper red. Sicilian, late 14th century. 10 inches by
6½ inches.

 Very like several other specimens in this collection from the looms of
 Sicily, Palermo especially, in the pattern of its diapering, usually
 in green upon a tawny ground.


7010.

Silk Damask; ground, crimson; pattern, bunches of flowers of the pink
and lily kinds, mingled with slips of the pomegranate. Spanish, 15th
century. 12 inches by 10 inches.

 The colour has much faded; but the design of the pattern, which is
 a crowded one, is very pretty; and the stuff seems to have been for
 personal wear.


7011.

Satin Damask; ground, green; pattern, an acorn and an artichoke united
upon one small sprig, in yellow silk. Genoese, 16th century. 8 inches
by 3½ inches.

 Though small, this is a pretty design; and, perhaps, the great family
 of Della Rovere belonging to the Genoese republic may have suggested
 the acorn, “rovere” being the Italian word for one of the kinds of oak.


7012.

Satin Damask; the diapering is a sprig fashioned like the artichoke,
and, in all likelihood, was outlined in pale pink. Italian, late 16th
century. 1 foot 4½ inches by 9¼ inches.

 A texture for personal attire which must have looked well.


7013.

Silk Damask; ground, crimson; pattern, a large artichoke flower
bearing, in the middle, a fleur-de-lis. Genoese, late 16th century.

 The design in the pattern is rather singular; and may have been meant
 for some noble, if not royal French family, connected with a house of
 the same pretensions in Spain.


7014.

Silk Brocade; ground, dull purple silk; pattern, flowers in gold,
partially relieved in white silk. Spanish, late 16th century. 10 inches
by 6 inches.

 The flowers are mostly after a conventional form, though traces of
 the pomegranate may be seen; the gold thread is thin and scantily
 employed, and always along with broad yellow silk. With somewhat poor
 materials, a stuff rather effective in design is brought out.


7015.

Silk Web, on linen warp; ground, deep crimson; pattern, a quatrefoil
with flowers at the tips of the barbs or angles at the corners, in gold
thread, and filled in with a four-petaled flower in gold upon a green
ground. German, 15th century. 14½ inches by 4½ inches.

 Intended as orphreys of a narrow form; but made of poor materials, for
 the gold is so scant that it has almost entirely disappeared.


7016.

End of a Maniple; pattern, lozenges, green charged with a yellow cross,
and red charged with a white cross of web; the end, linen embroidered
with a saint holding a scroll, and fringed with long strips of
flos-silk, green blue white and crimson. German, early 15th century.
15½ inches by 3 inches.

 As this piece is put the wrong side out in the frame, the figure of
 the saint cannot be identified, nor the word on the scroll read.


7017.

Linen Web; ground, crimson and green; pattern, on the crimson square,
a device in white; on the green, two narrow bands chequered crimson,
white, and green, with an inscription (now illegible) between them.
German, 15th century. 16 inches by 2½ inches.

 Poor in every respect, and the small band of gold is almost black.


7018.

Orphrey Web; ground, gold; pattern, a flower-bearing tree in green,
red, and white; and the sacred Name in blue silk. German, 15th century.
13½ inches by 3¾ inches.

 The same stuff occurs at other numbers in this collection.


7019.

Orphrey Band; ground, gold thread; pattern, flowers in various-coloured
silks. Flemish, 16th century. 19¾ inches by 2¾ inches.

 The whole of this pretty piece is done with the needle, upon coarse
 canvas, and, no doubt, ornamented either a chasuble, dalmatic, or some
 liturgical vestment.


7020.

Crimson and Gold Damask; ground, crimson; pattern, a diaper of animals
in gold. Italian, 15th century. 14¾ inches by 4 inches.

 Exactly like another piece in this collection; a winged gaping
 serpent, with a royal crown just above but not upon its head, occupies
 the lowest part of the design; over it is the heraldic nebulée or
 clouds darting forth rays all about them, and above all, a hart,
 collared, and with head regardant lies lodged within a palisade or
 paled park.


7021.

Narrow Orphrey of Web; ground, red and gold diapered; pattern, armorial
shields with words between them. German, 15th century. 1 foot 10 inches
by 2 inches.

 One of the shields is _azure_, two arrows _argent_ in saltire; the
 other shield is _argent_, three estoils, two and one, _azure_; and on
 a chief _or_, two animals (indiscernible) _sable_: the words between
 the shields are so worn away as not to be readable.


7022.

Linen, block-printed; ground, white; pattern, two eagles or hawks
crested, amid floriations of the artichoke form, and a border of roving
foliage; all in deep dull purple. Flemish, late 14th century. 1 foot 8
inches by 6¾ inches.

 The design is good, and evidently suggested by the patterns on silks
 from the south of Europe. Further on, we have another piece, No. 8303.


7023.

Orphrey of Web; ground, red and gold, figured with a bishop-saint.
German, 15th century. 5 inches by 4½ inches.

 The spaces for the head and hands are left uncovered by the loom, so
 that they may be, as they are here, filled in by the needle. In one
 hand the bishop, who wears a red mitre--an anomaly--and a cope with a
 quatrefoil morse to it, holds a church, in the other a pastoral staff.


7024.

Embroidery, in coloured silks upon fine linen damask. Flemish, 16th
century. 10 inches by 2½ inches.

 The fine linen upon which the embroidery is done, is diapered with a
 lozenge pattern: on one side of a large flower-bearing tree are the
 words:--“Jhesu Xpi,” and the other, “O crux Ave,” on each side of the
 tree is a shield unemblazoned but surrounded by a garland of flowers.
 Most likely this piece served to cover the top of the devotional table
 in a lady’s bed-room.


7025.

Embroidery, in coloured silks upon white linen; pattern, symbols of the
Passion, flowers, and birds, with saints’ names. German, 17th century.
20½ inches by 6 inches.

 Within a green circle, overshadowed on four sides by stems bearing
 flowers, stands a low column with ropes about it and a scourge at one
 side, and divided by it is the word Martinus, in red silk; amid the
 flower-bearing wide-spread branches of a tree are the names Ursula,
 Augustinus; within another circle like the first we see the cross with
 the sponge at the end of a reed, and the lance, having the name of
 Barbara in blue and crimson; and, last of all, another tree with the
 names Laurentius--Katerina. It is edged with a border of roses and
 daisies, and has a parti-coloured silk fringe. No doubt this piece
 served as the ornament of a lady’s praying-desk in her private room,
 and bore the names of those for whom she wished more especially to
 pray.


7026.

Orphrey of Web; ground, gold; pattern, two stems intertwined and
bearing leaves and flowers, in crimson silk. German, 15th century. 9
inches by 2½ inches.


7027.

Linen, block-printed; ground, white; pattern, crested birds and
foliage, just like another piece, No. 8615, in this collection.
Flemish, late 14th century. 14 inches by 2¾ inches.


7028.

Small Piece of Orphrey; ground, yellow silk stitchery upon canvas,
embroidered, within barbed quatrefoils in cords of gold, and upon a
gold diapered ground, with the busts of two Evangelists in coloured
silks, and the whole bordered by an edging of gold stalks, with
trefoils. Italian, the middle of the 15th century. 10 inches by 5½
inches.

 The quatrefoils are linked together by a kind of fretty knot, as well
 as the lengths in the two narrow edgings on the border by a less
 intricate one, all of which looks very like Florentine work. Most
 likely this orphrey served for the side of a cope.


7029.

Piece of a Liturgical Cloth, embroidered in white thread, very slightly
shaded here and there in crimson silk, upon linen, with a quatrefoil
at top enclosing the Annunciation and four angels, one at each corner
swinging a thurible, and lower down, with St. Peter and St. Paul, St.
James the Less and St. Matthias, St. James the Greater and St. Andrew;
amid the leaf-bearing boughs, roving all over the cloth, may be seen an
occasional lion’s head cabossed and langued _gules_. German, late 14th
century. 2 feet 9½ inches by 1 foot 10½ inches.

 This is but a small piece of one of those long coverings or veils for
 the lectern, of which such fine examples are in this collection.

 The lion’s head cabossed would seem to be an armorial ensign of the
 family to which the lady who worked the cloth belonged, although such
 an ornament does sometimes appear, without any heraldic meaning,
 upon monuments of the period. In the execution of its stitchery the
 specimen before us is far below others of the same class.


7030.

Piece of a Stole or Maniple; ground, crimson silk (much faded); and
embroidered with green stems twining up and bearing small round flowers
in gold, and large oak leaves in white. Italian, 16th century. 13¾
inches by 3 inches.

 The leaves, now so white, were originally of gold, but of so poor a
 quality that the metal is almost worn off the threads.


7031.

Silk Ribbon; ground, green and gold; pattern, squares and lozenges on
one bar, spiral narrow bands on another, the bars alternating. Italian,
early 17th century. 8 inches by 8¼ inches.

 Both silk and gold are good in this simple pattern.


7032.

Silk Damask; ground, crimson; pattern, a square enclosing a floriation;
both in bright yellow. Spanish, 15th century. 8 inches by 4½ inches.

 Designed on Moorish principles, and coarse in its workmanship.


7033.

Silk Texture; ground, yellow; pattern, net-work, with flowers and
mullets, all in dark blue. Sicilian, late 14th century. 10 inches by
3½ inches.

 Of a simple design and poor in texture, and probably meant as the
 lining for a richer kind of stuff.


7034.

Silk Damask; ground, crimson silk; pattern, in gold thread, two very
large lions, and two pairs, one of very small birds, the other of
equally small dragons, and an ornament like a hand looking-glass.
Oriental, 14th century. 2 feet 4 inches by 2 feet.

 The large lions, which strongly resemble, in their fore-legs, the
 Nineveh ones in the British Museum, are placed addorsed regardant and
 looking upon two very small birds, while between their heads stands
 what seems like a looking-glass, upon a stem or handle; at the feet of
 these huge beasts are two little long-tailed, open-mouthed, two-legged
 dragons. The whole of this design now appears to be in coarse yellow
 thread, which once was covered with gold, but so sparingly and with
 such poor metal that not a speck of it can now be detected anywhere in
 this large specimen. The probability is that this stuff was wrought
 in some part of Syria, for the European market; at the lions’ necks
 are broad collars bearing two lines or sentences in imitated Arabic
 characters. Copes and chasubles for church use during the Middle Ages
 were often made of silks like this. Dr. Bock has figured this very
 piece in his “Geschichte der Liturgischen Gewänder des Mittelalters,”
 t. i. pl. iv.


7035.

Silk and Linen Texture; ground, crimson; pattern, star-like flowers.
Spanish, 15th century. 5¾ inches by 2½ inches.

 Poor in design as well as material.


7036.

Silk Diapered, with a man wrestling with a lion repeated; ground,
crimson, the diaper in various colours, and the waving borders in
creamy white, edged black, and charged with crimson squares, and fruits
crimson and deep green. Byzantine, 12th century. 15¾ inches by
12½ inches.

 This is one among the known early productions of the loom, and
 therefore very valuable. The lion and man seem to be meant for
 Samson’s victory over that animal, though, for the sake of a pattern,
 the same two figures are repeated in such a way that they are in
 pairs and confronted. Samson’s dress is after the classic form, and
 he wears sandals, while a long narrow green scarf, fringed yellow,
 flutters from off his shoulder behind him; and the tawny lion’s mane
 is shown to fall in white and black locks, but in such a way that, at
 first sight, the black shading might be mistaken for the letters of
 some word. This stuff is figured by Dr. Bock in his “Geschichte der
 Liturgischen Gewänder des Mittelalters,” t. i. pl. ii.


7037.

Silk and Linen Damask; ground, pale dull yellow-coloured linen;
pattern, circles enclosing tawny foliation, in the midst of which is
a purple cinquefoil, and the spandrils outside filled in with other
foliations in the same tawny tone. Byzantine, 14th century. 13½
inches by 13 inches.

 Of poor stuff, but of a rather pleasing design.


7038.

Silk Texture; ground, crimson; pattern, geometrical figures, mostly
in bright yellow, filled in with smaller like figures in blue, green,
and white. Moorish, 15th century. 1 foot 10½ inches by 1 foot 2¼
inches.

 Most likely this garish and rather staring silk was woven either at
 Tangier or Tetuan, and found its way to Europe through some of the
 ports on the southern coast of Spain.


7039.

Silk Damask; ground, purple; pattern, lozenges, with so-called
love-knots, one on each side, enclosing a flower and a lozenge
chequered with Greek crosses alternately, all in yellow. Byzantine,
14th century. 8½ inches by 4 inches.

[Illustration: 7039

SILK FABRIC,

Byzantine---- 14th century.

  Vincent Brooks Day & Son, Lith.

]

 Though poor in material this silk is so far interesting as it gives a
 link in that long chain of traditional feeling for showing the cross
 about stuffs, meant, as most likely this was, for ritual uses, and
 known among both the Latins and the Greeks as “stauracina.” To this
 day the same custom is followed in the East of having the cross marked
 upon the textiles employed in liturgical garments.


7040.

White Linen, diapered with a small lozenge pattern, and a border of one
broad and two narrow bands in black thread. Flemish, 15th century. 12
inches by 11½ inches.

 A good example of Flemish napery with the diaper well shown.


7041.

Silk and Linen Texture; ground, blue; pattern, a large petaled flower
within a park fencing, upon the palings of which are perched two birds,
and another somewhat like flower enclosed in the same way with two
quadrupeds rampant on the palings. Italian, 15th century. 16 inches by
12¾ inches.

 The birds seem to be meant for doves; and the animals for dogs. In
 design, but not in richness of material, this specimen is much like
 No. 7020.


7042.

Silk Damask; ground, deep blue; pattern, floriated lozenges, enclosing
chequered lozenges in deep yellow. South of Spain, 14th century. 12
inches by 7¾ inches.

 A tissue showing a Saracenic feeling.


7043.

Silk Damask; ground, tawny; pattern, a cone-shaped floriation amid
foliage and flowers. Sicilian, 15th century. 13½ inches by 13 inches.

[Illustration: 7043.

SILK DAMASK,

Sicilian--15th century.

  Vincent Brooks Day & Son, Lith.

]

 Both around the cone, as well as athwart the flowers, there are
 attempts at Arabic sentences, but in letters so badly done as easily
 to show the attempted cheat.


7044.

Silk Damask; ground, deep blue; pattern, six-sided panels filled in
with conventional floriations, all in orange yellow. Spanish moresque,
15th century. 7 inches by 3½ inches.

 If not designed and wrought by Moorish hands, its Spanish weaver
 worked after Saracenic feelings in the forms of its ornamentation.


7045.

Silk Damask; ground, amber, diapered in small lozenges; pattern,
parrots in pairs outlined in blue and crimson, both which colours are
almost faded, and having a border consisting of narrow parallel lines,
some dark blue with white scrolls, others of gold thread, with deep
blue scrolls. Oriental, late 12th century. 9 inches by 5¾ inches.


7045A.

Silk Border, torn off from the foregoing number. Both the one and the
other are valuable proofs of the care taken by the Greek weavers, in
the Greek islands, Greece proper, and in Syria, to give an elaborate
design to the grounds of their silks.


7046.

Silk Brocade; ground, deep crimson; pattern, a diapering, in the same
colour, of heart-shaped shields charged with a fanciful floriation,
amid wavy scrolls bearing flowers upon them. South of Spain, 14th
century. 6½ inches by 4¼ inches.

 The fine rich tone of colour, so fixed that it is yet unfaded, is
 remarkable.


7047.

Silk Crape, deep crimson, thickly diapered with leaves upon the items.
Syrian. 8¾ inches by 5¾ inches.

 Not only the mellow tone, but the pretty though small pattern is very
 pleasing.


7048.

Silk and Cotton Texture; ground, white cotton; pattern, lozenges filled
up with a broken fret of T-shaped lines and dots, and a cross in the
middle; and with similar markings in the intervening spaces. Byzantine,
14th century. 14 inches by 5 inches.

 Though of such poor materials this specimen is rather interesting
 from its design where the narrow-lined lozenges with their T’s and
 short intervening lines are all in green silk, now much faded; and
 the cross, known as of the Greek form, with those little dots are in
 crimson silk. Most likely it was woven in one of the islands of the
 Archipelago, and for liturgical use, such as the broad flat girdle
 still employed in the Oriental rituals.


7049.

Silk Damask; ground, fawn-colour; design, parrots and giraffes in pairs
amid floriated ornamentation, all, excepting the portions done in gold,
of the same tint with the ground. Sicilian, 13th century. 15 inches by
8 inches.

 Like the specimen under No. 1274, where it is fully described.


7050.

Silk Damask; all creamy white; pattern, net-work, the oval meshes of
which show floriations in thin lines upon a satiny ground. Syrian, 13th
century. 11½ inches by 6 inches.

 This fine rich textile is, in all probability, the production of a
 Saracenic loom, and from the eastern part of the Mediterranean.


7051.

Silk Tissue; ground, amber; pattern, a reticulation, each six-sided
mesh filled in with alternate flowers and leaves, with here and there
a circle enclosing a pair of parrots, addorsed, regardant; and between
them a lace sort of column having, at top, a crescent all in dark blue.
Oriental, late 12th century. 12½ inches by 6½ inches.

 A good specimen, when fresh and new, of the eastern loom.


7052.

White Silk Damask, diapered with a chequer charged with lozenges,
bearing the Greek gammadion, and sprinkled with larger flowers.
Oriental, 14th century. 7½ inches by 5½ inches.

 The pattern of this curious stuff is very small; and from the presence
 of the gammadion upon it, we may presume it was originally wrought for
 Greek liturgical use, somewhere on the coast of Syria.


7053.

Silk Damask; green; the pattern, an oval, enclosing an artichoke, and
the spaces between filled in with foliations and pomegranates. Spanish,
16th century. 23 inches by 12½ inches.

 Beautiful in tone of colour, and of a pleasing design, well shown by a
 shining satiny look of the silk; this is a specimen of a rich stuff.


7054.

Diapered Silk; ground, yellow; pattern, a large conventional foliation,
in rows, alternating with rows of armorial shields, all in blue.
Spanish, early 17th century. 20 inches by 17 inches.

 A very effective design for household use: the shield is a pale, the
 crest a barred closed helmet topped by a demy wyvern.


7055.

Silk Diaper; ground, gold; pattern, flowers and fruits in crimson,
slightly shaded in blue and green silk. Spanish, 16th century. 12½
inches by 8½ inches.

 Though the gold on the ground be so sparingly put in, this stuff has a
 rich look, and the occurrence of the pomegranate points to Granada as
 the place of manufacture of this and other tissues of such patterns.


7056.

Silk Tissue, now deep amber, once bright crimson, diapered with a
modification of the meander, and over that sprigs of flowers. Oriental,
13th century. 8 inches by 4½ inches.

 To see the raised diapering of this piece requires a near inspection,
 but when detected, it is found to be of a pleasing type.


7057.

Silk Damask; ground, purple; pattern, a quatrefoil, within another,
charged with a cross-like floriation, with a square white centre,
surmounted by two eagles with wings displayed, upholding in their beaks
a royal crown, all in green. Italian, early 15th century. 14 inches by
11½ inches.

 Though the silk be poor the design is in good character, and the stuff
 would seem to have been wrought either at Florence or Lucca, for some
 princely German house.


7058.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, red and gold; pattern, a pair of ostrich
feathers, springing from a conventional flower, and drooping over an
artichoke-like floriation, of a tint once light green, and shaded dull
white. Spanish, 15th century. 14¾ inches by 7½ inches.

 A curious mixture of silk, wool, linen thread and gold very sparingly
 employed. The ostrich feather is so unusual an element of ornamental
 design, especially in woven stuffs, that we may deem it a kind of
 remembrance of the Black Prince who fought for a Spanish king, Don
 Pedro the Cruel, at the battle of Navaretta, or Najarra, if not having
 a significance of the marriage of Catherine of Arragon, first with
 our Prince Arthur, eldest son of Henry VII, and after his death, with
 his younger brother, Henry VIII, each of whom was in his time Prince
 of Wales, whose badge became one or more ostrich feathers. In old
 English church inventories drawn up towards the middle and the end
 of the 15th century, mention is often found of vestments made of a
 Flemish stuff, called Dorneck, from the name in Flanders for the city
 of Tournay, where it was made, but spelt in English various ways, as
 Darnec, Darnak, Darnick, and even Darnep. Such an inferior kind of
 tissue woven of thin silk mixed with wool and linen thread, was in
 great demand, for every-day wear in poor churches in this country.
 Though not wrought at Tournay, the present specimen affords a good
 example of that sort of stuff called Dorneck, which, very probably,
 was introduced into Flanders from Spain. Besides the present textile,
 another, figured in the “Mélanges d’Archéologie,” t. iii. pt. xxxiii,
 furnishes an additional instance in which the ostrich feather is
 brought into the design.


7059.

Green Silk Damask; pattern, floriations and short lengths of narrow
bands arranged zig-zag. Italian, 17th century. 8 inches by 6½ inches.

 An extraordinary but not pleasing pattern.


7060.

Silk and Linen Damask; ground, creamy white; pattern, in light brown,
once pink, a conventional artichoke. Italian, 16th century. 1 foot 5
inches by 9½ inches.

 The warp is thread, but still the texture looks well.


7061.

Silk and Gold Damask; ground, light green silk; pattern, large
vine-leaves and stars, with a border of griffins and fleur-de-lis, in
gold. Sicilian, 14th century. 10¼ inches square.

 This beautiful stuff was, in all likelihood, woven at the royal
 manufactory at Palermo, and meant as a gift to some high personage
 who came from the blood royal of France. The griffins, affronted or
 combatant, are drawn with much freedom and spirit, and though the gold
 be dull, the pattern still looks rich.


7062.

Gold Web, diapered with animals in green silk. French, late 13th
century. 14¼ inches by 2¼ inches.

 Probably wrought in a small frame, at home, by some young woman,
 and for personal adornment. So much is it worn away, that the green
 beardless lion, with a circle of crimson, can be well seen only in
 one instance. A narrow short piece of edging lace, of the same make
 and time, but of a simple interlacing strap-pattern, is pinned to this
 specimen.


7063.

Green and Fawn-coloured Silk Diaper; pattern, squares, green, filled in
with leaves fawn-coloured, and beasts and birds, green. Sicilian, late
13th century. 8 inches by 3¼ inches.

 Another of those specimens, perhaps of the Palermitan loom: all the
 animals look heraldic, and are lions, griffins, wyverns, and parrots.
 The stuff itself is not of the richest.


7064.

Gold Lace, so worn by use that the floriation on the oblong diaper is
obliterated. French, 13th century. 9 inches by 1¼ inches.


7064A.

Gold Lace; pattern, interlacing strap-work. French, 13th century. 7
inches by 1½ inches.

 Equally serviceable for personal or ecclesiastical use.


7065.

Black Silk Damask; figured with a tower surrounded by water, over which
are two bridges; in the lower court are two men, each with an eagle
perched upon his hand; from out the third story of the tower springs a
tree, bearing artichoke floriations. Italian, 15th century. 11 inches
by 8 inches.

 Another piece of this identical damask occurs at No. 8612, but there
 the design is by no means so clear as in the piece before us.


7066.

Green Silk; pattern, a lozenge reticulation, each mesh filled in with
four very small voided lozenges placed crosswise, in pale yellow.
Oriental, 14th century. 5¼ inches by 4-⅝ inches.


7067.

Silk and Gold Damask; ground, green silk; pattern, conventional
floriation, with a circular form of the artichoke. Spanish, early 15th
century. 1 foot 3¾ inches by 4 inches.

 One of those samples of that poor texture which came from the Spanish
 loom, with the sham gold, which we have before observed in other
 examples, of thin parchment gilt with a much debased gold.


7068.

Silk Damask; straw-colour; pattern, lozenge-shaped net-work, each mesh
enclosing a flower. Spanish, 15th century. 13¾ inches by 12 inches.

 So worn is this piece that it is with difficulty that its simple
 design can be made out.


7069.

Silk Damask; straw-colour; pattern, an imaginary eagle-like bird,
enclosed by a garland full of ivy leaves. Sicilian, 14th century. 7¾
inches by 6 inches.

 The ground is completely filled in with the well-designed and pretty
 diapering; but damp has sadly spoiled the specimen.


7070.

Silk Damask; ground, purple; pattern, heraldic figures, birds, and oval
floriations, in gold thread. Oriental, 14th century. 16 inches by 9
inches.

 On an oval, floriated all round, and enclosing two lionesses addorsed
 rampant regardant, are two wyvern-like eagles with curious feathered
 tails, regardant; below, are two cockatoos addorsed regardant, all in
 gold. The oval floriation is outlined with green. When new, this stuff
 must have had a brave appearance, and shows a Persian tradition about
 it.


7071.

Linen, embroidered in silk; ground, fine linen; pattern, a zigzag,
alternating in light blue and brown. German, 15th century. 14 inches by
3½ inches.

 The zigzag may be termed dancette, and all over is parted into
 lozenges, each lozenge charged with a cross made of mascles, and the
 spaces between the brown and the blue zigzags, filled in with others
 of a light brown coloured diapering.


7072.

Silk Damask; ground, violet or deep purple; pattern, angels with
thuribles, and emblems of the Passion, in yellow and white. Florentine,
late 14th century. 18¼ inches by 15¾ inches.

 This truly artistic and well-executed stuff displays a row of angels
 in girded albs, all flying one way, as with the left hand they swing
 thuribles, and another row kneeling, each with a crown of thorns in
 his hands, alternating, with a second set of angels, in another row,
 each bearing before him a cross. All the angels are done in yellow,
 but with face and hands white, and the whole ground is strewed with
 stars. It is likely that this fine stuff was woven expressly for the
 purple vestments worn in Passion time, at the end of Lent.


7073.

Crimson Silk and Gold Brocade; ground, a diaper of crimson; pattern, an
oval reticulation, in the meshes of which is an artichoke flower, all
in gold. Genoese, 16th century. 16¾ inches by 9 inches.

 The design of this rich stuff is well managed, and the diapering in
 dull silk upon a satin ground throws out the gold brocading admirably;
 the meshes which enclose the flowers are themselves formed of garlands.


7074.

Raised Crimson Velvet, damasked in gold; pattern, the artichoke and
small floriations in gold. Genoese, 16th century. 15¾ inches by
11½ inches.

 A specimen of what, in its prime, must have been a fine stuff for
 household decoration, though of such a nature as to have freely
 allowed it to be employed for ecclesiastical purposes. It has seen
 rough service, so that its pile is in places thread-bare, and its gold
 almost worn away.


7075.

Raised Velvet on Gold Ground; pattern, a very large rose with broad
border in raised crimson velvet, filled in with a bush of pomegranates,
in very thin lines of raised crimson velvet; the rest of the ground
is diapered all over with the pomegranate tree in very thin outline.
Genoese, early 16th century. 2 feet 9 inches by 2 feet.

 The gold thread was so poor that the precious metal has almost
 entirely disappeared; but when all was new, this stuff must have
 looked particularly grand. The large red rose, and the pomegranate,
 make it seem as if it had been wrought, in the first instance, for
 either our Henry the Seventh, or Henry the Eighth, after the English
 marriage of Catherine of Arragon.


7076.

Raised Velvet and Gold; pattern, conventional flowers in gold, upon
tawny-coloured velvet. Genoese, late 15th century. 12 inches by 8
inches.

 The gold of the design is, in parts, nicely diapered; and the gold
 thread itself thin, and now rather tarnished.


7077.

Raised Crimson Velvet; pattern, an artichoke amid flowers. Genoese,
late 15th century. 16½ inches by 11½ inches.

 The pile is rich; and when it is borne in mind how the Emperor Charles
 V. honoured Andrea Dorea, it is not surprising that his countrymen had
 a partiality for the Spanish emblem of their great captain’s admirer.


7078.

Raised Blue Velvet; ground, deep blue; pattern, within an outlined
seven-petaled floriation in silk, an artichoke, with sprigs of flowers
shooting out of it. Genoese, late 15th century. 17½ inches by 10¼
inches.

 Though much worn by hard usage, this stuff is of a pleasing effect,
 owing to its agreeable design, which not unfrequently occurs perfect,
 and consists of a kind of circle in narrow lines, somewhat in the
 shape of a flower, but having at the tips of its prominent feathering
 cusps of florets.


7079.

Figured Blue Velvet; embroidered in gold thread, with cinquefoils,
enclosing a floriation of the artichoke form, with smaller ones around
it. Spanish, 15th century. 15 inches by 9½ inches.

 By the shape of this piece it must have been cut off from the end of a
 chasuble. Though the velvet is rich, the embroidery is poor, done as
 it is in thin outline, but still of a good form.


7080.

Orphrey Web, silk and gold; ground, crimson; pattern, on a gold
diapering, conventional floriations and scrolls, in one of which is the
bust of St. Peter, with his key in one hand and a book in the other.
Florentine, late 15th century. 21 inches by 8 inches.

 Like many other samples, this rich web of crimson silk and fine gold
 thread was wrought for those kinds of broad orphreys needed for
 chasubles and copes; and sometimes worked up into altar-frontals.


7081.

Silk Damask; ground, yellow; pattern, net-work, the meshes, which are
looped to each other, filled in with a conventional floriated ornament,
all in green. Italian, 16th century. 16½ inches by 10¾ inches.

 Intended for household adornment. This stuff must have had an
 agreeable effect, though the green has somewhat faded.


7082.

Silk Damask; ground, yellowish pale green; pattern, a diapering of very
small leaves and flowers. Oriental, 13th century. 6½ inches by 5¾
inches.

 Just like No. 7056, and needing the same near inspection to find out
 its small but well-managed delicate design.

7083.

Silk and Linen Texture; ground, yellow; pattern, amid foliage, two
cheetahs, face to face, all blue, but spotted yellow. Syrian, 14th
century. 7¼ inches by 6½ inches.

 At the same time that the warp is of linen, the woof of silk is thin;
 and a bold design is almost wasted upon poor materials. The specimen,
 however, is so far valuable, as it shows us how, for ages, a Persian
 feeling went along with the workmen on the eastern shores of the
 Levant.


7084.

Silk Damask; ground, tawny; pattern, birds, flowers, and heart-shaped
figures, encircled with imitated Arabic letters, all mostly in green,
very partially shaded white. Sicilian, 14th century. 19½ inches by
5½ inches.

 Above a heart-shaped ornament, bordered by a sham inscription in
 Arabic, and surrounded by a wreath, are two birds of the hoopoe kind,
 and beneath, two other birds, like eagles; and this design is placed
 amid the oval spaces made by garlands of flowers. All the component
 elements of the pattern are in small, though well-drawn figures.


7085.

Silk and Gold Damask; ground, tawny; pattern, fruit, beasts, and birds.
Sicilian, 14th century. 22¼ inches by 10 inches.

 This rich stuff has an elaborate pattern, consisting of three pieces
 of fruit, like oranges or apples, with a small pencil of sun-rays
 darting from them above, out of which springs a little bunch of
 trefoils, which separate two lions, in gold, that are looking down,
 and with open langued mouths; below is another and larger pencil of
 beams, shining upon two perched eagles, with wings half spread out for
 flight. Between such groups is a large flower like an artichoke, with
 two blue flowers, like the centaurea, at the stalk itself; above which
 is, as it were, the feathering of an arch with a bunch of three white
 flowers, for its cusp. With the exception of the lions and flowers,
 the rest of the pattern is in green.


7086.

Silk and Gold Brocade; ground, dark purple; pattern, all in gold,
floriations, birds and beasts. Oriental, 13th century. 18¼ inches by
7 inches.

 When new, this rich stuff must have been very effective, either for
 liturgical use or personal wear. There is a broad border, formed
 by the shallow sections of circles, inscribed with imitated Arabic
 characters. Out of the points or featherings made by the junctions of
 the circular sections spring forth bunches of wheat-ears, separating
 two collared cheetahs with heads reversed; and from other featherings,
 a large oval well-filled floriation, upon the branches of which are
 perched two crested birds, may be hoopoes, at which the cheetahs seem
 to be gazing. Over the wheat-ears, drops are falling from a pencil of
 sunbeams above them; below are two flowers in silk, once crimson.


7087.

Silk Damask; ground, blue; pattern, birds, animals, and flowers, in
gold, and different coloured silks. Oriental, late 13th century. 17½
inches by 7½ inches.

 So fragmentary is this specimen, that it is rather hard to find
 out the whole of the design, which was seemingly composed of white
 cheetahs collared red, in pairs; above which sit two little dogs,
 in gold, looking at one another; and just over them a pair of white
 eagles, small too, on the wing, and holding a white flower between
 them. Running across the pattern was a band, in gold, charged with
 circles enclosing a sitting dog, a rosette, a circle having an
 imitated Arabic sentence over it.


7088.

Part of a Stole, or of a Maniple; silk brocade; ground, light crimson;
pattern, floriations in green, with lions rampant in gold. Sicilian,
late 14th century. 20½ inches by 3 inches.

 The parti-coloured fringe to this liturgical appliance is of poor
 linen thread not corresponding to the richness of the stuff.


7089.

Silk and Gold Damask; ground, gold; pattern, branches of foliation, in
yellow silk. Oriental, 15th century. 17½ inches by 3½ inches.

 Though rather rich in material, the design is so obscure as hardly to
 be observable.


7090.

Silk Damask; ground, purple; pattern, a diaper of parrots, and
floriations, in bright greenish yellow. Oriental, 14th century. 11
inches by 4½ inches.

 Though of a poor silk, the design is pretty, and tells of the coast of
 Syria, where many of the looms were kept at work for European use.


7091.

Silk and Gold Damask; ground, purple; pattern, fleurs-de-lis in gold.
Sicilian, late 14th century. 4 inches square.

 Done, as was often the case, for French royalty, or some one of French
 princely blood, at Palermo, and sent to France. The stuff is rich, and
 well sprinkled with the royal golden flower.


7092.

Silk Damask; ground, amber (once crimson); pattern, a diaper of flowers
and leaves, in yellow. Sicilian, late 14th century. 9 inches by 5¼
inches broad.

 Of a quiet and pleasing kind of design, showing something like a
 couple of letters in the hearts of two of its flowers.


7093.

Embroidery in silk upon linen; pattern, men blue, women white, standing
in a row hand in hand; the spaces filled up with lozenges in white. The
women upon a green, the men upon a white ground. German, 16th century.
8¾ inches by 6½ inches.

 So very worn away is the needlework, that it is very hard to see the
 design, which, when discovered, looks to be very stiff, poor, and
 angular.


7094.

Silk Damask; ground, straw-colour; pattern, net-work of lozenges and
quatrefoils, filled in each with a cross pommée, amid which are large
circles containing a pair of parrots, all in raised satin. Oriental,
13th century. 8¾ inches by 7¾ inches.

 This fine textile was, in all likelihood, woven by Christian hands
 somewhere upon the Syrian coast, and while a religious character was
 given it both by the crosses and the emblematic parrots, a Persian
 influence by the use of the olden traditionary tree between the
 parrots, or the Persians’ sacred “hom,” was allowed to remain upon the
 designer’s mind without his own knowledge of its being there, or of
 its symbolic meaning in reference to Persia’s ancient heathen worship.


7095.

Blue Linen, wrought with gilt thin parchment; pattern, an oval,
filled in with another oval, surrounded by six-petaled flowers, all
in outline; this piece is put upon another of a different design, of
which the pattern is an eagle on the wing. Spanish, 14th century. 7½
inches by 4-⅝ inches.

 This is another specimen of gilt parchment being used instead of gold
 thread.


7099.

Foot-cloth; ground, green worsted; pattern, birds and flowers. German,
16th century. 4 feet 7 inches by 2 feet 7 inches.

 In all likelihood, this piece of needlework served the purpose of a
 rug or foot-cloth, or, may be, as the cloth covering for the seat of a
 carriage. It is worked in thick worsted upon a wide-meshed thread net,
 and after a somewhat stiff design.


7218.

Table-cover, in green silk, with wide border of Italian point lace.
Venetian, late 16th century. 5 feet 6 inches by 3 feet 2 inches.

 The pattern of the lace is very bold and well executed, and consists
 of a large foliage-scroll of the classic type, ending in a lion’s
 head, so cherished by the Venetians, as the emblem of the Republic’s
 patron-saint, St. Mark. The poor thin silk is not worthy of its fine
 trimming.


7219.

Table-cover, in light blue silk, with wide border of Italian point
lace. Venetian, late 16th century. 6 feet 5 inches by 4 feet.

 The pattern of the lace, like the foregoing specimen, is after a
 classic form, consisting of two horns of plenty amid foliage and
 scroll-work; in both pieces we see the effect of that school which
 brought forth a Palladio.


7468.

A Lectern Veil of silk and gold cut-work; ground, crimson silk; design,
of cut-work in cloth of gold and white and blue silk, ramifications
ending in bunches of white grapes, horns of plenty holding fruit, and
ears of wheat. French, 17th century. 9 feet by 1 foot 9¾ inches.

 Such veils are thrown over a light moveable stand upon which the book
 of the Gospels and Epistles is put at high mass, for the deacon’s use
 as he sings the Gospel of the day. The cut-work is well-designed, and
 sewed on with an edging of blue cord in some places, of yellow in
 others. The cloth of gold was so poor that now it looks at a short
 distance like mere yellow silk.


7674.

Missal Cushion; ground, red silk; pattern, two angels standing face
to face and holding between them a cross, all in gold, excepting the
angels’ faces and hands, which are white; there are four tassels, one
at each corner, crimson and gold. Florentine, early 15th century. 1
foot 3 inches by 1 foot.

 The covering for this cushion is made of orphrey web, the gold of
 which is very much faded; and, like other specimens from the same
 looms, shows the nudes of the figures in a pinkish white. The use of
 such cushions for upholding the missal upon the altar is even now
 kept up in some places. According to the rubric of the Roman Missal,
 wherein, at the beginning among the “rubricæ generales,” cap. xx. it
 is directed that there should be “in cornu epistolæ (altaris) cussinus
 supponendus missali.”


7788.

Chasuble, in crimson velvet, with orphreys embroidered in gold and
coloured silks. Florentine, 15th century. 4 feet long by 2 feet 5
inches broad.

 This garment has been much cut down, and so worn that, in parts, its
 rich and curious orphreys are so damaged as to be unintelligible. Over
 the breast and on the front orphrey is embroidered the Crucifixion,
 but after a somewhat unusual manner, inasmuch as, besides our Lord
 on the Cross, with His mother and St. John the Evangelist standing
 by; two other saints are introduced, St. Jerome on one side, St.
 Lucy on the other, kneeling on the ground at the foot of the Cross,
 possibly the patrons, one of the lady, the other of the gentleman,
 at whose cost this vestment was wrought. Under this is St. Christina
 defending Christianity against the heathens; her arraignment, for her
 belief, before one of Dioclesian’s officials; her body bound naked,
 and scourged at a pillar. On the back orphrey, the same martyr on
 her knees by the side of another governor, her own pagan father, and
 praying that the idol, held to her for worship by him, may be broken;
 the saint maintaining her faith to those who came to argue with her
 before the window of the prison, wherein she is shut up naked in a
 cauldron, with flames under it, and praying with one of the men
 who are feeding the fire with bundles of wood, on his knees, as if
 converted by her words; then, the saint standing at a table, around
 which are three men; and below all, a piece so worn and cut, as to be
 unintelligible. Upon the last square but one is a shield _argent_,
 a bend _azure_, charged with a crescent _or_, two stars _or_, and
 another crescent _or_, probably the blazon of the Pandolfini family,
 to whose domestic chapel at Florence this vestment is said to have
 belonged.


7789, 7790.

Dalmatic, and Tunicle, in crimson velvet, with apparels of woven stuff
in gold and crimson silk, figured with cherubic heads. Florentine, 15th
century.

 The velvet is of a rich pile, and the tone of colour warm. The
 orphreys, or rather apparels, are all of the same texture, woven of
 a red ground, and figured in gold with cherubic heads, having white
 faces; the lace also is red, and gold; but in both the gold is quite
 faded. The sleeves are somewhat short, but the garment itself is full
 and majestic. Doubtless the dalmatic and tunicle formed a part of a
 full set of vestments, to which the fine and curiously embroidered
 chasuble, No. 7788, belonged; and their apparels, or square orphreys,
 above and below, before and behind, are in design and execution alike
 to several others from the looms of Florence, which we have found
 among various other remains of liturgic garments in this collection.


7791.

Piece of Woven Orphrey; ground, crimson silk; design, in gold, an
altar, with an angel on each side clasping a column, and above, other
two angels worshipping; and upon the step leading to the altar, the
words “sanctus, sanctus.” Florentine, early 16th century. 9 feet 7
inches by 9 inches.

 The design is evidently meant to express the tabernacle at the altar,
 where the blessed sacrament is kept in church, for administration to
 the sick, &c., and, like all similar textiles, was made of such a
 length as to be applicable to copes, chasubles, and other ritual uses.


7792.

Veil for the subdeacon, of raised velvet and gold; ground, gold;
pattern, a broad scroll, showing, amid foliation, a conventional
artichoke in raised crimson velvet. Florentine, late 16th century. 14
feet 4 inches by 1 foot 10 inches.

 The bright yellow ground is more of silk than gold thread, and the
 velvet design, deep in its rich pile and glowing in its ruby tint,
 is dotted with the usual gold thread loops; at each end is a golden
 fringe; both edges are bordered with poor gold open lace; and still
 attached to it are the two short yellow silk strings for tying it in
 front, when put about the shoulders of the subdeacon at the offertory,
 when the paten is given him to hold at high mass.


7793.

Hood of a Cope; ground, mostly gold, and a small part, silver; figured
with two adoring angels; the centre piece gone, and in its place a
saint standing, and done in woven work. Flemish, 15th century; the
inserted saint, Florentine, 15th century. 1 foot 4½ inches by 1 foot
4½ inches.

 The figures of the angels in worship are nicely done in flos-silk;
 and perhaps the original lost figure was that of our Lord, or of the
 B. V. Mary. The lay saint now inserted, bare-headed, and leaning on
 his sword, wearing a green tunic, and a blue mantle sprinkled with
 trefoils in red and gold, perhaps meant for fleurs-de-lis, seems to be
 intended for St. Louis of France. The broad green silk fringe, and the
 pointed shape of the hood will not escape notice; and behind may yet
 be seen the eyes by which this hood was hung upon the cope. The poor
 shabby silver tinsel round this king is an addition quite modern.


7794.

Burse for Corporals; ground, crimson satin; pattern, foliations and
flowers in coloured silks and gold, with a phœnix rising from the
flames in the middle. German, late 17th century. 11 inches by 10¼
inches.


7795.

Burse for Corporals; ground, crimson velvet; pattern, velvet upon
velvet, lined at back with silk; ground, amber, figured with a
modification of the artichoke, in deep crimson. Italian, 16th century.
10¾ inches by 10 inches.

[Illustration: 7795.

SILK DAMASK,

Italian---- 16th century.]

 Though probably this burse, like the one above, may have come from a
 church in Germany, its beautiful materials are of Italian manufacture;
 the fine deep piled velvet upon velvet, from Genoa, the well-designed
 and pleasing silk at back, from Lucca, and many years, may be a half
 century, older than the velvet, make this small liturgical article
 very noteworthy on account of its materials.


7799.

Veil of raised crimson velvet; ground, yellow silk and gold thread;
pattern, large floriations all in crimson velvet, freckled with little
golden loops. Florentine, 17th century. 11 feet 2½ inches by 1 foot
10 inches.

 One of those magnificent textures of cut velvet, with a fine rich
 pile, sent forth by the looms of Tuscany. Its use may have been
 both for a veil to the lectern for the Gospel, and to be worn by
 the subdeacon at high mass; the two strings, attached to it still,
 evidently show its application to the latter purpose. A heavy gold
 fringe borders its two ends, the scolloped shape of which is rather
 unusual.


7813.

Front Orphrey of a Chasuble, embroidered with figures in niches.
Italian, late 15th century. 3 feet 1 inch by 7 inches; at the cross,
1¾ inches.

 The first figure is that of our Lord giving His blessing, and of a
 very youthful countenance; next, seemingly the figure of St. Peter;
 then St. John the Evangelist. All these are done in coloured silks,
 upon a ground of gold, and within niches; but are sadly worn. The two
 angels at our Lord’s head are the best in preservation; but the whole
 is rather poor in execution. As a border, there are two strips figured
 with silver crosses upon grounds of different coloured silks.


7813A.

Part of an Orphrey, embroidered with figures of the Apostles. Italian,
late 15th century. 4 feet by 7½ inches.

 Of the five personages, only the second, St. Paul, can be identified
 by his symbol of a sword. All are wrought upon a golden diaper, and
 standing within niches; but though the features are strongly marked
 in brown silk lines, as a specimen it is not remarkably good; and,
 most likely, served as the orphrey to some vestment, a chasuble, the
 orphrey of which for the front was the piece numbered 7813.


7833.

Piece of Applied Embroidery, upon silk of a creamy white, an
ornamentation in crimson velvet and cloth of gold, scolloped and
tasseled. Italian, early 17th century.

 Rich of its kind, and probably a part of household furniture.


7900.

Silk Damask; ground, blue; pattern, diaper of stalks, bearing a broad
foliation in whitish blue, and lions, and birds like hoopoes, all
in gold, between horizontal bands inscribed with imitated Saracenic
letters. Sicilian, 14th century, 10¾ inches square.

 A beautiful design; and in the bands, at each end of the imitated
 word in Saracenic characters, are those knots that are found on
 Italian textiles. So poor was the gold on the thread, that it is sadly
 tarnished.


8128.

Apparels to an Alb; figured with the birth of the B. V. Mary, in the
upper one; and in the lower, the birth of our Lord; with two armorial
shields alternating between the spandrils of the canopies. English
needlework, on crimson velvet, and in coloured silks and gold thread,
done in the latter half of the 14th century. Each piece 2 feet 8½
inches by 10½ inches. Presented by Ralf Oakden, Esq.

 In many respects these two apparels, seemingly for the lower
 adornment of the liturgical alb, one before, the other behind, are
 very valuable; besides the subjects they represent, they afford
 illustrations of the style of needlework, architecture, costume, and
 heraldry of their time.

 In the upper apparel, we have the birth and childhood of the mother
 of our Lord, as it is found in one of the apocryphal books of the New
 Testament, entitled,--“Evangelium de Nativitate S. Mariae,” which the
 Latins got from the Greeks, as early, it would seem, as the second
 or third age of the Church. Though of no authority, this book was
 in especial favour with our countrymen, and it was not unfrequently
 noticed in their writings; hence, no doubt, the upper apparel was
 suggested by that pseudo-gospel. In its first compartment, we behold
 a middle-aged lady, richly clad, having a mantle of gold, lined with
 vair or costly fur, about her shoulders, seated on a cushioned stool
 with a lectern, or reading-desk before her, and upon it an open book
 of the Psalms, with the beginning of the fiftieth written on its
 silver pages,--“Miserere mei, Deus,” &c., and outstretching her hands
 towards an angel coming down from the clouds, and as he hails her with
 one hand, holds, unrolled, before her eyes, a scroll bearing these
 words:--“Occurre viro ad portam.” This female is Ann, wife of Joachim,
 and mother of Mary; and the whole is thus set forth in the Codex
 Apocryphus Novi Testamenti; where the angel, who appeared to her while
 she was at prayer, is said to have spoken these words:--“Ne timeas,
 Anna, neque phantasma esse putes.... Itaque surge, ascende Hierusalem,
 et cum perveneris ad portam quæ aurea, pro eo quod deaurata est,
 vocatur, ibi pro signo virum tuum obvium habebis,” &c.--_Evangelium de
 Nativitate S. Mariae_, c. iv. in COD. APOCRY. ed. Thilo, pp. 324, 325.
 This passage is thus rendered in that rare old English black-letter
 book of sermons called “The Festival,” which was so often printed by
 Caxton, Wynkyn de Worde, and other early printers in London:--“Anne
 was sory and prayed to God and sayde, Lorde, that me is woo. I am
 bareyne, and I may have noo frute ... and I knowe not whyther he
 (Joachim my husband) is gone. Lorde have mercy on me. Whene as she
 prayed thus an angell come downe and comforted her, and sayd: Anne,
 be of gode comfort, for thou shalt have a childe in thyne olde age,
 there was never none lyke, ne never shall be ... and whan he (Joachim)
 come nye home, the angell come to Anne, and bade her goo to the gate
 that was called the golden gate, and abide her husbonde there tyll he
 come. Thene was she glad ... and went to the gate and there she mete
 with Joachim, and sayd, Lord, I thanke thee, for I was a wedow and now
 I am a wyfe, I was bareyne and now I shall bear a childe ... and whan
 she (the child) was borne, she was called Mary.”--_The Festival_, fol.
 lxvi. In the second compartment we have a further illustration of the
 foregoing text in the representation of the golden gate at Jerusalem,
 and Anna and Joachim greeting one another as they meet there. In the
 third, there is the lying-in of Anna, who from her own bed is swathing
 her new-born child, whom the Almighty’s right hand coming from heaven
 is blessing. In the fourth is Anna bringing her little girl Mary,
 when three years old, as an offering to God, in the temple, before
 the High Priest. In the fifth and last compartment of this upper row
 of niches, we see Anna teaching her daughter, the B. V. Mary, to read
 the Psalter. In the first compartment in the lower apparel, or on the
 second row, the angel Gabriel, winged and barefoot, is represented
 standing before the B. V. Mary, whom with his right he is blessing,
 while in his left he holds out before her a scroll on which are the
 words:--“Ave Maria gracia.” She outstretches her hands, and gently
 bending her head forwards, seems to bow assent; between them is the
 lily-pot, and, as it should, holds but one flower-stem, with three,
 and only three, full-blown lilies (“Church of our Fathers,” t. iii.
 p. 247); above, is the Holy Ghost, figured as a white dove, coming
 down upon the Virgin. To this follows St. Elizabeth’s visit to the B.
 V. Mary, or the Salutation, as it is often called in this country.
 Then we have the Nativity, after the usual manner, with the ox and
 ass worshipping at the crib wherein our Lord is lying in swaddling
 clothes; and St. Joseph is figured wearing gloves. Filling the next
 niche, we behold the angel coming from the skies, with a scroll in his
 hands inscribed,--“Gloria in excelsis Deo,” to the shepherds, one of
 whom is playing on a bag-pipe with one hand, as with the other he is
 ringing a bell, which draws the attention of his dog that sits before
 him with upturned head and gaping mouth. In the last compartment
 we have the three wise men, clothed and crowned as kings, going to
 Bethlehem with their gifts, but none of them is a negro. Of the two
 shields hung alternately between every spandril, one is,--barry of ten
 _argent_ and _gules_, which was the blazon of Thornell de Suffolk; and
 the other,--_azure_ three cinque-foils _argent_, that of the family
 of Fitton, according to a MS. ordinary of arms, drawn up by Robert
 Glover, some time Somerset herald. In the subject of the shepherds,
 the ground is so plentifully sprinkled with growing daisies, that it
 seems as if it were done on purpose to tell us that she whose hands
 had wrought the work was called Margaret; as the flower was in French
 designated “La Marguerite,” it became the symbol of that saint’s name,
 and not unfrequently was the chosen emblem of the females who bore it.


8226.

Gold Embroidery on purple silk over a white cotton ground, with figures
of our Saviour and of the apostles St. Peter, St. Simon, and St.
Philip. Sicilian work, done about the end of the 12th century. 14½
inches by 7 inches.

 This piece of needlework with its figures, as well as its
 architectural accessories, wrought in gold thread, though rude in its
 execution, is not without an interest. In it the liturgical student
 will find the half of an apparel (for it has been unfeelingly cut in
 half at some remote time) for the lower hem in front of the linen
 garment known as the alb. Originally it must have consisted of seven
 figures; one of our Lord, in the middle, sitting upon a throne in
 majesty with the Α on the one side and the Ω on the other side of His
 nimbed head, and His right hand uplifted in the act of bestowing His
 benediction. To the left must have been three apostles; to the right
 are still to be seen the other three, nearest our Saviour, St. Peter,
 holding in his left hand a double-warded key, next to him St. Simon,
 with his right hand in the act of blessing, and holding in his left
 a saw fashioned not like ours, but as that instrument is still made
 in Italy, and last of all St. Philip, but without any symbol. What
 look like half-moons with a little dot in the inside, and having a
 cross between them, are nothing more than the word “Sanctus,” thus
 contracted with the letter S written as the Greek sigma formed like
 our C, a common practice in Italy during the middle ages, as may be
 seen in the inscriptions given by writers on Palæography.

 Our Lord is seated within an elongated trefoil, and, at each corner
 at the outward sides, is shown one of His emblems, better known as
 the Evangelists’ symbols hinted at by the prophet Ezekiel, i. 10:
 of these, two are very discernible, the winged human bust, commonly
 called St. Matthew’s emblem, at top, and the nimbed and winged horned
 ox or calf for St. Luke. The Apostles all stand within round-headed
 arches, the spandrils of which are filled in with a kind of diaper
 ornamentation.


8227.

Piece of Crimson Silk, with pattern woven in gold thread. Sicilian,
early 13th century. 10½ inches by 7 inches.

 This rich sample of the looms of Palermo betrays the architectural
 influences, which acted upon the designers of such stuffs, by the
 introduction of that ramified ornamentation with its graceful
 bendings, that is so marked a character in the buildings of England
 and France at the close of the 12th and opening of the 13th century.
 The fleur-de-lis is rather an accidental than intentional adaptation,
 years before the French occupation of Sicily.


8228.

Piece of Purple Silk Embroidery in gold and silver; pattern of
interlaced dragons, human figures, and birds. North German, 12th
century. 8½ inches by 7¼ inches.

 This small sample of needlework is as remarkable for the way in which
 it is wrought, as for the wild Scandinavian mythology which is figured
 on it.

 The usual process for the application of gold and silver in textiles
 and embroidery is to twine the precious metal about cotton thread, and
 thus weave it in with the shuttle or stitch it on by the needle. Here,
 however, the silver, in part white in its original condition, in part
 gilt, is laid on in the form of a very thin but solid wire, unmixed
 with cotton, and the effect is very rich and brilliant.

 In the middle of this piece are shown two monsters interlacing one
 another; within the upper coil which they make with their snake-like
 lengths, stands a human figure which, from its dress, looks that of a
 man who with each outstretched hand, seems fondling the serpent-heads
 of these two monsters; that at the other end terminates in the upper
 portion of an imaginary dragon with wings on its shoulders, its paws
 well armed with claws, and a wolfish head largely horned, and jaws
 widely yawning, as eager to swallow its prey. To our thinking, we
 have shown to us here the Scandinavian personification of evil in the
 human figure of the bad god Loki (the embroidery of whose face is
 worn away) and his wicked offspring, the Midgard serpent, the wolf
 Fenrir, and Hela or Death, who may be identified in that female figure
 seated within the smaller lower coil made by the twining serpents.
 Amid some leaf-bearing branches to the right is perceived a man as if
 running away affrighted; to the left we behold Thor himself, mallet
 in hand, about to deal a heavy blow upon the scaly length of this
 Midgard serpent. About the same time this embroidery was worked the
 bishop’s crozier began to end in the serpent’s head. A good figure of
 this piece is given by Dr. Bock, in his “Geschichte der Liturgischen
 Gewänder des Mittelalters,” 1 Band, 2 Lieferung, pt. vi.


8229.

Piece of Crimson Silk, with interlacing pattern woven in gold; the
centre occupied with representations of flat-shaped fish, and, as we
learn from Dr. Bock, like to an imperial robe at Vienna, made A.D.
1133. Oriental. 11 inches by 5 inches.

 Though of a very tame design and rather striking for the sparing way
 in which the dim gold is rolled about its thread, still it is not
 fair to judge of what this stuff might have once been when new, fresh
 from the loom and unfaded. If, in the first half of the 12th century,
 silks so wrought with the representation of fishes were deemed worthy
 of being put into use for state garments of a German Emperor; a short
 hundred years later, they were for their symbolism thought even more
 fitting to be employed for making the chasubles and copes worn at
 divine service in the cathedral of London. From the inventory drawn
 up, A.D. 1295, of the altar vestments belonging to old St Paul’s,
 we learn that among them there were:--“Capa magistri Johannis de
 S. Claro, de quodam panno Tarsico, viridis coloris, cum plurimis
 piscibus et rosis de aurifilo, contextis.” Dugdale’s “History of St.
 Paul’s,” new ed. p. 318. “Item casula de panno Tarsico indici coloris
 cum pisculis et rosulis aureis, &c.” Ib. p. 323. In all likelihood,
 the fish here shown was meant for what we oddly call “John Dory,” a
 corruption of the Italian “Gianitore,” or gate-keeper, the name of
 this fish in some parts of Italy, in reference to St. Peter, who is
 deemed to have found the tribute-money in the mouth of this fish,
 hence denominated St. Peter’s fish.


8230.

Piece of so-called Bissus, of a yellowish white, with squares formed by
intersecting bars of dark brown. 11¼ inches by 8½ inches.

 Though so unattractive to the eye, this fragment of one of the most
 delicate sorts of textile manufacture is one among the most curious
 and interesting specimens of this valuable collection. Unfortunately,
 Dr. Bock does not furnish us with any clue to its history, nor tell
 us where he found it. The large whitish squares measure 4¼ inches
 by 3¾ inches, and those deep brown bars that enclose them are a
 quarter of an inch broad, and meant evidently to have not a straight
 but wavy form. Another piece of this curious textile may be seen under
 No. 1238.


8231.

Piece of Yellow Silk, with a diapering of an artichoke shape marked
with lines like letters. Moresco-Spanish, 14th century. 6 inches by 3
inches.

 The texture of this silk is rather thick; and though resembling Arabic
 letters, the marks in the diapering are not alphabetical characters,
 but attempts to imitate them.


8231A.

Piece of Dark Blue Purple Stuff, partly silk, partly cotton,
double-dyed, with a diapering of small hexagons. Oriental. 5 inches by
2½ inches.

 This somewhat strong texture seems to have come from Syria and to be
 of the 14th century.


8232.

Piece of Silk and Gold Embroidery. German, 8½ inches by 3 inches.

 It is said that an imperial tunic, now kept in the Maximilian Museum
 at Munich, once belonged to the Emperor Henry II., and was spoken of
 as such in a list of the treasures of Bamberg Cathedral in the 12th
 century. From the border of this tunic the piece before us is reported
 to have been cut off.

 That in the 12th century Bamberg Cathedral had the imperial (probably
 the coronation) tunic of its builder and great benefactor, and as such
 reckoned it among its precious things, was but natural; it, however,
 by no means follows that this is the garment now at Munich and brought
 from Bamberg six hundred years after its reputed owner’s death, and
 put into the museum in his palace by the Elector Maximilian, A.D.
 1607. Keeping in mind that the Emperor Henry II. was crowned at the
 very beginning of the 11th century, about the year 1002, and seeing
 in the piece before us the style of the end of the 12th century--with
 thus a period of almost two hundred years between the two epochs--we
 cannot recognize this specimen to have ever formed a portion of the
 real tunic of the above-named German emperor. Besides its style, its
 materials forbid us to accept it as such. Its design is set forth in
 cording of a coarse thread roughly put together; the spaces between
 are filled in with shreds of red silken gold tissue, and of gold
 stuff sewed on to very coarse canvas. That, in this condition, it
 had been much used, and needed mending through long wear, is evident
 from other pieces of a gold and velvet texture of the 14th century
 being let in here and there over the frayed portions, thus showing a
 second example of what is called “applied.” Like Germany, England,
 too, has made its mistakes on such matters, for we are told that
 “as the kings of England are invested with the crown of St. Edward,
 their queens are crowned with that of St. Edgitha, which is named in
 honour of the Confessor’s consort.”--Taylor’s “Glory of Regality,”
 p. 63. In the inventory, drawn up in the year 1649, “of that part of
 the Regalia which are now removed from Westminster to the Tower Jewel
 House,” we find entered “Queen Edith’s crowne, King Alfred’s crowne,”
 &c.--Taylor’s “Glory of Regality,” p. 313. The likelihood is that, in
 the 17th century, these supposed Anglo-Saxon crowns were not 200 years
 old.


8233.

Piece of White Silk, with rich pattern of circles enclosing leopards
and griffins, and a diaper of scrolls and birds. Oriental, 13th
century. 1 foot 11 inches by 9 inches.

 Like the piece immediately preceding, this too comes to us with an
 account that it once formed a part of the white silk imperial tunic
 belonging to the same holy Emperor Henry II., and was cut off from
 that garment now preserved in the Maximilian Museum in the royal
 palace at Munich. That it could have been wrought so early as the
 beginning of the 11th century, that is, about the year 1002, we are
 hindered from believing by the style of the ornamentation of this very
 rich stuff. As a specimen of the Arabic loom in the 13th century it is
 most valuable, and looks as if its designer had in his mind Persian
 traditions controlled by Arabic ideas while he drew its pattern. A
 remembrance of the celebrated Persian _Hom_, or sacred tree, which
 separates both the griffins, the leopards, and the birds--seemingly
 peacocks in one place, long-tailed parrots in another--was clearly
 before him. The griffins are addorsed regardant and sketched with
 spirit; so too are the leopards, which are collared, and like the
 “papyonns,” or present East Indian “cheetahs,” of which mention
 is made at No. 8288. Altogether this pattern, which is thrown off
 with so much freedom, is among the most pleasing and effective in
 the collection, and the thickness of its silken texture renders it
 remarkable.


8234.

Piece of Purple Silk, double-dyed, the pattern formed of squares filled
in with a Greek cross amid conventional ornaments. Sicilian, 12th
century. 7½ inches by 9 inches.

 The warp is of linen thread, the woof of silk, and as the two
 materials have not taken the dye in the same degree, the ground is of
 quite another tone from the pattern, which is, in a manner, fortunate,
 as thus a better effect is produced.

 Not for a moment can we look upon this piece as a specimen of real
 imperial purple wrought at Byzantium for royal use, and so highly
 spoken of by Anastasius Bibliothecarius, and called by him “blatthin,”
 with the distinguishing adjunct of “holosericus,” or made entirely of
 silk, and sometimes noticing it as “porphyreticum,” while enumerating
 the gifts of rich silks bestowed upon the churches at Rome by
 pontifical and imperial benefactors.


8235.

Piece of Yellow Silk, with pattern of circles enclosing griffins, the
interspaces filled in with hawks. Byzantine, 11th century. 12 inches by
10½ inches.

 This well woven and thickly bodied stuff shows its Byzantine origin in
 that style of ornamentation seen in the circles so characteristic of a
 Greek hand, as may be found in the Byzantine MSS. of the period. What
 makes this specimen somewhat remarkable, is the rare occurrence of
 finding the birds and animals figured in lines of silver thread. Dr.
 Bock tells us that the chasuble of Bishop Bernward, who died in the
 11th century, is decorated with a similar design.


8236.

Piece of Silk, Tyrian purple, diapered with palmette pattern. Oriental,
11th century. 1 foot 4 inches by 8½ inches.

 The hundreds of years that have passed over this remnant of the
 Eastern looms have stolen from it that brightness of tone which once,
 no doubt, shone about its surface.


8237.

Portion of Silk Border, crimson wrought in gold, with circles
containing grotesque animals. Italian (?), middle of the 13th century.
1 foot 5½ inches by 3½ inches.

 This well filled piece contains birds and beasts, among the latter
 two dogs addorsed, embroidered with circles, upon plain red silk. By
 the ornamentation, the embroidery must be about the middle of the
 13th century, and is of that general character which hinders national
 identification, though there can be no doubt it must have been wrought
 by some hand in Western Europe.


8238.

Three Pieces of Silk, discoloured to dull olive, diapered with a
closely foliated pattern. Sicilian, 13th century. Respectively 6 inches
by 4 inches, 4½ inches by 4 inches, and 6 inches by 3 inches.

 The design of the pattern is very elaborate and worthy of attention
 for the tasteful way in which it is arranged.


8238A.

Piece of Silk, with lilac pattern, enclosing grotesque animals.
Sicilian, 13th century. 3¾ inches by 1¾ inches.

 There is no reason for assuming that this piece of woven stuff
 formed the orphrey of a stole or any other liturgical ornament. It
 is, however, a fine specimen in its kind, and is one of the very
 many proofs to be found among the textiles and embroideries in the
 Museum, of the influence exercised by heraldry upon the looms of
 Western Europe. The beasts and birds are evidently heraldic, and
 are heraldically placed, especially the beasts, which are statant
 regardant.


8239.

Maniple in Crimson Silk, embroidered in colours and gold with
emblematical animals. The ends contain within circles, one the lion,
symbolical of Christ, the other the initial M, but of much later work.
The silk, Oriental; the embroidery, German, early 14th century. 3 feet
8 inches by 7 inches.

 This valuable specimen of mediæval church-embroidery is very curious,
 inasmuch as it contains three distinct periods of work; the middle
 part of the earliest portion of the 14th century, embroidered with so
 many fantastic figures; the lion passant with the human head, at the
 left end, of the beginning of the 13th; and the green letter M, poorly
 worked on the red garment laid bare at the right end by the loss of
 the circular piece of embroidery once sewed on there, no doubt in the
 style and of the same period of the human-faced lion, of the latter
 part of the 15th century.

 The whole of the middle piece is of needlework, and figured with
 sixteen figures, four-legged beasts in the body, and human in the
 heads, all of which are seen, by the hair, to be female. All are
 statant gardant or standing and looking full in the face of the
 spectator. Eight of them are playing musical instruments, most of
 which are stringed and harp-shaped, one a clarionet-like pipe, another
 castanets, and two cymbals, and are human down to the waist; the other
 eight seem meant for queens wearing crowns, and having the hair very
 full, but reaching no further than the shoulders, while the minstrel
 females show a long braid of dark brown hair falling all down the
 back. The queens have wings, and are human only in head and neck;
 the musical figures are wingless, and human as far as the waist. All
 these monsters display large tails, which end in an open-mouthed head
 like that of a fox, and are all noued. Each of these figures stands
 within a square, which is studded at each corner with the curious
 four-pointed love-knot, and in the ornamentation of its sides the
 crescent is very conspicuous; besides which, upon the bodies of these
 figures themselves numerous ring-like spots are studiously marked,
 as if to show that the four-legged animal was a leopard. Grotesques
 like those in this curious piece of embroidery abound in the MSS.
 of the 14th century; and those cut in stone on the north and south
 walls outside Adderbury Church, Oxon, bear a strong likeness to them.
 These fictitious creatures, made up of a woman, a leopard--the beast
 of prey, a fox--the emblem of craftiness and sly cunning, wielding
 too the power of wealth and authority, shown in those regal heads,
 and bringing those siren influences of music, love, and revelry into
 action, lead to the belief that under such imagery there was once
 hidden a symbolic meaning, which still remains to be found out, and
 this embroidery may yield some help in such an interesting study.

 All the figures are wrought on fine canvas in gold thread, and shaded
 with silk thread in various colours, the ground being filled in, in
 short stitch, with a bright-toned crimson silk that has kept its
 colour admirably. The narrow tape with a gold ornament upon a crimson
 ground, that encloses the square at each end of this liturgical
 appliance, is very good, and perhaps of the 13th century, as well
 as the many-coloured fringe of the 15th. There is no doubt this
 maniple, for such it is, was made out of scraps of secular adornments
 of various dates; and gives us remarkable examples of embroidery and
 weaving at various periods. One end of it is figured in Dr. Bock’s
 “Geschichte der Liturgischen Gewänder des Mittelalters,” 1 Band, 2
 Lieferung, part vi.


8240, 8240A.

Two Pieces of Silk Border; red purple, embroidered with monsters,
birds, and scroll patterns. To No. 8240 is attached a portion of
edging, embroidered in gold, with the rude figure of a saint, on a
blue-purple ground. Sicilian, 13th century. 8240, 1 foot 3¼ inches
by 5 inches; 8240A, 1 foot 11 inches by 2 inches.

 Among the animals figured on these pieces may be discerned a wolf
 passant, the fabulous heraldic wyvern, an eagle displayed, and a stag.
 The figure, however, of the saint, done in gold now much faded, is of
 the 12th century.


8241.

Piece of Tapestry, the warp cotton, the woof partly wool, partly silk;
in the centre, a grotesque mask, connecting scroll-patterns in blue,
bordered with Tyrian purple. Sicilian, late 12th century. 1 foot 2¾
inches by 6 inches.

 This is a rare as well as valuable specimen of its kind, and deserves
 attention, not only for the graceful twinings of its foliage, but the
 happy contrast of its colours.


8242.

Portion of Gold Embroidery, on red-purple silk, over a dark blue cotton
ground, figure of St. Andrew within an arch. German work, 12th century.
9¾ inches by 5¼ inches.


8243.

Piece of Silk, dark Tyrian purple ground, with dark olive pattern
of angular figures, and circles enclosing crosses, composed of four
heart-shaped ornaments. Byzantine, beginning of the 12th century. 6
inches by 6 inches.


8243A.

Piece of Silk Border, ground alternately lilac, purple, and yellowish,
with figures of animals within the spaces of the patterns; edging,
green. Sicilian, 13th century. 3¼ inches by 1 inch.

 Though small, this is a beautiful sample of textile excellence; on it
 various animals are figured, of which one is the heraldic wyvern.


8244, 8244A.

Two Pieces of Crimson, embroidered, in gold, with a scroll-pattern.
Sicilian, 13th century. 8244, 6½ inches by 2½ inches; 8244A,
6¼ inches by 2½ inches.


8245.

Piece of Silk Tissue; the ground of pale purple, woven in a diaper with
stripes of yellow and blue; the pattern formed of parrots perched in
pairs. Sicilian, 12th century. 1 foot 6½ inches by 10 inches.

 It is said that St. Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux, when his grave was
 opened, was found vested in a chasuble made of a stuff much like this.


8245A.

Piece of Tissue, like the foregoing (No. 8245), with a centre stripe
woven with gold thread and dark blue, and two side-stripes with figures
of parrots. Sicilian, early 13th century.

 Though seemingly so slight and insignificant, these two pieces will
 richly repay a close examination, exhibiting, as they do, great beauty
 of design.


8246.

Piece of Border, of silk and gold thread, pale purple ground, with
pattern of animals and flower (?) ornament. Sicilian (?). 10½ inches
by 1¼ inches.

 From age, the design of the pattern is so very indistinct that it
 becomes almost a puzzle to make it out.


8247.

Three Pieces of Silk, orange-red ground, with yellow pattern,
apparently composed in part of grotesque animals. Oriental, 13th
century. 6 inches by 4½ inches; 3 inches by 2½ inches; 4½
inches by 2 inches.

 This last piece shows signs of having been waxed, and probably is the
 fragment of a cere-cloth for the altar, to be placed immediately on
 the stone table, and under the linen cloths.


8248.

Piece of Tissue, woven of silk and linen; ground, Tyrian purple, with a
Romanesque pattern in white. Moresco-Spanish, 13th century.

 The design of this specimen is very effective; and, as the materials
 of this stuff are poor and somewhat coarse, we may perceive that, even
 upon things meant for ordinary use, the mediæval artisans bestowed
 much care in the arrangement and sketching of their patterns.


8249.

Piece of Silk; purple ground, and yellowish pattern in lozenge forms,
intersected by interlaced knots. Byzantine, end of the 12th century.
6½ inches by 5 inches.

 The knots in this piece are somewhat like those to be found upon
 Anglo-Saxon work, in stone, and in silver and other metals; and the
 lozenges powdered with Greek crosses, and stopped at each of the
 four corners of the lozenge by a three-petaled flower ornament--not,
 however, a fleur-de-lis,--make this piece of stuff remarkable.


8250.

Piece of Broad Border of Gold Tissue, portion of a vestment. Sicilian,
13th century. 6 inches by 5 inches.

 This was once part of the orphrey of some liturgical garment, and is
 figured with lions rampant combatant, and foliage in which a cross
 flory may be discovered.


8250A.

Piece of Silk; green ground, with a stripe diapered in silver.
Byzantine, end of 12th century. 4¾ inches by 2 inches.

 The design of the stripe not only shows the St. Andrew’s cross, or
 saltire, but, in its variety of combination, displays other forms of
 the cross, that make this stuff one of the kind known among Greek
 writers as “stauracinus” and “polystauria,” and spoken of as such by
 Anastasius Bibliothecarius in very many parts of his valuable work.


8251.

Portion of a Maniple, linen web with an interlaced diamond-shaped
diapering, in silk. 12th century. Byzantine. 1 foot 9 inches by 2¾
inches.

 This curious remnant of textiles, wrought on purpose for liturgical
 use, shows in places another combination of lines, or rather of
 a digamma, so as to form a sort of cross: and stuffs so diapered
 were called by Greek, and after them by Latin, Christian writers,
 “gammadia.” It was a pattern taken up by the Sicilian and South
 Italian looms, whence it spread so far north as England, where it may
 be found marked amid the ornaments designed upon church vestments
 figured in many graven brasses. From us it got the new name of
 “filfod” through the idea of “full foot,” which by some English
 mediæval writers was looked upon as an heraldic charge, and is now
 called “cramponnée.” During the 13th century, in this country,
 ribbon-like textiles, for the express purpose of making stoles
 and maniples to be worn at the altar, were extensively wrought,
 and constituted one of the articles of trade in London, for a
 distinguished citizen of hers, John de Garlandia, or Garland, tells
 us:--“De textis vero fiunt cingula, et crinalia divitum mulierum et
 stole(ae) sacerdotum.” These “priests’ stoles,” in all likelihood,
 were figured with the gammadion or filfod pattern; and, perhaps, many
 of them which are to be found in foreign sacristies to this day came
 from London.

 The piece before us is figured in Dr. Bock’s “Geschichte der
 Liturgischen Gewänder des Mittelalters,” 4 Lieferung, pt. iii. fig. 3.


8252.

Piece of Silk and Gold Tissue, lilac-purple with fleur-de-lis diapering
in gold. South Italian, end of 14th century. 5 inches by 4½ inches.

 This stuff seems to have been made expressly for French royalty,
 perhaps some member of the house of Anjou.


8253.

Piece of Dark Blue Silk, with pattern in yellow, consisting of centre
ornaments surrounded by four crowned birds like parrots. South Italian,
14th century. 9 inches by 7 inches.


8254.

Piece of Silk Net, embroidered with crosslets and triangular ornaments
charged with chevrons in lilac and green. North Italian, 14th century.
7 inches by 5 inches.

 This is a good specimen of a kind of cobweb weaving, or “opus
 araneum,” for which Lombardy, especially its capital, Milan, earned
 such a reputation at one time.


8255.

Piece of Silk, crimson ground, with pattern in violet and green,
consisting partly of wyverns. Sicilian, end of 13th century. 10 inches
by 5 inches.

 Another good specimen of the Sicilian loom, and very likely one of
 those “cendals” for which Palermo was once so famous.


8256.

Piece of Silk, pink-buff colour, with pattern, in green, of vine-leaves
and grapes. South Italian, middle of 14th century. 8 inches by 5½
inches.

 The design of this silk is remarkably elegant, and exemplifies the
 ability of the weaver-draughtsmen of those times.


8257.

Piece of Crimson Silk, damasked with a pattern in which occur leopards
and eagles pouncing upon antelopes. Sicilian, end of 13th century.

 The design of this piece of what must have been such a beautiful stuff
 is very skilfully imagined, and the whole carried out in a spirited
 manner. The leopards are collared, and from the presence of, as well
 as mode of action in, the eagles stooping on their prey, a thought may
 cross the mind that some political or partisan meaning is hidden under
 these heraldic animals.


8258.

Piece of Silk; ground, lilac-purple; pattern, in bright yellow,
composed of stags, parrots, and peacocks, amid foliage. Italian, 14th
century. 10 inches by 4½ inches.

 A pretty design, in cheerful colours, and a pleasing example probably
 of the Lucca loom towards the close of the 14th century.


8259.

Piece of Tissue, with hemp warp and silk woof; ground, dark blue;
pattern, yellowish, representing a tree imparked, with eagles, and
leopards having tails noued or tied in a knot. Italian, early 15th
century. 1 foot 7 inches by 1 foot.

 Though somewhat elaborate, the design of this piece is rather heavy.


8260.

Piece of Silk and Gold Tissue, lilac-purple ground, with a green
pattern, showing eagles statant regardant, with wings displayed.
Sicilian, 14th century. 7 inches by 4¾ inches.

 The design is very good.


8260A.

Piece of Silk, lilac-purple ground with green pattern, and gold woven
border, exhibiting an antelope courant regardant. Sicilian, early 14th
century. 6½ inches by 3½ inches.

 Good in design.


8260B, C.

Two Pieces of Silk, green ground and lilac-purple pattern, with dragons
and cranes. Sicilian, early 14th century. 4½ inches by 4 inches; and
4½ inches by 2½ inches.

 A pleasing design.


8261.

Portion of an Orphrey embroidered in silk and gold, with figures of two
Apostles beneath crocketed canopies. German, early 14th century.


8262.

Piece of Silk, rose-coloured ground, with pattern of eagles rising from
trees, both green, and wild beasts spotted (perhaps leopards) in gold,
and lodged in a park, paled green. South Italian, 14th century. 2 feet
by 10½ inches.


8263.

Piece of Silk, rose-coloured ground, pattern in green and gold, of two
female demi-figures addorsed, gathering date-fruit with one hand, with
the other patting a dog rampant and collared with bells, and other two
female demi-figures holding, with one hand, a frond of the palm-tree
out of which they are issuing, and with the other hand clutching the
manes of lions rampant regardant and tails noued. Sicilian, 14th
century. 1 foot 9 inches by 1 foot 2 inches.

 This valuable and important piece displays an intricate yet
 well-managed and tastefully arranged pattern. One must be struck with
 the peculiar style of assortment of pink and green in its colours, the
 somewhat sameness in the subjects, and the artistic and heraldic way
 in which these silks (very likely wrought at Palermo) are woven. Dr.
 Bock has given a fine large plate of this stuff in his “Dessinateur
 pour Etoffes,” &c. Paris, Morel.


8264.

Piece of Silk and Gold Tissue; the ground black, with pattern, in gold,
of a rayed star, with eagles statant and swans naiant (swimming) upon
water on a foliated scroll. Sicilian, early 14th century. 1 foot 2
inches by 1 foot 1½ inches.

[Illustration: 8264

SILK AND GOLD TISSUE,

Sicilian, 14th century.

  Vincent Brooks Day & Son, Lith.

]

 The design of this piece is as easy and flowing as it is bold; and the
 specimen affords us a very choice example of fine manufacture.


8265.

Piece of Linen and Silk Textile; the ground, dark blue; the pattern,
yellow, consisting of arcades beneath which are rows of parrots and
hawks alternately, both gardant, and perched upon a vine; the initial M
surmounted by a crown or fleur-de-lis in gold thread is inserted in the
alternate range of arches. Southern Spanish, late 14th century. 1 foot
6 inches by 10 inches.

[Illustration: 8265

LINEN AND SILK TEXTILE,

Spanish, 14th century.

  Vincent Brooks Day & Son, Lith.]

 As a specimen of the Andalusian loom, and wrought by Christian hands,
 perhaps at Granada, while that part of Spain was under Moorish rule,
 this piece has a peculiar interest about it.


8266.

Maniple, embroidered in silk, inscribed in Gothic letters with “Gratia
+ plena + Dom ...” German, end of 14th century. 3 feet 10 inches by 2
inches.


8267.

Piece of Tissue, of cotton warp, of silk and gold woof, with pattern
of birds and stags amid foliated ornamentation. Spanish, 14th century.



8268.

Piece of Silk and Gold Tissue; the ground, lilac-purple; the pattern in
gold, symmetrically arranged and partly composed of birds, upon which
hounds are springing. Sicilian, 14th century. 2 feet 3½ inches by 11
inches.

A very effective and well-executed design.


8269.

Piece of Silk; ground, blue, diapered in yellow with mullets of eight
points and eight-petaled flowers, within lozenges. Sicilian, early 15th
century. 6 inches by 4¼ inches.


8269A.

Piece of Silk and Cotton Border; ground, crimson, now much faded;
pattern, a diaper of the fleur-de-lis within a lozenge, both yellow;
the stuff which it edged has a deep blue ground powdered with
fleurs-de-lis, and eight-petaled flowers within lozenges, both yellow.
South Italian, late 13th century. 4 inches by 2½ inches.

 Though from its pattern we may assume that this stuff was made for
 the requirement of the Sicilian Anjou family or one of its adherents,
 the poorness of its materials forbids us from thinking it could have
 served for any other than common use.


8270.

Piece of Silk and Gold Tissue; pattern, consisting of diaper and leaves
interspersed with small circles, within each of which is a conventional
flower expanded. South Italian, 14th century. 11 inches by 10 inches.


8271.

Piece of Silk, with portions of the pattern in gold; ground, green,
on which are parrots (?) and little dogs, amid a sprinkling of
quatrefoils. Sicilian, beginning of 14th century. 10½ inches by 4
inches.


8272.

Piece of Silk and Gold Tissue; ground, green; the pattern in gold seems
to have been divided by bars, and consists of an interlaced knot, on
which rest birds. Southern Spanish, early 14th century. 8½ inches by
4¼ inches.

 The knots in this piece are somewhat like our own Bouchier one; but
 the four ends of the English badge are not shown in this Andalusian
 ornament, perhaps meant to be really an heraldic charge peculiar to
 Spanish blazon.


8273.

Piece of Silk; ground, lilac-purple; pattern, yellow, diapered with
crescents, within the horns of which are two very small wyverns
addorsed. Sicilian, late 13th century. 7½ inches by 4½ inches.

 The design is so indistinct that it requires time to unpuzzle it.


8274.

Portion of an Orphrey, embroidered on parchment with glass, coral,
gold beads, and seed pearls, having also small bosses and ornaments in
silver-gilt. The ground is dark blue, on which is figured the B. V.
Mary nimbed and crowned within an oblong aureole terminated by scrolls
ending in trefoils and cinquefoils. Venetian, late 12th century.

 That this curious and elaborate piece of bead embroidery must have
 been part of an orphrey for a chasuble, and not a maniple, is evident
 from the pointed shape in which it ends. From its style, and the
 quantity of very small beads and bugles which we see upon it, it
 would seem to have been wrought either at Venice itself, in some of
 its mainland dependencies, or in Lower Styria. Then, as now, the
 Venetian island of Murano wrought and carried on a large trade in
 beads of all kinds; and the silversmith’s craft was in high repute
 at Venice. Finding, then, this remnant of a liturgical vestment so
 plentifully adorned with beads, bugles, and coral, besides being so
 dotted with little specks of gold, and sprinkled with so many small
 but nicely worked silver-gilt stars, we are warranted in taking this
 embroidery to have been wrought somewhere in North East Italy or
 South West Germany, upon the borders of the Adriatic. Those fond of
 ecclesiastical symbolism will look upon this old piece of needlework
 with no small interest, and observe that it was by intention that
 the ground was blue. It is figured in Dr. Bock’s “Geschichte der
 Liturgischen Gewänder Mittelalters,” 1 Band, 2 Lieferung, pt. x. s.
 275.


8275.

Piece of Linen Tissue, with pattern woven in gold; the design consists
of bands curving to a somewhat lozenge form and inclosing an ornament
composed of intersecting circles with a three-pointed or petaled kind
of conventional flower (not a fleur-de-lis) radiating from the centre.
Sicilian, 14th century. 5 inches by 4½ inches.


8276.

Piece of Silk; ground, pinkish purple; pattern in dark blue, or rather
green, divided by four-sided compartments and formed of conventional
flowers and salamanders, the borders of a running design. Sicilian,
14th century. 10½ inches by 6 inches.

 Most likely woven at Palermo, but no good sample of dyeing, as the
 colours have evidently changed; what is now a pinkish purple hue was
 of a light cheerful crimson tone, and the dark blue pattern must have
 originally been a warm green.


8277.

Piece of Crimson Silk and Gold Tissue; the pattern, in gold, of
conventional ornaments and circles containing birds and animals; the
border consists of a repetition of a wyvern, an eagle displayed, and an
elephant and castle. Italian, early 14th century. 11 inches by 4 inches.

 This fine costly specimen of old silken stuff cannot fail in drawing
 to itself a particular attention from the heedful observer, by its
 gracefully elaborate design, so well carried out and done in such rich
 materials, but more especially by the symbols figured on it.

 Though now unable to read or understand the meaning of all those
 emblematic hints so indistinctly uttered in its curious border, made
 up, as it is, of a wyvern, a stork embowed and statant on an elephant
 and castle, and a displayed eagle, we hopefully think that, at no
 far-off day, the key to it all will be found; then, perhaps, the piece
 before us, and many other such textiles in this very collection, may
 turn out to be no little help to some future writer while unravelling
 several entanglements in mediæval history.

 Not for a single moment can we admit that through these heraldic
 beasts and birds the slightest reference was intended to be made to
 the four elements; heaven or the air, earth or its productions, fire
 and water, were quite otherwise symbolized by artists during the
 middle ages, as we may see in the nielli on a super-altar described
 and figured in the “Church of Our Fathers,” t. i. p. 257.


8278.

A SINDON or kind of Frontal, of Crimson Silk, on a linen or canvas
lining, embroidered in silk and silver thread, with a large figure of
our Lord dead, two standing angels, and, at each of its four corners,
a half-length figure of an evangelist; the whole enclosed in a border
inscribed with Sclavonic characters. Ruthenic work, middle of 17th
century. 4 feet 6½ inches by 2 feet 10 inches.

 In the centre of this curious ecclesiastical embroidery (for spreading
 outside the chancel, at the end of Holy Week, among the Greek,) our
 dead Lord, with the usual inscription, IC, XC, over Him, is figured
 lying full length, stretched out, as it were, upon a slab of stone
 which a sheet overspreads. His arms are at His sides as far as the
 elbows, where they bend so that His hands may be folded downward
 cross-wise upon His stomach, from which, to His knees, His loins are
 wrapped in a very full-folded cloth done in silver thread, but now
 nearly black from age. His skin is quite white, His hair and beard
 of a light brown colour, and His right side, His hands and feet are
 marked each with a blood-red wound; and the embroidery of His person
 is so managed as to display, in somewhat high relief, the hollows and
 elevations of the body’s surface; all around and beneath His head
 goes a nimbus marked inside with a cross very slightly pattee, the
 whole nicely diapered and once bright silver, but now quite black. Two
 nimbed angels, beardless and, in look, quite youthful, are standing,
 one at His head, the other at His feet, each, like the other, vested,
 as is the deacon at the present day, for mass, according to the Greek
 and Oriental rites; they wear the “chitonion” or alb, over that the
 “stoicharion” or dalmatic, and from the right--though it should have
 been from the left--shoulder falls the “orarion” or stole, upon which
 the Greek word “agios,” or holy, is repeated, just as a Greek deacon
 is shown in “Hierurgia,” p. 345; in his right hand each holds extended
 over our Lord, exactly as Greek deacons now do, at the altar, after
 the consecration of the Holy Eucharist, a long wand, at the end of
 which is a large round six-petaled flower-like ornament, having within
 it a cherub’s six-winged face; this is the holy fan, concerning which
 see the “Church of our Fathers,” iv. 197; and each has his left hand
 so raised up under his chin as to seemingly afford a rest for it. At
 each of the four corners of the frontal is the bust of an evangelist
 with a nimb about his head; in the upper left, “Agios o Theologos,”
 for so the Greeks still call St. John the Evangelist: in the lower
 left, St. Luke; in the upper right, St. Matthew; in the lower right,
 St. Mark; each is bearded, and the hair, whether on the head or chin,
 is shown in blue and white as of an aged man. While the heads and
 faces of all four evangelists are red, with the features distinguished
 by white lines, the angels have white faces and their hair is deep red
 with strokes in white to indicate the curly wavings of their locks.
 There are two crosses, rather pattee, done in silver thread, measuring
 2½ inches, one above, the other below our Lord, in the middle of
 the ground, which is crimson, and wrought all over with gracefully
 twined flower-bearing branches; and each evangelist is shut in by
 a quarter-circle border charmingly worked with a wreath of leaves
 quite characteristic of our 13th century work. All the draperies,
 inscriptions, and ornamentation, now looking so black, were originally
 wrought in silver thread that is thus tarnished by age.

 Among the liturgical rarities in this extensive and precious
 collection of needlework, not the least is the present Russo-Greek
 “sindon,” or ritual winding-sheet, used in a portion of the Eastern
 Church service on the Great Friday and Great Saturday, as the
 Orientals call our Good Friday and Holy Saturday.

 The colour itself--purplish crimson--of the silk ground upon which our
 Lord’s dead body lies, as it were, outstretched upon the winding-sheet
 in the grave, is not without a symbolic meaning, for amongst the
 Greeks, up to a late period, of such a tint were invariably the
 garments and the stuffs employed on every occasion any wise connected
 with the dead, though now, like the Latins, the Muscovites at least
 use black for all such functions.

 All around the four borders of this sindon are wrought in golden
 thread, now much tarnished, sentences of Greek, but written, as the
 practice is among the Sclaves, in the Cyrillian character, thus named
 from St. Cyrill, the monk, who invented that alphabet a thousand years
 ago, as one of the helps for himself and his brother St. Methodius,
 in teaching Christianity to the many tribes of the widely-spread
 Sclavonian people, as we noticed in our Introduction, § 5.

 Beginning at the right-hand side, from that portion of the silk being
 somewhat torn, the words are not quite whole, but those that can
 be read, say thus:--“Pray for the servant of God, Nicolaus....and
 his children. Amen;” here, no doubt, we have the donor’s name, and
 the exact time itself of this pious gift was put down, but owing to
 the stuff being, at this place too, worn away, the date is somewhat
 obliterated, but seems to be the year 1645.

 All the other sentences are borrowed from the Greek ritual-book known
 as the Ὡρολόγιον or Horologium, in the service for the afternoon
 on Good Friday and Holy Saturday. Along the lower border runs this
 “troparion,” or versicle:-- Ὁ εὐσχήμων Ἰωσὴφ ἀπὸ τοῦ ξύλου καθελὼν
 τὸ ἄχραντόν σου Σῶμα, σινδόνι καθαρᾷ εἰλήσας καί ἀρώμασιν ἐν μνήματι
 καινῷ κηδεύσας ἀπεθέτο. “The comely Joseph (of Arimathea) having taken
 down from the wood (of the cross) the spotless body of Thee (O Jesus),
 and having wrapped it up in a clean winding-sheet together with
 aromatics, taking upon himself to afford it a becoming burial, laid
 it in a new grave.” Upon the left hand side comes this versicle:--
 Ταῖς μυρόφοροις γυναιξὶ παρὰ τὸ μνῆμα ἐπιστάς, ὁ Ἄγγελος ἐβόα: Τὰ
 μύρα τοῖς θνητοῖς ὑπάρχει ἁρμόδια, Χριστὸς δὲ διαφθορᾶς ἐδείχθη
 ἀλλότριος--Τροπάρια τοῦ Τριαδίου. Τῷ ἁγίῳ καὶ μεγάλῳ Σαββάτῳ. “Seeing
 at the grave the women who were carrying perfumes, the Angel cried
 out, ‘The ointments fitting (to be used in the burial) for mortal
 beings are lying here, but Christ, having undergone death, has shown
 Himself (again) after another form.’”

 According to the rite followed by the Russians and Greeks, on the
 afternoon of Good Friday, as well as that of Holy Saturday, a sindon
 or liturgical winding-sheet, figured just like the one before us,
 is brought into the middle of the church, and placed outside the
 sanctuary, so that it may be easily venerated by all the people in
 turn. First come the clergy, making, as they slowly advance, many
 low and solemn bows, and bendings of the whole person. Reaching the
 sindon, each one kisses with great devotion the forehead of our Lord,
 and the place of the wounds in His side, His hands, and feet. Then
 follow the congregation, every one approaching in the same reverential
 manner, and going through the same ceremonial like the clergy; all
 this while are being sung, along with other versicles, the ones
 embroidered round this piece of needlework. But this is not all, at
 least in some provinces where the Greek ritual obtains. As soon as it
 is dark on Good Friday evening, upon a funeral bier is laid the figure
 of our Lord, either wrought in low relief, painted on wood or canvas,
 or shown in needlework like this sindon. Lifted up and borne forwards,
 it is surrounded by a crowd carrying lights. Then follow the priests
 vested in chasubles and the rest of the garments proper for mass;
 after them walk the lower clergy, and the lay-folks of the place come
 last. Then the procession goes all through and about the streets of
 the town, singing the cxviiith Psalm, the “Beati immaculati in via,”
 &c. of the Vulgate, or cxixth of the authorized version, between each
 verse of which is chanted a versicle from the Horologium. Everywhere
 the populace bow down as the bier comes by, and many times it halts
 that they may kiss the figure of our dead Saviour, whose image is
 overspread by the flowers sprinkled upon it as it is carried past, and
 afterwards these same flowers are eagerly sought for by the crowd, who
 set much store by them as the bringers of health to their bodies and
 a blessing on their homesteads all the after year. Now it should be
 observed that, even in the present piece, what is the real sindon or
 white linen winding-sheet shown open and spread out quite flat
 beneath our Lord’s body, is put upon a mourning pall of red silk,
 which is worked all over with flowers, doubtless in allusion to this
 very custom of showering down upon it flowers as it is carried by.

Very like, in part, to the Greek ceremony, is the Latin rite still
followed on Good Friday of kissing the crucifix as it lies upon a
cushion on the steps going up to the altar, and known of old in England
as creeping to the cross, the ritual for which among the Anglo-Saxons,
as well as later, according to the use of Salisbury, may be seen in the
“Church of Our Fathers,” t. iv. pp. 88, 241. Those who have travelled
in the East, or in countries where the Greek rite is followed, may have
observed that, almost always, the cupola of the larger churches is
painted with the celebration of the Divine Liturgy; and among the crowd
of personages therein shown are usually six angels reverently bearing
one of these so-figured sindons, as was noticed in the Introduction, §
5.


8279.

Portion of an Orphrey for a Chasuble; border woven in silk, with a
various-coloured diapering. German, late 14th century. 3 feet.

 Such textiles (for they are not embroideries) as these were evidently
 wrought to serve as the orphreys for liturgical garments of a less
 costly character, and made, as this example is, out of thread as well
 as silk, fashioned after a simple type of pattern.


8279A.

Linen Napkin, for a Crozier; of very fine linen, and various
embroideries. German, late 14th century. 2 feet 10 inches by 6 feet.

 Such napkins are very great liturgical curiosities, as the present
 one, and another in this collection, are the only specimens known in
 this country; and perhaps such another could not be found on any part
 of the Continent, the employment of them having been for a very long
 time everywhere left off. Its top, like a high circular-headed cap,
 4¾ inches by 4 inches, is marked with a diapering, on one side
 _lozengy_, on the other _checky_, ground crimson, and filled in with
 the gammadion or filfot in one form or another. On the lozenges this
 gammadion is parti-coloured, green, yellow, white, purple; in the
 checks, all green, yellow, white, and purple. Curiously enough, the
 piece of vellum used as a stiffening for this cap is a piece of an
 old manuscript about some loan, and bears the date of the year 1256.
 The slit up the middle of the linen, 11 inches long, is bordered on
 both edges with a linen woven lace, 1½ inches broad, embroidered
 on one side of the slit with L, one of the forms of the gammadion;
 on the other with the saltire, or St. Andrew’s cross; the gammadion
 and saltire are wrought in purple, green, crimson (faded), or yellow,
 each of one colour, and not mixed, as in one part of the cap. These
 two edgings brought together, and thus running up for the space of 6
 inches, are stopped by a piece of woven silk lace, 3¼ inches by 2
 inches, and figured with the filfot or gammadion. The linen is very
 fine, and of that kind which, in the middle ages, was called “bissus;”
 tent-like in shape, and closed, it hung in full folds. Its gold and
 silken cords, of various colours, as well as those large well-platted
 knobs of silk and gold by which it was strung to the upper part of
 the crozier, are all quite perfect; and an account of this ornament
 is given in the “Church of Our Fathers,” t. ii. p. 210. Dr. Bock has
 given a figure of the present one in his “Geschichte der Liturgischen
 Gewänder des Mittelalters,” 4 Lieferung, pl. xiv. fig. i; and another
 specimen will be found here, No. 8662.


8280.

Piece of Net, of coarse linen thread, with an interlaced lozenge
pattern, and a border. Very likely German, 16th century. 3 feet 10
inches by 3 feet 8 inches.

 Those who amuse themselves by netting will find in this specimen a
 good example to follow, both in design and accurate execution. It must
 have been wrought for domestic, and not for Church use.


8281.

Portion of an Orphrey, in red and purple silk, figured in gold, with a
fleur-de-lis, inscriptions, and armorial bearings. German, late 15th
century. 12¾ inches by 2¾ inches.

 This piece is woven throughout, and the letters, as well as the
 heraldry, are the work, not of the needle, but of the shuttle. On a
 field _gules_ is shown a fleur-de-lis _argent_, which device, not
 being upon a shield, may have been meant for a badge. On a field _or_
 is a cross _purpure_, and over it, another cross of the field. Though
 the words given may possibly be intended to read “Pete allia (alia),”
 there are difficulties in so taking them. It is imagined that these
 heraldic bearings refer to the archiepiscopal sees and chapters of
 Cologne and Treves.


8282.

Piece of Silken and Linen Texture. Upon a yellow thread ground are
figured, in green silk, trees, from the lower right side of which darts
down a pencil of sunbeams, and just over these rays stand birds like
cockatoos or hoopoes, and six-petaled flowers and eagles stooping, both
once in gold, now dimmed; the flowers and eagles well raised above the
rest of the design. Made in North Italy, during the middle of the 14th
century.

 When bright and fresh, this stuff must have been very effective; and
 a play of light could not fail in well showing off its golden eagles
 and flowers, that are made to stand out somewhat boldly amid the green
 foliage of the trees.


8283.

Piece of Lilac-purple Silk, with a delicate diapering of vine-branches
and birds. Italian, late 14th century.

 Though everything is small in the design of this piece, it is
 remarkably pleasing. The way in which the boughs are twined is quite
 graceful, and the foliage very good.


8284.

Piece of Light Crimson Silk and Gold Tissue. This small bit of a large
pattern shows a crested bird plucking a bell-shaped flower. Italian,
early 15th century.

 Unfortunately this scrap is so small as not to exhibit enough of the
 original design to let us know what it was; but, to judge by the ends
 of some wings, we have before us sufficient to see that, when entire,
 it must have consisted of large birds, and have been bold and telling.


8285.

Piece of Light Crimson Silk and Gold Tissue; the pattern is a
diapering, all in gold, formed of a tree with a lioness sejant
regardant beneath it, and a bird alighting on a flower, the centre of
which is spotted with stamens of blue silk. North Italian, beginning of
the 15th century.

 This specimen is valuable both for its rich materials and the
 effective way in which the design is brought out.


8286.

Piece of Dark Purple Silk and Silver Tissue, relieved with crimson
thrown up in very small portions. The pattern is a bold diapering of
grotesque animals and birds, together with inscriptions affecting to be
in Arabic. Very likely from the South of Spain, at the beginning of the
15th century. 24 inches by 19 inches.

 Alike conspicuous for the richness of materials, as for the exuberance
 in its design, this specimen deserves particular attention. Spotted
 leopards and shaggy-haired dogs, all collared, and separated by
 bundles of wheat-ears; birds of prey looking from out the foliage,
 hoopoes pecking at a human face, dragon-like snakes gracefully
 convoluted amid a Moorish kind of ornamentation, and imitated Arabic
 letters strung together without a meaning, show that the hand of the
 Christian workman was guided somewhat by Saracenic teachings, or
 wrought under the set purpose of passing off his work as of Oriental
 produce. But in this, as in so many other examples, a strong liking
 for heraldry is displayed by those pairs of wings conjoined and
 elevated, in the one instance eagle’s, in the other wyvern’s.


8287.

Piece of Silk and Gold Tissue, on a red ground; a design in green,
relieved by bands of scroll-pattern, with an eagle’s head and neck in
gold and flowers in white and dark purple. Sicilian, 15th century.
12¼ inches by 12 inches.

 When new this tissue must have been very showy, but now the whole of
 its pattern is somewhat difficult to trace out. The way in which the
 large eagle’s head and neck are given, resting upon a broad-scrolled
 bar, is rather singular; so, too, is the listing or border, on one
 side charged with a small but rich ornamentation, amid which may be
 detected some eaglets.


8288.

Piece of Silk and Gold Tissue, the ground of which is gold banded with
patterns in blue, red, and green, divided by narrowed stripes of black;
on one golden band is an Arabic word repeated all through the design.
Syrian. 16½ inches by 16 inches.

 The value of this fine rich specimen will be instantly appreciated
 when it is borne in mind that it is one of the few known examples of
 real Saracenic weaving which we have.

 Its ornamentation has about it, in the checkered and circular portions
 of its design, much of that feeling which shows itself in Saracenic
 architecture; and those who remember the court of lions, in the
 Alhambra at Granada, will not be surprised at seeing animals figured
 upon this piece of stuff so freely.

 The broad bands are separated by very narrow black ones, on which are
 shown, in gold, short lengths of thick foliage like strawberry-leaves,
 and an animal, which, from the tuft of hair on its ears, seems a lynx,
 chased by the hunting-leopard, of which our celebrated travelling
 countryman, Sir John Mandeville, in his “Voiage,” written in the reign
 of Edward III, speaks thus: “In Cipre men hunten with Papyonns that
 ben lyche Lepardes, and thei taken wylde bestes righte welle and thei
 ben somedelle more than Lyonns; and thei taken more scharpely the
 bestes and more delyverly than don houndes.” Ed. Halliwell, p. 29.
 This sort of leopard, the claws of which are not, like the rest of its
 kind, retractile, is, to this day, employed in Asia, more especially
 in the East Indies, like dogs for hunting, and known by the name of
 “Cheetah.”

 Each of these lengths is studded with those knots, found so often upon
 eastern wares of all sorts, and formed by narrow ribbons interlacing
 one another at right angles so as to produce squares or checks; these
 knots are alternately large--of three rows of checks, and small--of
 two rows. Upon one of the large bands, gold in its ground, is, all
 along it, woven a sentence in Arabic letters in dusky white, of which
 tint is the circular ornament which everywhere stands between this
 writing; very likely these characters, as well as the dividing flower,
 were once of a crimson colour, which is now faded. The inscribed
 sentence itself being figured without the distinctive points, may be
 understood various ways. That it is some well-known Oriental saying or
 proverb is very likely, and, to hazard a guess, reads thus: “Injury,
 hurt, reception,”--meaning, perhaps, that the individual who has done
 you, behind your back, all the harm he can, may, when next he meets
 you, utter the greetings and put on all the looks of friendship. Such
 was its meaning, as read by the late lamented Oriental scholar, Dr.
 Cureton.

 Upon the next broad band, on a ground once crimson, are figured, in
 gold, the before-mentioned “papyonns,” or hunting-leopards, collared
 and in a sitting position under foliage, swans swimming, and an animal
 of the gazelle or antelope genus, heraldically lodged regardant, with
 a flower-bearing stem in its mouth, and another animal not easily
 identified. The remaining two broad bands, one blue, the other green,
 are figured, in gold, with squares filled up by checks of an Oriental
 character, alternating with quatrefoils sprouting all over into
 flowers.


8289.

Piece of Silk and Gold Tissue; the ground, lilac; the pattern, green
and white, of flowers, beneath which couch two animals, and under them
stand two eagles. Italian or Sicilian, late 14th century. 15½ inches
by 15¼ inches.

 One of those well-balanced designs thrown off so freely by the looms
 of Italy and Sicily during the whole of the 14th century. What those
 two animals collared, couchant and addorsed regardant, may be meant
 for it is hard to imagine. Rays, like those from the sun, dart down
 beneath these dog-like creatures, and looking upward to those beams
 stand two eagles. Some of the flowers and the two animals are wrought
 in gold.


8290.

Piece of Silk; ground, dark blue; pattern, yellow, in zigzag arabesque.
Moorish work of the South of Spain, 14th century. 12½ inches by
8½ inches.

 Though of such simple elements in its design, this Moresco stuff is
 not unpleasing.


8291, 8291A.

Two Pieces of Silk and Gold Tissue, having a pattern in bands diapered
with arabesques, birds, and animals. Syrian, 14th century. 5 inches by
4 inches, and 5 inches by 3½ inches.

 Although but mere rags, these two specimens are interesting. They
 tell, of their country and time, by the management of their design,
 and have a near relationship to the specimen No. 8288.


8292.

Piece of Silk; ground, red with pattern, in violet, of vine-leaves,
conventional foliage, and animals. Sicilian, early 14th century. 12½
inches by 6 inches.

 This very pretty produce of the Italian loom, like No. 8283, commends
 itself to our admiration by the graceful manner in which the design
 is carried out. Though small in its parts, the pattern is attractive.
 Those stags, tripping and showing heads well attired, are not
 uncommon, about the period, upon stuffs, but those wild boars--like
 the deer, in pairs--segeant face to face, are somewhat new.


8293.

Piece of Linen embroidered in red silk, with an open diaper of
crosslets leaving circular and lozenge spaces, the former now empty,
the latter ornamented with cross-crosslets in yellow, purple, and green
silk. Late 14th century. 15 inches by 12½ inches.

 In all likelihood the round spaces were filled in with heraldic
 animals, and the piece served as the apparel to an alb, resembling the
 one shown on the fine Wensley brass, figured by the brothers Waller,
 and also given in the “Church of our Fathers,” t. i. p. 325.


8294.

Piece of Silk and Gold Tissue, the ground red with a pattern in green
and white, forming a large lozenge, enclosing, in one instance, a bunch
of foliage and two eagles, in the other, a bough and two dogs. South
Italian, late 14th century. 21½ inches by 11½ inches.

 In this rich pattern there are certain portions that, at first sight,
 might be taken for attempts to represent Oriental letters; they
 are, however, no forms of any alphabet, and, least of all, bear any
 likeness to the Cufic.


8295.

Piece of Silk and Cotton Tissue; ground, deep red mixed with green,
blue, white, and gold; the pattern consists of loosely branched stems
with large flower-heads, and monsters alternately blue and gold,
bearing in their hands a white flower. Italian, late 14th century.
27½ inches by 9½ inches.

 The so-called sphinxes in this piece are those monster figures often
 found in art-work during the middle ages, and are formed of a female
 head and waist joined on to the body of a lioness passant cowed, that
 is, with its tail hanging down between its legs. In this specimen may
 be detected an early form of the artichoke pattern, which afterwards
 became such a favourite.


8296.

Piece of Silk; ground, dark red; pattern, a yellow diapering of
somewhat four-sided figures enclosing an ornament of a double ellipsis.
South Spanish, 15th century. 10¾ inches by 7 inches.


8297.

Piece of Crimson Silk; pattern, in green, of open arabesque spread
in wide divisions. Southern Spain, late 14th century. 18 inches by 7
inches.

 The design of this valuable piece is very good, and must have had a
 pleasing effect. From the way in which the cross is introduced by
 combinations of the ornamentation and slight attempts at showing the
 letter M for Maria--the Blessed Virgin Mary, it would seem that it was
 the work of a Christian hand well practised in the Saracenic style of
 pattern-drawing.


8298.

Piece of Silk; ground, crimson; pattern, a yellow diapering of a rather
peculiar form. Spanish, late 14th century. 18 inches by 12 inches.

 Rich in its tones, this specimen may have been designed under the
 influence of Moorish teachings; it is, however, very agreeable.


8299.

Piece of Silk Tissue; the pattern, a large raised diaper, which
consists of a centre, in red silk, representing the web of the
geometric spider, with the insect resting in the middle, enclosed
within the branches of a conventional tree, in silver thread. Italian,
early 15th century. 12 inches by 6 inches.

 Though the silk ground of this elegant stuff must have been once of a
 bright crimson tinge, almost the whole of the colour has flown; and
 the silver thread, of which the beautifully arranged tree is formed,
 has become so tarnished as to look as if it had been from first a
 dull olive-green. Such events give a warning to manufacturers about
 the quality of their dyes, and the purity as well as sort of the
 metals they may choose to employ. The manner in which the tree and
 its graceful branches are made to stand well out and above the red
 grounding is remarkably good; and, altogether, the pattern, composed
 as it is of a spider in its web, hanging so nicely between the
 outspread limbs of the tree, is as singular as it is pleasing. Of old,
 a Lombard family bore, as its blazon, a spider in its web.


8300.

Piece of very rich Crimson Silk and gold Tissue; the large pattern
represents a palm-tree rising from a close palisade, within which is a
lion seated; from one side shoots a slender branch, to which clings a
bird. Italian, late 14th century. 31 inches by 14 inches.

 A fine bold pattern, but the gold so tarnished that it looks as if
 the threads had always been brown. The down-bent eagles, and the
 shaggy-maned lion couchant regardant at the foot of a palm-tree in a
 park palisaded, make this heraldic design very pleasing.


8301.

Portion of Linen; border, probably of an altar-cloth, stamped in red
and yellow with a geometric pattern composed of circles and leaves.
Flemish, 15th century.

 The design and colouring of this old piece of printed cloth are so
 very like those employed upon the glazed paving tiles of the mediæval
 period, that the idea of the potter’s work immediately suggests
 itself; though of such poor material, it is a valuable link in the
 history of textiles.


8302.

Piece of Purple Silk and Gold Tissue; the pattern is formed of angels
holding a monstrance, beneath which is a six-winged cherub’s head.
Florentine, 14th century. 18 inches by 16 inches.

 This is one of the most elaborate and remarkable specimens of
 the mediæval weavers’ works, and shows how well, even with their
 appliances, they could gear their looms. The faces of the six-winged
 cherubic heads, as well as the hands and faces of the seraphim,
 vested in long albs, were originally shaded by needlework, most of
 which is now gone. The Umbrian school of design to be seen in the
 gracefully floating forms of the angels, is very discernible. This
 rich stuff must have been purposely designed and woven for especial
 liturgical use at the great Festival of Corpus Christi, and its solemn
 processions. It may have been employed for hanging the chancel walls,
 or for altar-curtains; but most likely it overspread the long wooden
 frame-work or portable table upon which stood, and was thus carried
 all about the town by two or four deacons, the Blessed Sacrament
 enclosed in a tall heavy gold or silver vessel like the one shown in
 this textile, and called a “monstrance,” because, instead of shutting
 up from public gaze, it displayed the consecrated host as it was
 borne about among the people. Dr. Bock has figured this stuff in his
 “Geschichte der Liturgischen Gewänder des Mittelalters.”


8303.

Piece of Linen; pattern, stamped in black with a central stem of
conventional branches and flowers, at either side of which are hawks
crested, regardant; at one side is a running border of detached
portions of scroll-foliage. Flemish, very late 14th century. 13 inches
by 6¾ inches.

 Any specimen of such printed linen has now become somewhat a rarity,
 though there are other pieces here, Nos. 7022, 8615.

8304.

Linen Towel, for use at the altar, with deep border embroidered in
various coloured silk, with a geometrical pattern interspersed with
small figures of birds. Beginning of 15th century. 3 feet by 1 foot 1
inch.


8305.

A Diaconal Stole, embroidered in linen thread and various-coloured
silk, with a pattern somewhat like the “gammadion” ornaments, the ends
of gold tissue, fringed with silk and linen. German, 14th century. 8
feet 8 inches by 2¾ inches.

 For the distinction of the priest’s and the deacon’s stole, and the
 manner in which either wears it in the celebration of the liturgy, see
 Hierurgia, p. 434, 2nd edition.


8306.

Piece of Dark brown raised Velvet and Gold Tissue; portion of the robe
in which the Emperor Charles IV. was buried at Prague, as it is said.
Italian, 14th century. 7 inches by 6½ inches.


8307.

Linen Amice, with its “apparel” of crimson silk, to which are sewed
small ornaments in silver and silver-gilt. German, 15th century. 4 feet
2 inches by 1 foot 11 inches.

 The example of linen in this amice will, for the student of mediæval
 antiquities and manufactures, be of great service, showing, as it
 does, what we are to understand was the kind of stuff meant by canvas
 in old accounts which speak of that material so often as bought
 for making albs, surplices, and other linen garments used in the
 ceremonial of the Church. The crimson ornament of silk sprinkled with
 large spangle-like plates of silver gilt, and struck with a variety of
 patterns, is another of various instances to show how the goldsmith’s
 craft in the middle ages was brought into play for ornaments upon silk
 and other textiles; and the liturgical student will be glad to see in
 this specimen an instance, now so very rare, of an old amice, with its
 strings, but more especially its apparel, in its place; about which
 see “Church of our Fathers,” t. i. 463.


8308.

Piece of Embroidery in Silk, on linen ground; the subject, partly
needlework, and partly sketched in, represents the Adoration of the
three Kings. German, 14th century. 12 inches square.

 Though in the style of that period, it is roughly done, and by no
 means a good example.


8309.

Piece of Silk and Gold Tissue; the ground, lilac-blue; the pattern,
in gold, represents the Annunciation. Florentine, late 14th century.
17¾ inches by 12 inches.

 This is another of those many beautiful and artistic exemplars of
 the loom given to the world, but more especially for the use of
 the Church, by North Italy, during the 14th and 15th centuries.
 The treatment of the subject figured on this fragment--the
 Annunciation--is quite typical, in its drawing and invention, of the
 feelings which spread themselves all over the sweet gentle Umbrian
 school of painting, from the days of its great teacher the graceful
 Giotto. The lover, too, of ecclesiastical symbolism will, in this
 small piece, find much to draw his attention to it: the dove, emblem
 of the Holy Ghost, is in one place flying down from heaven with an
 olive-branch, and hovers over the head of the Blessed Virgin Mary; in
 another place, it stands at rest behind her, and bearing in its beak a
 lily-like flower; the angel Gabriel, clothed in a full, wide-flowing
 alb, carrying in his left hand a wand--the herald’s sign--tipped with
 a fleur-de-lis, to show not only that he was sent from God, but for an
 especial purpose, is on his bended knee before the mother of our Lord,
 while, with his right hand uplifted in the act of blessing according
 to the Latin rite, he utters the words of his celestial message.
 The colour, too, of the ground--lilac-blue, emblematic of what is
 heavenly--must not be overlooked.


8310.

Fragment of a Vestment for Church use; embroidered in silk and gold,
on a dark blue linen ground, with figures of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
and Infant, our Saviour, and St. John. German, 15th century. 3 feet 6
inches by 10 inches.

 This fine example of the German needle, in its design and treatment,
 calls to mind the remarkably painted folding altar-piece by Master
 Stephen Sothener, A.D. 1410, in the chapel of St. Agnes, at the east
 end of Cologne Cathedral.


8311.

The Apparel for an Amice; the ground, crimson, embroidered in silk; the
centre pattern is edged at both sides with inscriptions done in letters
of the mediæval form. German, 15th century. 15¼ inches by 3¾
inches.

 This apparel for an amice is embroidered in sampler-stitch and
 style with the names of St. Odilia and St. Kylianus, and the first
 line of the hymn in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary, “Ave Regina
 celorum,” as well as the inscription “Mater Regis,” having, except
 in one instance, a crowned head between each word in the lettering.
 St. Kilian or Kuln was an Irishman born of a noble house: with
 two companions, he went to Germany to preach to the unbelieving
 Franconians, and being made bishop by Pope Conon, he fixed his see at
 Wurtzburg, where he was martyred, A.D. 688. Dr. Bock has figured it
 in his “Geschichte der Liturgischen Gewänder des Mittelalters,” iv
 Lieferung, pl. iii. fig. 4.


8312.

Piece of Raised Velvet; ground, crimson; pattern, flowers and foliage
in green, white, and purple. North Italian, middle of 15th century.
Attached is a piece of dark blue plush lining of the same date and
country. 14¼ inches by 13¼ inches.

 As a specimen of a pattern in raised velvet upon a plain silk ground,
 this fragment is valuable; and the occurrence of roses, both white and
 red, seeded and barbed, would, at first sight, lead to the thought
 that its designer had in his mind some recollection of the English
 Yorkist and Lancastrian strife-stirring and direful badges; but it
 must have been woven some years before the war of the Roses raged in
 all its wildness through the length and breadth of this land.


8313.

Purse with cords; white lattice-work on crimson ground, with crimson
and yellow pattern in the spaces, four of which on each side are
ornamented with gold thread. German, latter half of the 14th century.
5½ inches by 5 inches.

 Not only is this little bag nicely embroidered, but it has a lining
 of crimson sarcenet, and is supplied with platted silken strings of
 several colours for drawing its mouth close, as well as another silk
 string made after the same fashion, for carrying it in the hand. In
 church inventories of the period mention is often found of silk bags
 holding relics, and from Dr. Bock we learn that in the sacristy of St.
 Gereon’s, at Cologne, may yet be seen just such another bag, which
 served, if it does not still serve, as a sort of reliquary. For taking
 to the sick and dying, the holy Eucharist shut up in a small silver or
 ivory box, such little bags were and yet are employed, but then they
 were borne slung round the neck of the priest, which in this instance
 could not be done, as the cord is too short. Bags for prayer-books are
 often figured, but this one is too small for such a purpose; its most
 probable use was that of a reliquary.


8314.

Piece of Velvet; ground of crimson, bordered with green, brown, white,
and purple, and striped with bands of gold thread, probably for secular
use. Spanish, beginning of the 16th century. 13½ inches by 5 inches.

 The pile of this velvet is good, but so bad was the gold, that it has
 turned black.


8315.

Two Pieces of Embroidery, in silk and gold thread upon white linen; the
one shows our Saviour bearing His cross; the other, an inscription with
the date 1442. These pieces have been mounted on a piece of crimson
damask of a much later date. The embroideries, German, middle of 15th
century; the crimson silk, Lyons, late 17th century. 6 inches square.

 To all appearance, this figure of our Lord carrying His cross to
 Calvary, as well as the inscription above it, formed part of the
 orphrey of a chasuble, and to preserve it, was mounted upon the
 crimson silk which is stiffened by a thin board; and from the black
 loop at top it seems it was hung as a devotional picture upon the
 wall, most likely, of a private oratory or bed-room. As a work of art,
 the figure of our Lord is beautiful. The head, hands, and feet, as
 well as the crossed nimbus in gold, the cross, and the ground strewed
 with flowers, are worked with the needle; while the folds of the
 white linen garment are all, with but a very few strokes, marked by
 brown lines put in with the brush. The inscription, quite a separate
 piece, done in gold upon thin brown silk lined with canvas, reads
 thus:--Wyderoyd Pastor S. Jac(obi) Colon(iensis). 1442.

 In its original state it must have been, as now, “applied,” and not
 wrought upon the vestment itself, and affords a good hint to those who
 are striving to bring back the use of such a mode of embroidery in cut
 work.


8316.

Piece of Silk Embroidery on green silk ground. The pattern is in
branches decorated with glass beads, and gilt spangles, flowers in
white and red silk, and leaves in red and yellow. German, middle of
15th century. 6 inches square.

 Remarkable for the freedom of its design and beautiful regularity
 of its stitches. The thin green sarcenet upon which the embroidery
 was originally made is nearly all gone, and scarcely anything like a
 grounding is to be seen beside the thick blue canvass, which is backed
 by a lining of the same material, but white. Those small opaque white
 beads, in all likelihood, came from Venice, where Murano, to this day,
 is the great manufactory for Africa of the same sort of ornament.


8317.

Napkin, or Towel, in White Linen Diaper, with patterns woven in blue
and brown. German, beginning of the 15th century. 19½ inches by 9
inches.

 Though not conspicuous for the richness of its material, this linen
 textile is somewhat a curiosity, as such specimens have now become
 rare; and it shows how, even in towels, the ornamentation of colour,
 as well as the pattern in warp and weft, were attended to in the
 mediæval period.


8318.

Piece of Silk Damask, green, with pattern of pomegranates, crowns, and
wreaths of flowers. Flemish, middle of 16th century.

 The tastefully-arranged design of this silk would seem to have been a
 favourite, as we shall again meet it in other specimens, especially at
 No. 8332.


8319.

Piece of Silk Damask, slate blue ground, with winding borders of
cinnamon colour, enclosing pomegranates wrought in gold thread and
white silk. Flemish, middle of 16th century, 2 feet 6½ inches by 2
feet.

 Though elaborate in design and rich in gold, this piece is not happy
 in its colours. Its use must have been for the court and palace, but
 not for the church, and the whole is loom-wrought, and nothing about
 it done by the needle.


8320.

Orphrey, woven of crimson wool and white linen thread. The pattern is
of flowers and leaves on a trellis of branches, in which appear the
names of “Jhesus,” “Maria.” German, end of 15th century. 2 feet 8½
inches by 2¾ inches.

 In this textile the warp is of white strong linen thread, the woof of
 crimson wool; and stuffs of such cheap materials were wrought to serve
 as orphreys to tunicles and dalmatics worn by deacon and sub-deacon
 at high mass, and in processions, as well as for trimming other
 adornments for church use; the liturgical girdle neither is, nor ever
 was made, according to the Latin rite, of so broad a width, nor after
 such a fashion; in the Greek ritual, broad girdles are in use.

 The weavers of laces for carriage-trimming, or the adornment of state
 liveries, will in this specimen see that, more than three hundred
 years ago, their craft was practised in Germany; and Cologne appears
 to have been the centre of such a loom production.


8321.

Piece of Satin Damask, ground of golden yellow, covered with a rich
pattern in rose-colour. French (?), middle of the 16th century. 2 feet
10½ inches by 11 inches.

 In this specimen we observe how the designs for textiles were
 gradually losing the conventional forms of the mediæval period.


8322.

Piece of Velvet, dark blue, figured with a pomegranate kind of pattern.
Italian, end of the 15th century. 17¾ inches by 14½ inches.

 Lucca seems to be the place where this specimen of a deep-piled and
 prettily designed velvet was produced; and a mediæval conventionality
 hung about the pencil of its designer, as we may observe in the
 scrolls or featherings stopped with graceful cusps which go round
 and shut in those modifications of the so-called pine, really an
 artichoke, and the pomegranate pattern.

 Though equally employed for secular as well as sacred purposes, such
 velvets, in their latter use, are often found in the remains of copes,
 chasubles, &c. and altar-frontals.


8323.

Portion of a Chasuble, in figured velvet; the ground, purple, with a
pomegranate pattern in yellow, green, and white, with a broad yellow
scroll. Genoese, middle of 16th century. 2 feet 3¼ inches by 1 foot
9 inches.

 Genoa had earned for itself a notoriety, about this period, for its
 velvets, wrought in several colours, and the present piece seems no
 bad specimen of the style. By the warp of cotton and the thin low pile
 of its silken woof we learn that Genoese velvets varied much in the
 richness of their materials, and, in consequence, in their cost. This
 piece was once in a chasuble, as we may see by the bend, to fit the
 neck, in the upper part.


8324.

Piece of Silk and Linen Tissue; pattern, white crosses on ground of
crimson, barred with purple, yellow, and green. German, 16th century. 4
inches square.

 This specimen of German trimming, like the one No. 8320, seems to have
 been made at Cologne, and for the same ecclesiastical uses.


8325.

Piece of Silk-Velvet Damask; green, with pattern of large and small
pomegranates in gold. Lucca, latter half of the 15th century. 3 feet 10
inches by 11½ inches.

 Among the remarkable specimens of velvet in this collection, not the
 least conspicuous is the present one, being velvet upon velvet, that
 is, having, in a portion of it, a pattern in a higher pile than the
 pile of the ground. By looking narrowly at the larger pomegranate in
 golden thread within its heart-shaped oval, with featherings bounded
 by trefoiled cusps, the eye will catch an undulating pattern rising
 slightly above the rest of the pile; such examples, as distinguished
 from what is called cut or raised velvet, are very rare. The tone,
 too, of the fine green, as well as the goodness of the gold, in the
 ornamentation, enhance the value of this piece, which was once the
 back part of a chasuble.


8326.

Piece of Silk Damask; white, with the rose and pomegranate pattern
woven in gold thread. Spanish, latter half of the 15th century.

 This piece, from the looms of Spain, for the beauty of design and the
 thick richness of its silk, is somewhat remarkable.


8327.

Box covered with crimson raised velvet, having, round the lid, a
many-coloured cotton fringe. It holds two liturgical pallæ, both of
fine linen and figured--one mounted on pasteboard and measuring 7¾
inches by 7¼ inches, with an altar and two figures; the other, with
the Crucifixion and St. Mary and St. John, measuring 9½ inches by
9¾ inches. Inside the lid of this box is an illuminated border of
flowers, and the central design is effaced. Velvet, Italian, 16th
century, all the paintings very late 15th century, and German. Box, 10
inches by 9½ inches.

 As a case for holding “corporals” and “palls,” this box is a
 curiosity, in its way, of rare occurrence. It must be carefully
 distinguished from a square sort of case for the “corporal,” and
 called the “burse.” The corporal is a large square piece of fine
 linen; and at one time the chalice at mass not only stood upon it
 but was covered too by its inward border; but for a long period, the
 usage has been and is to put upon the chalice, instead of any part
 of the corporal, a much smaller separate square piece of fine linen,
 often stiffened, the better to serve its purpose, with card-board,
 like this example; such is a pall, and the one before us is figured,
 we may say illuminated, with what used to be called, in England, St.
 Gregory’s Pity; “Church of our Fathers,” i. 53. Upon an altar, around
 which are the instruments of the Passion, and on one side St. Peter,
 known by the key in his hand, and on the other the cock on the column,
 crowing, stands our Lord all bleeding, with the blood trickling into
 a chalice between His feet. At the foot of the altar kneels, veiled
 for mass, St. Gregory the Great, behind whom we see, holding a book in
 both hands, St. Jerome, robed as a cardinal; the whole is framed in a
 floriated border. The other, and unstiffened “pall,” is illuminated
 with the Crucifixion after the usual conventional manner, in all
 respects, that prevailed at the time it was done, that is, somewhere
 about the year 1490. As specimens on linen these two palls are rather
 rare. The border of flowers, on vellum, attached to the inside of the
 lid, is a free, well-coloured, and pleasing example of the Flemish
 school late in the 15th century. The raised velvet is of a rich
 crimson tone, and from Lucca or Genoa.

 Though, in later times, employed as an ordinary case for the cleanly
 keeping after service of the corporals or pieces of fine linen,
 always spread out in the middle of the altar-stone for the host and
 chalice to rest upon, at mass, its first use seems to have been for
 reservation of the Blessed Sacrament consecrated on Maundy Thursday to
 serve at the celebration of the divine office on Good Friday morning,
 as we have fully set forth in the Introduction § 5, and again while
 describing a similar box, No. 5958.

 In the present specimen all that remains of the vellum illumination,
 once upon the inside of the lid, is a wreath of painted flowers,
 within which stood the missing Crucifixion. The absence of that scene
 is, however, well supplied by the other kind of art-work wrought in
 colours of the same subject; done, too, after a broad bold manner,
 upon a square piece of very fine linen, which, as it is moveable,
 serves now as a lining for the lower inside of this case.

 Such ecclesiastical appliances are rare, so much so, that, besides the
 two in this collection, none is known to be in this country; while
 very few, even on the Continent, are to be seen at the present day.


8328.

Amice of Linen; with its apparel of crimson velvet, on which are three
hexagonal roses woven in gold. Spanish, middle of the 15th century. 3
feet 9 inches by 1 foot 9 inches.

 The velvet of the apparel is of a fine rich pile, and the tone of
 colour light ruby. The flowers, seeded and barbed, are not put in by
 the needle but woven. Such a liturgical appliance is not now often to
 be met with in its original state; but, in this instance, it ought to
 be noticed, that while the amice itself--that is, the linen portion of
 this vestment--is remarkable for its large size, the velvet apparel
 sewed on it is broader and shorter than those which we find figured
 on English ecclesiastical monuments during the mediæval period. The
 narrow green ferret which hems the apparel is usually found employed
 as a binding in crimson liturgical garments anciently made in
 Flanders. Though the velvet was woven in Spain, this linen amice seems
 to have once belonged to some Flemish sacristy: at one period the
 connection between the two countries was drawn very close.


8329.

Linen Cloth or Corporal, with an edge on all its four sides; 2¼
inches broad, embroidered in blue, white, and yellow silks. German,
late 15th century. 22 inches by 21 inches.

 To the student of ecclesiastical antiquities this liturgical appliance
 will be a great curiosity, from its being so much larger than the
 corporals now in use; but its size may be easily accounted for.
 From being put over the altar-cloth, on the middle of the table of
 the altar, so that the priest, at mass, might place the host and
 chalice immediately upon it before and after the consecration of the
 Eucharist, it got, and still keeps the name of “corporale,” about
 which the reader may consult “Hierurgia,” p. 74, 2nd edition.

 The embroidery, seemingly of a vine, is somewhat remarkable from
 being, like Indian needlework, the same on both sides, and was so done
 for a purpose to be noticed below. Its greater size may be easily
 explained. During the middle ages, as in England, so in Germany,
 the usage was to cover the chalice on the altar, not with a little
 square piece of linen called a “palla,” two specimens of which are
 mentioned, No. 8327, but with the corporal itself, as shown in those
 illuminations copied and given as a frontispiece to the fourth volume
 of the “Church of our Fathers.” To draw up for this purpose the inner
 edge of the corporal, it was made, as needed, larger than the one
 now in use. Moreover, as the under side of the embroidery would thus
 be turned upwards and conspicuously shown, even on the consecrated
 chalice, to a great extent; and as anything frayed and ragged--and
 this single embroidery always is on the under side--would, at such
 a time, in such a place, have been most unseemly; to hinder this
 disrespect the embroidery was made double, that is, as perfect on the
 one side as on the other, giving the design clear and accurate on
 both, so that whichever part happened to be turned upwards it looked
 becoming.


8330.

Piece of Silk Damask; green, with pattern of crowns connected by wavy
ribbons, in each space is a rose. North Italian, 15th century. 22
inches by 21 inches.

 This fine and valuable piece of damask exhibits a very effective
 design, which is thoroughly heraldic in all its elements. Of these,
 the first are roselettes--single roses having five petals each--seeded
 and barbed, and every petal folds inward very appropriately; all about
 each roselette roves a bordure nebulé, significative in heraldry
 of a cloud-wreath, above which and just over the flower rests an
 open crown, the hoop of which is studded with jewels, and bears on
 the upper rim two balls--pearls--on pyramidal points, and three
 fleurs-de-lis. To take these roselettes for the Tudor flower would
 be a great mistake, as it was not thought of at the period when
 this stuff was manufactured, besides which, it is never shown as a
 roselette or single rose, but as a very double one. It is not
 unlikely that this damask was, in the first instance, ordered from
 Italy, if not by our Edward IV, at least by one of the Yorkist party
 after the Lancastrian defeat at Mortimer’s Cross: the crown with its
 fringe of clouds seems to point to the curious appearance in the
 heavens that day. When once his loom was geared the Lombard weaver
 would not hesitate to work off stuffs after the same pattern ordered
 by his English customer and sell them in the Italian markets.


8331.

Piece of Lace in Open Work. The pattern, oblong and octagonal spaces
framed in gold thread, and containing stars in silver and flowers in
gold, upon a black silk ground. Milanese, end of the 16th century.
14¼ inches by 4½ inches.

[Illustration: 8331.

LACE EMBROIDERY,

Milanese---- 16th century.]

 During a long time Milan, the capital of rich and manufacturing
 Lombardy, stood conspicuous among its neighbouring cities for the
 production of its gold thread, and beautifully wrought laces in that
 material; and the specimen before us is a pleasing example of this
 far-famed Milanese handicraft. To all appearance, it once served as
 the apparel to an amice to be used in religious services for the
 dead. It seems the work of the loom; and the piece of stout black
 silk under it was meant, though quite apart from it, to be, as it
 were, a grounding to throw up more effectively its gold and silver
 ornamentation.


8332.

Piece of Silk, formerly crimson, but much faded, with elaborate pattern
of pomegranates, crowns and wreaths of flowers. Flemish, middle of the
16th century. 19 inches by 17½ inches.

 In this piece, though so faded, we have a good specimen of the Bruges
 loom about the second half of the 16th century, and seemingly from the
 same workshop which sent forth No. 8318.


8333.

Hood of a Cope, with figures embroidered on a very rich ground of red
and gold velvet. Velvet, Florentine; the embroidery Flemish, late 15th
century. 16 inches by 15½ inches.

 About this period, Florence was noted for its truly rich and beautiful
 crimson velvets of a deep pile and artistically flowered in gold,
 and profusely sprigged, or rather dotted, with small loops of golden
 thread standing well up from the velvet ground; and in this production
 of Florentine contrivance we have a good example of its speciality.

 The needlework is a very favourable specimen of Flemish embroidery,
 and the management of the three subjects shows that the hand that
 wrought them was quickened with a feeling love for the school of Hans
 Memling, who has made Bruges to be the pilgrimage of many an admirer
 of the beautiful in Christian art. The holy woman, who, according to
 the old tradition, gave a napkin to our Lord on His way to Calvary, is
 figured, at top, holding, outstretched before her to our view, this
 linen cloth showing shadowed on it the head of our Redeemer crowned
 with thorns and trickling with blood: the Saint became known as St.
 Veronica, and the handkerchief itself as the “Varnicle.” Just below,
 we have the Blessed Virgin Mary seated and holding on her knees the
 infant Saviour, before whom kneels St. Bernard, the famous abbot
 of Clairvaux, in the white Cistercian habit which he had received
 from our fellow-countryman, St. Stephen Harding, the founder of the
 Cistercian Order, about the year 1114. The group itself is an early
 example of a once favourite subject in St. Bernard’s life, thus
 referred to by Mrs. Jameson, in one of her charming books:--“It was
 said of him (St. Bernard) that when he was writing his famous homilies
 on ‘The Song of Songs which is Solomon’s,’ the Holy Virgin herself
 condescended to appear to him, and moistened his lips with the milk
 from her bosom; so that ever afterwards his eloquence, whether in
 speaking or in writing, was persuasive, irresistible, super-natural.”
 (Legends of the Monastic Orders, p. 142). Lower still, St. Bernard,
 with his abbot’s pastoral staff, cast upon the ground by his side, is
 praying, on bended knees, before a crucifix, from off of which our
 Redeemer has loosened Himself to fall into the arms of the saint, who
 was so fond of meditating on all the throes of our Lord upon the cross.


8334.

Piece of Crimson Velvet, spangled with gold and silver stars, and
embroidered with leaves and flowers in gold thread, once dotted with
precious stones. North Italian, end of the 15th century. 14½ inches
by 5¼ inches.

 The Genoese velvet of this piece is of a very deep ruby tone, deeper
 than usual; but the way in which it is ornamented should not be passed
 over by those who wish to learn one among the very effective styles of
 embroidering. The design consists chiefly of branches gracefully bent
 in all directions and sprouting out, here and there, with leaves and
 variously fashioned flowers which, from one example that still holds
 its tiny round-headed piece of coloured glass set in a silver gilt
 socket, bore in them mock precious stones, and perhaps seed-pearls.
 These branches themselves are made of common hempen string, edged on
 both sides with a thread of gold of a smaller bulk, and the flowers
 are heightened to good effect by the bright red stitches of the
 crimson silk with which the gold that forms them is sewed in; and the
 whole of the design appears to have been worked, first upon a strong
 canvas, from which it was afterwards cut and appliqué upon its velvet
 ground. All the space between the boughs is sprinkled rather thickly
 with six-rayed stars of gold and silver, but the latter ones have
 turned almost black. This piece was once the apparel for the lower
 border of an alb.


8335.

Piece of Silk Damask; upon a light blue ground, an elaborate pattern
of pomegranates and flowers in pale yellow. Flemish, end of the 16th
century. 24½ inches by 21 inches.

 Like, in many respects, to another piece of the looms of ancient
 Bruges, it shows that the Flemings were unfortunate in their mode of
 dyeing, for this, as well as No. 8332, has faded much in colour, but
 the pattern is very rich and graceful. This textile is figured by Dr.
 Bock, in his “History of Liturgical Robes,” vol. i.


8336.

Piece of Silk Net-Work, formerly crimson. The design is evidently
circular, and consists of a lozenge filled in with two other very much
smaller lozenges touching each other lengthwise. Milanese, end of the
16th century.

 This curious little piece of frame-work seems to be another specimen
 of the lace of Milan, concerning which a notice has been given under
 No. 8331. Some would take it to be crochet, but it looks as if it came
 from a loom. To our thinking, it was either the heel or the toe part
 of a silk stocking. Though of a much finer texture, it much resembles,
 in pattern, the yellow silk pair of stockings belonging now to the
 Marquis of Salisbury, but once presented by Lord Hunsdon to Queen
 Elizabeth, and said to be the first ever made in England.


8837.

Piece of Crimson Raised Velvet, with pattern of pomegranates, flowers
and scrolls embroidered in gold thread and coloured silks. Genoese,
beginning of the 16th century.

 This piece affords a very instructive instance of how velvet textiles
 were not unfrequently treated. The pattern was first wrought in the
 weaving, and made the fabric what is now known as cut or raised
 velvet. Then those parts left bare of the silken pile were filled
 in by hand-embroidery, done in gold, silver, and silks of various
 colours, as the fancy of the individual might like, and produced a
 mixed work similar to the one before us. The velvet itself of this
 specimen is poor in colour and thin in substance, but the gold thread
 is of the finest, and admirably put together; and those little specks
 of the crimson silk employed in sewing it on, help, in no small
 manner, to heighten its brilliancy and effect.


8338.

Part of an Orphrey; ground, gold thread, with ornamentation, in silk,
of a rosette, a tree with flowers, and the inscriptions--“Ave Regina
Celorum,” and “Jhesus.” Cologne work, late 15th century. 22½ inches
by 3¾ inches.

 Much, in style, like No. 8320.


8338A.

Part of an Orphrey, woven in silk upon linen; ground, red; pattern, in
gold thread upon blue silk. Cologne work, 15th century. 15½ inches
by 4½ inches.

 This and the piece immediately preceding afford us one of the
 peculiarities of the German loom, and, in all likelihood, were woven
 at Cologne, the great manufacturing centre of Germany in the middle
 ages. Such webs were wrought for the orphreys of chasubles, copes,
 and dalmatics, &c. The design is stiff, and wanting in much of the
 elegance to be found in earlier works of the loom, and, from its
 sampler-like look, might, at first sight, be taken for needlework.


8339.

Piece of Silk and Linen Damask; pattern, rich, broad and flowing, in
crimson, on a gold ground. Genoese, late 16th century. 2 feet 4 inches
by 1 foot 11½ inches.

 This gives us a fine specimen of Italian weaving in the middle
 or latter portion of the 16th century. So rich, and so solid in
 materials, it is as bold as it is, at first sight, attractive in its
 design, and shows indications of that strap-shaped ornamentation which
 soon afterwards became so conspicuous in all cut-work, especially so
 in bookbindings, all over Western Europe. Such stuffs were mostly used
 for hangings on the walls of state-rooms and the backs of the stalls
 in churches, as well as for curtains at the sides of altars.


8340.

Piece of Silk Damask; pattern, of the 16th century revival character,
in crimson upon a yellow ground; probably a border to some other stuff.
Florentine, end of the 16th century, 10½ inches by 5½ inches.


8341.

Piece of Linen and Woollen Damask, white and green; the pattern, birds,
oak-leaves, and acorns. North Italian, end of the 16th century. 7
inches by 5 inches.

 Though made out of such humble materials as linen-thread and worsted,
 this charming little piece of stuff cannot fail in drawing upon itself
 the eye of the observer, by the beauty and elegance which it has about
 it.


8342.

Linen Napkin, or rather Sindon or Pyx-cloth, the borders embroidered
with coloured silks and silver-thread. Perhaps Flemish, 16th century.
18½ inches by 16½ inches.

 In more senses than one this small linen cloth is of great value,
 being, in the first place, a liturgical appliance of the mediæval
 period, now unused in this form, certainly unique in this country, and
 hardly ever to be met with on the continent, either in private hands
 or public collections. According to ancient English custom, the pyx
 containing particles of the Blessed Eucharist for giving, at all hours
 of day or night, the Holy Communion to the dying, and kept hanging up
 over the high altar of every church in this land, was overspread with
 one of such fine linen and embroidered veils, as may be seen in an
 illumination from the “Life of St. Edmund, King and Martyr,” in the
 Harley Collection, British Museum, and engraved in the “Church of our
 Fathers,” t. iv. p. 206.

 The readers of English history will, no doubt, feel an interest in
 this specimen, when they learn that, with such a linen napkin, Mary
 Queen of Scots had her face muffled just before she laid her head upon
 the block: “Then the maid, Kennedy, took a handkerchief, edged with
 gold, in which the Eucharist had formerly been enclosed, and fastened
 it over her eyes.” “Pict. Hist. of England, ed. Knight,” t. ii. p.
 671. Knight is wrong in saying that the Holy Eucharist had ever been
 immediately enclosed in this cloth, which is only the veil that used
 to be cast over the pyx or small vessel in which the consecrated hosts
 were kept, as we observed in the introduction, § 5.


8343.

Piece of Linen Damask; pattern, of the pomegranate type, with a border
of an armorial shield repeated, and the initials C. L. An edging of
lace is attached to one end. Flemish, middle of the 16th century.
17¼ inches by 13 inches.

 The shield is party per pale; in the first, two bars
 counter-embattled; in the second, a chevron charged with three
 escallop shells.

 Most likely this small piece of Flemish napery served as the
 finger-cloth or little napkin with which, when saying mass, the priest
 dried the tips of his fingers after washing them, the while he said
 that prayer, “Munda me, Domine,” &c. in the Salisbury Missal; “Church
 of our Fathers,” t. iv. p. 150. By the rubrics of the Roman Missal,
 the priest was, and yet is, directed to say, at the ritual washing
 of his hands, that portion of the 25th Psalm, which begins, verse
 6, “Lavabo manus meas,” &c. “Hierurgia,” p. 21; hence these small
 liturgical towels got, and still keep, the name of Lavabo cloths or
 Lavaboes, especially in all those countries where the Roman Missal is
 in use.


8344.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, blue and yellow; pattern, a large
conventional flower, with heraldic shields, helmets, and crests.
Italian, late 16th century. 1 foot 8½ inches by 13 inches.

 The shields show a pale; the helmets are given sidewise with the
 beaver closed; and the crests, a demi-wyvern segeant, but with no
 wreath under it, doubtless to show the armorial bearings of the
 esquire or gentleman of blood, as, according to the readings of
 English blasonry, he could have been of no higher degree, for whom
 this stuff had been woven.


8345.

Fragment of an Ecclesiastical Vestment; ground, cloth of gold, diapered
with an elaborate flower-pattern. French, middle of the 16th century. 2
feet 1¼ inches by 1 foot 9 inches.

 This valuable specimen of cloth of gold is figured, in small red
 lines, with a free and well-designed pattern, and shows us how much
 above modern French and Italian toca and lama d’oro were those fine
 old cloth of gold stuffs which, in the 16th century, became so
 variously employed for secular purposes. Let the reader imagine a
 vast round royal tent of such a textile with the banner of a king
 fluttering over it, and then he may well conceive why the meadow upon
 which it stood was called “the field of the cloth of gold.”


8346.

Piece of Silk and Linen Damask, green and yellow; pattern, a small
conventional flower, probably a furniture stuff. Italian, late 16th
century. 10 inches by 7½ inches.


8347.

Piece of Silk Damask, blue and yellow; pattern of flowers. French, late
16th century. 8 inches square.

 In the design of the pattern there is evidently a wish to indicate the
 national fleur-de-lis.


8348.

Portion of a Housing or Saddle-cloth, grey velvet, embroidered with
interlaced patterns in silver and gold thread. In one corner is an
armorial shield in silver and coloured silks. Spanish, middle of the
16th century. 1 foot 8½ inches by 6½ inches.

 Very probably the blazon of the shield on this curious horse-furniture
 may be the canting arms of its primitive owner; and it is _argent_, a
 hoopoe _gules_ on a mount _vert_.


8349.

Piece of Silk Damask; green, with the pomegranate pattern. French, end
of the 16th century. 2 feet 7 inches by 1 foot 7 inches.


8350.

Embroidered Girdle; pattern, rectangular, in gold and silver threads
and crimson silk; there are long gold tassels at the ends. French, late
16th century. 6 feet 3 inches by ⅞ inch.

 Most likely a liturgical girdle, for the use of which see “Hierurgia,”
 p. 426, 2nd edition, and “Church of our Fathers,” t. i. p. 448. Such
 ecclesiastical appliances are now become great rarities, and though
 this one is very modern, it is not less valuable on that account. The
 only other good example known in England is the very fine and ancient
 one kept, in Durham Cathedral Library, among the remains of those rich
 old vestments found upon the body of a bishop mistaken, by Mr. Raine,
 for that of St. Cuthbert. Flat girdles, whenever used in the Latin
 rite, were narrow; while those of the Greek and Oriental liturgies are
 much broader.


8351.

Linen Cloth; pattern, a white diaper lozenge. Flemish, end of the 16th
century. Shape, oval, diameters 22 inches and 17 inches.

 Though of so simple a pattern the design is pleasing, and well brought
 out.


8352.

Piece of Silk Damask, sky-blue and white; pattern, intersecting ribbons
with flowers in the spaces. French, late 16th century. 9¾ inches by
4¾ inches.

 A very agreeable specimen of the taste of the period and country, as
 well as grateful to the eye for the combination and management of its
 two colours in such a way that neither overmatches the other--a beauty
 often forgotten by the designers of textiles, but to be found in
 several other examples of the mediæval loom in this collection.


8353.

Dalmatic of Yellow Silk, damasked with a pattern of the pomegranate
form, in raised velvet, of a lightish green tint. The tissue, Italian,
late 15th century; the embroidery and inscriptions, German, late 15th
century. 7 feet 8 inches by 4 feet 3 inches.

 This fine dalmatic--for the liturgical use of which the reader may
 consult the “Church of our Fathers,” t. i. p. 375--is rather curious
 for the way in which the two very singular tassels hanging on the back
 from the shoulders are ornamented. These usual appendages are in this
 instance made of remarkably long (15 inches) flakes of white, red,
 and deep-brown silken thread, and, instead of silk nobs at the end of
 the cords, have large round balls of rock crystal. The orphreys, or
 stripes, down both sides, before and behind, are 2½ inches broad,
 woven in gold and charged with squares of flower-bearing trees, and
 inscribed in blue with “Jhesus,” “Maria.” The fringes on the two
 lower borders of the dalmatic, 3½ inches deep, are alternately
 red, green, white, and blue, and those on the sides and around the
 sleeves are much narrower. The sleeves themselves from being 18 inches
 wide at the shoulder become as narrow as 12 inches towards the wrist.
 The two apparels on the upper part, before and behind, are woven
 in gold, and measure 16½ inches in length, and 5¼ inches in
 breadth; the one on the back just under the neck is figured with three
 golden-grounded squares, the centre one ornamented with a crimson
 quatrefoil, barbed, and enclosing a various-coloured conventional
 flower; the other two, with a green tree blossomed with red flowers:
 the apparel across the breast is inscribed with the names, in large
 blue letters, of “Jhesus,” “Maria.” Half way down the back hangs,
 transversely, a shield of arms quarterly, one and four _gules_, two
 bars _argent_, between seven fleurs-de-lis, _or_, three, two, and two;
 two and three, _sable_ two bars, _argent_: as a crest, a full-forward
 open-faced helmet, with six bars all gold, surmounted by a pair of
 horns barred _sable_ and _argent_, with mantlings of the same. This
 blazon, according to English heraldry, would indicate that the giver
 of this splendid vestment--and very likely it was only one of a large
 set--could boast, by showing the golden five-barred full-forward
 helmet, of royal blood in his pedigree, and was not lower than a Duke
 in title. Dr. Bock has figured this finely-preserved dalmatic in his
 “Geschichte der Liturgischen Gewänder des Mittelalters,” 4 Lieferung,
 pt. vii. fig. 1.


8354.

A Cope of Crimson Raised Velvet; pattern of the so-called pomegranate
design. The orphreys and hood embroidered on a golden ground; the
latter with the death of the Blessed Virgin Mary; the former, with
various saints. Velvet, Spanish, the embroidery, German, both of the
end of the 15th century. 10 feet 8 inches by 5 feet 8 inches.

 The velvet, both for its ruby tone and richness of pile, is
 remarkable, while its design of the pattern is efficiently shown.

 The hood which, it should be observed by those curious in liturgical
 garments, runs right through the orphreys quite up to the neck, is an
 elaborate and well-wrought piece of needlework; and strongly reminds
 one of the picture of the same subject--the death-bed of the Mother
 of our Lord--by Martin Schön, now in the National Gallery. All the
 Apostles are supposed to be gathered round her; to the right of the
 spectator stands St. Peter sprinkling her with holy water from the
 silver sprinkle in his right hand; next to this chief celebrant is St.
 John, the acolyte, with the holy water stoop in his left hand, and in
 his right the lighted taper, which he is about to put into the hand of
 his adopted mother--an emblem of the lighted lamp with which each wise
 virgin in the Gospel awaited the coming of the bridegroom. Behind him
 again, and with his back turned, is another apostle, blowing into the
 half-extinguished thurible, which he is raising to his mouth; the rest
 of the Apostles are nicely grouped around. The ground of this hood
 is of rich gold thread, and the figures of the scene are separately
 wrought and afterwards “applied.” The orphreys, that are rather
 narrow, measuring only 5½ inches in breadth, are of a golden web
 and figured, on the right hand side, with St. Mary Magdalen, carrying
 a box of ointment in her hands; St. Bernadin of Siena, holding a
 circular radiated disc inscribed with I.H.S. in his right hand, and
 in his left a Latin cross; St. Bicta--for so the inscription seems
 to read--bearing the martyr’s branch of palm in her right hand, and
 a sword thrust through her throat; and St. Kymbertus in a cope, with
 a crozier in his right hand, and in his left a closed book: on the
 left hand orphrey, St. Elizabeth, the Queen of Hungary, with a child’s
 article of dress in one hand, and a royal crown upon her head; St.
 Severinus, wearing a mitre and cope, and holding in his right hand
 a crozier, in his left a church; St. Ursula, with the martyr’s palm
 in one hand; in the other a long large silver arrow, and having six
 of her martyred virgins at her sides; and St. John Baptist, with the
 “Lamb of God” on the palm of his left hand, and the forefinger of the
 right outstretched as pointing to it. The heads of all these figures
 are done in silk and “applied,” but the hands and diapering of the
 garments, as well as the emblems, are wrought by the needle, in gold
 or in silk, upon the golden web-ground of these orphreys. At the lower
 part of the hood is “applied” a shield--no doubt the armorials of
 the giver of this fine cope--party per pale--_gules_ two chevronels
 _argent_, a chief _or_--_azure_ three garbs (one lost), _argent_, two
 and one.


8355.

Chasuble of Damask Cloth of Gold; the orphreys figured with arabesques
in coloured silk upon a golden ground, and busts of saints embroidered
in coloured silks within circles of gold. There is a shield of arms on
the body of the vestment, on the left side. French, 17th century. 7
feet 3 inches by 2 feet 4 inches.

 The cloth of gold is none of the richest, and may have been woven
 at Lyons; but the orphreys are good specimens of their time: that
 on the back of this vestment, 4¾ inches in width, and made in a
 cross, shows a female saint holding a sword in her right hand, and in
 her left a two-masted boat--perhaps St. Mary Magdalen, in reference
 to her penitence and voyage to France; St. John with a cup, and the
 demon serpent coming up out of it; the Empress Helen carrying a
 cross (?). The orphrey in front, three inches broad, gives us, in
 smaller circles, St. Simon the apostle with his saw; a female saint
 (Hedwiges?) holding a cross; and two prophets, each with a rolled-up
 scroll in his hand. On the back, and far apart from the orphrey, is
 a shield _argent_ (nicely diapered), a chevron _sable_ between three
 leaves slipped _vert_, hanging as it does on the left hand, it may be
 presumed there was another shield on the right, but it is gone. This
 chasuble, small as it is now, must have been sadly reduced across the
 shoulders, from its original breadth.


8356.

Piece of Carpet, of wool and hemp; ground, red; pattern, boughs, and
flowers, in blue, and the so-called pomegranate, blue with a large
yellow flower in the middle; border, two stripes blue barred with
yellow, one stripe yellow barred red. Spanish, 16th century. 3 feet 10
inches by 3 feet 7 inches.

 In every way like the following specimen of carpeting, with its warp
 of hempen thread; and originally employed for the same purpose of
 being spread up the steps leading to the altar, but more especially
 upon the uppermost or last one for the celebrant to stand on.


8357.

Piece of Carpet; ground, dark blue; pattern, a large so-called
pomegranate design in light blue, spotted with flower-like circles,
white and crimson (now faded). At each end it has a border in red,
blue, green, white, and yellow lines. Spanish, 16th century. 9 feet 3
inches by 8 feet 6 inches.

 The warp, as in the foregoing example, is of hempen thread, the woof
 of worsted; and this textile was woven in breadths 4 feet 3 inches
 wide. In all likelihood this piece of carpeting, valuable because
 very rare now, served as the covering for the steps that led up
 to the altar, and corresponded to what in some old English church
 inventories were called pedalia, or pede-cloths:--“Church of our
 Fathers,” i. 268. Finer sorts were spread on high feast days upon the
 long form where sat the precentor with his assistant rulers of the
 choir, or upon the stools which they separately occupied. Ib. ii. 202.


8358.

Liturgical Cloth of grey linen thread, figured all over with subjects
from the New Testament, angels, apostles, flowers, and monsters.
Rhenish, end of the 14th century. 10 feet by 3 feet.

 This curious and valuable piece, of the kind denominated “opus
 araneum,” or spider-web, is very likely the oldest as well as one
 among the very finest specimens yet known of that peculiar sort of
 needlework. The design is divided into two lengths, one much shorter
 than the other, and reversed; thus evidently proving that its original
 use was to cover, not the altar, but the lectern, upon which the
 Evangeliarium, or Book of the Gospels, is put at high mass for the
 deacon to sing the gospel from: judging by the subjects wrought upon
 it, and in white, it appears to have been intended more especially for
 the daily high mass, chaunted in many places every morning in honour
 of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

 Beginning at the lower part of the longer length, we see an angel,
 vested like a deacon, in an appareled and girded alb, playing the
 violin, then six apostles--St. Simon with the fuller’s bat in his
 hand, St. Matthias with sword and book, St. James the Greater with
 pilgrim’s bourdon or staff, St. Jude, or Thaddeus, with club and
 book, St. Andrew with book and saltire cross, St. Thomas with spear;
 then another like vested angel sounding a guitar--all of which
 figures are standing in a row amid oak boughs and flowery branches.
 Higher up, and within a large quatrefoil encircled by the words:--☩
 “Magnificat: Anima: mea: Dominum;” the Visitation, or the Blessed
 Virgin Mary and St. Elizabeth, both with outstretched hands, one
 towards the other, the first as a virgin with her hair hanging down
 upon her shoulders, the second having her head shrouded in a hood
 like a married woman; they stand amid lily-bearing stems (suggested
 by the lesson read on that festival from Canticles ii.); in each of
 the north and south petals of the quatrefoil is a kneeling angel,
 deacon-vested, holding in each hand a bell, which he is ringing,
 while in the east and west petals are other like-robed angels, both
 incensing with a thurible. Outside the quatrefoil are represented
 within circles at the south-west corner the British St. Ursula--one of
 the patron saints of Cologne--standing with a book in one hand, and
 an arrow in the other; at the south-east corner St. Helen (?), with
 cross and book; at the north-west, St. Lucy with book and pincers; at
 the north-east, a virgin martyr, with a book and a branch of palm.
 At each of the angles, in the corners between the petals, is an open
 crown. Above stands in the middle a double-handled vase, between two
 wyverns, jessant oak branches. Over this species of heraldic border
 is another large quatrefoil arranged in precisely the same manner:
 the angels--two with bells, two with thuribles--are there, so too
 are the corner crowns, within and encircled by the words ☩ Gloria:
 in: exc(e)l(s)is: Deo: et: in: terr(a), we have the Assumption of
 the Blessed Virgin Mary, after this manner: seated upon a throne is
 our Lord in majesty, that is, crowned and holding the mund or ball
 surmounted by a cross in His left hand; with His right He is giving
 His blessing to His mother, who is seated also on the same throne,
 crowned, with her hair about her shoulders, and with hands upraised
 to Him as in the act of prayer. At the top, to the left, is St.
 Catherine, with a sword in one hand, a wheel armed with spikes in the
 other; to the right, St. Dorothy, with a blooming branch in one hand
 and in the other a basket--made like a cup with foot and stem--full
 of flowers; below, St. Barbara, with tower and palm-branch, in the
 left side; on the other, St. Mary Magdalen, with an ointment box and
 palm. Here the design is reversed, and very properly so, as otherwise
 it would be, when thrown over the lectern, upside down; and curiously
 enough, just at this place there is a large hole, caused, as is clear,
 by this part of the needlework being worn away from the continual
 rubbing of some boss or ornament at the top of the folding lectern,
 which most likely was wrought in iron. This shorter length of the
 design--that portion which hung behind--begins with the double-handled
 vase and two wyverns, and has but one quatrefoil arranged like the
 other two in the front part: within the circle inscribed ☩ Ecce:
 ancilla: Domini: fiat: michi--we see the Annunciation; kneeling before
 a low reading desk, with an open book upon it, is the Blessed Virgin
 Mary, with the Holy Ghost under the form of a nimbed dove coming down
 from heaven, signified by the nebulæ or clouds, upon her; and turning
 about with arms wide apart, as if in wonderment, she is listening to
 Gabriel on his knees and speaking his message in those words:--ave:
 gracia: ple(na), traced upon the scroll, which, with both his hands,
 he holds before him. In the corners of the petals are, at top, to
 the left, a female saint, with a cross in one hand, a closed book in
 the other; to the right, a female saint with palm-branch and book;
 below, to the left, a female saint--St. Martina, V. M.--with book and
 a two-pronged and barbed fork; on the right, a female saint with a
 book, and cup with a lid. As the other end began, so this ends, with
 a row of eight figures, of which two are angels robed as deacons, one
 playing the violin, the other the guitar; then come six apostles--St.
 John the Evangelist exorcising the poisoned cup; St. Bartholomew, with
 book in one hand and flaying knife in the other; St. Peter, with book
 and key; St. Paul, with book and sword held upwards; St. Matthew, with
 sword held downwards, and book; St. Philip, with book and cross.

 The figures within the quatrefoils and of the apostles are about seven
 inches high; those of the female saints--all virgins, as is shown by
 the hair hanging in long tresses about their shoulders--measure six
 inches. The spaces between are filled in with branches of five-petaled
 and barbed roses, and at both ends there originally hung a prettily
 knotted long fringe. All the female saints are dressed in gowns with
 very long remarkable sleeves--a fashion in woman’s attire which
 prevailed at the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th centuries.

 The exact way in which these now very rare specimens of mediæval
 needlework used to be employed in the celebration of the liturgy, may
 be seen, by a glance, on looking at any of those engravings in which
 are figured a few of those old lecterns; made either of light thin
 wood, or iron, or of bronze, so as they could be easily folded up:
 they were thus with readiness carried about from one part to another
 of the choir, or chancel, even by a boy. When set down the veil was
 cast over them. Some of our own archæological works afford us good
 examples of such lecterns; as fine, if not finer, are those two which
 M. Viollet Le Duc has given in his instructive “Dictionnaire du
 Mobilier Français,” t. i. pp. 162, 163, especially that from the Hotel
 de Cluny. Speaking of the coverings for such lecterns, he tells that
 in the treasury of Sens Cathedral there yet may be found one which
 is, however, according to his admeasurements, much smaller every way
 than this piece of curious needlework before us. Whether the one now
 at Sens be of the 10th or 11th century assigned it, far too early date
 to our thinking, it cannot, to judge from the coloured plate given by
 M. Viollet Le Duc, be put for a moment in competition with the present
 one, as an art-work done by the needle. In our own mediæval records
 notices of such lecterns may be sometimes found; in the choir of
 Cobham College, Kent, A.D. 1479, there was such an article of church
 furniture, “Church of our Fathers,” ii. 201, and doubtless it was
 usually covered with a veil.


8359.

Chasuble of Silk Damask, green and fawn-coloured, freckled in white
with small flowers, inscriptions, and other ornaments; the pattern,
in bands, consists of a large fan-like flower-bearing plant, and
a double-handled vase, from which shoots up the thin stem of a
tree between two hunting leopards collared, and addorsed, with an
Arabic inscription beneath the vase, both plant and vase occurring
alternately; these bands are separated by a narrower set of bands
divided into squares enclosing birds of prey alternately gardant
segeant. Syrian, late 13th century. 9 feet 5 inches by 4 feet.

 This stuff betrays a few lingering traditions of the Persian style
 of design, and some people will see in the little tree between those
 hunting leopards the “hom,” or sacred tree of the olden belief of
 that country. The material of it is thin and poor, and in width it
 measures twenty-one inches. The characters under the vase holding
 the leopards and “hom,” are but an imitation of Arabic, and hence we
 may presume that it was woven by Jewish or Christian workmen for the
 European market, and to make it pass better, as if coming from Persia,
 inscribed as best they knew how, with Arabic letters, or imitations of
 that alphabet.


8360.

Back of a Chasuble, blue silk wrought all over with beasts and birds
in gold beneath trees. The orphrey of crimson silk is embroidered with
flowers and armorial shields. The blue silk, Italian, 14th century; the
orphrey, German, 15th century. 3 feet 8½ inches by 2 feet 5 inches.

 The birds that are shown on this blue-grounded piece of rather
 shining silk are peahens, standing on green turf sprinkled with
 white flowers, and three very much larger flowers stand high above
 their heads; the beasts are leopards, with their skin well spotted,
 and they seem to be, as it were, scenting and scratching the ground.
 The orphrey, cross-shaped, and 5½ inches wide, is overspread with
 gracefully intertwined rose-branches, the leaves of which are of gold
 shaded green, and the flowers in silver, seeded and barbed. It is
 blazoned all over with armorial bearings, seemingly of two houses,
 of which the first is a shield, tincture gone, charged with a lion
 rampant _or_, langued and armed _gules_; the second, a shield, barry
 of twelve, _gules_ and _or_, with a lion rampant, _argent_, langued
 and armed _azure_, in the dexter canton. There are three of each of
 these shields, and all six are worked on canvas, and afterwards sewed
 on. On the upright stem of the cross may be read in places the name
 of “Lodewich Fretie,” the individual who bore those arms and gave the
 chasuble.


8361.

Dalmatic of blue silk damasked with gold; the pattern consists of
alternate rows of oxen, and pelican-like birds amid flowers and
foliage. North Italian, late 14th century. 7 feet 7½ inches by 4
feet.

 A rather showy piece, and very effective in its pattern, though
 the gold about the thread with which the design is brought out is
 sparingly employed, so that it looks more yellow than metallic. The
 sleeves now but eleven inches long, are slit quite up, and were very
 likely shortened when the slitting was inflicted on them, and that,
 within the last hundred years, in compliance with the somewhat modern
 practice that took its rise in France.


8388.

Piece of Embroidery of our Lord upon His mother’s lap. Florentine, 15th
century. 8¼ inches by 5½ inches.

 The Blessed Virgin Mary is robed in the usual crimson tunic, and
 sky-blue flowing mantle, and bearing, as is customary in the Italian
 schools of art, a golden star figured on her left shoulder. Sitting
 upon a tasseled cushion, and holding a little bird in His left hand,
 we have our Lord quite naked, with His crossed nimb about His
 head. Those who bring to mind that lovely picture of Raphael’s, the
 so-called “Madonna del Cardellino,” or our Lady of the gold-finch,
 will see that such an idea was an old one when that prince of painters
 lived. This piece of needlework was originally wrought for the purpose
 of being applied, and shows on the back proofs that, in its last use,
 it had been pasted on to some vestment or altar-frontal.


8561.

Small Piece of Silk; ground, purple; pattern, boughs of green leaves
twining amid rosettes, green, some with crimson, some with yellow
centres. Sicilian, late 14th century. 6½ inches by 3 inches.

 Good in material and pretty in design, though the colours are not
 happily contrasted.


8562.

Piece of Silk; ground, purple; pattern, circles inclosing, some a tree
which separates beasts and birds, some a long stripe which seemingly
separates birds, all in yellow. Syrian, 14th century. 1 foot 1½
inches by 7½ inches.

 The piece is so faded that with much difficulty its design can be
 traced, but enough is discernible to show the Persian feelings in
 it. No doubt the beasts are the cheetah or spotted hunting leopard
 addorsed and separated by the traditional “hom,” and the birds over
 them, put face to face, but parted by the “hom,” are eagles.


8563.

Piece of Yellow Silk; pattern, a broad oval, filled in and surrounded
with floriations. Florentine, 15th century. 11 inches by 7½ inches.

 The once elaborate design, now indiscernible, was brought out not by
 another coloured silk but by the gearing of the loom; some one, very
 recently, has tried to show it by tracing it out in lead-pencil.


8564.

Piece of White Silk; pattern, within circles, two birds addorsed,
regardant, and separated by a tree. Syrian, 14th century. 12¼ inches
by 9 inches.

 The satin-like appearance and the creamy tone of this piece make it
 very pleasing, and in it we find, as in No. 8562, the same Persian
 influences; here, too, we have the mystic “hom,” put in, no doubt, by
 Christian hands.


8565.

Piece of Silk Tissue; ground, red; pattern, embroidery in
various-coloured silks, gold thread, and coloured small beads. German,
14th century. 3-⅝ inches by 3¾ inches.

 In most of its characters this end of a stole is just like those
 attached to the fine specimen noticed under No. 8588.


8566.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, red; pattern, squares filled in
alternately with a pair of animals and flower-like ornaments. Syrian,
13th century. 7 inches by 2 inches.

 The old Persian tradition of the “hom” may be seen here dividing the
 two addorsed regardant lionesses, and the whole design is done with
 neatness.


8567.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, red; pattern, two popinjays divided
by a bowl or cup looking much like a crescent moon, in an octagonal
frame-work, all yellow. Spanish, 13th century. 8½ inches by 6 inches.

 This stuff is of very light material, which has, however, kept its
 colour very well.


8568.

Piece of Gold Tissue, embroidered with the needle; ground, gold;
pattern, the Archangel Gabriel, with his head, hands, folds of his
dress, and lines in his wings done by needle in different coloured
silks. Italian, 14th century. 8½ inches by 5 inches.

 This beautiful and rare kind of textile, combined with needlework,
 merits the particular attention of those occupied with embroidery. The
 loom has done its part well; not so well, however, he or she who had
 to fill in the lines, especially the spaces for the hands and head, on
 which the features of the face are rather poorly marked.


8569.

Two Portions (joined together) of Gold Tissue; ground, gold; pattern,
in various-coloured silks, of birds, beasts, monsters, and foliage.
English or French, 13th century. 13 inches by 2 inches.

 Among the monsters, we have the usual heraldic ones that so often
 occur upon the textiles of that period; but the recurrence of the
 unmistakable form of the fleurs-de-lis, though sometimes coloured
 green, persuades us that this piece, entirely the produce of the
 loom, came from French, very likely Parisian hands, and was wrought
 for female use, as a band or fillet to confine the hair about the
 forehead, just as we see must have been the fashion in England at
 the time from the marked way in which that attire is shown in the
 illuminations of MSS. and sepulchral effigies of our Plantagenet
 epoch. Our countryman, John Garland, tells us, as we noticed in our
 Introduction, that women-weavers, in their time, wove such golden
 tissues, not only for ecclesiastical, but secular uses; and these two
 pieces seem to belong to the latter class.


8570.

Portion of an Orphrey; ground, crimson silk; pattern, foliage with
fruit and flowers in gold. German, 14th century. 9½ inches by 3¾
inches.

 So sparingly was the gold twined about the yellow thread, and of such
 a debased amalgamation that it has almost entirely disappeared, or
 where it remains has turned black.


8571.

Portion of Gold Tissue, figured with birds and beasts in gold upon a
crimson ground. French or English, late 12th century. 9 inches by 2⅛
inches.

 When new this textile must have been very pretty; but so fugitive
 was its original crimson, that now it looks a lightish brown. Within
 circles, divided by a tree made to look like a floriated cross, stands
 a lion regardant, and upon the transverse limbs of the cross, as upon
 the boughs of a tree, are perched two doves; while the spandrils or
 spaces between the circles are filled in with fleurs-de-lis growing
 out of leafed stalks. Though, in after times, it may have been applied
 to church use, it seems, like the specimen under No. 8569, to have
 been at first intended for female dress, either as a girdle or head
 attire.


8572.

Two Portions of Embroidery (joined together), the one showing, on
a reddish purple silk ground, figures of birds and animals within
circles, all embroidered in gold; the other, a similar ground and
pattern within lozenges. German, 14th century. 2 feet 1½ inches by 2
inches.

 The figures are heraldic monsters with the exception of the three
 birds, and are all done with great freedom and spirit; like the
 preceding piece, this looks as if it had originally been wrought for
 a lady’s girdle. The present two portions seem from the first to have
 formed parts of the same ornament, and to have been worked by the same
 needle.


8573.

Small Fragment of Red Silk, having a narrow border of purple with
lozenge pattern, in gold. English or French, 13th century. 2 inches by
¾ inch.

 Alike, in its original use, to the foregoing pieces.

8574.

Two Fragments (joined together) of Purple Silk, much faded, with a
cotton woof. Byzantine, 12th century. 2½ inches by 1¼ inches.


8575.

Two Fragments (joined together) of Silk and Gold Tissue; ground, light
crimson, now quite faded, bordered green; pattern, an interlacing
strap-work, in gold. English or French, 13th century. 2 inches by 2
inches.

 Like, for use, to the other similar specimens.


8576.

Very small Fragment of Gold Tissue on a red ground. 13th century. 1⅜
inches by ½ inch.

 This cloth of gold must have been showy from its richness.


8577, 8577A.

Two small Pieces of Silk, Tyrian purple. Byzantine, 12th century. Each
1¼ inches square.


8578, 8578A.

Two Rosettes, in small gold thread on deep purple silk, bordered by an
edging of much lighter purple. 14th century. 1½ inches square; 1
inch square.


8579.

Piece of Silk and Linen Damask; ground, green; pattern, a monster
animal within a circle studded with full moons, and a smaller circle
holding a crescent-moon studded in like manner. Syrian, 13th century. 1
foot 8¼ inches by 1 foot 2 inches.

 This bold and effective design is somewhat curious, exhibiting, as it
 does, a novel sort of monster which is made up of a dog’s head and
 fore-paws, wings erect, and a broad turned-up bushy tail freckled with
 squares, in each of which is an ornament affecting sometimes the shape
 of an L, sometimes of an F, at others of an A. Around the neck of this
 imaginary beast is a collar which, as well as the root of the wing,
 shows imitations of Arabic characters.


8580.

Portion of Gold Embroidery; ground, dark blue silk; pattern, large
griffins in gold. Early 13th century. 1 foot 4½ inches by 12½
inches.

 Pity it is that we have such a small part, and that so mutilated, of
 what must have been such a fine specimen of the needle. Though the
 whole pattern may not be made out, enough remains to show that the
 griffins, which were langued _gules_, stood in pairs and rampant, both
 figured with two-forked tails ending in trefoils, all worked in rich
 gold thread.


8581.

Portion of an Orphrey; ground, crimson silk; pattern, stars of eight
points, within squares, both embroidered in gold. 14th century. 5½
inches by 2 inches.

 This is one of the very few specimens which have pure gold, or perhaps
 only silver-gilt wire, without any admixture of thread in it, employed
 in the stars and narrow oblong ornaments in the embroidery, the
 wire itself being stitched to its grounding by thin linen thread.
 The large and small squares, as well as the borders, are executed in
 gold-twisted thread, very poor of its kind. The glittering effect of
 the pure metal-wire is very telling.


8582.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, crimson; pattern, conventional peacocks
and foliage, in yellow. Syrian, 13th century. 13 inches by 9½ inches.

 A good design bestowed upon very thin materials.


8583.

Portion of Gold Tissue; ground, light crimson, now quite faded, edged
green; pattern, a diaper of interlacing strap-work. English or French,
13th century. 2½ inches by 1½ inches.


8584.

Portion of Gold Tissue; ground, green, edged crimson; pattern,
lozenge-shaped diaper in gold. English or French, 13th century. 7½
inches by 1 inch.


8585.

Portion of Gold Tissue; ground, green, now quite faded; pattern, in
gold, almost all worn away, a lozenge diaper. English or French, 13th
century. 5 inches by 1½ inches.

 This, as well as the other two pieces immediately preceding, were
 woven by female hands for the binding of the hair.


8586.

Fragment of Silk Tissue; ground, purple; pattern, small squares, green
and black, enclosing a black disk voided in the middle. Byzantine (?),
12th century. 7 inches by 2 inches.

 This stuff, which was thin in its new state, is now very tattered and
 its colours dimmed.


8587.

Fragment of Silk Tissue; ground, purple; pattern, a rosette within a
lozenge, with a floral border. Italian, 14th century. 4 inches by 2
inches.


8588.

Stole of Gold Tissue, figured with small beasts, birds, and floriated
ornaments, bordered on one side by a blue stripe edged with white and
charged with ornamentation in gold, on the other, by a green one of a
like character, as well as by two Latin inscriptions. The ends, four
inches long, are of crimson silk, ornamented with seed-pearls, small
red, blue, gold, yellow, and green beads, pieces of gilt-silver, and
have a fringe three inches long, red and green. Sicilian, 13th century.
6 feet by 3¼ inches.

 As a piece of textile showing how the weavers of the middle ages
 could, when they needed, gear the loom for an intricacy of pattern in
 animals as well as inscriptions, this rich cloth of gold is a valuable
 specimen. Among the ornaments on the middle band we find doves, harts,
 the letter M floriated, winged lions, crosses floriated, crosses
 sprouting out on two sides with fleurs-de-lis, four-legged monsters,
 some like winged lions, some biting their tails, doves in pairs
 upholding a cross, &c.; and above and below these, divided from them
 by gracefully ornamented bars, one blue the other green, may be read
 this inscription,--“O spes divina, via tuta, potens medicina ☩ Porrige
 subsidium, O Sancta Maria, corp. (_sic_) consortem sancte sortis
 patrone ministram. ☩ Effice Corneli meeritis (_sic_) prece regna
 meri. ☩ O celi porta, nova spes mor. (_sic_) protege, salva, benedic,
 sanctifica famulum tuum Alebertum crucis per sinnaculum (_sic_) morbos
 averte corporis et anime. Hoc contra signum nullum stet periculum. ☩ O
 clemen. (_sic_) Domina spes dese’erantibus una.”

 The ends of this stole, German work of the 14th century, widen like
 most others of the period, and in their original state seem to have
 been studded with small precious stones, the sockets for which are
 very discernible amid the beads; and in each centre must have been
 let in a tiny illumination, as one still is there showing the Blessed
 Virgin Mary with our Lord, as a child, in her arms; and this appears
 to have been covered with glass. Amid the beads are yet a few thick
 silver-gilt spangles wrought like six-petaled flowers. As a stole,
 the present one is very short, owing, no doubt, to a scanty length
 of the gold tissue; in fact, it might easily be taken for a long
 maniple. When it is remembered that the Suabian house of Hohenstaufen
 reigned in Sicily for many years, till overthrown in the person of the
 young Conradin, at the battle of Tagliacozzo, by the French Charles
 of Anjou, A.D. 1268, we can easily account for Sicilian textiles of
 all sorts finding their way, during the period, into Germany. In his
 “Geschichte der Liturgischen Gewänder des Mittelalters,” 4 Lieferung,
 pt. xviii. fig. 3, Dr. Bock has given a figure of this stole.


8589.

Piece of Silk and Linen Tissue; ground, yellow, with a band of crimson;
pattern, crowned kings on horseback amid foliage, each holding on his
wrist a hawk, and having a small dog on the crupper of his saddle.
Sicilian, early 13th century. 1 foot 4½ inches by 7 inches.

 From a small piece to the left, figured with what looks like an
 English bloodhound or talbot, it would seem that we have not the full
 design in the pattern of this curious stuff, which speaks so loudly
 of the feudalism of mediæval Italy and other continental countries.
 Seldom was a king then figured without his crown, besides carrying
 his hawk on hand and being followed by his dogs, like any other lord
 of the land. The little hound behind him is somewhat singular. To us
 it appears curious that such an elaborate and princely design, meant
 evidently for the hangings of some palace, should have been done in
 the rather mean materials which we find. Parts seem to have been woven
 in gold thread; but so thin and debased was the metal that it is now
 quite black, and the linen warp far outweighs the thin silken woof.


8590.

Piece of Silk Tissue; ground, green; pattern, a so-called pomegranate
of elaborate form, amid flowers of white and light purple, now faded,
both largely wrought in gold. Spanish, 15th century. 1 foot 11 inches
by 1 foot 2 inches.

 Not only is the design of the pattern very effective, but the gold,
 in which the far larger part of it is done, looks bright and rather
 rich; yet, by examining it with a powerful glass, we may discover an
 ingenious, not to say trickish, way for imitating gold-covered thread.
 Skins of thin vellum were gilt, and not very thickly; these were cut
 into very narrow filament-like shreds, and in this form--that is,
 flat with the shining side facing the eye--afterwards woven into the
 pattern as if they were thread, a trick in trade which the Spaniards
 learned from the Moors.

 The warp is of a poor kind of silk not unlike jute, and the woof is
 partly of cotton, partly linen thread, so that with its mock gold
 filaments we have a showy textile out of cheap materials; a valuable
 specimen of the same sort of stuff from a Saracenic loom will be found
 under No. 8639, &c.


8591, 8591A.

Two Pieces of Silk Tissue; ground, a bright green; pattern, not
complete, but showing a well-managed ornamentation, consisting of the
so-called pomegranate with two giraffes below, the heads of which are
in gold, now so faded as to look a purplish black. Sicilian, early
14th century. 7½ inches by 4½ inches; 4½ inches by 4½
inches.

 This is a specimen interesting for several reasons. When new and
 fresh, this stuff must have been very pleasing; the elaborate design
 of its pattern, done in a cheerful spring-like tone of green upon a
 ground of a much lighter shade of the same colour, makes it welcome to
 the eye. The giraffes, tripping and addorsed, with their long necks
 and parded skins, have something like a housing on their backs. From
 such a quadruped being figured on this stuff, he who drew the design
 must have lived in Africa, or have heard of the animal from the Moors;
 he must have been a Christian, too, for green being Mohammed’s own
 colour, and even still limited, in its use, to his descendants, no
 Saracenic loom would have figured this stuff with a forbidden form
 of an animal. Yet, withal, there may be seen upon it strong traces
 of Saracenic feeling in its pattern. That singular ornament, made up
 of long zero-like forms placed four together in three rows, which we
 find upon other examples in this curious collection (No. 8596, &c.),
 seems distinctive of some particular locality; so that we may presume
 this fine textile to have been wrought at the royal manufactory of
 Palermo, where the giraffe might have been well known, where Saracenic
 art-traditions a long time lingered; and people cared nothing for
 the prohibition of figuring any created form, or of wearing green in
 their garments, or hanging their walls with silks dyed green; in some
 specimens the zero-like ornamentation takes the shape of our letter U;
 moreover the large feathers in the bird’s long tail are sometimes so
 figured.


8592.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, red; pattern, the castle of Castile and
fleur-de-lis, both in yellow. Spanish, 13th century. 10 inches by 6¼
inches.

 Though of poor and somewhat flimsy silk, this stuff is not without
 some merit, as it shows how exact were the workmen of those days to be
 guided by rule in the choice of colour; for instance, the tinctures
 here are correct, so far that metal _or_ is put upon colour _gules_.
 It was woven in stripes marked by narrow blue lines.


8593.

Portion of some Liturgic Ornament (?); ground, deep blue; pattern,
fleurs-de-lis embroidered in gold. French, 14th century. 7 inches by
3½ inches.

 Whether this fragment once formed a part of maniple, stole, or orphrey
 for chasuble, cope, dalmatic, or tunicle, it is impossible to say;
 heraldically it is quite correct in its tincture, and that is its only
 merit.


8594.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, fawn-colour; pattern, birds and beasts
amid foliage, all in green. Sicilian, early 14th century. 10¼ inches
by 4 inches.

 Though every part of the design in the pattern of this charming stuff
 is rather small, the whole is admirably clear and well rendered,
 and we see a pair of hawks perched, a pair of lions passant, a pair
 of flags tripping, a pair of birds (heads reversed), a pair of
 monster-birds (perhaps wyverns), and a pair of eagles (much defaced)
 with wings displayed. The lions are particularly well drawn.


8595.

Fragment of Silk Tissue; ground, crimson and gold, with three white and
green narrow stripes running down the middle, and an inscription on
each side the stripes. Spanish, 14th century. 7 inches by 6 inches.

 The warp is of thick cotton thread, the woof of silk and gold. Though
 very much broken, the inscription is Latin, and gives but a very few
 entire words, such as “et tui amoris in eis,” with these fragments,
 “--tus. Re---- le tuoru--.” From this, however, we are warranted in
 thinking this textile to have been wrought, not for any vestment--for
 it is too thick, except for an orphrey--but rather for hangings about
 the chancel at Whitsuntide. See Introduction, § 5.


8596.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, light crimson; pattern, in deep
brown, vine-leaves within an ellipsis which has on the outer edge a
crocket-like ornamentation, and on both sides a cluster as if of the
letter U, arranged four in a row, one row above the other. Sicilian,
14th century. 8½ inches by 6 inches.

 As we saw in Nos. 8591, 8591A, so here we see that very curious and
 not usual ornamentation, in the former instances like an O or zero,
 in the present one like another letter, U. The same crispiness in the
 foliage may be observed here as there; and in all likelihood both
 silks issued from the same city, perhaps from the same loom, but at
 different periods, as the one before us does not come up, by any
 means, in beauty with those fragments at Nos. 8591, 8591A. In some
 instances the feathers in a bird’s tail are made in the shape of our
 capital letter U.


8597.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, blackish purple; pattern, conventional
foliage in greyish purple. Italian, 14th century. 1 foot 8 inches by 1
foot 6 inches.

 The foliage, so free and bold, is quite of an architectural character,
 and shows a leaning to that peculiar scroll-form so generally to be
 seen on Greek fictile vases. Perhaps this stuff was wrought at Reggio
 in South Italy; but evidently for secular, not ecclesiastical use.


8598.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, purple; pattern, large monster birds,
and, within ovals, smaller beasts, all in gold thread, relieved with
green silk. Sicilian, 14th century. 2 feet 4 inches by 10 inches.

 The design is bold and very effective, and consists of an oval
 bordered very much in the Saracenic style, within which are two
 leopards addorsed rampant regardant. Above this oval stand two
 wyverns with heads averted and langued green or _vert_. This
 alternates with another oval enclosing two dog-like creatures rampant
 addorsed regardant; above this two imaginary birds, well crested,
 langued _vert_, with heads averted, and seem to be of the cockatoo
 family. From the shape of this piece, as we now have it, no doubt its
 last use was for a chasuble, but of a very recent make and period; and
 sadly cut away at its sides.


8599.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, green; pattern, in light purple or
violet, an ellipsis filled in with Saracenic ornamentation, having
below two split pomegranates in gold, and above, two giraffes, which
alternate with a pair of long-necked gold-headed birds that are flanked
by an ornament made up of letters like U. Sicilian, 14th century. 1
foot 10½ inches by 2 feet 2 inches.

 Though this specimen has been sadly ill-used by time, and made out of
 several shreds, it evidently came from the hands that designed and
 wrought other pieces (Nos. 8591, 8591A, 8596) in this collection. Upon
 this, as upon them, we have the same elements in the pattern--the
 ellipsis, the giraffes, and that singular kind of ornamentation, a
 sort of letter U or flattened O, not put in for any imaginary beauty
 of form, but to indicate either place or manufacturer, being a symbol
 which we have yet to learn how to read and understand. That in time we
 shall be able to find out its meanings there can be little or no doubt.

 Though of so pleasing and elaborate a design, the stuff, in its
 materials, is none of the richest.


8600.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, yellow; the pattern, in violet, an
ellipsis filled in with Saracenic ornamentation. Sicilian, 14th
century. 10 inches by 2¼ inches.

 There can be little doubt that this inferior textile, showing, as it
 does, the same feelings in its pattern, came from Palermo.


8601.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, yellow; pattern, a broad stripe of gold
with narrow stripes, two in green, two in blue, and yellow bands
charged with birds and flowers in gold. Spanish, late 14th century. 13
inches by 8 inches.

 The narrow stripes running down the broad one, and constituting its
 design, are ornamented with square knots of three interlacings and a
 saltire of St. Andrew’s cross alternatingly. The bands display birds
 of the waterfowl genus--a kind of crested wild-duck--very gracefully
 figured as pecking at flowers, one of which seems of the water-lily
 tribe.

 Here, as at No. 8590, we have the same substitution for gold thread,
 of gilt vellum cut into thread-like filaments, and so woven up with
 the silk and cotton of which the warp and woof are composed. This,
 like its sister specimen, so showy, is just as poor in material; and,
 from its thinness, if may have served not so much for an article of
 dress as for hangings in churches and state apartments.


8602, 8602A, B, C, D, E.

Six Fragments of Silk Damask; ground, fawn-colour; pattern, a floriated
ellipsis enclosing a pair of eagles, with foliage between the
elliptical figures. Sicilian, 14th century. Dimensions, all small and
various.

 In many respects these fragments of the same piece of tissue closely
 resemble the fine stuff under No. 8594; the ground, fawn-colour, is
 the same; the same too--green, and of the same pleasing tone--is the
 colour of its pattern, which, however, gives us the peculiarity of a
 knot of two interlacings plentifully strewed amid the foliage. It is
 slightly freckled, too, with white.


8603.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, fawn-colour; pattern, birds in pairs amid
foliage (all green) and flowers, some blue, some gold, now faded black.
Italian, 14th century. 18 inches by 12¾ inches.

 Not a satisfactory design, as the birds are in green and hard to be
 distinguished from the heavy foliage in which they are placed. The
 materials, too, are poor and thin, the warp being cotton.


8604.

Fragment of Silk Damask; ground, deep fawn-colour; pattern, birds
pecking at a flower-stem amid foliage, all yellow, occasionally shaded
deep green. Sicilian, 14th century. 6½ inches by 4½ inches.

 As far as it goes, the design is neat and flowing, with the
 peculiarity of the deep green, now almost blue, shadings both in the
 birds and foliage. The warp is fine cotton, and the whole speaks of a
 Sicilian origin.


8605.

Piece of Damask; ground, light purple; pattern, in yellow, a net-like
broad ribbon, within the meshes of which are eight-petaled conventional
flowers. Italian, 14th century.

  [Illustration: 8605
  SILK DAMASK.
  Italian, 14th century.
  Vincent Brooks Day & Son, Lith.]

 The texture of the specimen is somewhat thin, but the tones of its
 two harmonious colours are good, and its pattern, in all its parts,
 extremely agreeable; upon those broad ribbon lines of the net, the
 branches, sprouting out into trefoils, are gracefully made to twine;
 and an inclination to figure a crowned M on every petal of the flower
 inside the meshes is very discernible. Possibly Reggio, south of
 Naples, is the town where this showy stuff was wrought, serviceable
 alike for sacred and secular employment.


8606.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, black; pattern, not easily discernible,
though evidently elaborate. Italian, 14th century. 10 inches by 6¼
inches.

 So much has damp injured this piece that its original black has
 become almost brown, and its pattern is well nigh gone. In its fresh
 state, however, the design, traces of which show it to have been
 sketched in the country and about the time mentioned, was thrown up
 satisfactorily, for it was woven in cotton from the silken ground of
 the piece.


8607.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, fawn-colour; pattern, trefoils and
vine-leaves, in green. Sicilian, 14th century. 8¾ inches by 4½
inches.

  [Illustration: 8607.
  SILK DAMASK.
  Sicilian, 14th century.
  Vincent Brooks Day & Son, Lith.]

 Like all the other specimens of this kind, the present one is pleasing
 in its combination of those favourite colours--fawn and light
 green--as well as being remarkable for the elegance with which the
 foliage is made to twine about its surface; the materials, too, are
 thick and lasting.


8608.

Fragment of Silk Damask; ground, dark blue; pattern (very imperfect in
the specimen), an ellipsis filled in with ornamentation and topped by a
floriation, out of which issue birds’ necks and heads, all in lighter
blue, edged with white, and two conventional wild animals in gold, but
now black with tarnish. Sicilian, 14th century. 6 inches by 6 inches.


8609.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, fawn-colour; pattern, wreaths of white
flowers, green boughs bearing white flowers, forming part of a design
in which an ellipsis in green constitutes a leading portion; and a
broad band figured with scroll-work and an Arabic sentence, all in
gold. Sicilian, 13th century. 1 foot 5½ inches by 5¾ inches.

 Probably in the sample before us we behold a work from the royal
 looms or “tiraz”--silk-house--of Palermo, when Sicily was under the
 sway of France, in the person of a prince belonging to the house of
 Anjou. In the first place, we have the fawn--a tone of the murrey
 colour of our old English writers--and the light joyous green; in
 the second place, the ellipsis was there, though our specimen is too
 small to show it all. Those narrow borders that edge the large golden
 lettered band present us with a row of golden half-moons and blue
 fleurs-de-lis on one side; on the other, a row of golden half-moons
 and blue cross-crosslets: on the band itself we find, alternating with
 foliage, an oblong square, within which is written a short sentence
 in Arabic--a kindly word, a wish of health and happiness to the
 wearer--such as was, and still is, the custom among the Arabs. Sure is
 it that this textile, if wrought by Saracenic hands, was done under a
 Christian prince, and that prince a Frenchman.


8610.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, fawn-colour; pattern, birds and dogs in
green. Sicilian, 14th century. 1 foot 4½ inches by 10¼ inches.

 Like so many other specimens of the Palermitan loom, both in colours
 and design, this piece is rather poor in its silk, which is harsh and
 somewhat thin. The birds are a swan ruffling up its feathers at the
 presence of an eagle perched just overhead, amid branches and foliage
 in which the trefoil abounds.


8611.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, red; pattern, foliage in green, wild dogs
in blue, gold, and white. South Italian, 14th century. 15 inches by
12½ inches.

 The wild dogs are segeant face to face, in pairs; one blue, the other
 gold; one white, the other gold: and below are flowers blue, gold,
 and white, alternating like the animals. The warp is cotton, the woof
 silk, and altogether the stuff is coarse.


8612.

Fragments of Silk Damask; ground, black; pattern, a tower surrounded
by water and a figure holding a hawk, and hawks perched, in pairs, on
trees. Italian, 15th century. 9 inches by 5½ inches; 9 inches by
4½ inches.

 Pity that this curious piece is so fragmental and decayed that its
 singular design cannot, as in another specimen of the very same
 tissue, all be made out. Whether it be man or woman standing on
 high outside the tower with a bird at rest on the wrist is here
 hard to say. The castle is well shown, with its moat, and its
 draw-bridges--for it has more than one--all down. Like No. 8606, it
 shows its pattern by the difference of material in the warp and woof.
 All over it has been thickly sprinkled with thin gilt trefoils that
 were not sewed but glued on; many have fallen off, and those remaining
 have turned black. See No. 7065.


8613.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, black; pattern, in gold thread, birds
amid foliage. Italian, 14th century. 14 inches by 7¼ inches.

 The bold and facile pattern of this piece is very conspicuous, with
 its eagles stooping upon long-necked birds perched on waving boughs;
 to much beauty in design it adds, moreover, richness in material.


8614.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, light brown; pattern, the same colour,
palmettes and rosettes, with Arabic sentences repeated. Attached is a
piece of green silk wrought with gold. Sicilian, 14th century. 16¼
inches by 15½ inches.

 A quiet but rich stuff, and especially noticeable for its Arabic or
 imitated Arabic inscriptions, one within the rosettes, the other all
 round the inner border of the palmettes or elliptical ornamentations.
 The cloth of gold is plain.


8615.

Piece of Linen, block-printed in a pattern composed of birds and
foliage. Flemish, late 14th century. 1 foot 9 inches by 3 inches.

 Of this kind of block-printed linen, with its graceful design in
 black upon a white ground, there are other good examples (Nos. 7027
 and 8303) in this collection. From the marks of use upon its canvas
 lining, this long narrow strip would seem to have once served as an
 apparel to an amice in some poor church.


8616.

Portions of Crimson Silk, brocaded in gold; the pattern, angels holding
crescents beneath crowns, from which come rays of glory, and hunting
leopards seizing on gazelles. Italian, end of 14th century. 2 feet
8¾ inches by 2 feet.

 This rich stuff betrays in its design an odd mixture of Asiatic
 and European feeling; we have the eastern hunting lion spotted and
 collared blue, pouncing on the gazelle or antelope, which is collared
 too; so far we have the imitation, but without lettering, of a Persian
 or Asiatic pattern. With this we find European, or at least Christian,
 angels, clothed in white, but with such curious nebule-nimbs about
 their heads as to make their brows look horned, more like spirits of
 evil than of good. The open crowns are thoroughly after a western
 design; and the head and shoulders of a winged figure, to the left,
 show that we have not the entire design before us. From the graceful
 way in which the figures are made to float, as well as from several
 little things about the scrolls, we may safely conclude that the
 designer of the pattern lived in upper Italy, and that this costly and
 elegant brocade was wrought at Lucca. Of the Oriental elements of this
 pattern we have said a few words at No. 8288.


8617.

Stole of deep purple silk, brocaded in gold and crimson; pattern,
a long flower-bearing stem, and large flowers. Italian, early 15th
century. 9 feet 6 inches by 4 inches.

 Like all the old stoles, this is so long as almost to reach down to
 the feet, and is rather broader than usual, but does not widen at the
 ends, which have a long green fringe. The stuff is of a rich texture,
 and the pattern good.


8618.

Part of a Linen Cloth, embroidered with sacred subjects, and inscribed
with the names, in Latin, of the Evangelists. German, end of the 14th
century. 6 feet by 4 feet.

 Unfortunately, this curious and very valuable sample of Rhenish
 needlework is far from being complete, and has lost a good part of
 its original composition on its edges, but much more lamentably on
 the right hand side. Not for a moment can we think it to have been
 an altar-cloth properly so-called, that is, for spreading out over
 the table itself of the altar; but, in all likelihood, it was used
 as a reredos or ornament over but behind the altar, as a covering
 for the wall. Another beautiful specimen of the same kind has been
 already noticed under No. 8358, for throwing over the deacon’s and
 subdeacon’s lectern at high mass; and, from the fact that, in both
 instances, the subjects figured are in especial honour of the B. V.
 Mary, it would seem that, in many German churches, and following a
 very ancient tradition that the Blessed Virgin wrought during all her
 girlhood days ornaments for the Temple of Jerusalem with her needle,
 the custom was to have for the “Mary Mass,” and for altars dedicated
 under her name, as many liturgical appliances as might be of this sort
 of white needlework, and done by maidens’ hands.

 In the centre we have the coronation of the B. V. Mary, executed after
 the ordinary fashion, with her hair falling down her shoulders, and a
 crown upon her head; she is sitting with arms uplifted in prayer, upon
 a Gothic throne, by her Divine Son, who, while holding the mund in
 His left, is blessing His mother with raised right hand; over-head is
 hovering an angel with a thurible; at each of the four corners is an
 Evangelist represented, not only by his usual emblem, but announced by
 his name in Latin. At first sight the angel, the emblem of St. Matthew
 might be taken for Gabriel announcing the Incarnation to the B. V.
 Mary. Above and around are circles formed of the Northern Kraken, four
 in number, put in orb, and running round an elaborately floriated
 Greek cross, symbolizing the victory of Christianity over heathenism.
 In many places, within a gracefully twining wreath of trefoil leaves
 and roses barbed, is the letter G, very probably the initial of the
 fair hand who wrought and gave this beautiful work to our Lady’s
 altar; and the spaces between the subjects are filled in with
 well-managed branches of the oak bearing acorns. To the left is seen a
 hind or countryman hooded, carrying, hung down from a long club borne
 on his shoulder, a dead hare; and further on, still to the left, an
 old man who with a lance is trying to slay an unicorn that is running
 at full speed to a maiden who is sitting with her hair hanging about
 her shoulders, and stroking the forehead of the animal with her left
 hand. The symbolism of this curious group, not often to be met with,
 significative of the mystery of the Incarnation, is thus explained
 by the Anglo-Norman poet, Phillippe de Thaun, who wrote his valuable
 “Bestiary” in England for the instruction of his patroness, Adelaide
 of Louvaine, Queen to our Henry I:--“Monoceros is an animal which has
 one horn on its head; it is caught by means of a virgin: now hear in
 what manner. When a man intends to hunt it and to take and ensnare it,
 he goes to the forest where is its repair, there he places a virgin
 with her breast uncovered, and by its smell the monoceros perceives
 it; then it comes to the virgin and kisses her breast, falls asleep on
 her lap, and so comes to its death: the man arrives immediately, and
 kills it in its sleep, or takes it alive and does as he likes with
 it.... A beast of this description signifies Jesus Christ; one God
 he is and shall be, and was and will continue so; he placed himself
 in the virgin, and took flesh for man’s sake: a virgin she is and
 will be, and will always remain. This animal in truth signifies God;
 know that the virgin signifies St. Marye; by her breast we understand
 similarly Holy Church; and then by the kiss it ought to signify that a
 man when he sleeps is in semblance of death; God slept as a man, who
 suffered death on the cross, and His destruction was our redemption,
 and His labour our repose,” &c.--“Popular Treatises on Science written
 during the Middle Ages, &c., and edited for the Historical Society of
 Science by T. Wright,” pp. 81, 82.

 The figure of the countryman carrying off the hare is brought forward
 in illustration. As the rough coarse clown, prowling about the lands
 of his lord, wilily entraps the hare in his hidden snares, so does the
 devil, by allurements to sin, strive to catch the soul of man. These
 interesting symbolisms end the left-hand portion of the reredos. Going
 to the right, we find that part torn and injured in such a way that it
 is evidently shorn of its due portions, and much of the original so
 completely gone that we are unable to hazard a conjecture about the
 subject which was figured there.


8619.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, rose-coloured; pattern, peacocks, eagles,
a small nondescript animal, and a lyre-shaped ornament, all in green,
touched with white. Italian, late 14th century. 11 inches by 10½
inches.

 A curious design, in which the birds are boldly and freely drawn. Each
 horn of the lyre-shaped ornament ends, bending outwardly with what to
 herald’s eyes seems to be two wings conjoined erect.


8620.

Piece of Silk and Gold Damask; ground, dark blue, in some places
faded; pattern, a band charged with squares in gold, every alternate
one inscribed with the same short Arabic word, lions in gold beneath a
tree in light blue shaded white, and cockatoos in gold. Syrian, 14th
century. 19 inches by 13½ inches.

 So strong is the likeness between this and the stuff at No. 8359, both
 in the texture of the silk and the treatment of the beasts and birds,
 that we are led to suppose them to have come from the same identical
 workshop. That tree-like ornament, under which the shaggy long-tailed
 lion with down-bent head is creeping, seems the traditionary form of
 the Persians’ “hom.” The gold is, in most parts, very brilliant, owing
 to the broadness of the metal wrapped round the linen thread that
 holds it; and, altogether, this is a rich specimen of the Syrian loom.


8621.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, fawn-colour; pattern, foliage in green,
flowers, some white, some in gold, and lions in gold. Sicilian, late
14th century. 22½ inches by 10 inches.

 The warp is of linen, and the silken woof is thin; so sparingly was
 the gold bestowed, that it has almost entirely faded; altogether, this
 specimen shows a good design wasted upon very poor materials. In the
 expanding part of the foliage there seems to be a slight remembrance
 of the fleur-de-lis pattern, and the lions are sejant addorsed
 regardant.


8622, 8623.

Two Portions of Silk Damask; in both, the ground, fawn-colour; the
pattern, in the one, ramified foliage, amid which two lions sejant
regardant, in gold; in the other, two eagles at rest regardant, in
green, divided by a large green conventional flower, including another
such flower in gold. Sicilian, 14th century. 11 inches by 5¼ inches;
9½ inches by 4¾ inches.

 Very likely from the same loom as No. 8621, and every way
 corresponding to it.


8624.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, pale brown; pattern, in a lighter tone,
stags and sunbeams, and below eagles within hexagonal compartments.
Sicilian, late 14th century. 18 inches by 14 inches.

 The stags, well attired, are in pairs, couchant, chained, with heads
 upturned to sunbeams darting down on them, with spots like rain coming
 amid these rays; beneath these stags are eagles. The material is very
 thin and poor for such a pleasing design. In a much richer material
 part of this same pattern is to be seen at No. 1310.


8625.

Piece of very fine Linen. Oriental. 2 feet 4 inches by 1 foot 5 inches.

 This is another of those remarkably delicate textiles for which
 Egypt of old was, and India for ages has been, so celebrated. A fine
 specimen has been already noticed at No. 8230; but to indicate the
 country or the period of either would be but hazarding a conjecture.
 Surplices were often made of such fine transparent linen, as is shown
 by illuminated MSS. See “Church of our Fathers,” t. ii. p. 20.


8626.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, fawn-colour; pattern, flowers and birds,
both in green. Italian, end of 14th century. 11 inches by 8½ inches.

  [Illustration: 8626
  SILK DAMASK.
  Italian, 14th century.
  Vincent Brooks Day & Son, Lith.]

 The birds are in two pairs, one at rest, the other on the wing darting
 down; between them is an ornament somewhat heart-shaped, around which
 runs an inscription of imitated Arabic. Most likely this silk is of
 Sicilian work.


8627.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, dark blue; pattern, lozenge-shaped
compartments, filled in with quadrangular designs varying alternately.
Spanish, late 14th century. 10½ inches by 8 inches.

 There is a Moorish influence in the design, which leads to the
 supposition that this stuff was wrought somewhere in the South of
 Spain.


8628, 8628A.

Two Fragments of Silk Damask; ground, light yellow; pattern, flowers
and birds, with the letters A and M crowned, all in pale red. Italian,
late 14th century. 6 inches by 5 inches; 6 inches by 3½ inches.

 A very pleasing design, in nicely toned colours, and evidently wrought
 for hangings, or perhaps curtains, about the altar of the B. V.
 Mary, as we have the whole sprinkled with the crowned letters A M,
 significative of “Ave Maria.”


8629.

Fragment of Silk Damask; ground, purple; pattern, four green hares in
a park walled, with conventional flowers, yellow. Italian, late 14th
century. 5 inches by 4¾ inches.

 The colours, both of the ground and design, of this piece are much
 faded, so that it becomes hard, at first sight, to make out the
 pattern, especially the four green hares tripping within a park,
 which, instead of being shown with pales, has a wall round it.


8630.

Fragment of Silk Damask; ground, red; pattern, foliage and flowers in
green, with animals, alternately in gold and dark blue. Italian, late
14th century. 5 inches by 4 inches.

 Though the materials be thin, the design is interesting and displays
 taste. The animals, seemingly fawns, are lodged, but so sparingly was
 the gold bestowed upon its cotton thread that it has almost entirely
 disappeared from the would-be golden deer.


8631.

Fragment of Silk Damask; ground, deep purple; pattern, a circle
inclosing a heart-shaped floral ornament, in red, with an indistinct
ornament, once gold. South of Spain, 14th century. 6¼ inches by
5½ inches.

 The colours of what may have been a rich stuff, as well as the
 brightness of the gold, are much dulled.


8632.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, pale yellow; pattern, vine-leaves and
grapes, with the letter A, all in light purple. Italian, late 14th
century. 11¾ inches by 3 inches.

 One of those cheerful designs which are to be found in this
 collection; and had the specimen been larger, very likely an M would
 have been shown under the A.


8633.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, purple; pattern, within interlacing
strapwork forming a square, two parrots addorsed alternating with
two dogs addorsed, all yellow, with ornamentations of small circles
and flowers, once gold, but now so tarnished that they look black.
Sicilian, 14th century. 5½ inches by 5 inches.

 One of those specimens which will be sought by those who want examples
 of stuffs figured with animals. This stuff is shewn in Dr. Bock’s
 “Dessinateur pour Etoffes,” &c. 3 Livraison.


8634.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, fawn and green; pattern, small squares
enclosing leaves, birds, and beasts alternately. Italian, 14th century.
7½ inches by 3 inches.

 Though small, the pattern is good and comes from either a Sicilian or
 a Reggio loom. Lions, and stags with branching horns, eagles, parrots,
 and undecipherable birds, in braces with necks crossing one another,
 are to be found upon it; among the foliage the vine-leaf prevails.


8635.

Altar Frontal of Linen, embroidered with the filfot in white thread
freckled with spots in blue and green silk, and lozenge-shaped
ornaments in blue, green, and crimson silk. German, 14th century. 3
feet 10 inches square.

 There can be little doubt but this piece of needlework was originally
 meant for an altar frontal, and its curious but coarser lining, may
 have been wrought for the same separate but distinct purpose. The
 filfot or gammadion, a favourite object upon vestments, is its chief
 adornment, while its lining, a work of a century later, is worked with
 a palm-like design in thick linen thread. At a later time, it seems to
 have been employed as a covering to the table itself of the altar, and
 is plentifully sprinkled with spots of wax-droppings.


8636.

Piece of Linen Cloth, embroidered with filfots, some in white, some in
blue silk. German, 14th century. 1 foot 11 inches by 9 inches.

 This handsome piece of napery was evidently woven for the service of
 the church, and may have been intended either for frontals to hang in
 front of the altar, or as curtains to be suspended away from, but yet
 close to, the altar-table on the north and south sides. The favourite
 gammadion appears both in the pattern of the loom-work and in the
 embroideries wrought by hand, sometimes in blue, sometimes in white
 silk, upon it.


8637.

Piece of Silk and Gold Damask; ground, green; pattern, flower-bearing
stems, in gold, amid foliated tracery of a deep green tone, all
enclosed by a golden elliptical border. Italian, early 15th century,
11½ inches by 7½ inches.

 This rich and pleasing stuff is most likely from the loom of some
 workshop in Lucca and was manufactured for secular purposes, and
 deserves attention not only for the goodness of its materials, but for
 the beauty of its design.


8638.

PIECE of Thread and Silk Damask; ground, purple slightly mixed with
crimson; pattern, vine-branches bearing grapes and tendrils all in
green, amid which are wyverns in gold, langued green. South Italian,
15th century, 1 foot 1 inch by 9½ inches.

 The warp is of thread, and the woof of silk. Such was the poverty of
 the gold thread in the wyverns, that it has almost entirely dropped
 off or turned black. This specimen shows how, sometimes, a rich
 pattern was thrown away upon mean materials. Its uses seem to have
 been secular.


8639.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, gold; pattern, a circle showing, in its
lower half, a crescent moon and an eight-petaled flower, in the round
centre of which is an Arabic inscription, all in black, and the spaces
filled in with a Saracenic scroll in light blue, light green, and
crimson (now faded). Moresco-Spanish, 14th century. 1 foot 1¾ inches
by 5¾ inches.

 This unmistakeable specimen of a Saracenic loom would seem to have
 been wrought somewhere in the south of Spain, may be at Granada,
 Seville, or Cordova.

 As a sample of its kind it is valuable, showing, as it does, that the
 same feelings which manifested themselves upon Moorish ornamentation
 for architecture were displayed in the patterns of textiles among that
 people. The fraud, so to say, of gilt shreds of parchment for threads
 covered with gold is exemplified here; and hence we may gather that
 the Spaniards of the mediæval period learned this trick from their
 Saracenic teachers in the arts of the loom. As in No. 8590, &c., so
 here, the gold ground is wrought, not in thread twined with gold foil,
 but with gilt vellum cut into very narrow filaments, and worked into
 the warp so as to lie quite flat.


8640.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, light blue; pattern, a circle elaborately
filled in with a wreath of leaves edged with a hoop of fleur-de-lis,
and enclosed in an oblong garland made up of boughs and flowers, in a
slightly deeper tone of the same blue. Italian, early 15th century. 1
foot by 8½ inches.

 So very like in design to No. 8637, that we may presume it to have
 been wrought at Lucca.


8641.

Part of an Orphrey; ground, once crimson, but now faded to a light
brown colour; pattern, quatrefoils, with angles between the leaves,
embroidered with male saints in various colours upon a golden ground.
Each quatrefoil is separated by a knot of three interlacings, and the
sides filled in with a pair of popinjays, gold and green, and two
boughs of the oak bearing acorns, alternately. On both sides runs a
border formed of a scroll of vine-leaves, done alternately in gold and
silver, upon a green silk ground. North Italian, 15th century. 2 feet 7
inches by 5½ inches.

 The whole of this elaborate piece of needlework has been done with
 much care, and in rich materials; but as the saints have no peculiar
 emblems given them, their identification is beyond hope. Whether for
 cope or chasuble--for it might have served for either vestment--this
 embroidery must have been very effective, from the bold raised nature
 of much of its ornamentation.


8642, 8642A.

Two Pieces of Silk Damask; ground, green and fawn; pattern,
intertwining branches of the vine, with bunches of grapes. Sicilian,
14th century. 9¾ inches by 4½ inches; 6 inches by 4 inches.

 Another of those graceful green and fawn-coloured silks almost
 identical in pattern with others we have seen from the same country.


8643.

Piece of Net-work; ground, reticulated pale brown silk; pattern, a sort
of lozenge, in green and in brown silk, hand-embroidered. German, 14th
century. 7 inches by 5 inches.

 From the circular shape of this piece it seems to have been a portion
 of female attire, most likely for the shoulders. One of its ornaments
 looks very like a modification of one form of the heraldic mill-rind,
 with the angular structure.


8644.

Portion of an Orphrey; ground, gold; pattern, a shield of arms, and an
inscription in purple letters, repeated. German, 15th century. 1 foot 9
inches by 2¼ inches.

 This specimen of the German loom may have been woven at Cologne,
 probably for the narrow orphreys of a whole set of vestments given
 to the church by some Duchess of Cleves, of the name of Elizabeth
 Vancleve, since, to such a lady, the blazon and the inscription
 point. The shield is party per pale _gules_, an escarbuncle _or_; and
 _purpure_, a lion rampant _argent_, barred _gules_, ducally crowned
 and armed _or_.


8645.

Piece of Linen; ground, light brown; pattern, small blue squares or
lozenges, separated into broad bands by narrow stripes, once ornamented
with green lozenges and bordered all along by red lines. German, 15th
century. 1 foot by 7 inches.

 The warp and woof are linen thread; the green of the narrow stripes,
 from the small remains, appears to have been woollen.


8646.

Fragment of a Piece of Silk and Gold Embroidery on Linen; ground, as
it now looks, yellow; pattern, interlacing strapwork, forming spaces
charged with the armorial bearings of England, and other blazons,
rudely worked. 14th century. 5 inches by 3½ inches.

 So faded are the silks, and so tarnished the gold thread used for
 the embroidery of this piece, that, at first sight, the tinctures
 of the blazon are not discernible. In the centre we have the three
 golden libards or lions of England, and the silk of the ground or
 field, on narrow examination, we find to have been scarlet or _gules_;
 immediately below is a shield quarterly, 1 and 4 _or_, a lion rampant
 _gules_, 2 and 3 _sable_, a lion rampant _or_; immediately above, a
 shield _gules_, with three pales _azure_ (?), each charged with what
 are seemingly tall crosses (St. Anthony’s) _or_; above, the shield of
 England; but to the right hand, on a field barry of twelve _azure_ and
 _or_, a lion rampant _gules_; below this shield, another, on a field
 _or_, two bars _sable_; these two shields alternate on the other side.
 The strapwork all about is fretty _or_, on a field _gules_.


8647.

Piece of Silk and Gold Damask; ground, crimson, sprinkled with gold
stars; pattern, the Annunciation. Italian, 14th century. 1 foot 1¼
inches by 8 inches.

 In this admirable specimen of the Florentine loom we have shown us
 the B. V. Mary not quite bare-headed, but partly hooded and nimbed,
 as queen-like she sits on a throne, with her arms meetly folded on
 her breast, the while she listens to the words of the angel who
 is on his knees before her, and uplifting his hand in the act of
 speaking a benediction, while in his left he holds the lily-branch,
 correctly--which is not always so in artworks--blooming with three,
 and only three, full-blown flowers. Above the archangel the Holy Ghost
 is coming down from heaven in shape of a dove, from whose beak dart
 forth long rays of light toward the head of St. Mary. The greater part
 of the subject is wrought in gold; the faces, the hands, and flowers
 are white, and a very small portion of the draperies blue. The drawing
 of the figures is quite after the Umbrian school, and, therefore,
 not merely good, but beautiful. In his “Geschichte der Liturgischen
 Gewänder des Mittelalters,” 1 Lieferung, pl. xiii. Dr. Bock has
 figured it.


8648.

An Embroidered Figure of St. Ursula, within a Gothic niche, which with
much of the drapery, was done in gold, on a ground now brown. Rhenish,
14th century. 8¾ inches by 3¾ inches.

 So sadly has the whole of this embroidery suffered, apparently from
 damp, that the tints of its silk are gone, and the gold about it all
 become black. That this is but one of several figures in an orphrey is
 very likely; it gives us the saint with the palm-branch of martyrdom
 in one hand, a book in the other, and an arrow slicking in her neck,
 the instrument of her death; being of blood royal, she wears a crown;
 emblem of heaven and paradise, the ground she treads is all flowery.


8649.

Piece of Woollen Carpet; ground, red; pattern, a green quatrefoil
bearing three white animals. Spanish, late 14th century. 1 foot 11
inches by 1 foot 1 inch.

 A most unmistakeable piece of mediæval carpeting; the lively tone
 of its red is yet bright. The quatrefoils are quite of the period,
 and look like four-petaled roses barbed, that is, with the angular
 projection between the petals. So unlion-like are the animals, that we
 may not take them as the blazon of the Kingdom of Leon.


8650.

Piece of Silk Damask; ground, crimson; pattern, the so-called artichoke
in yellow and green, lined white, and foliage of green lined white.
Spanish, 15th century. 1 foot 9 inches by 1 foot 4½ inches.

 A good example of this showy pattern, once so much in favour, and of
 which the materials are very good and substantial; much of the yellow
 portions of the design was in gold thread, the metal of which has,
 however, almost all gone. From the quantity of glue still sticking to
 the hind part of this silk, its last destination would seem to have
 been the covering of some state room.


8651.

The “Vernicle,” embroidered in silk, and now sewed on a large piece of
linen. Flemish, middle of 15th century. 9½ inches by 7½ inches;
the linen, 2 feet 10½ inches by 2 feet 9 inches.

 To the readers of old English literature, especially of Chaucer,
 the term of “Vernicle” will not be unknown, as expressing the
 representation of our Saviour’s face, which He is said to have left
 upon a napkin handed Him to wipe His brows, by one of those pious
 women who crowded after Him on His road to Calvary. It is noticed,
 too, in the “Church of our Fathers,” t. iii. p. 438. This piece of
 needlework seems to have been cut off from another, and sewed, at a
 very much later period, to the large piece of linen to which it is
 now attached; for the purpose of being put up either in a private
 chapel, or over some very small altar in a church, as a sort of
 reredos; or, perhaps, it may have originally been one of the apparels
 on an alb: never, however, on an amice, being much too large for such
 a purpose. One singularity in the subject is the appearance of crimson
 tassels, one at each corner of the napkin figured with our Lord’s
 likeness, which is kept with great care still, at Rome, among the
 principal relics in St. Peter’s, where it is shown in a solemn manner
 on Easter Monday. It is one of those representations of a sacred
 subject called by the Greeks ἀχειροποίητος, that is, “not made by
 hands,” or, not the work of man, as was noticed in the Introduction to
 the present Catalogue.


8652.

Linen Towel, with thread embroidery; pattern, lozenges, some enclosing
flowers, others, lozenges. German, 15th century. 3 feet 11 inches by 1
foot 6½ inches.

 Most likely this small piece of linen was meant to be a covering for
 a table, or may be the chest of drawers in the vestry, and upon which
 the vestments for the day were laid out for the celebrating priest
 to put on. In the pattern there is evidently a strong liking for the
 gammadion--a kind of figuration constructed out of modifications of
 the Greek letter gamma. In England the gammadion became known as the
 “filfot,” and seems to have been looked upon as a symbol for the name
 Francis or Frances, and is of frequent occurrence in our national
 monuments--especially in needlework--belonging to the 14th and 15th
 centuries. From the presence of that large eight-petaled flower in
 this cloth we are somewhat warranted in thinking that the same hand
 that wrought the fine and curious frontal, No. 8709, worked this, and
 that her baptismal name was Frances.


8653-8661A.

Ten Fragments of Narrow Laces for edgings to liturgical garments,
woven, some in gold, some in silk, and some in worsted. 8658 is a
specimen of parti-coloured fringe; 8659 shows a two-legged monster as
part of its design; and in 8661 and 8661 A we find a knot much like
the one to which Montagu gives the names of Wake and Ormond, in his
“Guide to the Study of Heraldry,” p. 52.


8662.

The Napkin for a Crozier, of fine linen ornamented with two
narrow perpendicular strips of embroidery of a lozenge pattern in
various-coloured worsteds, and having, at top, a cap-shaped finishing
made of a piece of green raised velvet, which is figured with a bird,
like a peacock, perched just by a well, into which it is looking. At
each corner of this cap is a small parti-coloured tassel, and, at the
top, the short narrow loop by which it hung from the upper part of the
crozier-staff. German, 15th century. 2 feet 2½ inches by 1 foot
8½ inches.

 This is another of those liturgical ornaments, valuable, because so
 rare, of which we have spoken under No. 8279A. But in the specimen
 before us we find it in much diminished form--half only of its usual
 size. The design of the raised velvet, in its cap, is as unusual as
 curious.


8663.

Linen Cloth, embroidered in coloured silks with sacred emblems and
hagiological subjects, and inscribed with names amid trees and flowers.
German, 15th century. 1 foot 1¾ inches by 4 inches.

 In all likelihood this needlework was meant as the covering for a
 table in the vestry of some church, or oratory in some lady’s room. On
 the left is figured St. George slaying the dragon; next, the pelican
 in its piety, above which is the “vernicle,” and over this the word
 “Emont,” with a ducal coronet above it. Then the names “Ihs,” “Maria,”
 and, above them, the word “Eva” crowned. In the middle of the cloth is
 a cross with all the emblems of the Passion around it, as well as a
 star and crescent. Then an animal spotted like a panther and chained
 to a tree; this is followed by the name “Meltinich;” last of all we
 find the name “Amelia,” and beneath, a half-figure of a woman having
 long hair with a large comb in her right hand, altogether resembling a
 mermaid. At bottom runs a narrow parti-coloured thread fringe.


8664.

Frontlet to an Altar-Cloth, embroidered in coloured silks upon fine
linen, with flower-bearing trees and a shield of the Passion, along
with saints’ names, &c. German, 16th century. 1 foot 1¾ inches by 4
inches.

 The shield in the middle is charged with a chalice and consecrated
 host, and four wounds (hands and feet) of our Lord. Under one tree
 occur the names “Jhesus,” “Maria;” under another, “Andreas,” “Anna.”
 From amid the grass on the ground spring up tufts of daisies.


8665.

Piece of Embroidery, done upon fine linen in coloured silks and gold
thread. German, middle of the 15th century. 7½ inches square.

 The subject of this piece is the death of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
 figured according to the traditional manner much followed by the
 mediæval schools of art in most parts of Christendom. It is, however,
 to be regretted that this embroidery has been at some time mutilated;
 in its original state it may have, perhaps, served as an apparel to an
 alb, and occupied the place of one of those to be seen at No. 8710.


8666.

Fragment of thin Silk Damask; pattern, a lozenge-shaped diaper; colour,
a much faded crimson. Oriental, 13th century. 8½ inches by 4½
inches.

 Though small, the pattern is pretty, and much resembles a stuff of
 silk and gold very lately found in the tomb of one of the Archbishops
 of York, in that cathedral.


8667.

Portion of an Orphrey, wrought partly in the loom, partly by the
needle, and figured with an angel-like youth holding before him
an armorial shield, as he stands within a Gothic niche, with an
inscription below his feet. German, very late 15th century. 10½
inches by 5½ inches.

[Illustration: 8667.

EMBROIDERY, SILK & GOLD

Under a Gothic canopy &c. __ German, late 15th century.]

 This instructive piece deserves the attention of those who study
 embroidery. The loom was geared in such a manner that the spaces for
 the head, face, neck, and hands were left quite empty, so that they
 might be filled in by the needle. But this was not all the hand had to
 do; the architectural features of the canopy, its shading in red, the
 nimb, and nicely floriated diapering all over the angel’s golden alb,
 were put in by the needle.

 The inscription, woven in, reads “Johā vā geyē,” and the piece is
 figured in Dr. Bock’s “Geschichte der Liturgischen Gewänder des
 Mittelalters,” 2 Lieferung, pl. xv.


8668.

Part of an Orphrey, mostly loom-woven, and figured with the
Crucifixion, on one side of which stands the Blessed Virgin Mary, on
the other, St. John the Evangelist, German, late 15th century. 12¼
inches by 5 inches.

 Like the preceding piece, the greater part is woven, even the body
 itself of our Lord, so that in His figure, as in those of His mother
 and the beloved disciple, the only embroidered portions are the
 head and face, besides those blood-spots all over His person, the
 tricklings from His five wounds, and the crossed nimb about His head.


8669.

Portion of a Maniple, in much faded tawny silk; pattern, a rose-like
floriation. Flemish, 16th century. 1 foot 10½ inches by 3¼ inches.

 Though peculiar, the pattern in the design of this silken stuff is
 very pretty; the piece of parti-coloured silken fringe that edges the
 end of this maniple is older than the textile to which it is sewed.


8670.

The hind Orphrey for a Chasuble, with embroidered figures applied upon
a ground red and gold. The figures are a knight bareheaded and kneeling
in prayer, with his helmet and shield before him, St. Catherine of
Alexandria, and St. Anthony of Egypt reading a book. German, middle of
the 15th century. 2 feet 11 inches by 5¼ inches.

 The figures are well done, and all show the varieties of process
 then brought into use; they were worked on canvas, of which the
 portions for the face and hands were left untouched, saving by the few
 slight stitches required for indicating the hair and features of the
 countenance and indications of the fingers. Some of the dress was cut
 out of woven cloth of gold and sewed on; other parts worked with the
 needle, as were such accessories as books, instruments of martyrdom,
 and other such emblems. The knight, probably the giver of the
 chasuble, is meant to be indicated by his blazon, which is a shield
 _or_ charged with eight _torteaux_ in orle, and this is surmounted
 by a golden helmet with mantling, and a crest, consisting of golden
 horns fringed with four _torteaux_ each. The ground upon which the
 embroideries are set is rich, and woven with golden wheel-like circles
 with wavy, not straight, spokes upon a bright red field.


8671.

Fragment of an Orphrey, woven in gold and coloured silks; pattern,
intertwining brambles of the wild rose, bearing flowers seeded and
barbed. German, beginning of the 16th century. 7¾ inches by 4½
inches.

 Though the ground is, or rather was, of gold, so sparingly was the
 precious metal bestowed upon the thread, that it has been almost
 entirely worn away. The same may be said of the very narrow tape with
 which, on one of its edges, it is still bordered.


8672.

Part of an Orphrey, embroidered upon linen, in coloured silks, and
figured with St. Anthony and a virgin martyr-saint, both standing
beneath Gothic canopies. Rhenish, late 15th century. 1 foot 9 inches by
3¾ inches.

 Notwithstanding the embroidery be somewhat coarse, like much of the
 same kind of work at the period, it is so far valuable as it instructs
 us how three methods were practised together on one piece. The canvas
 ground was left bare at the faces and hands, so that the features of
 the one and the joints of the other might be shown by appropriate
 stitches in silk. Pieces of golden web, cut to the right size, were
 applied for the upper garments of the figures, and the folds shaded
 by hand in red silk, and the borders of the robe edged with a small
 cording, while all the rest of the work was filled in with needlework.
 The closely fitting scull-cap, but more especially the staff ending
 in a tau-cross, indicate St. Anthony, but the female saint cannot
 be identified; her long hair flowing about her shoulders signifies
 that she was a virgin, and the green palm-branch in her right hand
 indicates that she underwent martyrdom.


8673.

Piece of Raised Velvet; ground, yellowish pink, the raised velvet,
bright crimson; pattern, a large compound floriation within a circle
formed by small hooked lines having flowers at the cusps, and the round
itself springing out of a somewhat smaller floriation. Flemish, 16th
century. 2 feet 3 inches by 1 foot 1¾ inches.


8674.

Piece of Raised Velvet; the ground, orange, the raised velvet, green;
the pattern, of pomegranate form, within crocketed circles, and
alternating with a large floriation. Flemish, 16th century. 2 feet
4½ inches by 11 inches.

 The raised pattern, from its rich pile, stands up well, and was hung
 upon walls, or employed for curtains and other household appliances,
 for which such stuffs were generally produced.


8675.

Piece of Worsted Needlework; pattern, lozenges after several forms, and
done in various colours. Flemish, 16th century. 18½ inches by 12
inches.

 Worked after the same fashion, and with the same materials, that our
 ladies at this day employ upon their Berlin wool work.


8676.

Piece of Linen Damask; pattern, artichoke and pomegranate forms.
Flemish, 16th century. 1 foot 3 inches by 1 foot 1¾ inches.

 The design is carefully elaborated; and the piece itself is evidence
 of the beauty of old Flemish napery.


8677.

A Small Cloth for an Oratory, of fine linen, embroidered with sprigs
of flowers in their proper colours, in silk, and with I. H. S. in red
gothic letters, within a thorn-like wreath in green. Flemish, 16th
century. 2 feet 6 inches by 1 foot 10 inches.

 That this cloth has been cut down is evident; the sacred monogram is
 not in the middle, and the higher row of flowers is shortened. Though
 hemmed with tape on one side, and edged on two sides by very narrow
 strong lace, and on the fourth or front border by a broader lace,
 its last use was as a covering for some sort of table, not an altar
 properly so called; it is by far very much too small for any such
 purpose. In all likelihood, this cloth was made to overspread the
 top of a praying desk, or some little table strewed with devotional
 objects in a bed-room or private oratory.


8678.

Portion of Worsted Embroidery upon light brown linen; the pattern, a
scroll of flowers and foliage in colours German, late 16th century. 1
foot 5¾ inches by 4¼ inches.

 The design is made to run along well, and the colours are nicely
 contrasted.


8679.

Piece of Silk Damask, of a light red and straw colour; pattern, two
varieties of the pomegranate mixed with large artichokes and small
crowns, and separated by thick branches, which are purpled with broad
ivy-like leaves. Italian, 16th century. 2 feet 10 inches by 1 foot 11
inches.

 A bold pattern, remarkable for the originality of some parts of its
 design.


8680, 8680A.

Two Pieces of Raised Velvet, green and gold; pattern, a modification of
the favourite pomegranate and its accompanying intertwining foliage;
very large and incomplete. Florentine, early 16th century. 2 feet 1
inch by 9½ inches; 1 foot 3 inches by 10½ inches.

 These two pieces give us specimens of those gorgeous stuffs so often
 sent forth to the world from the looms of Tuscany, and afford, in
 portions of the design, samples of velvet raised upon velvet so very
 rarely to be found. The little short loops, or spots, of gold thread,
 with which the velvet is in some parts freckled, ought not to go
 unnoticed.


8681.

Piece of Embroidery, wrought with a running pattern of leaves and
flowers in coloured threads upon a golden ground, now much tarnished.
German, 16th century, 1 foot 6 inches by 4½ inches.

 Embroidery in thread is of somewhat rare occurrence.


8682.

Part of a Web for church use, wrought in thread and silk upon a golden
ground, now much faded. The pattern, trees bearing white flowers,
bunches of white lilies, wheels with stars, and the words “Jhesus,
Maria.” Cologne, late 15th century. 6 feet by 5 inches.

 That it once formed a frontlet or border to the front edge of an
 altar-cloth is very likely, not only from the spots of wax with which
 it is in some parts sprinkled, but more especially from the way in
 which its pattern is wrought, so as to be properly seen when stretched
 out horizontally.


8683, 8684.

Two Specimens of Web for church use; woven in silks, upon a golden
ground; the first with the sacred name “Jhesus,” and a tree bearing
white and red flowers, with daisies at its foot, and the name “Maria,”
beneath which is a garland of white and red flowers twined about the
letter M; the second, with a round ornament, having red and gold
stars upon a tawny white ground between each of its eight radii,
and underneath the sacred name, in dark blue silk. German, late 15th
century. 1 foot 7½ inches by 2½ inches; 7 inches by 3¼ inches.

 Like several other examples of the same kind to be found in this
 collection, and wrought for the same liturgical purposes.


8685.

Piece of Raised Velvet, dark blue; pattern, one of the several
varieties of the pomegranate. Italian, 16th century. 1 foot 3½
inches by 1 foot 3 inches.

 Rich neither in material nor design, this velvet may have been wrought
 not for ecclesiastical but personal use.


8686.

Piece of Silk Damask, purple; pattern, the pomegranate. Italian. 2 feet
5 inches by 11¾ inches.

 Like the preceding, meant for personal use, but exhibiting a much
 more elaborate design, and the variety of the corn-flower (centaurea)
 springing forth all round the pomegranate, which itself grows out of a
 fleur-de-lis crown.


8687.

Piece of Embroidery, on canvas; ground, figured with St. John the
Baptist and St. John the Evangelist. Rhenish, 16th century. 1 foot 4
inches square.

 To the left is seen St. John the Baptist, clothed in a long garment of
 camel-hair and his loins girt with a light-blue girdle, preaching in
 the wilderness on the banks of the Jordan. In his left hand he holds
 a clasped book, upon which rests the “Lamb of God,” and just over,
 a flag, the white field of which is ensigned with a red cross; his
 upraised right hand, with the first two fingers elevated as in the act
 of blessing, is pointed to the lamb. To the right we have St. John
 the Evangelist, holding a cup in one hand, while with the other he
 makes the poisonous drug in it harmless by a blessing.

 The grounding has been filled in mostly with golden thread, but of
 so poor a quality that the thin metal on it is scarcely discernible.
 In both figures the whole of the person, the fleshes, as well as
 clothing, are all done in woven white silk cut out, shaded, and
 featured in colours by the brush, with some little needlework here and
 there upon the garments and accessories. The figures of the saints are
 “applied;” and one cannot but admire the effect which a few stitches
 of rich green silk produce upon the canvas ground, while a piece of
 applied silk, slightly shaded by the brush, is an admirable imitation
 of a rocky cliff. The two tall trees and green garlands between
 them are telling in their warm tones. Altogether this is a precious
 specimen of applied work, and merits attention. It seems to have been
 the middle piece of a banner used for processions, and may have once
 belonged to some church at Cologne dedicated to the two SS. John.


8688.

Portion of an Orphrey, crimson satin, embroidered with flowers in
coloured silk and gold thread. 17th century. 1 foot 3½ inches by 2
inches.

 From what liturgical vestment this was taken it would be hard to
 guess, but there is no likelihood that it ever ornamented a mitre.
 The yellow flowers, of the composite kind, and heart’s-eases are very
 nicely done, whether the work of an Italian, French, or German hand.
 They have much about them that speaks of France.


8689.

Piece of Raised Velvet, brown, with floriated pattern in gold thread.
North Italy, early 16th century. 1 foot 1½ inches by 6½ inches.

 Most likely from the looms of Lucca, and with a pretty diapering in
 the gold ground where it is bare of the velvet pile.


8690.

Piece of Green Velvet, spangled with gold, and embroidered with three
armorial shields in gold thread and coloured silks. German, 17th
century. 10 inches by 9¾ inches.

 All the shields are very German, especially in their crests. The
 shield on the right hand will attract notice by its anomaly; on a
 field _azure_ it gives a rose _gules_ barbed _green_, or colour upon
 colour; the crest, too, is a curiosity, at least in English blazon,
 displaying an Elector’s cap with very tall bullrushes, five in number,
 and coloured proper, issuing from between the ermine and the crimson
 velvet.


8691.

Linen Napkin, for liturgic use, embroidered, in coloured silks, with
conventional flowers. German, end of the 16th century. 2 feet ½ inch
by 1 foot 11 inches.

 This is another of those liturgical rarities--Corpus Christi
 cloths--of which we have spoken at No. 8342, under the name of
 Sindons, or Pyx-cloths. Such appliances were employed for mantling
 the pyx or ciborium when shut up in the tabernacle--that little
 temple-like erection on the table, or rather step, on the wall-side
 of the altar--when the custom ceased of keeping the pyx hanging up
 beneath a canopy.


8692.

Hood of a Cope, silk damask, red and yellow, with the subject of the
Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary woven in it. Florentine, late
15th century. 1 foot 5 inches by 1 foot 4½ inches.

 Uprising from her grave, and amid rays of glory and an oblong or
 elliptic aureole, the Virgin Mary is being wafted to heaven by four
 angels, who are not, as of yore, vested in long close albs like
 deacons, but in flowing garments so slit up as to show their naked
 arms, bare legs, and lower thighs. Upon the empty tomb, from out of
 which are springing up lilies, is written “Assunta est;” and at one
 corner kneels the apostle St. Thomas who, with head uplifted and both
 his arms outstretched, is receiving from the mother of our Lord her
 girdle, which she is holding in her hands and about to let drop down
 to him. “La Madonna della cintola”--this subject--may often be met
 with in Italian, more especially Florentine, art of the middle ages,
 and is closely linked with the history of the fine old church of
 Prato, as we gather from Vasari, in his “Vite dei Pittori,” t. i. p.
 279, Firenze, 1846; and the English translation, t. ii. p. 75.


8693.

Linen Napkin, for liturgic use, embroidered in white, brown, and blue
thread, with figures of our Lord and the twelve Apostles. German, 4
feet 8 inches by 1 foot 4½ inches.

 Like the valuable specimen of the needle described at No. 8358, the
 example before us served the purpose of covering the lectern in the
 chancel at the celebration of the liturgy.

 As in the usual representations of the Jesse-tree, the bust of each
 of the thirteen figures is made to rest within a circular branch
 upon its tip, where it sprouts out like a wide flower. At the top
 of this tree we behold our Lord with His right hand uplifted in the
 act of benediction, His left rested upon a mund, and, about His head
 a scroll inscribed “Pax F(V)obis.” To the right is St. Peter--so
 inscribed--holding a key; to the left, St. John, as a beardless
 youth--inscribed “S. Johnis;” then St. Anderus (Andrew), with a cross
 saltire-wise; and St. Jacob (James), with his pilgrim’s staff in
 hand, and on his large slouched hat turned up in front he has two
 pilgrim-staves in saltire; St. Jacobi (James the Less), with fuller’s
 bat; St. Simonus (Simon), beardless, with a long knife or sword jagged
 or toothed like a saw; St. Thomas, with his spear; St. Bartlyme
 (Bartholomew), with the flaying knife; St. Judas Tadvs (Jude or
 Thaddeus), with a knotted club; St. Matheus (Matthew), with a hatchet,
 and beardless; St. Philippe, with a cross bottony, and beardless;
 St. Mathias, with a halbert. At bottom is marked, in blue ink, 1574;
 but it may be fairly doubted if this date be the true one for this
 embroidery, of which the style looks at least fifty years older.


8694.

Fragment of Silk and Cotton Tissue, green, with small flower pattern.
Italian, late 16th century. 6½ inches by 4¼ inches.

 A pleasing specimen, rich in material, and bright in its tones, very
 likely from the South of Italy.


8695.

Piece of Silk Damask, crimson and yellow; pattern, scroll and foliage.
French, end of 16th century. 1 foot 7¾ inches by 1 foot 9 inches.

 This piece, intended for household use, is not without effect in its
 design. Though the warp is silk, in the woof there is linen thread,
 though not easily perceived.


8696.

Piece of Fine Linen, with broad border of flowers in coloured silks.
Syrian (?), 15th century. 12¼ inches by 1 foot 7 inches.

 This very fine linen has all the appearance of having been wrought
 in some country on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, and
 reminds us of those thin textures for which India was, and yet is,
 so celebrated. The embroidery, too, is but a timid imitation of
 flowers, and is so worked as to be equally good on both sides. To all
 appearance it is she end of a woman’s scarf.


8697.

Piece of Needlework in coloured worsteds, upon a canvas ground;
pattern, zig-zag lozenges, containing tulips and other liliacious
flowers. German, middle of 16th century. 1 foot 4¾ inches by 1 foot
1 inch.

 Seemingly, this is but a small piece of a foot-cloth for the upper
 step of an altar.


8698.

Linen Damask Napkin; pattern, scrolls enclosing a pomegranate
ornamentation; border, at two sides, rich lace. Flemish, 16th century.
4 feet 3 inches by 2 feet 3½ inches.

 This napkin probably served for carrying to the altar the Sunday “holy
 loaf,” as it was called in England, the use of which is still kept up
 in France, and known there as the “pain benit.” For an account of this
 ancient rite, see the “Church of our Fathers,” i. 135.


8699.

Small Bag, silk and linen thread, embroidered in quadrangular pattern.
German, 15th century. 3½ inches square.

 Very like the one under No. 8313. It may have been used as a
 reliquary, or, what is more probable, for carrying the rosary-beads of
 some lady. Concerning the form of prayer itself, see the “Church of
 our Fathers,” t. iii. p. 320.


8700.

Piece of Embroidery, upon an older piece of white silk, brocaded in
gold, three armorial shields in their proper tinctures, all within a
golden wreath. German, late 16th century. 4 inches square.


8701.

Piece of Black Raised Velvet, with small flower pattern. Italian, 16th
century. 1 foot by 7 inches.

 A pleasing example of the Genoese loom.


8702.

Piece of Damask, silk and linen, tawny and yellow; pattern, a
modification of the pomegranate within oblong curves, and other
floriations. Florentine, 16th century. 2 feet 11½ inches by 1 foot
1½ inches.

[Illustration: 8702

DAMASK, SILK AND LINEN,

Florentine, 16th century.

  Vincent Brooks Day & Son, Lith.

]

 Of a large bold design, though not rich in material.


8703.

Piece of Damask, silk and linen, tawny and yellow; pattern, a slight
variation of the foregoing, No. 8702. Florentine, 16th century. 3 feet
4 inches by 9½ inches.

 So much alike are these two specimens, that at first sight they look
 parts of the same stuff; a near and close inspection shows, however,
 that for one or other there was a slight alteration in the gearing of
 the loom. Both may have originally been crimson and yellow: if so,
 the first colour has sadly faded. From the shape of this piece, its
 last use must have been for a chasuble, but of a very recent period,
 judging from its actual shape.


8704.

Chasuble, cloth of gold, diapered with a deep-piled blue velvet, so
as to show the favourite artichoke pattern after two forms, with
embroidered orphreys and armorial shields. Flemish, very late 15th
century. 4 feet 4½ inches by 3 feet 10½ inches.

  [Illustration: 8704.
  PART OF THE ORPHREY OF A CHASUBLE.
  Flemish, 15th century.
  Vincent Brooks Day & Son, Lith.]

 This chasuble, rare, because not cut-down, has been lately but
 properly repaired. The back orphrey, in the form of a cross, is
 figured with the Crucifixion, the B. V. Mary fainting and upheld by
 St. John; a shield _gules_, with chalice _or_, and host _argent_, at
 top; another shield at bottom, _gules_, a column _argent_, twined with
 cords _or_; the front orphrey is figured with the B. V. Mary crowned,
 and carrying our infant Lord in her arms; beneath her, the words
 inscribed in blue, “Salve Regina;” lower down, St. John the Evangelist
 blessing a golden chalice, out of which is coming a dragon,
 and having the inscription at his feet, “Sanctus Iohannes.” Lower
 still, St. Catherine with a book in her right hand, and in the left a
 sword resting on a wheel.

 The front orphrey is done in applied work; the back orphrey consists
 of a web with a ground of gold, figured with green flower-bearing
 boughs, and having spaces left for the heads and hands to be filled
 in with needlework. The shield of arms _or_, with a chief _azure_,
 charged with three square buckles _argent_, we may presume to be the
 blazon of the giver of this gorgeous vestment.


8705.

Frontlet to an Altar-Cloth of diapered linen. The frontlet itself
is the broad border of purple cloth on which is figured a Latin
inscription within wreaths of flowers done in white linen. German, late
15th century. 10 feet 9 inches by 6½ inches; the linen, 9 inches.

 This is another liturgical appliance, once so common everywhere, and
 so often mentioned in English ecclesiastical documents, which has
 now become a very great rarity. From the shred of the altar-cloth
 itself to which it is sewed, that linen, with its fine diapering and
 its two blue stripes, diapered, too, and vertically woven in, must
 have been of a costly kind, and large enough to overspread the whole
 table of the altar, so that this blue frontlet fell down in front.
 The Latin inscription, each word parted by a wreath, from four parts
 of which shoot sprigs of flowers, reads thus:--“O Gloriosum lumen
 ec(c)lesiarum funde preces pro salute populorum.” The letters, as well
 as all the floral ornamentation of this short prayer, are wrought in
 pieces of linen stitched on with red thread; and below is a worsted
 parti-coloured fringe, 1¾ inches deep. For the use of the frontlet
 in England, during the mediæval period, the reader may consult the
 “Church of our Fathers,” i. 238.


8706.

An Altar-Frontal in very dark brown coarse cloth, on which are applied
armorial shields, and the ground is filled in with flower-bearing
branches, in worsted and silk. German, beginning of 16th century. 7
feet 8 inches by 4 feet 1 inch.

 Though of so late a period, this altar-frontal can teach those
 studious of such appliances how readily and effectively such works may
 be wrought. The whole is divided into eight squares; in the middle of
 each is put a shield alternating with another in its blazon, the first
 being _or_, three hearts _gules_, two and one, between three bendlets
 _sable_; the second, _argent_, an eagle _sable_ on an arched bough
 raguly _azure_ in the dexter base. The ramifications twining all over
 the ground are done in light brown broad worsted threads stitched on
 with white thread; and the flowers, all seeded and barbed, some white,
 some yellow, as if in accordance with the tints of the two shields,
 are done in silk. At bottom this frontal has been edged with a deep
 fringe, parti-coloured white and black.


8707.

Chasuble, blue cut velvet; pattern, one of the pomegranate forms, with
orphreys. German, late 15th century. 9 feet 5 inches by 4 feet 9 inches.

 To the liturgical student fond of vestments in their largest, most
 majestic shapes, this chasuble will afford great satisfaction, as it
 is one of the few known that have not been cut down. The front orphrey
 is a piece of narrow poor web, once of gold, but not much worn; the
 hind orphrey is a long cross, raguly or knotted, with our Lord nailed
 to it; above is the Eternal Father wearing an imperial crown of gold
 lined crimson, and in the act of blessing, between whom and our
 Saviour is the Holy Ghost in shape of a silver dove with outspread
 wings. At foot is the group of the Blessed Virgin Mary fainting, and
 hindered from falling by St. John.


8708.

The Blue Linen Lining of a Dalmatic, with the parti-coloured fringe
bordering the front of the vestment, and some other fragments. 4 feet
1½ inches by 5 feet 7 inches. The silk Sicilian, 14th century.

 The silk is much like the specimen fully described under No. 8263.


8709.

Altar-Frontal of grey linen, figured in needlework, with flowers,
stars, and heraldic animals, on alternating squares of plain linen and
net-work. German, 15th century. 9 feet 5½ inches by 4 feet 2½
inches.

 This important piece of stitchery was never meant for a covering to
 the table or upper part of the altar; it served as a frontal to it,
 and was hung before, and at each corner of the altar so as to cover it
 and its two sides down to the ground. From all its ornaments having
 an armorial feeling about them, this elaborate piece of needlework
 would seem to have been wrought by the hands of some noble lady, who
 took the blazon of her house for its adornment. At the lower part, in
 the middle, is a shield of arms _argent_, charged with two bars once
 _gules_; high above, a star of eight points voided _gules_; below, a
 fleur-de-lis barred _argent_ and _gules_; at each of the four corners
 of the square a maneless lion rampant barred _argent_ and _gules_. To
 the right, on the same level, a square filled in with fleurs-de-lis;
 then a square with birds and beasts unknown to English heraldry: the
 birds, natant, have heads of the deer kind, horned, and the beasts
 a beaked head with a single arched horn coming out of the forehead
 with the point of the bow in front; both birds and beasts are paled
 _argent_ and _gules_. On the next square are stars of eight points,
 and flowers with eight petals, within quatrefoils all _argent_, upon a
 field (the netting) _gules_. The last square is separated into three
 pales each charged with a flower-like ornament alternately _argent_
 and _gules_. Above this square is another of net _gules_, charged
 with four flowers _argent_; and, going to the left, we have a square
 showing two bears combatant barred _argent_ and _gules_; still to the
 left, birds at rest, and stars alternating _argent_ upon a square of
 net _gules_. Next to this a large antelope tripping paled _argent_
 and _gules_; then a square having lions rampant within lozenges with
 a four-petaled flower at every point, all _argent_, on a field (of
 net) _gules_. Following this is a large dog, maned and rampant barred
 _argent_ and _gules_; to this succeeds a square of net _gules_ charged
 with lozenges, having over each point a mascle, and within them stars
 of eight points all _argent_. The last square to the left on this
 middle row is charged with a heart-shaped ornament voided in the
 form of a fleur-de-lis, and put in three piles of four with flowers
 between. The only other square differing from those just noticed are
 the two charged with an animal of the deer kind, with antlers quite
 straight. The narrow borders at the sides are not the least curious
 parts of this interesting specimen; that on the left hand is made up
 of a dog running after a bearded antelope, which is confronted by a
 griffin so repeated as to fill up the whole line. The border on the
 right hand is made up of the beast with the one horn.


8710.

Alb of White Linen appareled at the cuffs, and before and behind at the
feet, with crimson and gold stuff figured with animals and floriations
of the looms of Palermo. Sicilian, 14th century. 5 feet 7 inches long,
4 feet across the shoulders, without the sleeves.

 For those curious in liturgical appliances this fine alb of the
 mediæval period will be a valuable object of study, though perhaps
 not for imitation in the way in which it is widened at the waist. Its
 large opening at the neck--1 foot 4½ inches--is somewhat scalloped,
 but without any slit down the front, or gatherings, or band. On each
 shoulder, running down 1 foot 3¾ inches, is a narrow piece of
 crochet-work inscribed in red letters with the names “JESUS,” “MARIA.”
 The full sleeves, from 1 foot 6 inches wide, are gradually narrowed
 to 6¼ inches at the end of the apparels at the cuffs, which are 4
 inches deep and edged with green linen tape. At the waist, where it
 is 3 feet 10 inches, it is made, by means of gatherings upon a gusset
 embroidered with a cross-crosslet in red thread, to widen itself into
 6 feet, or 12 feet all round. Down the middle, before and behind, as
 far as the apparels, is let in a narrow piece of crochet-work like
 that upon the shoulders, but uninscribed. The two apparels at the
 feet--one before, the other behind--vary in their dimensions, one
 measuring 1 foot 1 inch by 1 foot 1¾ inches, the other, which is
 made up of fragments, 1 foot by 11¾ inches. Very elaborate and
 freely designed is the heraldic pattern on the rich stuff which forms
 the apparels. The ground is of silk, now faded, but once a bright
 crimson; the figures, all in gold, are an eagle in demi-vol, langued,
 with a ducal crown, not upon, but over its head; above this is a
 mass of clouds with pencils of sun-rays darting from beneath them
 all around; higher up again, a collared hart lodged, with its park
 set between two large bell-shaped seeded drooping flowers, beneath
 each of which is a dog collared and courant. For English antiquaries,
 it may be interesting to know that upon the mantle and kirtle in
 the monumental effigy of King Richard II, in Westminster Abbey,
 the hart as well as the cloud with rays form the pattern on those
 royal garments, and are well shown in the valuable but unfinished
 “Monumental Effigies of Great Britain,” by the late brothers Hollis.
 This alb is figured, but not well with regard to the apparels, by Dr.
 Bock, in his “Geschichte der Liturgischen Gewänder des Mittelalters,”
 4 Lieferung, pl. iii, fig. 1.


8711.

Chasuble, Cloth of, now tawny, once crimson, silk; pattern, animals
amid floriations. Sicilian, 14th century. 4 feet 5 inches by 3 feet 6
inches.

 Made of precisely the same rich and beautiful stuff employed in the
 apparels of the alb just noticed, No. 8710, the elaborate design of
 which is here seen in all its perfectness. The chasuble itself has
 been much cut away from its first large shape.


8712.

Part of a large Piece of Needlework, done upon linen in coloured
worsteds, figured with a king and queen seated together on a Gothic
throne, and a young princess sitting at the queen’s feet. All about are
inscriptions. German (?), 15th century. 5 feet 6½ inches by 3 feet
10 inches.

 Wofully cut as this large work has been, enough remains to make it
 very interesting. The king,--whose broad-toed shoes, as well as the
 very little dog at his feet, will not escape notice,--holds a royal
 sceptre in his left hand, and around his head runs a scroll bearing
 this inscription, “Inclitus Rex Alfridus ex ytalia Pacis amator.”
 About the head of the queen, which is wimpled, the scroll is written
 with, “Pia Hildeswit Fundatrix Peniten (?), A^o. M^o. XII^o.” Below
 the princess, whose hair, as that of a maiden, falls all about
 her shoulders, and whose diadem is not a royal one, nor jewelled
 like those worn by the king and queen, runs a scroll bearing these
 words, “Albergissa Abbatissa.” Just under the king, on a broad band,
 comes--“o. dāpnacionis (damnationis) in &.” At top, on a broad bright
 crimson ground, in large yellow letters, we read--“v (ex voto?) hoc
 opus completum ē (est).” From droppings of wax still upon it, this
 curious piece of needlework must have been used somewhere about an
 altar--very likely as a sort of reredos; and from the inscription, it
 would seem to have been wrought as an ex voto offering.


8713.

Piece of Needlework, in silk, upon linen, figured with St. Bartholomew
and St. Paul, each standing beneath a round arch. German, early 12th
century. 2 feet 8 inches by 1 foot 6 inches.

 The linen upon which this venerable specimen of embroidery is done
 shows a very fine texture; but the silk in which the whole is wrought
 is of such an inferior quality that, at first sight, though soft to
 the touch, it looks like the better sort of untwisted cotton thread.
 Such parts of the design as were meant to be white are left uncovered
 upon the linen, and the shading is indicated by brown lines. As
 such early examples are scarce, this is a great curiosity. Dr. Bock
 has figured it in his “Geschichte der Liturgischen Gewänder des
 Mittelalters,” 2 Lieferung, pl. viii.


8942.

Persian Tunic, crimson satin, embroidered in various-coloured silks
after shawl-patterns, with a double-mouthed long pocket in front. 4
feet by 3 feet.


8973.

Piece of Embroidered Silk; ground, blue silk; pattern, flowers in
coloured flos-silks and gold thread, and broad band figured with
wood-nymphs, syrens, boys, and an animal half a fish and half a lion.
Italian, 17th century. 6 feet ½ inch by 3 feet 1½ inches.

 No doubt this embroidery served as domestic decoration. It may have
 been employed as the front to a lady’s dressing-table.


8975.

Counterpane; ground, thread net, embroidered with foliage and flowers
in various silks. Italian, 16th century. 8 feet by 7 feet 10 inches.

 The flos-silks used are of a bright colour, and the whole was worked
 in narrow slips sewed together in places with yellow silk; in other
 parts the joinings were covered by a narrow silk lace of a pleasing
 design.


8976.

Frontal to an Altar; ground, crimson; pattern, sacred subjects and
saints, some in gold, some in yellow silk. Venetian, early 16th
century. 6 feet 6 inches by 2 feet 3½ inches.

 This frontal is made out of pieces of woven orphreys, and by the way
 in which those pieces are put together we know that they must have
 been taken from old vestments, some of which had been much used. It is
 composed of nine stripes or pales of broad orphrey-web; and allowing
 for the two end pales being brought round the ends of the altar when
 hung there, it would then present seven stripes or pales to the eye.
 Looking at it thus, we find the first pale of crimson silk, figured in
 yellow silk, with the B. V. Mary holding our Lord as an infant on her
 lap, with the mund or terraqueous globe surmounted by a cross in His
 right hand, amid a strap-like foliation; the next pale of crimson silk
 is figured in gold, with a saint-bishop vested in alb, stole crossed
 over his breast, and cope, and wearing jewelled gloves, with his
 pastoral staff in his right hand. The third pale, in yellow silk upon
 a crimson ground, presents us our Lord’s tomb, with soldiers watching
 it, and our Lord Himself uprising, with His right hand giving a
 blessing, and in His left a banner, and by His side cherubic heads.
 The fourth pale at top gives us the B. V. Mary and our infant Saviour
 in her arms, very much worn away, and beneath, St. Peter with his
 keys, in gold upon crimson. The other pales are but repetitions of the
 foregoing. Altogether, this frontal, thread-bare as it is in places,
 is well worth the attention of those who interest themselves in the
 history of Venetian design, and the art of weaving.


8977.

Hood to a Cope; ground, two shades of yellow silk; subject, the
Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Venetian, 16th century. 1 foot 4
inches by 1 foot 3½ inches.

 Within an oval, upheld by four angels, and radiant with glory,
 and having a cherubic head beneath her, the B. V. Mary is rising
 heavenward from her tomb, out of which lilies are springing, and by it
 St. Thomas on his knees is reaching out his hand to catch the girdle
 dropped down to him. On an oval upon the face of the tomb is written
 “Assunta est,” like what is shown in other pieces in this collection.


8978.

Piece of Silk Orphrey Web; ground, crimson; pattern, the Coronation, in
heaven, of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in yellow. Venetian, 16th century.
1 foot 7½ inches by 10¾ inches.

 This design, though treated after the tradition of the Italian
 schools, has one peculiarity. On the royal diadem which our Lord, who
 wears, as Great High Priest of the new law, a triple-crowned tiara, is
 putting on the head of His mother a large star is conspicuously shown;
 one of the titles of St. Mary is “stella maris,” star of the sea,
 which would not be forgotten by a seafaring people like the Venetians.


8979.

Tissue of Crimson Silk and Gold Thread; pattern, the Blessed Virgin
Mary in glory, amid cherubic heads, and having two angels, one on each
side, standing on clouds. Venetian, 16th century. 1 foot 4 inches by 1
foot.

 The subject, a favourite one of the time, is the Assumption of the
 B. V. Mary, and the tissue was woven entirely for the adornment of
 liturgical furniture.


9047.

Cushion, elaborately wrought by the needle on fine canvas, and figured
with animals, armorial bearings, flowers, and love-knots, as well as
with the letters I and R royally crowned. Scotch, 17th century. 11
inches by 8 inches.

 We have on the first large pane a rose tree, bearing one red rose
 seeded _or_, barbed _vert_, and at its foot, but separating them,
 two unicorns _argent_, outlined and horned in silver thread; above
 them, and separated by the red rose, two lions passant, face to face,
 langued and outlined in gold thread; above the flower a royal crown
 _or_, and two small knots _or_, and at each side a white rose slipped;
 over each unicorn a gold knot, and a strawberry proper. Beneath this
 larger shield are three small ones: the first, fretty _or_, and
 _vert_ (but so managed that the field takes the shape of strawberry
 leaves), charged with four true-love-knots _or_, and in chief _vert_,
 a strawberry branch or wire _or_, bearing one fruit proper, and one
 flower _argent_; the second shield gives us, on a field _azure_, and
 within an orle of circles linked together on four sides by golden
 bands, and charged with strawberry fruit, and leaf, and flower proper,
 and alternating, a plume of Prince of Wales’s feathers _argent_, with
 the quill of the middle feather marked red or _gules_, at each of
 the four corners there is a true-love-knot in gold; the third small
 shield is a series of circles outlined in gold, and filled in with
 quatrefoils outlined green; below, on a large green pane, a white rose
 slipped, with grapes and acorns; by its side, the capital letters, in
 gold, I and R, with a strawberry and leaf close by each letter, and
 above all, and between two love-knots, a regal crown. By the sides of
 this device are several small panes, exhibiting fanciful patterns of
 flowers, &c.: but in most of them the true-love-knot as well as the
 strawberry plant, in one combination or another, are the principal
 elements; and in one of the squares or panes the ornamentation
 evidently affects the shape of the capital letter S; upon the other
 side, with an orle of knots of different kinds, is figured a mermaid
 on the sea, with a comb in one hand, and on one side of this pane is
 shown a high-born dame, whose fan, seemingly of feathers, is very
 conspicuous. Underneath the mermaid are shown, upon a field _vert_,
 a man with a staff, amid four rabbits, each with a strawberry-leaf
 in its mouth, and at each far corner a stag. As on the other side,
 so here the larger squares are surrounded by smaller ones displaying
 in their design true-love-knots, strawberries, acorns, roses, white
 and red, and in one pane the combination, in a sort of net-work, of
 the true-love-knot with the letter S, is very striking. In Scotland
 several noble families, whether they spell their name Fraser or
 Frazer, use, as a canting charge in their blazon, the frasier or
 strawberry, leafed, flowered, and fructed proper; the buck, too, comes
 in upon or about their armorial shields. And this may have been worked
 by a member of that family.


9047A.

Silk Damask; ground, white; pattern, wreaths of flowers and fruits, in
net-work, each mesh filled in with two peacocks beneath a large bunch
of red centaurea, or corn-flowers. Sicilian, late 15th century. 2 feet
3½ inches by 1 foot 8 inches.

 The garlands of the meshes, made out of boughs of oak bearing red and
 blue acorns, have, at foot, two eagles red and blue; at top, two green
 parrots beneath a bunch of pomegranates, the fruit of which is red
 and cracked, showing its blue seed ready to fall out. The corn-flower
 is spread forth like a fan. This stuff shows the mark of Spanish rule
 over the two Sicilies.


9182.

The Syon Monastery Cope; ground, green, with crimson interlacing barbed
quatrefoils enclosing figures of our Lord, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the
Apostles, with winged cherubim standing on wheels in the intervening
spaces, and the orphrey, morse, and hem wrought with armorial bearings,
the whole done in gold, silver, and various-coloured silks. English
needlework, 13th century. 9 feet 7 inches by 4 feet 8 inches.

  [Illustration: 9182.
  PART OF THE ORPHREY OF THE SYON COPE.
  English, 13th century.
  Vincent Brooks Day & Son, Lith.]

 This handsome cope, so very remarkable on account of its comparative
 perfect preservation, is one of the most beautiful among the several
 liturgic vestments of the olden period anywhere to be now found in
 christendom. If by all lovers of mediæval antiquity it will be looked
 upon as so valuable a specimen in art of its kind and time, for every
 Englishman it ought to have a double interest, showing, as it does,
 such a splendid and instructive example of the “Opus Anglicum,” or
 English work, which won for itself so wide a fame, and was so eagerly
 sought after throughout the whole of Europe during the middle ages.

 Beginning with the middle of this cope, we have, at the lowermost
 part, St. Michael overcoming Satan; suggested by those verses of
 St. John, “And there was a great battle in heaven, Michael and his
 angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels;
 ... and that great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, who is
 called the Devil and Satan,” &c.--Rev. xii. 7, 9, to which may be
 added the words of the English Golden Legend: “The fourth victorye
 is that that tharchaungell Mychaell shal have of Antecryst whan he
 shall flee hym. Than Michaell the grete prynce shall aryse, as it
 is sayd Danielis xii, He shall aryse for them that ben chosen as an
 helper and a protectour and shall strongely stande ayenst Antecryst
 ... and at the last he (Antichrist) shall mount upon the mount of
 Olyvete, and whan he shall be ... entred in to that place where our
 Lorde ascended Mychaell shall come and shall flee hym, of whiche
 victorye is understonden after saynt Gregorye that whyche is sayd in
 thapocalipsis, the batayll is made in heven,” (fol. cclxx. b.). As he
 tramples upon the writhing demon, the archangel, barefoot, and clad
 in golden garments, and wearing wings of gold and silver feathers,
 thrusts down his throat and out through his neck a lance, the shaft
 of which is tipped with a golden cross crosslet, while from his left
 arm he lets down an _azure_ shield blazoned with a
 silver cross. The next quatrefoil above this one is filled in with the
 Crucifixion. Here the Blessed Virgin Mary is arrayed in a green tunic,
 and a golden mantle lined with vair or costly white fur, and her head
 is kerchiefed, and her uplifted hands are sorrowfully clasped; St.
 John--whose dress is all of gold--with a mournful look, is on the
 left, at the foot of the cross upon which the Saviour, wrought all
 in silver--a most unusual thing,--with a cloth of gold wrapped about
 His loins, is fastened by three, not four, nails. The way in which
 the ribs are shown and the chest thrown up in the person of our Lord
 is quite after old English feelings on the subject. In the book of
 sermons called the “Festival” it is said, with strong emphasis, how
 “Cristes body was drawen on the crosse as a skyn of parchement on a
 harow, so that all hys bonys myght be tolde,” fol. xxxiii. In the
 highest quatrefoil of all is figured the Redeemer uprisen, crowned
 as a king and seated on a cushioned throne. Resting upon His knee,
 and steadied by His left hand, is the mund or ball representing
 the earth--the world. Curiously enough, this mund is distinguished
 into three parts, of which the larger one--an upper horizontal
 hemicycle--is coloured crimson (now faded to a brownish tint), but the
 lower hemicycle is divided vertically in two, of which one portion is
 coloured green, the other white or silvered. The likelihood is, that
 such markings were meant to show the then only known three parts of
 our globe; for if the elements were hereon intended, there would have
 been four quarters--fire, water, earth, and heaven; instead, too, of
 the upper half being crimsoned, it would have been tinted, like the
 heavens, blue. Furthermore, the symbolism of those days would put,
 as we here see, this mund under the sovereign hand of the Saviour,
 as setting forth the Psalmist’s words, “The earth is the Lord’s, and
 the fulness thereof, the world and all that dwell therein;” while its
 round shape--itself the emblem of endlessness--must naturally bring
 to mind that everlasting Being--the Alpha and the Omega spoken of in
 the Apocalypse--the beginning and the end, Who is and Who was, and
 Who is to come--the Almighty. Stretching forth His right arm, with
 His thumb and first two fingers upraised--emblem of one God in three
 persons--He is giving His blessing to His mother. Clothed in a green
 tunic, over which falls a golden mantle lined with vair or white
 fur, she is seated on the throne beside Him, with hands upraised in
 prayer. It ought not to be overlooked, that while the Blessed Virgin
 Mary wears ornamented shoes, our Lord, like His messengers, the angels
 and apostles, is barefoot. To show that as He had said to those whom
 He sent before His face, that they were to carry neither purse, nor
 scrip, nor shoes, so therefore, is He Himself here and elsewhere
 figured shoeless. Though already in heaven, still, out of reverence
 towards Him, the head of His mother is kerchiefed, as it would have
 been were she yet on earth and present at the sacred liturgy. John
 Beleth, an Englishman, who, in A.D. 1162, a short century before this
 cope was worked, wrote a book upon the Church Ritual, lays it down as
 an unbending rule that, while men are to hear the Gospel bare-headed,
 all women, whatever be their age, rank, or condition, must never be
 uncovered, and if a young maiden be so her mother or any other female
 ought to cast a cloth of some sort over her head;--“Viri, itaque
 ... aperto capite Evangelium audire debent.... Mulieres vero debent
 audire Evangelium tecto et velato capite etiamsi sit virgo, propter
 pomum vetitum. Et si eveniat ut virgo capite sit aperto, ut velamen
 non habeat, necesse est, ut mater, aut quævis alia mulier capiti ejus
 pannum vel simile quippiam imponat.” Divin. Offic. Explic. c. xxxix.
 p. 507.

 The next two subjects now to be described are--one, that on the right
 hand, the death of the Blessed Virgin Mary; the other, to the left,
 her burial. To fully understand the traditionary treatment of both, it
 would be well to give the words of Caxton’s English translation of the
 “Golden Legend,” from the edition “emprynted at London, in Fletestrete
 at y^e sygne of y^e Sonne, by Wynkyn de Worde, in y^e yere of our
 Lorde M.CCCCXVII,” a scarce and costly work not within easy reach. “We
 fynde in a booke sente to saynt Johan the evangelys, or elles the boke
 whiche is sayd to be apocryphum ... in what maner the Assumpcyon of
 the blessyd vyrgyn saynt Marye was made ... upon a daye whan all the
 apostles were spradde through the worlde in prechynge, the gloryous
 vyrgyne was gretely esprysed and enbraced wyth desyre to be wyth her
 sone Ihesu Cryste ... and an aungell came tofore her with grete lyghte
 and salewed her honourably as the mother of his Lorde, sayenge, All
 hayle blessyd Marie.... Loo here is a bowe of palme of paradyse, lady,
 ... whiche thou shalte commaunde to be borne tofore thy bere, for thy
 soule shall be taken from thy body the thyrde daye nexte folowynge;
 and thy Sone abydeth thee His honourable moder.... All the apostles
 shall assemble this daye to thee and shall make to thee noble exequyes
 at thy passynge, and in the presence of theym all thou shalte gyve up
 thy spyryte. For he that broughte the prophete (Habacuc) by an heer
 from Judee to Babylon (Daniel xiv. 35, according to the Vulgate) may
 without doubte sodeynly in an houre brynge the apostles to thee....
 And it happened as Saynt Johan the euangelyst preched in Ephesym the
 heven sodeynly thondred and a whyte cloude toke hym up and brought
 hym tofore the gate of the blessyd vyrgyne Marye at Jerusalem (who)
 sayd to hym, ... Loo I am called of thy mayster and my God, ... I
 have herde saye that the Jewes have made a counseyll and sayd, let us
 abyde brethren unto the tyme that she that bare Jhesu Crist be deed,
 and thenne incontynente we shall take her body and shall caste it in
 to the fyre and brenne it. Thou therefore take this palme and bere
 it tofore the bere whan ye shall bere my body to the sepulcre. Than
 sayd Johan, O wolde God that all my brethren the apostles were here
 that we myght make thyn exequyes covenable as it hoveth and is dygne
 and worthy. And as he sayd that, all the apostles were ravysshed with
 cloudes from the places where they preched and were brought tofore
 the dore of the blessyd vyrgyn Mary.... And aboute the thyrde houre
 of the nyght Jhesu Crist came with swete melodye and songe with the
 ordre of aungelles.... Fyrst Jhesu Crist began to saye, Come my chosen
 and I shall set thee in my sete ... come fro Lybane my spouse. Come
 from Lybane. Come thou shalte be crowned. And she sayd I come, for in
 the begynnynge of the booke it is wryten of me that I sholde doo thy
 wyll, for my spyryte hath joyed in thee the God of helth; and thus in
 the mornynge the soule yssued out of the body and fledde up in the
 armes of her sone.... And than the apostles toke the body honourably
 and layde it on the bere.--And than Peter and Paule lyfte up the bere,
 and Peter began to synge and saye Israhell is yssued out of Egypt,
 and the other apostles folowed hym in the same songe, and our Lorde
 covered the bere and the apostles with a clowde, so that they were
 not seen but the voyce of them was onely herde, and the aungelles
 were with the apostles syngynge, and than all the people was moved
 with that swete melodye, and yssued out of the cyte and enquyred what
 it was.--And than there were some that sayd that Marye suche a woman
 was deed, and the dyscyples of her sone Jhesu Crist bare her, and
 made suche melodye. And thenne ranne they to armes and they warned
 eche other sayenge, Come and let us slee all the dysciples and let us
 brenne the body of her that bare this traytoure. And whan the prynce
 of prestes sawe that he was all abashed and, full of angre and wrath
 sayd, Loo, here the tabernacle of hym that hath troubled us, and our
 lygnage, beholde what glorye he now receyveth, and in the saynge so he
 layde his hondes on the bere wyllynge to turne it and overthrowe it
 to the grounde. Than sodeynly bothe his hondes wexed drye and cleved
 to the bere so that he henge by the hondes on the bere and was sore
 tormented and wepte and brayed. And the aungelles ... blynded all the
 other people that they sawe no thynge. And the prynce of prestes sayd,
 saynt Peter despyse not me in this trybulacyon, and I praye thee to
 praye for me to our Lorde.--And saynt Peter sayd to hym--Kysse the
 bere and saye I byleve in God Jhesu Crist. And whan he had so sayd he
 was anone all hole perfyghtly.--And thenne the apostles bare Mary unto
 the monument (in the Vale of Josaphat outside Jerusalem) and satte
 by it lyke as oure Lord had commaunded. And at the thyrde daye ...
 the soule came agayne to the body of Marye and yssued gloryously out
 of the tombe, and thus was receyved in the hevenly chaumbre, and a
 grete company of aungelles with her; and saynt Thomas was not there;
 and whan he came he wolde not byleve this; and anone the gyrdell
 with whiche her body was gyrde came to hym fro the ayre, whiche he
 receyved, and therby he understode that she was assumpte into heven;
 and all this it here to fore is sayd and called apocryphum,” &c. ff.
 ccxvi, &c.

 With this key we may easily unlock what, otherwise, would lie hidden,
 not only about the coronation, but, in an especial manner, the death
 and burial, as here figured, of the Blessed Virgin Mary; the former of
 these two is thus represented on the right hand side. In her own small
 house by the foot of Mount Sion, at Jerusalem, is Christ’s mother on
 her dying bed. Four only of the apostles--there would not have been
 room enough for showing more in the quatrefoil--are standing by the
 couch upon which she lies, dressed in a silver tunic almost wholly
 overspread with a coverlet of gold; she is bolstered up by a deep
 purple golden fretted pillow. St. Peter is holding up her head, while
 by her side stands St. Paul, clad, like St. Peter, in a green tunic
 and a golden mantle; then St. Matthew, in a blue tunic and a mantle
 of gold, holding in the left hand his Gospel, which begins with the
 generation of our Lord as man, and the pedigree of Mary His mother;
 while, in front of them, stands John, arrayed in a shaded light-purple
 tunic, youthful in look, and whose auburn hair is in so strong a
 contrast to the hoary locks of his brethren. On the left-hand side
 we have her burial. Stretched full-length upon a bier, over which is
 thrown a pall of green shot with yellow, lies the Virgin Mary, her
 hair hanging loose from her head. St. Peter, known by his keys, St.
 Paul, by his uplifted sword, are carrying on their shoulders one end
 of the bier, in front; behind, in the same office, are St. Andrew
 bringing his cross with him, and some other apostle as his fellow.
 After them walks St. Thomas, who, with both his uplifted hands, is
 catching the girdle as it drops to him from above, where, in the
 skies, her soul, in the shape of a little child, is seen standing
 upright with clasped hands, within a large flowing sheet held by two
 angels who have come from heaven to fetch it thither. Right before the
 funeral procession is a small Jew, who holds in one hand a scabbard,
 and with the other is unsheathing his weapon. By the side of the bier
 stand two other Jews also small in size--one, the high priest. One of
 them has both his arms, the priest but one, all twisted and shrunken,
 stretched forward on the bier, as if they wanted to upset it; while
 the latter holds in one of his wasted hands the green bough of the
 palm-tree, put into it by St. John.

 With regard to St. Thomas and the girdle, this cope, if not the
 earliest, is among the earlier works upon which that part of the
 legend is figured, though after a somewhat different manner to the one
 followed in Italy, where, as is evident from several specimens, in
 this collection, it found such favour.

 Below the burial, we have our Lord in the garden, signified by the
 two trees (John xx. 17). Still wearing a green crown of thorns, and
 arrayed in a golden mantle, our Lord in His left hand holds the banner
 of the resurrection, and with His right bestows His benediction on
 the kneeling Magdalene, who is wimpled, and wears a mantle of green
 shot yellow, over a light purple tunic. Below, but outside the
 quatrefoil, is a layman clad in gold upon his knees, and holding a
 long narrow scroll, bearing words which cannot now be satisfactorily
 read. Lowermost of all we see the apostle St. Philip with a book in
 the left hand, but upon the right, muffled in a large towel wrought in
 silver, three loaves of bread, done partially in gold, piled up one on
 the other, in reference to our Lord’s words (John vi. 5), before the
 miracle of feeding the five thousand. At the left is St. Bartholomew
 holding a book in one hand, in the other the flaying knife. A little
 above him, St. Peter with his two keys, one gold, the other silver;
 and somewhat under him, to the right, is St. Andrew with his cross.
 On the other side of St. Michael and the dragon is St. James the
 Greater--sometimes called of Compostella, because he lies buried in
 that Spanish city--with a book in one hand, and in the other a staff,
 and slung from his wrist a wallet, both emblems of pilgrimage to his
 shrine in Galicia. In the next quatrefoil above stands St. Paul with
 his usual sword, emblem alike of his martyrdom, and of the Spirit,
 which is the word of God (Ephes. vi. 17), and a book; lower, to the
 right, St. Thomas with his lance of martyrdom and a book; and still
 further to the right, St. James the Less with a book and the club from
 which he received his death-stroke (Eusebius, book ii. c. 23). Just
 above is our Saviour clad in a golden tunic, and carrying a staff
 overcoming the unbelief of St. Thomas. Upon his knees that apostle
 feels, with his right hand held by the Redeemer, the spear-wound in
 His side (John xx. 27).

 As at the left hand, so here, quite outside the sacred history on the
 cope, we have the figure of an individual probably living at the time
 the vestment was wrought. The dress of the other shows him to be a
 layman; by the shaven crown upon his head, this person must have been
 a cleric of some sort: but whether monk, friar, or secular we cannot
 tell, as his gown has become quite bare, so that we see nothing now
 but the lower canvas with the lines drawn in black for the shading of
 the folds. Like his fellow over against him, this churchman holds up a
 scroll bearing words which can no longer be read.

 When new this cope could show, written in tall gold letters more than
 an inch high, an inscription now cut up and lost, as the unbroken word
 “Ne” on one of its shreds, and a solitary “V” on another, are all that
 remains of it, the first on the lower right side; the second, in the
 like place, to the left. Though so short, the Latin word leads us to
 think that it was the beginning of the anthem to the seven penitential
 psalms, “_Ne_ reminiscaris, Domine, delicta nostra, _v_el parentum
 nostrorum; neque _v_indictam sumas de peccatis nostris,” a suitable
 prayer for a liturgical garment, upon which the mercies of the Great
 Atonement are so well set forth in the Crucifixion, the overthrow of
 Antichrist, and the crowning of the saints in heaven.

 In its original state it could give us, not, as now, only eight
 apostles, but their whole number. Even as yet the patches on the
 right-hand side afford us three of the missing heads, while another
 patch to the left shows us the hand with a book, belonging to the
 fourth. The lower part of this vestment has been sadly cut away, and
 reshaped with shreds from itself; and perhaps at such a time were
 added its present heraldic orphrey, morse, and border, perhaps some
 fifty years after the embroidering of the other portions of this
 invaluable and matchless specimen of the far-famed “Opus Anglicum,” or
 English needlework.

 The early writers throughout Christendom, Greek as well as Latin,
 distinguished “nine choirs” of angels, or three great hierarchies, in
 the upper of which were the “cherubim, or seraphim, and thrones;” in
 the middle one, the “dominations, virtues, and powers;” in the lower
 hierarchy, the “principalities, angels, and archangels.” Now, while
 looking at the rather large number of angels figured here, we shall
 find that this division into three parts, each part again containing
 other three, has been accurately observed. Led a good way by Ezekiel
 (i.), but not following that prophet step by step, our mediæval
 draughtsmen found out for themselves a certain angel form. To this
 they gave a human shape having but one head, and that of a comely
 youth, clothing him with six wings, as Isaias told (vi. 2) of the
 seraphim, and in place of the calf’s cloven hoofs, they made it with
 the feet of man; instead of its body being full of eyes, this feature
 is not unoften to be perceived upon the wings, but oftenest those
 wings themselves are composed of the bright-eyed feathers borrowed
 from the peacock’s tail.

 Those eight angels standing upon wheels, and so placed that they are
 everywhere by those quatrefoils wherein our Lord’s person comes, may
 be taken to represent the upper hierarchy of the angelic host; those
 other angels--and two of them only are entire--not upon wheels, and
 far away from our Lord, one of the perfect ones under St. Peter, the
 other under St. Paul, no doubt belong to the second hierarchy; while
 those two having but one, not three, pair of wings, the first under
 the death, the other under the burial of the Virgin, both of them
 holding up golden crowns, one in each hand, represent, we may presume,
 the lowest of the three hierarchies. All of them, like our Lord and
 His apostles, are barefoot. All of them have their hands uplifted in
 prayer.

 For every lover of English heraldic studies this cope, so plentifully
 blazoned with armorial bearings, will have an especial value, equal
 to that belonging to many an ancient roll of arms. To begin with
 its orphrey: that broad band may, in regard to its shields, be
 distinguished into three parts, one that falls immediately about the
 neck of the cleric wearing this vestment, and the other two portions
 right and left. In this first or middle piece the shields, four in
 number, are of a round shape, but, unlike the square ones, through
 both the other two side portions, are not set upon squares alternately
 green and crimson (faded to brown) as are the quatrefoils on the body
 of the cope. Taking this centre-piece first, to the left we have--

 6. Checky _azure_ and _or_, a chevron _ermine_. WARWICK.

 7. Quarterly 1 and 4 _gules_, a three-towered castle _or_; 2 and 3
 _argent_, a lion rampant _azure_. CASTILE AND LEON.

 8. Vair _or_ and _gules_, within a bordure _azure_, charged with
 sixteen horse-shoes _argent_. FERRERS.

 9. _Azure_, three barnacles _or_, on a chief _ermine_ a demi-lion
 rampant _gules_. GENEVILLE.

 These four shields are round, as was said before, and upon a green
 ground, having nothing besides upon it. All the rest composing this
 orphrey are squares of the diamond form, and put upon a grounding
 alternately crimson and green; on the crimson are two peacocks and two
 swans in gold; on the green, four stars of eight rays in gold voided
 crimson. Now, beginning at the furthermost left side, we see these
 blazons:--

 1. _Ermine_, a cross _gules_ charged with five lioncels statant
 gardant _or_. EVERARD.

 2. Same as 8. FERRERS.

 3. _Gules_, the Holy Lamb _argent_ with flag _or_, between two stars
 and a crescent _or_. BADGE OF THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS.

 4. Same as 2. FERRERS.

 5. Same as 1. EVERARD.

 10. Checky _azure_ and _or_, a bend _gules_ charged with three
 lioncels passant _argent_. CLIFFORD.

 11. Quarterly _argent_ and _gules_; 2 and 3 fretty _or_, over all a
 bend _sable_. SPENCER.

 12. The same as 3, but the Lamb is _or_, the flag _argent_. BADGE OF
 THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS.

 13. Same as 11. SPENCER.

 14. Same as 10. CLIFFORD.

 Just below the two middle shields are four nicely-formed loops,
 through which might be buttoned on to the cope the moveable hood--or
 different hoods, according to the festival, and figured with the
 subject of the feast--now lost. On the other edge of the orphrey, to
 the left, are seen other three loops, like the former, made of thick
 gold cord, by which was made fast the morse that is also blazoned with
 ten coats, as follows:--

 1. _Gules_, a large six-pointed star _argent_ voided with another star
 _azure_ voided _argent_ voided _gules_, between four cross-crosslets
 _or_.

 2. _Gules_, an eagle displayed _or_. LIMESI or LINDSEY.

 3. CASTILE AND LEON.

 4. _Gules_, a fess _argent_ between three covered cups _or_. LE
 BOTILER.

 5. CASTILE AND LEON.

 6. FERRERS.

 7. _Azure_, a cross _argent_ between four eagles (?) displayed
 _argent_ (?).

 8. SPENCER.

 9. Same as 2. LINDSEY.

 10. GENEVILLE.

 The ground is checky _azure_ and _or_ upon which these small shields
 in the morse are placed.

 On the narrow band, at the hem, the same alternation of green and
 crimson squares, as a ground for the small diamond-shaped shields, is
 observed, as in the orphrey; and the blazons are, beginning at the
 left-hand side:--

 1. Barry of ten _azure_ and _or_ imbattled, a fess _gules_ sprinkled
 with four-petaled flowers seeded _azure_.

 2. _Or_, charged with martlets _gules_, and a pair of bars gemelles
 _azure_.

 3. FERRERS.

 4. CASTILE AND LEON.

 5. _Azure_, a cross _or_. SHELDON.

 6. _Azure_, a lion rampant _or_, within a bordure _gules_ charged with
 eight water-bougets _argent_.

 7. WARWICK.

 8. SPENCER.

 9. _Azure_, a bend between six birds _or_. MONTENEY of Essex.

 10. _Gules_, sprinkled with cross-crosslets _or_, and a saltire verry
 potent _argent_ and _azure_. CHAMPERNOUN.

 11. GENEVILLE.

 12. ENGLAND.

 13. Checky _argent_ and _azure_, on a bend _gules_, three garbs (?) or
 escallop-shells (?) _or_.

 14. _Or_, on a fess _gules_ between six fleurs-de-lis three and three
 _gules_, three fleurs-de-lis _or_.

 15. _Gules_, a lion rampant _argent_, within a bordure _azure_,
 charged with eight water-bougets _or_.

 16. Checky _or_ and _gules_, on a bend _azure_, five horse-shoes
 _argent_.

 17. Same as 1.

 18. Same as 2.

 19. Same as 3. FERRERS.

 20. Same as 10. CHAMPERNOUN.

 21. Same as 10 in the orphrey. CLIFFORD.

 22. Same as 8. SPENCER.

 23. _Azure_, between six escallop-shells (?) three and three, a bend
 _or_. TYDDESWALL.

 24. Same as 6.

 25. Paly of ten _argent_ and _azure_, on a bend _gules_, three
 escallop-shells (?) _or_. A coat of GRANDISON.

 26. _Gules_, a lion rampant _or_. FITZ ALAN.

 27. Barry _argent_ and _azure_, a chief checky _or_ and _gules_.

 28. GENEVILLE.

 29. Party per fess _azure_ and _or_, a cross fusil counterchanged.

 30. _Argent_, four birds _gules_, between a saltire _gules_, charged
 with nine bezants. HAMPDEN (?).

 31. _Azure_, five fusils in fesse _or_. PERCY.

 32. Same as 1, on the orphrey. EVERARD.

 33. Same as 6, on the orphrey. WARWICK.

 34. _Gules_, three lucies hauriant in fess between six cross-crosslets
 _or_. LUCY.

 35. Paly of ten _or_ and _azure_, on a fess _gules_, three mullets of
 six points _argent_, voided with a cross _azure_. CHAMBOWE (?).

 36. Party per fess _gules_, fretted _or_, and _ermine_. RIBBESFORD (?).

 37. Same as 9.

 38. _Or_, on a cross _gules_, five escallop-shells _argent_. BYGOD.

 39. Barry, a chief paly and the corners gyronny, _or_ and _azure_, an
 inescutcheon _ermine_. ROGER DE MORTIMER.

 40. Same as 6.

 41. Party per fess, _argent_ three eight-petaled flowers formed as it
 were out of a knot made cross-wise, with two flowers at the end of
 each limb, and _azure_ with a string of lozenges like a fess _argent_,
 and three fleurs-de-lis (?) two and one _or_.

 42. _Gules_, a fess checky _argent_ and _azure_, between twelve cross
 crosslets _or_. Possibly one of the many coats taken by LE BOTILER.

 43. _Azure_, three lucies hauriant in fess between six cross-crosslets
 _or_. LUCY.

 44. _Ermine_, on a chevron _gules_, three escallop-shells _or_.
 GOLBORE or GROVE.

 45. Gyronny of twelve _or_ and _azure_. DE BASSINGBURN.

 Besides their heraldry, squares upon which are shown swans and
 peacocks wrought at each corner, afford, in those birds, objects of
 much curious interest for every lover of mediæval symbolism under its
 various phases.

 In the symbolism of those times, the star and the crescent, the
 peacock and the swan, had, each of them, its own several figurative
 meanings. By the first of these emblems was to be understood,
 according to the words, in Numbers xxiv. 17, of Balaam’s prophecy,--“a
 star shall arise out of Jacob,”--our Saviour, who says of His divine
 self, Apocalypse xxii. 16, “I am the bright and morning star.” By
 inference, the star not only symbolized our Lord Himself, but His
 Gospel--Christianity--in contradistinction to Mahometanism, against
 which the crusades had been but lately carried on. The star of
 Bethlehem, too, was thus also brought before the mind with all its
 associated ideas of the Holy Land.

 The crescent moon, on the shields with the Holy Lamb, represents the
 Church, for the reason that small at first, but getting her light
 from the true Sun of justice, our Lord, she every day grows larger,
 and at the end of time, when all shall believe in her, will at last
 be in her full brightness. This symbolism is set forth, at some
 length, by Petrus Capuanus as quoted by Dom (now Cardinal) Pitra in
 his valuable “Spicilegium Solesmense,” t. ii. 66. But for an English
 mediæval authority on the point, we may cite our own Alexander Neckam,
 born A.D. 1157 at St. Albans, and who had as a foster-brother King
 Richard of the Lion-Heart. In his curious work, “De Naturis Rerum,”
 not long since printed for the first time, and published by the
 authority of Her Majesty’s treasury, under the direction of the Master
 of the Rolls, Neckam thus writes:--“Per solem item Christus, verus
 sol justiciæ plerumque intelligitur; per lunam autem ecclesia, vel
 quæcunque fidelis anima. Sicut autem luna beneficium lucis a sole
 mendicat, ita et fidelis anima a Christo qui est lux vera.” P. 53.

 Not always was the peacock taken to be the unmitigated emblem of
 pride and foolish vanity. Osmont the cleric, in his “Volucraire,
 or Book of Birds,” after noticing its scream instead of song, its
 serpent-like shape of head that it carries so haughtily, but lowers
 quite abashed as it catches a glimpse at its ugly feet, and its garish
 plumage with the many bright-eyed freckles on its fan-like tail
 which it loves to unfold for admiration, draws these comparisons. As
 the peacock affrights us by its cry, so does the preacher, when he
 thunders against sin startle us into a hatred of it; if the step of
 the bird be so full of majesty, with what steadiness ought a true
 Christian fearlessly tread his narrow path. A man may perhaps find a
 happiness, nay, show a pride in the conviction of having done a good
 deed, perhaps may sometimes therefore carry his head a trifle high,
 and, strutting like the peacock, parade his pious works to catch the
 world’s applause; as soon as he looks into Holy Writ and there learns
 the weakness, lowliness, of his own origin, he too droops his head in
 all humility. Those eye-speckled feathers in its plumage warn him that
 never too often can he have his eyes wide open, and gaze inwardly upon
 his own heart and know its secret workings. Thus spoke an Anglo-Norman
 writer.

 About the swan an Englishman, our Alexander Neckam, says:--“Quid
 quod cygnus in ætate tenella fusco colore vestitus esse videtur,
 qui postmodum in intentissimum candorem mutatur? Sic nonnulli
 caligine peccatorum prius obfuscati, postea candoris innocentiæ
 veste spirituali decorantur.”--_De Naturis Rerum_, p. 101. Here our
 countryman hands us the key to the symbolic appearance of the swan
 upon this liturgical garment; for, as while a cygnet, its feathers
 are always of a dusky hue, but when the bird has grown up its plumage
 changes into the most intensely white, just so, some people who are at
 first darkened with the blackness of sin, in after days become adorned
 with the garb of white innocence.

 Besides their ecclesiastical meanings these same symbols had belonging
 to them a secular significance. Found upon a piece of stuff quite
 apart from that of the cope itself, and worked for the adornment of
 that fine vestment after a lapse of many years, made up too of an
 ornamentation the whole of which is heraldic and thus bringing to
 mind worldly knights and their blazons and its age’s chivalry, it
 is easy to find out for it an adaptation to the chivalric notions
 and customs of those times. The Bethlehem star overtopping the Islam
 badge of the crescent moon showed forth the wishes of every one who
 had been or meant to be a crusader, or rather more, not merely of
 our men at arms but of every true believer throughout Christendom
 whose untiring prayers were that the Holy Land might be wrested from
 the iron hand of the Mahometan. At great national festivities and
 solemn gatherings of the aristocracy, not the young knight alone then
 newly girt, but the grey-haired warrior would often, in that noble
 presence, bind himself by vow to do some deed of daring, and swore
 it to heaven, and the swan, the pheasant, or the peacock as the bird
 of his choice, was brought with a flourish of trumpets, and amid a
 crowd of stately knights waiting on a bevy of fair young ladies, and
 set before him. This sounds odd at this time of day; not so did it
 in mediæval times, when those birds were looked upon with favour on
 account of the majestic gracefulness of their shape, or the sparkling
 beauty of their plumage. It must not be forgotten that this orphrey
 was blazoned by English hands in England, and while all the stirring
 doings of our first Edward were yet fresh in our people’s remembrance.
 That king had been and fought in the Holy Land against the Saracens.
 At his bidding, towards the end of life, a scene remarkable even
 in that period of royal festive magnificence, took place, when he
 himself, in the year 1306, girded his son, afterwards Edward II, with
 the military belt in the palace of Westminster, and then sent him to
 bestow the same knightly honour, in the church of that abbey, upon the
 three hundred young sons of the nobility, who had been gathered from
 all parts of the kingdom to be his companions in the splendours of the
 day. But that grand function was brought to an end by a most curious
 yet interesting act; to the joyous sounds of minstrelsy came forwards
 a procession, bearing along a pair of swans confined in a net, the
 meshes of which were made of cords fashioned like reeds and wrought
 of gold. These birds were set in solemn pomp before the king; and
 there and then Edward swore by the God in heaven and the swans that he
 would go forth and wage war against the Scots: Matthew Westminster, p.
 454. No wonder, then, that along with the star and crescent we find
 the knightly swan and peacock mingled in the heraldry of the highest
 families in England, wrought upon a work from English hands, during
 the fourteenth century. A long hundred years after this elaborate
 orphrey was worked we find that Dan John Lydgate, monk of Bury St.
 Edmund’s, in his poem called “All stant in chaunge like a mydsomer
 Rose,” upon the fickleness of all earthly things, while singing of
 this life’s fading vanities, counts among them--

    “Vowis of pecok, with all ther proude chere.”
        MINOR POEMS, _ed. Halliwell for Percy Society_, p. 25.

 To the wild but poetic legend of the swan and his descendants, we have
 already alluded in our Introduction.

 A word or two now upon the needlework, how it was done, and a certain
 at present unused mechanical appliance to it after it was wrought, so
 observable upon this vestment, lending its figures more effect, and
 giving it, as a teaching example of embroidery, much more value than
 any foreign piece in this numerous collection.

 Looking well into this fine specimen of the English needle, we find
 that, for the human face, all over it, the first stitches were begun
 in the centre of the cheek, and worked in circular, not straight
 lines, into which, however, after the middle had been made, they fell,
 and were so carried on through the rest of the fleshes. After the
 whole figure had thus been wrought; then with a little thin iron rod
 ending in a small bulb or smooth knob slightly heated, were pressed
 down those spots upon the faces worked in circular lines, as well as
 that deep wide dimple in the throat especially of an aged person. By
 the hollows thus lastingly sunk, a play of light and shadow is brought
 out that, at a short distance, lends to the portion so treated a look
 of being done in low relief. Upon the slightly-clothed person of our
 Lord this same process is followed in a way that tells remarkably
 well; and the chest with the upper part of the pelvis in the figure of
 our Saviour overcoming Thomas’s unbelief, shows a noteworthy example
 of the mediæval knowledge of external anatomy.

 We must not, however, hide from ourselves the fact that the edges,
 though so broad and blunt, given by such a use of the hot iron to
 parts of an embroidery, expose it somewhat to the danger of being worn
 out more in those than other portions which soon betray the damage by
 their thread-bare dingy look, as is the case in the example just cited.

 The method for filling in the quatrefoils, as well as working much
 of the drapery on the figures, is remarkable for being done in a
 long zigzag diaper-pattern, and after the manner called in ancient
 inventories, “opus plumarium,” from the way the stitches overlie each
 other like the feathers on a bird.

 The stitchery on the armorial bearings is the same as that now
 followed in so many trifling things worked in wool.

 The canvas for every part of this cope is of the very finest sort;
 but oddly enough, its crimson canvas lining is thick and coarse.
 What constituted, then, the characteristics of the “opus Anglicum,”
 or English work, in mediæval embroidery were, first, the beginning
 of the stitchery in certain parts of the human figure--the face
 especially--in circular lines winding close together round and round;
 and, in the second place, the sinking of those same portions into
 permanent hollows by the use of a hot iron.

 A word or two now about the history of this fine cope.

 In olden days not a town, hardly a single parish, throughout England,
 but had in it one or more pious associations called “gilds,” some of
 which could show the noblest amongst the layfolks, men and women, and
 the most distinguished of the clergy in the kingdom, set down upon
 the roll of its brotherhood, which often grew up into great wealth.
 Each of these gilds had, usually in its parish church, a chapel, or
 at least an altar of its own, where, for its peculiar service, it
 kept one if not several priests and clerics, provided, too, with
 every needful liturgical appliance, articles of which were frequently
 the spontaneous offering of individual brothers, who sometimes
 clubbed together for the purpose of thus making their joint gift
 more splendid. Now it is most remarkable that upon this cope, and
 quite apart from the sacred story on it, we have two figures, that to
 the left, pranked out in the gay attire of some rich layman; on the
 right, the other, who must be an ecclesiastic from the tonsure on his
 head; each bears an inscribed scroll in his hand, and both are in the
 posture of suppliants making offerings. This cleric and this layman
 may have been akin to one another, brothers, too, of the same gild for
 which they at their joint cost got this cope worked and gave to it.
 But where was this gild itself?

 Among the foremost of our provincial cities once was reckoned
 Coventry. Its Corpus Christi plays or mysteries, illustrated by
 this embroidery, enjoyed such a wide-spread fame that for the whole
 eight days of their performance, every year, they drew crowds of
 the highest and the gentlest of the land far and near, as the
 “Paston Letters” testify, to see them; its gild was of such repute
 that our nobility--lords and ladies--our kings and queens, did not
 think it anywise beneath their high estate to be enrolled among its
 brotherhood. Besides many other authorities, we have one in that
 splendid piece of English tapestry--figured with Henry VI, Cardinal
 Beaufort, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and other courtiers, on the
 left or men’s side, and on the women’s, Queen Margaret, the Duchess
 of Buckingham, and other ladies, most of them on their knees, and
 all hearing mass--still hanging on the wall of the dining hall of
 St. Mary’s gild, of which that king, with his queen and all his
 court became members; and at whose altar, as brethren, they heard
 their service, on some Sunday, or high festival, which they spent at
 Coventry. Taking this old city as a centre, with a radius of no great
 length, we may draw a circle on the map which will enclose Tamworth,
 tower and town, Chartly Castle, Warwick, Charlcote, Althorp, &c. where
 the once great houses of Ferrers, Beauchamp, Lucy, and Spencer held,
 and some of them yet hold, large estates; and from being the owners
 of broad lands in its neighbourhood, their lords would, in accordance
 with the religious feeling of those times, become brothers of the
 famous gild of Coventry; and on account of their high rank, find their
 arms emblazoned upon the vestments belonging to their fraternity.
 That such a pious queen as the gentle Eleanor, our First Edward’s
 first wife, who died A.D. 1290, should have, in her lifetime, become a
 sister, and by her bounties made herself to be gratefully remembered
 after death, is very likely, so that we may with ease account for her
 shield--Castile and Leon--as well as for the shields of the other
 great families we see upon the orphrey, being wrought there as a
 testimonial that, while, like many others, they were members, they
 also had been munificent benefactors to the association. A remembrance
 of brotherhood for those others equally noble, but less generous in
 their benefactions, may be read in those smaller shields upon the
 narrow hem going along the lower border of this vestment. The whole of
 it must have taken a long, long time in the doing; and the probability
 is that it was worked by the nuns of some convent which stood in or
 near Coventry.

 Upon the banks of the Thames, at Isleworth, near London, in the year
 1414, Henry V. built, and munificently endowed, a monastery to be
 called “Syon,” for nuns of St. Bridget’s order. Among the earliest
 friends of this new house was a Master Thomas Graunt, an official
 in one of the ecclesiastical courts of the kingdom. In the Syon
 nuns’ martyrologium--a valuable MS. lately bought by the British
 Museum--this churchman is gratefully recorded as the giver to their
 convent of several precious ornaments, of which this very cope
 seemingly is one. It was the custom for a gild, or religious body, to
 bestow some rich church vestment upon an ecclesiastical advocate who
 had befriended it by his pleadings before the tribunals, and thus to
 convey their thanks to him along with his fee. After such a fashion
 this cope could have easily found its way, through Dr. Graunt, from
 Warwickshire to Middlesex. At the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign it
 went along with the nuns as they wandered in an unbroken body through
 Flanders, France, and Portugal, where they halted. About sixty years
 ago it came back again from Lisbon to England, and has found a lasting
 home in the South Kensington Museum.


197.

Web for Orphreys; ground, crimson silk; design, the Assumption, in
yellow silk and gold thread. Florentine, 15th century. 2 feet 2½
inches by 1 foot 2¾ inches.

 The same sort of stuff frequently occurs in this collection, and the
 present specimen, which consists of two breadths sewed together, is
 the same as the one fully described in No. 4059. In its present shape
 it may have served as a back hanging to a little praying-desk in a
 bed-room.


198.

A Crimson Velvet Stole, with crosses and fringes of green silk.
Spanish, 16th century. 6 feet 8 inches by 2½ inches, and 5½
inches.

 The pieces of crimson velvet out of which this stole was made, not so
 many years ago, are of a deep warm tone of colour, and soft rich pile;
 both so peculiar to the looms of Spain. The velvet must have been in
 use for church purposes before this stole was made out of it.


1207.

A Crimson Velvet Stole, with crosses of poor gold lace, and fringes of
crimson silk. Spanish, 16th century. 7 feet 7 inches by 3 inches, and 8
inches.

 Like the foregoing stole in quality of velvet.


254-55.

Two Crimson Velvet Maniples, with crosses and fringes of green.
Spanish, 16th century. 1 foot 6½ inches by 3 inches, and 5 inches.

 These were to match the like kind of stole.


524.

A Crimson Velvet Maniple, with crosses of gold and fringes of crimson
silk. Spanish, 16th century. 1 foot 5½ inches by 3¼ inches, and
6½ inches.


733.

A Piece of Raised Velvet; ground, yellow silk; design, in velvet pile,
pomegranates, and conventional floriations, enclosing an oval with a
quatrefoil in the middle. Spanish, late 16th century. 1 foot 6 inches
by 7 inches, and by 1 foot 2 inches.

 This raised velvet must have been for household decoration, and may
 have been wrought at Almeria.


902.

Cut-Work for furniture purposes; ground, yellow silk; design, vases of
flowers formed in green velvet; the flowers in places embroidered in
white and light blue floss-silk. French, 17th century. 9 feet 9 inches
by 1 foot 9 inches.

 This specimen well shows the way in which such strips for pilasters
 were wrought. At first the green velvet seems the ground, which,
 however, is of amber yellow silk, but the velvet is so cut out and
 sewed on as to give the vases and their flowers the right form,
 and sometimes is made to come in as foliage. The flowers, mostly
 fleurs-de-lis and tulips, are well finished in white silk, shaded
 either by light blue in the first, or pink in the second instance,
 where, however, there are only five instead of six petals; and the
 whole is edged in its design with yellow silk cord.


910.

An Altar Frontal, silk and thread; ground, yellow; design, vases and
conventional artichokes, amid floriations, all in crimson silk, and
trimmed at the lower side with cut-work, in a flower pattern, of
various-coloured silks, edged with yellow cord. Italian, early 17th
century. 6 feet by 2 feet 8½ inches.

 The silk in this stuff is small in comparison with the thread, which,
 however, is so well covered as to be kept quite out of sight in the
 pattern. The fringe, six inches in depth, is left quite open.


911.

A Bed-Quilt; ground, green silk; design, in the middle the goddess
Flora, around her large flowers and branches, amid which are birds
(doves?), and hares climbing up the boughs, all in floss-silk of very
showy colours, with a deep border of flowers, worked upon dark net.
Italian, 18th century. 8 feet 3 inches by 6 feet.

 Such coverlets were, as they still are, used for throwing over beds in
 the day-time. The flowers, both on the silk and the netting, are so
 embroidered as to show the same, like East Indian needlework, on both
 sides. The love for lively colour, not to say garishness, was such as
 to lead the hand that wrought this piece to render the branches of
 some of the parts parti-coloured in white and crimson. Other specimens
 of embroidered net may be seen at Nos. 623, 624, 4462.



[Illustration]



PART THE SECOND.

_Tapestry._


1296.

Pieces of Tapestry Hanging, figured with poetic pastoral scenes.
Flemish, perhaps wrought at Audenaerde, in the first half of the 16th
century. 29 feet 4 inches by 11 feet.

 Soon after the early part of the 16th century, there sprang up
 throughout Europe a liking for pastoral literature as seen in Virgil’s
 eclogues: poets sung their dreams of the bliss to be found in rustic
 life, in which sports and pastimes, amid well-dressed revelry and
 music, with nought of toil or drudgery belonging to it, formed the
 yearly round; and in summer tide, nobles and their ladies loved to
 rove the woods and fields, and play at gentle shepherdism. How such
 frolics were carried out we learn from the tapestry before us, which,
 in many of its features, is near akin to those low reliefs of the same
 subject that adorn the walls in the court-yard of the curious and
 elaborately ornamented Hotel de Bourgtheroud, at Rouen.

 At the left-hand side, lying on a flowery bank, is a gentleman
 shepherd, whose broad-toed shoes and thick cloth leggings, fastened
 round the knees and about the ancles, are rather conspicuous. On
 the brim of his large round white hat is a sort of square ticket,
 coloured. From his waist hangs a white satchel, bearing outside
 various appliances, such as countrymen want. Over him stands, with a
 tall spud in her hands, a youthful lady dressed in a scarlet robe, and
 wearing her satchel by her side, a thin gauze cap, not a hat, is on
 her head, and with her hand upraised she seems to be giving emphasis
 to what she says to her friend upon the ground.

 In the middle of this piece is a group, consisting of four characters,
 all of whom are playing at some game of forfeits. A young lady clad in
 blue satin, with the usual rustic pouch slung at her side, is sitting
 on the flowery grass, with her hands on the shoulders of a youth at
 her feet, and hiding his face in her lap. Standing over him and about
 to strike his open palm is another youth in a blue tunic turned up
 with red, and holding a spud. Behind the blindfolded youth stands a
 young lady, whose flaxen locks fall from under a broad-brimmed crimson
 hat, upon her shoulders over her splendid robe, the crimson ground of
 which is nearly hidden by the broad diapering of gold most admirably
 shown upon it.

 In the other corner, to the right, is a lady, kerchiefed and girded
 with her rustic wallet, with both hands grasping a man, who seems
 as if he asked forgiveness. Overhead is a swineherd leading a pig,
 and going towards a farm-labourer who is making faggots; further on
 is another clown, hard at work, with his coat thrown down by him on
 the ground, lopping trees; and last of all, a gentleman and lady,
 both clad in the costume of the first half of the sixteenth century.
 These groups on the high part of the canvas are evidently outside the
 subject of the games below, and are merely passers by. All about the
 field are seen grazing sheep; and to the right, a golden pheasant on
 the foreground is so conspicuous as to lead to the thought that it was
 placed there to tell, either the name of the noble house for which
 this beautifully-wrought and nicely-designed tapestry was made, or of
 the artist who worked it.

 In a second, but much smaller pane of tapestry, the same subject is
 continued. Upon the flowery banks of a narrow streamlet sit a lady
 and a little boy, bathing their feet in its waters. A gentleman--a
 swain for the nonce--on his bended knee, holds up triumphantly one
 of the lady’s stockings over the boy’s head. Just above and striding
 towards her comes another gentleman-shepherd, with both his hands
 outstretched as if in wonderment, over whom we find a real churl in
 the person of a shepherd playing a set of double pipes--the old French
 “flahuter à deux dois”--to the no small delight of a little dog by his
 side. Serving as a background to this group, we have a comfortable
 homestead amid trees. Somewhat to the right and lower down, over a
 brick arch leans a lady, to whom a gaily-dressed man is offering money
 or a trinket, which he has just drawn forth from his open _gipcière_
 hanging at his girdle. Below sits a lady arrayed in a white robe, the
 skirts of which she has drawn and folded back upon her lap to show
 her scarlet petticoat. She is listening to a huntsman pranked out
 with a belt strung with little bells; falling from his girdle hangs
 in front a buglehorn, and his left hand holds the leash of his dog
 with a fine collar on. Over this spruce youth is an unmistakable real
 field labourer with a Flemish _hotte?_, or wooden cradle, filled with
 chumps and sticks, upon his back; and before him walk two dogs, one of
 which carries a pack or cloth over his shoulders. Still higher up is a
 wind-mill, toward which a man bearing a sack is walking.

 In both these pieces, which are fellows, and wrought for the hangings
 of the same chamber, the drawing of the figures, with the accessories
 of dress, silks, and even field-flowers, is admirable, and the
 grouping well managed: altogether, they are valuable links in the
 chain for the study and illustration of the ancient art of tapestry.


1297.

Piece of Tapestry Hanging; ground, green sprinkled with flowers, and
sentence-bearing scrolls; design, steps in a religious life, figured in
five compartments. West German, late 15th century. 12 feet by 2 feet 10
inches.

 1. A young well-born maiden, with a narrow wreath about her unveiled
 head, and dressed in pink, is saying her prayers kneeling on the
 flowery green ground, with these words traced on the scrolls twined
 gracefully above her,--“Das wir Maria kindt in trew mage werden so ...
 t ich myn gnade ... n af erden;” “Let us become like to Mary’s child,
 (so) we shall deserve mercy on earth.”

 2. Seated on a chair, with a book upon his lap, is an ecclesiastic, in
 a white habit and black scapular. To this priest the same young lady
 is making confession of her sins; and the scrolls about this group
 say,--“Vicht di sunde mit ernst sonder spot so findestic Godez trew
 gnadt;” “Fight against sin with earnestness and without feigning; you
 will find the true mercy of God.”--“Her myn sunde vil ich ach dagen
 uff das mir Gots trew moge behagen;” “Lord, I will mourn over my sin,
 in order that the truth of God may comfort me.”

 3. The same youthful maiden is bending over a wooden table, upon which
 lies a human heart that she is handling; and the inscriptions about
 her tell us the meaning of this action of hers, thus,--“Sol ich myn
 sund hi leschen so musz ich ich mȳ hertz im blude wesche;” “To cleanse
 away my sin here, I must wash my heart in the blood.”

 4. We here see an altar; upon its table are a small rood or crucifix
 with S. Mary and S. John, two candlesticks, having prickets for the
 wax-lights, the outspread corporal cloth, upon which stands the
 chalice, and under which, in front and not at the right side, lies the
 paten somewhat hidden. At the foot of this altar kneels the maiden,
 clad in blue, and wearing on her head a plain, closely-fitting linen
 cap, like that yet occasionally worn at church in Belgium, by females
 of the middle classes,--and the priest who is saying mass there is
 giving her Communion. The priest’s alb is ornamented with crimson
 apparels on its cuffs and lower front hem, inscribed with the word
 “haus,” house, is well rendered. The inscriptions above are, as
 elsewhere, mutilated, so that much of their meaning is lost; but they
 run thus,--“Wer he ... versorget mich mit Gottes trew das bitten ich;”
 “If ... not procure me the love of God that I pray for.”--“Emphang
 in trewen den waren Crist dmit dyn;” “Receive with fidelity the very
 Christ in order....”

 5. A nunnery, just outside of which stands its lady-abbess, clothed in
 a white habit, black hood, and white linen wimple about her throat.
 In her right hand she bears a gold crozier, from which hangs that
 peculiar napkin, two of which are in this collection, Nos. 8279A, and
 8662. Behind stands an aged nun, and, as if in the passage and seen
 through the cloister windows, are two lay sisters, known as such by
 the black scapular. In front of the abbess stands the young maiden
 dressed in pink, with her waiting woman all in white, in attendance on
 her. Upon the scrolls are these sentences,--“Dez hymels ey port Godez
 vor (m)eyn husz disz ist;” “A gate of heaven--God’s and mine house
 this is.”--“Kom trew Christ wol. p.. eidt nym dy Kron dy dir Got hat
 bereit.”--“Come, true Christian well ... take the crown which God has
 prepared for thee.”

 Though but a poor specimen of the loom, this piece gives us scraps of
 an obsolete dialect of the mediæval German, not Flemish, language.


1465.

Piece of Tapestry Hanging; ground, grass and flowers; design, a German
romance, divided into six compartments, each having its own inscribed
scrolls, meant to describe the subject. South German, middle of the
15th century. 12 feet by 2 feet 6 inches.

 In the first compartment we see a group of horsemen, of whom the first
 is a royal youth wearing a richly-jewelled crown and arrayed in all
 the fashion of those days. Following him are two grooms, over one of
 whose heads, but high up in the heavens, flies an eagle; and perhaps
 the bird may be there to indicate the name of the large walled city
 close by. Pacing on the flowery turf, the cavalcade is nearing a
 castle, at the threshold of which stand an aged king and his youthful
 daughter. On a scroll are the words,--“Bisg god wilkum dusig stunt(?)
 grosser frayd wart uns nie kunt;” “Be right welcome for a thousand
 hours; a greater joy we never knew.” Of course the coming guest utters
 his acknowledgments; but the words on the scroll cannot be made out
 with the exception of this broken sentence,--“Heute ich unt ...;” “To
 day I and ...”

 In the second compartment, in a room of the castle we behold the same
 royal youth, wearing, as before, his crown upon his long yellow locks,
 along with his three varlets. On a scroll are the words,--“Fromer
 dieur bestelle mir die ros ein wagge ist nun lieber;” “Pious servant,
 order me the horses, a carriage is preferred.”

 In the third compartment is shown, and very likely in his own home,
 the same young wooer talking, as it would seem by the scrolls, to
 his three waiting-men; and after one of them had said,--“Wage u[=n]
 rosz sint bereit als ...;” “Carriage and horses are ready as....” he
 says,--“Wo schien gluck zu diser vart nie kein reise;” “If luck has
 shone on this journey, I never liked travelling better.” Of the three
 servants, one holds three horses, while the upper groom is presenting,
 with both hands, to his royal young master a large something,
 apparently ornamented with flowers; the churl wears, hanging down
 from his girdle in front, an anelace or dagger, the gentleman a gay
 _gipcière_, but the shoes of both are very long and pointed.

 In the fourth compartment the same crowned youth again is seen
 riding towards the castle-gate, though this time no lady fair stands
 at its threshold for the greeting; but instead, there stands with
 the old king a noble youth who, to all appearances, seems to have
 been beforehand, in the business of wooing and winning the young
 princess’s heart, with the last comer. There are these words upon
 the scroll,--“Ich hab vor einem ... gericht einer tuben und mich
 yr verpflicht;” “I have before a ... tribunal of a dove, and have
 myself engaged to her;” meaning that already had he himself betrothed
 the king’s daughter, by swearing to her his love and truth before a
 dove--a thing quite mediæval, like the vows of the swan, the peacock,
 and the pheasant, as we have noticed in the Introduction, and again
 while treating of the Syon Cope, at p. 28. On his side, the old king
 thus addresses him,--“Mich dunckt du komst uber land ... zu der
 hochzeit;” “Methinks thou comest over-land ... to see the wedding.” In
 this, as in other inscriptions, the whole of the words cannot be made
 out.

 The fifth compartment shows us the second and successful wooer,
 dressed out in the same attire as before, but now riding a
 well-appointed steed, and booted in the manner of those times. He
 is waited on by a mounted page. On a scroll are the words,--“Umb
 sehnlichst ich nun köme ... ist die ewige ...;” “That I most
 passionately now can ... is the eternal,” &c.

 In the last compartment the rejected wooer is seen riding away as he
 came--without a bride--followed by two grooms.

 Though rough in its execution, this piece of tapestry is valuable
 not only for its specimens of costume, like our own at the period,
 but especially for its inscriptions, which betray the provincialisms
 belonging to the south of Germany; and some of their expressions are
 said to be even yet in daily use about the neighbourhood of Nuremberg,
 to which locality we are warranted, for several reasons, in ascribing
 the production of this early example of the German loom.


1480.

Tapestry Hanging; within a narrow border of a dark green ground,
ornamented with flowers mostly pink, and fruit-bearing branches of
the vine, is figured a subject just outside the gates of a large
walled city, and upon the flowery turf. Flemish, beginning of the 16th
century, 13 feet by 11 feet 6 inches.

 To all appearance the subject is taken from the Gospel of St. John,
 chap. 9, where the miracle is related of our Lord giving sight to the
 man born blind, who has just come back from washing in the pool of
 Siloam, and is answering his neighbours who had hitherto known him as
 the blind beggar. In front stands an important personage in a tunic of
 cloth of gold shot light blue, over which he wears a shorter one of
 fine crimson diapered in gold, having a broad jewelled hem; of a rich
 gold stuff is his lofty turban. In his left hand he holds a long wand,
 ending in an arrow-shaped head. At the feet of this high functionary
 kneels the poor man blessed with sight, while he is taking from him
 a something like a square glass bottle, and holds his coarse hat in
 his hand. Near but above him stands a lady wearing a most curious
 head-dress, which is blue, with two red wings bristling at its sides.
 The rest of her array is exactly like, in shape and stuffs, to the
 magnificent apparel of the first portly male figure, so as to lead us
 to believe that she must be his wife, himself being one of the Jewish
 chief priests. Talking with her is another Jew splendidly dressed,
 and bearing a wand in one hand; and behind her we see a man wearing
 earrings, and a woman belonging to the lower class--probably the cured
 man’s father and mother. Not far away from the priest, and at his
 back, are soldiers with lances, and one with a halbert, before whom
 stands a well-dressed, mantled and hooded Pharisee, with a rolled-up
 volume in his hand, and looking with a somewhat haughty scowl upon
 the man kneeling on the ground. Above the walls are seen the domes of
 several large buildings, of which one looks as if it were the temple
 of Jerusalem; and all about the battlements are people gazing down
 upon the scene beneath them.

 So Flemish is the Gothic style of architecture on the gates, around
 which are mock inscriptions, and on the walls of the city, that we
 find at once that the tapestry must have been designed and wrought in
 Flanders. Though the shapes of the dresses be for the most part quite
 imaginary, still the diapering on the gorgeous cloths of gold is after
 the style then in vogue and well rendered.


1481.

Tapestry Wall-hanging; subject, Neptune stilling the wind-storm raised
at Juno’s request by Æolus against the Trojan fleet on the Sicilian
coast. Flemish, 17th century.

 Evidently the designer of this tapestry meant to illustrate Virgil
 at the beginning of his first book of the Æneid. To the left hand is
 seen Boreas with a lance, which he is aiming against Neptune, in one
 hand, while in the other he holds by a cord a rough wooden yoke, to
 which are tied two boys floating in the water, and each with a pair of
 bellows, which he is blowing. Drawn by two steeds comes Neptune with
 uplifted trident, to still the winds raised by the two boys; and over
 his head are Eurus and the western wind in the shape of females flying
 in the air, one snapping the tall mast of one of Æneas’s ships, and
 the other pouring out broad streams of water from four vases, one in
 each hand. The bellows are very like those elaborately-carved ones in
 the Museum, out of Soulages collection.


1483.

Tapestry Wall-hanging; subject, Æneas and Achates before Dido, at
Carthage. Flemish, 17th century.

 The passage, in Virgil’s first book of the Æneid, descriptive of
 Æneas, with the faithful Achates at his side, relating his adventures
 to Dido, the Carthaginian queen, is here illustrated. The youthful
 princess, enthroned beneath a cloth of estate, is listening to the
 Trojan prince before her, and around are her ladies in gay costume,
 her own being of light blue silk damasked with a large golden flower.
 As a background we see the port filled with Æneas’s ships, to which
 countrymen are driving sheep and oxen for their crews. The women are
 quite of the Flemish type of fat beauty, and the odd head-dress for a
 man on Achates is remarkable.


1582.

Tapestry Hanging; subject, the departure of Æneas from Carthage.
Flemish, 17th century.

 In the foreground is Æneas taking leave of Dido, who is fainting into
 the arms of her waiting ladies. Behind, is a youth working as a mason
 and building a wall: further back, are seen horses richly caparisoned,
 upon one of which rides Dido, while Mercury comes flying down bidding
 Æneas to haste him away.


1683.

Tapestry Wall-hanging; subject, Venus appearing to Æneas in a wood.

 The second book of the Æneid has furnished the designer with the
 materials for this piece. Just as Æneas had uplifted his hand to slay
 Helen, Venus appears, stays his arms, and reasons with him. So says
 Virgil; but here we merely see Mercury coming down from the clouds,
 and Venus revealing herself to her son. The admirers of the beautiful
 in form and face will not find much to please them in the lady’s
 person. This piece closes the history of Æneas as given in these
 tapestries, which came from the palace, or, as it used to be called,
 the King’s House at Newmarket. All through, Dido is made to appear
 in the same kind of costume; but the dresses in general are purely
 imagined by the artist, without the slightest authority from the
 monuments of either Greek or Roman antiquity: and the architectural
 parts are quite in the debased classic style of the 17th century,
 as followed in Flanders. All these tapestries are framed in a red
 border, wrought at the sides with scrolls and shields, and below, with
 winged boys holding labels once showing inscriptions (now faded) all
 shot with gold, but tarnished black. Many of the female figures are
 slip-shod, like St. Mary Magdalen in Rubens’s “Taking down from the
 Cross,” at Antwerp.


6733.

Tapestry Hanging; subject, the story of Arria and Paetus, copied from
a painting by Francois André Vincent, and dated 1785. The border was
added afterwards. French, done at the Gobelins. 12 feet by 10 feet 6
inches. Presented by His Imperial Highness Prince Napoleon.

 The subject is a startling one; being condemned to die, by the Emperor
 Claudius, and put an end to his life with his own hand, Paetus
 hesitated. Seeing this, his wife Arria snatched up the weapon and
 plunged it to the hilt in her own bosom, and then handing the dagger
 to her husband, said, “It does not pain me, Paetus.”

 At top, on a blue ground, is a large N in yellow, indicative of the
 first Napoleon, who, in the year 1807 presented this fine specimen of
 the far-famed Gobelin tapestry to his brother Jerome, at the time King
 of Westphalia, as a marriage gift. By the late Prince Jerome it was
 sent, through his son, the present Prince Napoleon, for presentation
 to this Museum.


2442.

Tapestry Wall-hanging; design, groups of richly-dressed ladies and
gentlemen around a queen. Flemish, early 16th century.

 Apparently the crowded scene before us is meant to illustrate some
 symbolic subject. In the midst of them all stands a queen, whose hands
 are clasped. Before her kneels a man who respectfully bares his head
 the while he outstretches to the princess a written paper. Behind
 stands a magnificent chair. Further back is a nicely-shown interior
 of a room having its cupboard loaded with vases standing on the
 shelves; there sit three ladies in earnest talk. All about are groups
 of richly-clothed men and women, each of whose dresses is worthy of
 notice.


2443.

Tapestry; subject, a landscape, the foreground strewed with human and
animals’ bones, and a living figure sitting among rocks. French, early
17th century.

 This is one of a short series of tapestries setting forth, but
 sometimes laughing at, the ideas of the ancient cynics. Before us
 here we have a wild dell clothed in trees on one side, on the other
 piled with rocks capped, in some places, by ruins. Seated on a stone,
 with a book held in his hand, is Diogenes in meditation, with human
 bones, animal skulls, and monster things about him. The work is well
 done, and shows how perfect was the loom that wrought it. On a blue
 tablet at top runs this inscription,--“Diogenes derisor omnium in fine
 defigitur.”


2807.

Tapestry; subject, the visit of Alexander the Great to Diogenes in his
tub. French, early 17th century.

 The scene is well laid out, peopled with many figures, and its story
 neatly told. Above, in the usual place, is this inscription,--“Sensit
 Alexander testã quum vidit in illã magnum habitatorem, quanto felicior
 hic, qui nil cuperet (_quàm_) qui totum sibi posceret orbem.”


3818.

Tapestry; subject, a beautifully-wooded scene with a stream running
down the middle of it, and across which two men, one on each side, are
talking. French, early 17th century.

 On one side stands Dionysius; on the other, and holding a bunch of
 vegetables, which he is about to wash in the brook, is Diogenes,
 who was not remarkable for his personal cleanliness. Dionysius, it
 would seem, has been twitting him upon that subject, and gets for
 answer that his very presence taints with dirt Diogenes himself, and
 the waters in which he is about to wash his pot-herbs: “Sordet mihi
 Dionysius lavanti olera,” as the Latin inscription reads above.


4331.

Tapestry Wall-hanging; design, a wooded scene in the background; in the
foreground, Diogenes and a man. French, early 17th century.

 Before a large tub, lying on its side, is stretched out Diogenes,
 pointing his finger to his curious dwelling, with his head looking
 towards a wayfarer, to whom he seems to say those words traced on the
 blue label at the top,--“Qui domum ambit hanc (anne?) me sepeliat.”
 This appears to have been drawn from his lips by the man going by, who
 is pointing towards the gaping mouth of the tub.


4650.

Tapestry; subject, a gate-way built of rough stone, over which a female
is tracing an inscription, of which are written in large capital
letters these words:--

    “Nihil hic ingrediatur mali.”

Besides this, we find these sentences also:--

    “Diogenes Cynicus subscribit;” and, “Spado sceleratus scripsit.”

 In these five pieces of tapestry, which were evidently employed for
 hanging the walls in some especial hall, we cannot but admire the
 ease and freedom of their whole design, and be struck especially by
 the beauty of their wild, yet charming landscapes, which are so well
 brought out by the weaver-artist who wrought them.


7926.

Tapestry; subject, the holy family, after Raphael. Presented by His
Imperial Majesty the Emperor Napoleon III.

 No words are necessary to call the observer’s attention to this
 admirable specimen of the French loom. Of the many fine pieces sent
 forth by the manufactory of the Gobelins, this may easily take a place
 among the very finest; and, at first sight, many people might be led
 to think that it was the work of the pencil, and not of machinery.
 About it there is a warmth and depth of mellow colouring which has
 partly fled from the original, through time and, may be, want of care.
 Those who have seen the pictures at the Louvre must well remember the
 grand and precious original of which this is such a successful copy.


189.

Tapestry Wall-hanging; design, our Lord giving the power of the keys to
St. Peter, after Raphael’s cartoon. English (probably from Soho), 17th
century. 17 feet 1 inch by 12 feet.

 The point of time chosen by the great Roman painter is that indicated
 by St. Matthew, xvi. 18, 19; for St. Peter holds the keys promised him
 by his divine Master, at whose feet he alone, of all the apostles, is
 kneeling. Behind our Lord is a large flock of sheep, as explanatory of
 the pastoral power bestowed, after His uprising from the grave, by our
 Saviour upon St. Peter more especially, to feed the sheep as well as
 lambs in His flock, as we read in St. John, xxi. 16, 17: both subjects
 are naturally connected.

 By the many engravings, but, more particularly, the fine photographs
 of the original cartoon, once at Hampton Court, now in this Museum,
 this subject is well known. In this especial piece, the colouring,
 being so badly graduated and garish, is by no means as good as in the
 earlier one, still to be seen in the Gallery of the Tapestries at the
 Vatican. Here, the tone of our Lord’s drapery is not distinguishable
 from the stony hue of the wool upon the sheep behind Him.


8225.

Panel of Tapestry; ground, light blue; design, bunches of flowers upon
a white panel. 2 feet 11½ inches by 2 feet 3½ inches. Aubusson,
present century. Presented by Messrs. Requillart, Roussel, and
Chocqueel.

 After Paris with the Gobelins, and the city of Beauvais, there is no
 town in France which produces such fine tapestries as Aubusson, the
 carpets of which are much admired.


7927 to 7930.

Four Pieces of Tapestry; ground, light blue; design, flowers. French,
present century. Presented by His Imperial Majesty the Emperor Napoleon
III.

 Beauvais, which produced these beautiful specimens, has long been
 famous for the works of the loom; and the present lovely figures of
 such well-drawn, nicely-coloured flowers are worthy of that city’s
 reputation.


594.

Tapestry Wall-hanging; subject, Esther about to venture into the
presence of Ahasuerus. From the Soulages Collection. Flemish, first
half of the 16th century. Height 13 feet, breadth 11 feet 6 inches.

 The history, as here shown us, of a most eventful achievement, is at
 top distributed into four groups, each made up of figures rather small
 in stature; and at bottom, into other five clusters, in which all the
 personages assume a proportion little short of life-size.

 Beginning with those higher compartments on the piece, we find in
 the two at the left-hand side the commencement of this Scriptural
 record. The mighty Ahasuerus is presented to us in the second of
 those two groups there, as seated amid trees, and robed as would
 have been a sovereign prince during the first half of the sixteenth
 century. All about his head and neck the Persian king wears, wrapped
 in loose folds, a linen cloth, over which he has a large scarlet hat
 with an ornament for a crown, made up of small silver shield-shaped
 plates, marked with wedge-like stripes of a light blue colour, or
 heraldically, _argent_, five piles _azure_ meeting at the base; over
 his shoulders falls an unspotted ermine cape jagged all about its edge
 so as to look as if meant for a nebulée border. Upon the left breast
 of this sort of mantle is sewed a little crimson shield-shaped badge
 marked in white seemingly with the letter A, not having, however,
 the stroke through it, but above, the sign of contraction dashed. He
 wears a blue tabard, is girt with a sword, and holds in his left hand
 a tall wand, that golden sceptre which, if not outstretched in token
 of clemency towards the man or woman who had the hardihood to come
 unbidden to his presence, signified that such a bold intruder, were
 she the queen herself, must be put to death. Having nobles and guards
 about him, this monarch of one hundred and twenty-seven provinces is
 handing to Haman, one of those three princes before him, a written
 document from which hang two royal seals: this is that terrible
 decree, which, out of spite towards Mordecai, and hatred for the
 Jewish race, Haman had won from his partial master Ahasuerus, for the
 slaughter, on a certain day, of every Hebrew within the Persian empire.

 Yet further to the left is another group, wherein we observe some of
 the richly-attired functionaries of the empire. A bareheaded old man,
 a royal messenger, who holds up his left hand as if to indicate he
 had come from the court of Ahasuerus, delivers to one of the nobles
 there this original decree to be copied out and sent in all directions
 through the kingdom.

 Looking still at top, but to the far right, we have in the background,
 amid the trees, a large house, from out of the midst of which stands
 up a tall red beam, the gibbet, fifty cubits high, got ready by Haman
 at his wife’s and friends’ suggestion for hanging on it Mordecai.
 In this foreground we behold Haman clad in a blue mantle and a rich
 golden chain about his neck: to the man standing respectfully before
 him, cap in hand, Haman gives the written order duly authenticated
 by the two imperial seals upon it, for the execution of Mordecai.
 Immediately to the left of this scene we are presented with the inside
 view of a fine chamber hung with tapestry, and ornamented with tall
 vases, two of which are on a shelf close by a lattice-window. In the
 middle of this room is a group of three women: one of them, Esther,
 richly clad, is seated and wringing her hands in great grief, as if
 she had learned the fell death awaiting her uncle, and the slaughter
 already decreed of all her nation: two of her gentlewomen are with
 her, wailing, like their queen-mistress, the coming catastrophe.

 Right in the centre of the piece, and occupying its most conspicuous
 position, we behold the tall stately figure of a beautiful young
 queen, splendidly arrayed, and wearing over the rich caul upon
 her head a royal diadem. She seems to have just arisen from the
 magnificent throne or rather faldstool close behind her. With both her
 hands clasped in supplication, she is followed in her upward course by
 her train of attendants--two ladies and a nobleman--all gaily dressed,
 threading their way through as they ascend from the hall below crowded
 with courtiers, men and women gossiping together in little knots,
 and set off in fashionable dress. While bending her steps, Esther
 looks towards the spot where Ahasuerus is sitting. At this moment
 an oldish man steps forward, clad after a beseeming fashion: in one
 hand he holds his red cap, while with the other hand he is stretching
 out, for Esther’s acceptance, his inscribed roll. This person must be
 Mordecai, thus shown as instructing and encouraging his niece-queen
 Esther in the hazardous work of saving her people’s lives, at the same
 time that he furnishes her with a copy of the decree for their utter
 annihilation.

 This inner court of the King’s house where Esther is now standing over
 against the hall in which Ahasuerus sits upon his throne is crowded
 with courtiers, all remarkable for the elegance and costliness of
 their dress. In a circle of three great personages to the right, one
 of those high-born dames has brought with her her guitar, made in the
 form of the calabash, to help on by her music the expected mirth and
 revelry of the day.

 In those several instances in which the royal decree is figured with
 the imperial seals hanging from it, the impression stamped upon the
 wax seems, no doubt, to be taken as the cipher of Ahasuerus, a large
 A, but without the stroke through it.

 One remarkable feature among the ornaments of dress assumed by
 almost all the great personages in this piece of tapestry is the
 large-linked, heavy golden chain about the neck, worn as much by
 ladies as by gentlemen. The caps of the men are mostly square.

 The elaborately-adorned, closely-fitting, round-shaped caul worn by
 the women in this court of Ahasuerus is in strict accordance with the
 female fashion abroad at the beginning of the sixteenth century; while
 here, in England, the gable-headed coif found more favour than the
 round with our countrywomen. Then, however, as now, ladies loved long
 trains to their gowns; and the men’s shoes had that peculiar broad toe
 so conspicuously marked in Hans Holbein’s cartoon for a picture of our
 Henry VIII. belonging to the Duke of Devonshire, and exhibited among
 the National Portraits on loan to the South Kensington Museum, A.D.
 1866.


8979.

Tapestry Hanging; subject, the three Fates with a young lady lying dead
at their feet. Flemish, early 16th century.

 With a grove of blooming trees behind them, and upon a lawn,
 everywhere sprinkled with many kinds of flowers, stand the Fates.
 Each of the weird sisters may be individually known by her proper
 name written in white letters near her head. Beginning from the right
 side of the piece, we have the spinster Clotho, who is figured as a
 youthful maiden; amid the boughs of a tree just above her is seen a
 long-billed bird of the snipe-kind; she is gaily dressed in a yellow
 kirtle, elaborately diapered after a flowery pattern done in green,
 over which she wears a gown of deep crimson velvet, while from her
 girdled waist falls a large golden chain ending in a gold pomander. In
 her left hand she holds a distaff, keeping at the same time between
 her fingers the thread which she has but just done spinning. Next to
 Clotho stands Lachesis, almost as young in look; she is not quite so
 sprightly but yet as elegantly clad as her sister with the distaff;
 billing and cooing above this feigned manager of individual destiny
 we behold a pair of turtle-doves; this second of the Fates is clad in
 robes of a light pink tone nicely and artistically diapered, and with
 her left hand she takes from Clotho the thread just spun and with her
 right passes it on to Atropos. This the last, and the most dreaded
 of the fatal three, looks older than the other two, and is arrayed
 more matronly. Clothed in deep blue, Atropos wears a large full white
 kerchief, which, as its name implies, not only covers her head, but
 falls well down from her shoulders half-way to her broad girdle, upon
 which is slung a string of beads for prayer--a rosary. Atropos, whose
 imaginary office was to cut with knife, or scissors, or a pair of
 shears, the thread of life, uses no such an instrument here; for with
 her hands she has broken the life-cord, and the spindle, around which
 it had been wound, lies thrown upon the flowery turf close by the
 head of the victim of the Fates. At the feet of these three sisters
 lies, stretched out in all her fullest length, a youthful lady dead.
 She wears a kerchief on her head, and over her richly-diapered pink
 gown she has a light crimson mantle thickly powdered with small golden
 crescents. Her bed seems made of early summer flowers; and alongside
 of her, and as if just fallen from her outstretched right hand, lies
 the tall stalk, snapped short off near the lower end, of a blooming
 white lily. At one side, but lower down, is the half-figure of a
 monkey; some way to the right, but on the same level, sits in quiet
 security a large brown hare; while between these two animals, from out
 a hole in the ground, as if they snuffed their future prey in the dead
 body, are creeping a weasel and a stoat, just after a large toad that
 has crawled out before them.

 This piece of tapestry, valuable alike for its artistic excellence
 and its good preservation, has a more than common interest about it.
 In all likelihood it gives us the history, nay, perhaps affords
 us the very portraiture of some high-born, beautiful young lady,
 well known and admired in her day. A little something at least
 may be gathered from its symbolism. By the heathen mythological
 distribution of functions among the poetic Parcæ, or Fates, to the
 second of these three sisters, to Lachesis, was it given to decide
 the especial destiny of each mortal the hour that she or he was born.
 Now in the instance before us a pair of turtle-doves, love’s emblem,
 is conspicuously shown above the head of Lachesis. As this young
 lady’s life-thread slipped through her fingers Lachesis has touched
 it, quickened it so that the child for whom it is being spun shall
 have a heart all maidenly, but soft to the impressions of the gentle
 passion--love. She has been wooed and made a bride, for she has on
 the married woman’s kerchief. That lily-stem with its opening buds
 and full-blown flowers at top is the emblem of a spotless whiteness,
 an unstained innocence; the stalk is broken, but the flowers on it
 are unwithered. What fitter tokens of a bride’s unlooked-for death,
 the very morning of her marriage? But that monkey-emblem of mischief,
 evil, moral ugliness, and in particular of lubricity--perhaps may mean
 us to understand the worthlessness of wanton, profligate men. As the
 harmless unsuspecting hare is easily snared and taken in a toil, so
 she might have been caught, but may have been spared, by early death,
 a life of misery. Those loathsome things coming from out the ground
 warn men that all of us must one day or another become the prey of the
 grave, and that youth, and innocence, and beauty will be its food.

[Illustration]



[Illustration]



THE BROOKE COLLECTION.


542. ’64.

Christening Ribbon, white silk with silver gimp edge. English, 18th
century. Length 6 feet 9 inches, width 2¼ inches. Presented by the
Rev. R. Brooke.


858, 858B. ’64.

Court suit, coat and knee-breeches, of cherry-coloured Genoa velvet,
white satin lining, waistcoat white satin embroidered in coloured
silks and silver. English, dated 1772. Length of coat 3 feet 2½
inches, length of breeches 2 feet, length of waistcoat 2 feet 5 inches.
Presented by the Rev. R. Brooke.


859, 859B. ’64.

Dress suit, coat, waistcoat, and knee-breeches, of pink silk brocade
with a diapered flower pattern. English, date about 1770. Length of
coat 3 feet 2½ inches, length of waistcoat 2 feet 6 inches, length
of breeches 2 feet 4 inches. Presented by the Rev. R. Brooke.


860. ’64.

Apron, white silk, with raised floral embroidery. English, date about
1720. Length 2 feet 0½ inch, width 2 feet 9½ inches. Presented by
the Rev. R. Brooke.


861. ’64.

Apron, yellow silk, with raised floral embroidery, in colours, bordered
with silk lace. English, date about 1720. Length 2 feet 1 inch, width 2
feet 10 inches. Presented by the Rev. R. Brooke.


862. ’64.

Apron, white silk, with coloured floral embroidery and silver cord.
English, date about 1720. Length 1 foot 7½ inches, width 3 feet.
Presented by the Rev. R. Brooke.


863. ’64.

Apron, white silk, with purple floral embroidery and gold cord.
English, date about 1720. Length 1 foot 9 inches, width 3 feet 2
inches. Presented by the Rev. R. Brooke.


864. ’64.

Portion of Embroidery, flowers in coloured silks (chiefly orange)
on linen ground covered with stitched scroll pattern. English, 18th
century. Length 1 foot 10½ inches, width 1 foot 6 inches. Presented
by the Rev. R. Brooke.


865. ’64.

Portion of Embroidery, flowers in coloured silks (chiefly orange)
on linen ground covered with stitched scroll pattern. English, 18th
century. Length 1 foot 1½ inches, width 1 foot 6 inches. Presented
by the Rev. R. Brooke.


866. ’64.

Portion of Embroidery, flowers in coloured silks (chiefly orange)
on linen ground covered with stitched scroll pattern. English, 18th
century. Length 2 feet 2¼ inches, width 2 feet. Presented by the
Rev. R. Brooke.


867. ’64.

Piece of Brocade, crimson satin with cut velvet floral pattern;
bordered with silver gimp and spangles. French, date about 1770. Length
3 feet 5½ inches, width 3 feet 2 inches. Presented by the Rev. R.
Brooke.


868. ’64.

Piece of Brocade, crimson satin with cut velvet floral pattern;
bordered with silver gimp and spangles. French, date about 1770. Length
6 feet, width 3 feet 2 inches. Presented by the Rev. R. Brooke.


869. ’64.

Mantilla, yellow silk and black lace. English, date about 1770. Length,
as worn, 5 feet, width of skirt 3 feet. Presented by the Rev. R. Brooke.


870. ’64.

Boddice, yellow silk. English, date about 1770. Height 12½ inches,
width 2 feet 4½ inches. Presented by the Rev. R. Brooke.


871. ’64.

Table-cover, pink silk edged with silver gimp. English, 18th century.
Length 3 feet 5 inches, width 3 feet. Presented by the Rev. R. Brooke.


872. ’64.

Piece of Silk, pink ribbed, lined with pink sarsnet. English, 18th
century. Length 3 feet 4 inches, width 4 feet. Presented by the Rev. R.
Brooke.


873. ’64.

Silk Fringe, green and yellow. English, date about 1740. Length 8 feet
1 inch, depth 3½ inches. Presented by the Rev. R. Brooke.


874. ’64.

Counterpane, white linen embroidered with running pattern; in centre
a scroll ornament with cipher and scroll border, all in yellow silk.
English, 17th century. Length 7 feet 8 inches, width 6 feet 11 inches.
Presented by the Rev. R. Brooke.


875. ’64.

Cushion-cover, white linen embroidered with running pattern and scroll
ornament, yellow silk; cipher in centre. English, 17th century. Length
2 feet 1 inch, width 1 foot 5½ inches. Presented by the Rev. R.
Brooke.


876. ’64.

Cushion-cover, white linen embroidered with running pattern and scroll
ornament, yellow silk; cipher in centre. English, 17th century. Length
1 foot 8½ inches, width 1 foot 3½ inches. Presented by the Rev.
R. Brooke.


877. ’64.

Cushion-cover, white linen embroidered with running pattern and scroll
ornament, yellow silk; cipher in centre. English, 17th century. Length
1 foot 5½ inches, width 1 foot 2 inches. Presented by the Rev. R.
Brooke.


878. ’64.

Piece of Brocade, white silk and gold in narrow stripes. French (?),
18th century. Length 10 feet 4 inches, width 2 feet 2 inches. Presented
by the Rev. R. Brooke.


879. ’64.

Table-cover, crimson Genoa velvet with broad border of silver gimp,
Indian (Delhi) work. Length 5 feet 2 inches, width 5 feet 2 inches.
Presented by the Rev. R. Brooke.


880. ’64.

Saddle-cloth, dark blue Genoa velvet, ornamented with broad bands of
flowered gold lace; trappings for the horse of H. Osbaldeston, Esq.,
High Sheriff of Yorkshire, A.D. 1772-3. Length 4 feet 5 inches, width 1
foot 8½ inches. Presented by the Rev. R. Brooke.


881, 881A. ’64.

Pair of Holsters for Pistols, dark blue Genoa velvet, ornamented
with broad bands of flowered gold lace; trappings for the horse of
H. Osbaldeston, Esq., High Sheriff of Yorkshire, A.D. 1772-3. Length
1 foot 9 inches, width 1 foot 6½ inches. Presented by the Rev. R.
Brooke.


882. ’64.

Saddle-cloth, scarlet cloth with border of gold lace, used by the
attendants of the High Sheriff of Yorkshire, A.D. 1772-3. Length 3 feet
8 inches, width 1 foot 6 inches. Presented by the Rev. R. Brooke.


883. ’64.

Saddle-cloth, scarlet cloth with border of gold lace, used by the
attendants of the High Sheriff of Yorkshire, A.D. 1772-3. Length 3 feet
10½ inches, width 1 foot 6¾ inches. Presented by the Rev. R.
Brooke.


884. ’64.

Saddle-cloth, scarlet cloth, with border of gold lace, used by the
attendants of the High Sheriff of Yorkshire, A.D. 1772-3. Length 3 feet
10 inches, width 1 foot 6¾ inches. Presented by the Rev. R. Brooke.


885. ’64.

Pair of Pistol Holsters, scarlet cloth bordered with gold lace, used by
the attendants of the High Sheriff of Yorkshire, A.D. 1772-3. Length 12
inches. Presented by the Rev. R. Brooke.


886, 886A. ’64.

Pair of Pistol Holsters, scarlet cloth bordered with gold lace, used by
the attendants of the High Sheriff of Yorkshire, A.D. 1772-3. Length 12
inches. Presented by the Rev. R. Brooke.


887, 887A. ’64.

Pair of Pistol Holsters, scarlet cloth bordered with gold lace, used by
the attendants of the High Sheriff of Yorkshire, A.D. 1772-3. Length 12
inches. Presented by the Rev. R. Brooke.


888. ’64.

Dress Silk Brocade, white ground with pattern of flowers in various
colours. French(?), early 18th century. Length 4 feet 7 inches, width 8
feet 4 inches. Presented by the Rev. R. Brooke.


889. ’64.

Lady’s Shoe, pink prunella, with high heel. English, date about 1765.
Length 9⅛ inches. Presented by the Rev. R. Brooke.


890 ’64.

Grenadier’s Cap, scarlet and white cloth and crimson velvet, with
silver and gold embroidery, and gold spangles. English, date about
1770. Height 14 inches. Presented by the Rev. R. Brooke.


891. ’64.

Lady’s Workbag, made from the bark of a tree, bordered with green and
white. English(?), 18th century. Length 2 feet, width 1 foot 1 inch.
Presented by the Rev. R. Brooke.


892. ’64.

Piece of Silk Embroidery in frame, white satin ground, on which are
worked in high relief King Ahasuerus, Queen Esther, various animals,
fruits, and other objects, in coloured silk and gold cord. English,
early 18th century. Height 1 foot 1 inch, width 1 foot 7 inches.
Presented by the Rev. R. Brooke.


893. ’64.

Waistcoat, white ribbed silk embroidered with flowers in various
colours, silver cord, and spangles. English, date about 1770. Length 2
feet 3 inches. Presented by the Rev. R. Brooke.


894. ’64.

Waistcoat, crimson satin, with floral brocade border in various
colours. English, date about 1770. Length 2 feet 7 inches. Presented by
the Rev. R. Brooke.


895. ’64.

Waistcoat, blue and white striped silk brocade with flower spot
pattern. English, date about 1770. Length 2 feet 2½ inches.
Presented by the Rev. R. Brooke.


896. ’64.

Skirt of a Lady’s Dress, white silk printed with flowers in various
colours. French(?), 18th century. Height 3 feet 6 inches, width 9 feet
8 inches. Presented by the Rev. R. Brooke.


897. ’64.

Piece of Silk, white silk printed with flowers in various colours.
French(?), 18th century. Height 3 feet, width 2 feet. Presented by the
Rev. R. Brooke.


898. ’64.

Kerchief, yellow silk gauze with floral pattern, border of pink and
yellow silk lace. French(?), 18th century. Length 4 feet 3 inches,
width 3 feet. Presented by the Rev. R. Brooke.


899. ’64.

Trimming of a Dress, chocolate silk gauze, embroidered with flowers in
various colours. English, 18th century. Length 5 feet, width 12 inches.
Presented by the Rev. R. Brooke.


900. ’64.

Christening Suit, viz. cap, bib, mittens, and dress (in two pieces),
old point lace. Flemish(?), 18th century; worn in 1773. Length of dress
1 foot 11 inches, width 1 foot 3½ inches. Presented by the Rev. R.
Brooke.


919. ’64.

Reticule, silk embroidery of various colours, with yellow satin neck.
English, 18th century. Length 9 inches, width 6 inches. Presented by
the Rev. R. Brooke.


932. ’64.

Sword-Belt, black silk web; part of a Volunteer uniform. English, early
present century. Length 3 feet 5 inches. Presented by the Rev. R.
Brooke.


933. ’64.

Sword-belt, pale blue silk web, with steel clasps; part of a Volunteer
uniform. English, early 18th century. Length 3 feet 8 inches. Presented
by the Rev. R. Brooke.


934. ’64.

Sword-belt, black leather, gilt metal mounts; part of a Volunteer
uniform. English, 18th century. Length 2 feet 11 inches. Presented by
the Rev. R. Brooke.


935. ’64.

Badge for a Cap Front, crown, cipher, and motto in steel on scarlet
cloth; part of a Volunteer uniform. English, 18th century. Height 4-⅞
inches, width 5 inches. Presented by the Rev. R. Brooke.


966. ’64.

Bag, or Purse, links of silver filagree. Modern Genoese. Length 5¼
inches. Presented by the Rev. R. Brooke.


978. ’64.

Screen, white silk gauze painted with flowers and birds with a vase in
centre. Modern Chinese. Length 12 feet 8 inches, height 2 feet 6½
inches. Presented by the Rev. R. Brooke.


979. ’64.

Screen, white silk gauze, painted with flower-sprigs, insects, and a
basket hanging from a tree. Modern Chinese. Length 12 feet 10 inches,
width 2 feet 5 inches. Presented by the Rev. R. Brooke.


980. ’64.

Screen, white silk gauze, painted with flowers and birds. Modern
Chinese. Height 3 feet 6½ inches, width 4 feet 8¼ inches.
Presented by the Rev. R. Brooke.


981. ’64.

Piece of Embroidery, white satin ground with pattern of leaves and
flowers highly relieved in coloured silks and gold cord. English, 18th
century. Length 1 foot 10 inches, width 1 foot 1½ inches. Presented
by the Rev. R. Brooke.


982, 982D. ’64.

Five Funeral Banners, silk, emblazoned with armorial shields. English,
18th century. Length 1 foot 9-⅓ inches, width 1 foot 4-⅝ inches.
Presented by the Rev. R. Brooke.


983. ’64.

Funeral Banner, calico, emblazoned with armorial shields. English, 18th
century. Length 1 foot 2 inches, width 1 foot 4 inches. Presented by
the Rev. R. Brooke.


983A. ’64.

Funeral Banner, calico. English, 18th century. Length 1 foot 2 inches,
width 1 foot 1 inch. Presented by the Rev. R. Brooke.

[Illustration]



[Illustration]



LENT BY HER MAJESTY AND THE BOARD OF WORKS.


Tapestry; ground crimson, diapered with foliage; design, within a broad
arch, a white panel, figured with Diana, and about her flowers, birds,
and animals, dead and alive. At the right corner, on the lower hem, is
inscribed, “Neilson, ex. 1786.” French, from the Gobelin factory.

 Diana holds by a long blue ribbon a greyhound; below, are other two
 hounds and two little naked boys, of whom one is about to dart an
 arrow; the other, to shoot one from a bow at Diana herself, who, with
 her shadow cast upon a cloud, is holding her favourite dog by its
 blue string: at her feet lie her own bow and arrows. This piece is
 graciously lent by Her Majesty, and is a favourable specimen of the
 Gobelins royal manufactory, over which the Neilsons, father and son,
 presided, from A.D. 1749 till 1788. Most likely this piece was wrought
 by the elder Neilson, who, as well as his son, worked with the “basse
 lisse,” or low horizontal frame, as distinguished from the “haute
 lisse,” or high vertical one.


Tapestry Wall-hanging; design, a landscape with the figure of a man.
French, 17th century.

 The landscape is somewhat wild, but nicely rendered. In the
 foreground, sitting on a stone, we have a youth with both his hands
 upon a classic-shaped vase, standing between his feet. In the
 background are seen a few goats; and further on still, a building
 with pillars, very likely a well. This fancy piece is surrounded by a
 border figured with ornamentation, and though it be small and made to
 fit some panel in a room, is a good specimen of its time, and seems to
 have come from the same hands that designed and wrought the Diogenes
 pieces.


Tapestry; design, within a crimson border ornamented, in white, with
scroll-work after a classic character, a large mythologic, perhaps
Bacchanal subject. French, 17th century.

 Upheld by pilasters and columns wreathed with branches of the vine,
 we see a wide entablature coloured crimson and blue, figured with
 tripods, vases, and other fanciful arabesque ornamentation, and amid
 these, heathen gods and goddesses, centaurs, birds, and groups of
 satyrs. Below, and between the pilasters and columns, a male figure is
 playing the double pipe, women are carrying fruits in dishes, another
 is dancing, and some high personages feasting at a table, with some
 men looking on. Lowermost of all is another scene, in which we have
 little naked boys, satyrs carrying grapes, and an ass laden with
 them, and other satyrs pouring into vases the red wine which they
 are getting from a fountain brim full of it. A border of a crimson
 ground figured in places with full-faced heads, and all over with
 small figures, the draperies of which are shaded in gold now quite
 black, and arabesques after a classic form, goes round the whole
 piece, which is fellow to another showing the labours of Hercules, in
 this collection. In the tapestry before us, all the subjects are so
 Bacchanalian that we must suppose that the designer meant to set forth
 the ways of the god of wine. Like the drawing in the Hercules piece,
 the drawing here is good; but the piece itself is in a somewhat bad
 condition.


Tapestry Wall-hanging; subject, the labours of Hercules. Flemish, late
17th century. 21 feet 6 inches by 16 feet.

 This large piece is divided into three broad horizontal bands; on the
 first of these, upon a dark blue ground, amid arabesques and monsters
 after classic models, are observable the infant Hercules strangling
 the two serpents; in the middle, a female holding two ropes, and about
 her little boys carrying tall reeds, which at top expand into a cup
 full of fire, as she stands upright upon a pedestal over a doorway,
 in the tympanum of which, within a round hollow, is the bust of a
 man having a wine-jug on one side, and a dish filled with fire on
 the other; still further to the right, there is, within an oval, a
 child reading at a three-legged desk, and seated on the bending bough
 of a tree, at the foot of which is a book, and a comic mask. On the
 second band, the ground of which is light blue, within the doorway,
 coloured green, stands Hercules cross-legged, bearing in his right
 hand his club, and with the left upholding the lion-skin mantle. To
 the right, Hercules is seen wrestling; next, Hercules fighting the
 Nemean lion with his club; and then the hero shooting with his bow
 and arrows the Stymphalian birds, half human in their shape: to the
 left, Hercules is beheld strangling with his own hands the Nemean
 lion; then he is seen with this dead beast upon his shoulders as he
 carries it to Eurystheus; and lastly, he is shown loaded with a blue
 globe, marked with the signs of the zodiac, upon his back. On the
 third band, which is crimson, we find Hercules, leading by a chain
 the many-headed Cerberus from the lower world, having along with him
 Athena, who is seen with clasped hands, and Theseus, who is clad in
 armour with a reversed dart in his hand; in front lies a dead man. The
 middle of this band is filled in with architectural scroll-work, upon
 which are seated two half-bust winged figures, one male, the other
 female, and hanging between them a shield figured with the rape of
 Europa. After this central piece we come to the scene on the journey
 into exile of Hercules and his wife Deianira: the centaur Nessus is
 carrying the lady in his arms over the river Evenus, and while doing
 so insults her, whereupon Hercules lets fly an arrow, on hearing his
 wife’s screams, and shoots Nessus to the heart. The whole is enclosed
 within a border of a crimson ground, figured with arabesques and heads
 of a classic character. The third band has a hermes or terminal post
 at each end; and, curiously enough, in the top band, and resting on
 the foliations, are four nests of the pelican, billing its breast and
 feeding its young ones with its blood; besides this we see in places
 two lions rampant, and regularly langued _gules_, being caressed by a
 sort of harpy: all of which would lead us to think that in the bird
 and the animals we have the armorial charge upon the shield, and its
 supporters, of the noble, but now unknown, owner for whom this piece
 of tapestry was originally wrought. Its fellow-piece, figured not so
 much with the triumphs as the festive joys of Bacchus, is in this
 collection.


Tapestry Wall-hanging; ground, white; subject, the young Bacchus on a
cloud, with a cup of wine in one hand, and the thyrsus-staff in the
other; and all about, his symbols. French, or Gobelin, 18th century.

 Within a rather broad panelled arch, wine-red in its tone, is figured
 the young Bacchus with a couple of thyrsus-staves,
 crossed saltire-wise above him: below, is a fountain with an animal’s
 face, from the mouth of which runs red wine, and by it two little
 satyrs playing with tigers, into whose open maws they are squeezing
 the juice of the purple grape. Within a tablet in the higher part are
 figured two letters M. M. seemingly the ciphers of the individual for
 whom this piece was woven.


Tapestry Wall-hanging; ground, white; subject, Venus surrounded by her
emblems. French, or Gobelin, 18th century.

 This is a fellow-piece to the foregoing one, and arranged in the same
 manner. Riding on a cloud, Venus holds a small dart, and leans upon
 a swan, with a Cupid by her feet. Like the other piece, it has the
 cipher M. M.


Tapestry Wall-hanging; ground, mostly white; subject, shepherds and
shepherdesses sacrificing to Pan. French, or Gobelin, 18th century.

 This large fine piece has a very cheerful tone, and the background is
 so managed as to be very lightsome in its skies, and hills, and water.
 In many parts of the costumes, and the vegetation, the colouring is
 warm without being dauby or garish.


Tapestry Wall-hanging; subject, Melchizedek bringing bread and wine to
Abram after his victory. Flemish, late 17th century.

 On a tablet at the top of the piece is this inscription:--“Sodomâ
 expugnatâ Lot capitur. Abram illum recepit. Rex Melchizedek victori
 Abram offert panem et vinum.” As the reader will easily bring to
 mind, the subject as well as the inscription are borrowed from the
 fourteenth chapter of Genesis. Supposing that Sodom, after the
 overthrow by Abram’s night attack of the four kings, had been retaken,
 and his nephew Lot and his substance freed from the hands of the four
 conquered princes, the artist has chosen that point of time in the
 story, when Melchizedek, the King of Salem and the Priest of the Most
 High, went out to meet Abram as he was coming from the slaughter; and
 bringing forth bread and wine, blessed him.

 The two principal personages occupy the centre of the foreground.
 Crowned as a king and wearing a costly sword, Melchizedek comes
 forth with outstretched right hand to welcome Abram, from whom he is
 separated by a highly ornamented tall vase full of wine. Behind this
 King of Salem one of his own serving men, who carries on his shoulders
 a basket full of food, is coming down the wide staircase from which
 his royal master has just issued, while outside a doorway, under an
 upper portico in the same palace, stand two men gazing on the scene
 below them. On the other side of the vase, Abram, holding a long staff
 in his right hand, is stepping forwards toward Melchizedek, whom he
 salutes with his lowered left hand, and behind him a second servant of
 Melchizedek has just set upon the ground a large hamper full of flat
 loaves of bread. A little higher in the piece, and somewhat to the
 left of this domestic, a group of soldiers are quenching their thirst
 gathered about an open tun of wine, which they drink out of a wide
 bowl; hastening towards the same spot, as if from an archway, flows a
 stream of other military men. Amid the far-off landscape may be seen
 banners flying, and beneath them all the turmoils of a battle raging
 at its height. To the right, the standard-bearers and some of the
 vanquished are seen in headlong flight.

 The deep golden-grounded border is parted at bottom by classic
 monstrous hermæ, male and female, each wearing a pair of wings by
 its ears. The spaces between these grotesques are filled in with
 female figures, mostly symbolizing vices. “Violentia” is figured by
 a youthful woman, who, with a sheathed sword by her side, is driving
 before her a captive young man, whom she holds by the cords which tie
 his hands behind him, and whom she hurries onwards by the blows from a
 thick staff that she wields in her uplifted right hand. “Depredatio,”
 with her fingers ending at their tips in long sharp ravenous nails,
 is riding astride a lion. “Gratitudo” is a gentle young maiden, who
 is seated with a bird in her lap, a stork, which she seems to be
 fondling. “Pugna,” or brawling, is shown by two middle-aged women of
 the lower class. With their dishevelled hair hanging all about their
 shoulders, they are in the height of a fight, and the woman with a
 bunch of keys hanging from her girdle has overcome the other, and
 is tugging at one of her long locks. “Tyrannis” is an old haggish
 female with dog-like feet, and she brandishes a sword; almost every
 one of the other women on the border has, curiously enough, one foot
 resembling that of an animal. In several parts of the composition
 besides the border, in the warp and for shading, golden thread has
 been woven in, but so scantily employed, and the gold itself of such
 a debased bad quality, that the metal from being tarnished to quite a
 dull black tone is hardly discernible.

 The costume, like the scenery and buildings, has nothing of an
 oriental character about it, but is fashioned after an imagined
 classic model.


Tapestry Wall-hanging; subject, the Progress of Avarice. Flemish,
middle of the 17th century.

 Up above within the border of this large piece is a tablet bearing
 this inscription:--

    “Semper eget sitiens mediis ceu Tantalus undis
      Inter anhelatas semper avarus opes.”

 Beginning at the top left hand of the subject represented, we see a
 murky sort of vapour streaked by a flash of red lightning. Amid this
 brownish darkness, peopled with horrid little phantoms and small
 fantastic sprites, we discover a diminutive figure of Death wielding a
 long-handled curiously-headed scythe.

 Just below is a man pointing with his right hand up to Death, and
 with his left hand to a little harpy before him; behind him stands a
 figure with two heads, one a woman’s, the other a man’s, set together
 Januswise. Lower down, and of a much larger size, are three male
 figures, one a youth well clad, were it not for his ragged pantaloons,
 the next an old man wearing sandals and bearing in his right hand what
 looks like a reliquary glazed and coloured red, while in his left he
 holds two unfolded scrolls, the upper one of which is illuminated with
 a building like a castle, by the side of which stands a man, over
 whose head is the tau or T, with a bell hanging under it--the symbols
 of St. Anthony of Egypt.

 Beside the last personage stands the figure of a monk-like form,
 clasping in both hands a pair of beads or rosary. Next we have, half
 leaning from out her seat placed upon a car, and bending over an open
 chest, into which she is dropping golden pieces of money from her
 claw-like fingers, a female form with hideous wings and vulture feet,
 such as harpies have. The chariot drawn by a wyvern-like animal, with
 its fiery long tongue thrust out, has knocked down an elderly man,
 who, from the tonsure on his grey head, would seem to be a priest,
 and its wheel is going to crush a youth upon the ground, while the
 wyvern’s outstretched claws are about to gripe a ghastly cut-off head.
 Hanging on the mouldings of this car are empty money-bags, crumpled-up
 deeds, and a wide-open account book. Alongside of this fiendish hag
 trips a flaunting courtier; before her rides Midas with ass’s ears to
 his bloated face, unkempt locks falling down its sides, a royal diadem
 upon his head, and a withered branch in his hand; and, as if bound to
 her chariot, walks a king, having with him his queen. Before, but on
 one side, paces another crowned prince on horseback, while full in
 front rides a third king carrying in his arms a naked woman.

 Last of all and heading, as it were, this progress of Avarice, sits a
 female figure sidewise on a horse, which she has just reined up. In
 her right hand she bears a red standard emblazoned with a monkey on
 all fours, sharp clawed, and something which may be meant for gold
 pieces.

 Flying down from the skies comes an angel, who, with his outstretched
 right hand, seems to stay the march of the frightful woman in the
 chariot with her kingly rout, and forbid its onward progress.

 In the far-off landscape we discover a group of soldiers, near whom
 lies stretched out on the ground a dead body, upon which an angel
 gazes. Far to the right we find an open building, intended, may be,
 for a church; near it are two military men in armour; inside, a third
 seems holding out his hand as if he were leaving his offerings on
 the altar there. Outside, and not far from this same building, may
 be seen other four men, two of them pilgrims, of whom one kneeling
 before another looks as if he were making his confession.

 The broad border to this large piece is designed with elaborate care.
 At each of the two lower corners it is figured with the one same
 subject, which consists in a group of three naked winged boys or
 angels; of these one holds a short-stemmed cup or chalice, from out
 of which rises a host or large round altar bread, showing marked on
 it our Lord hanging upon the cross, between the B. V. Mary and St.
 John Evangelist; a second angel kneeling has in his hands an uplifted
 crown of thorns, while lying behind him are two books; and the third
 angel shows us a tablet written with the Greek letters Α Ω. All the
 rest of this frame-work is filled in with flowers, fruits, birds,
 and snakes. Of the flowers the most frequent are the fritillary,
 the rose, the lily, the amaryllis, poppies, white campanulas, large
 daisies, fleurs-de-lis, and corn-flowers. Among the fruits we see the
 pomegranate, of which some are split, pears, Indian corn, apples,
 plums, and figs. The birds are mostly parrots, woodpeckers, storks,
 cocks, doves, and some other birds of the smaller kinds. In places may
 be discovered a knot of snakes coiled about a garland made of yellow
 leaves.

 The allegory of the piece is read with ease. The progress of Avarice
 is headed by Wickedness, who carries aloft her blood-stained flag,
 emblazoned with the monkey, the emblem of moral ugliness and mischief.
 Hard upon the heels of Wickedness comes a lecherous potentate, the
 type of immorality. The crowned heads, whether mounted or on foot,
 that come next have for their brother-companion Midas, the emblem
 of the sensual miser’s greed of gold, to remind us how kings, nay
 queens too, sometimes thirst for their subjects’ wealth to gratify
 their evil wishes; and the gay young man behind them, coming by the
 chariot’s side, personates those courtiers who are reckless of what
 they do to help their royal masters in their love for lucre. Next we
 are told what harpy-avarice will not waver to execute while led on
 by wicked sovereigns. Look at those about and beneath her chariot:
 from them we learn that she beggars the nobility, and leaves them
 to walk through the world in rags; she destroys churches, and, when
 lacking other means for her fell purpose, will shed innocent blood
 and behead her opponents. But here below, Avarice and those who lead
 her on, though they be kings and queens, will have their day: Time
 will bring them to a stand. The rifled altar will be ornamented again,
 the rites of worship restored, and hospitals reopened. While an angel
 from heaven stops the progress of Avarice, high up in the eastern sky
 a thunder-storm is gathering; and on earth a man, whilst pointing
 with one hand to grim Death, armed with his scythe, amid a cloud of
 loathsome winged things flitting around him, with the other that
 same person warns a harpy that her sister harpy Avarice will soon be
 overtaken; and just as the heathen Januslike figure close by--emblem
 of the past, and of a certain future--he also tells her of that just
 retribution which, by the hands of Death and in another world, will be
 dealt out to herself and all this miscreant company.

 It would seem that this piece was wrought to stigmatize the memory of
 some of those many wanton acts of spoliation perpetrated in France
 and Belgium during the latter years of the 16th and the beginning
 of the 17th centuries. Perhaps the clue to the history and import
 of this fine specimen of the Flemish loom may be found all about
 the person of that old man, who carries in one hand a reliquary so
 conspicuously painted red, and in the other two parchment scrolls,
 upon one of which we find a sort of sketch of some particular spot,
 with an important edifice on it. By its size and look it seems to be
 some great hospital, and from the presence there of a man having above
 his head the letter tau or T and a bell hanging to it, we are given
 to understand that this building belonged to some brotherhood of St.
 Anthony, in the service of the sick; and that its suffering inmates
 were principally those afflicted with erysipelas, a disease then, and
 even yet, called abroad St. Anthony’s fire, once so pestilential that
 it often swept away thousands everywhere. Near Vienne, in the South of
 France, stood a richly-endowed hospital, founded A.D. 1095, chiefly
 for those suffering under this direful malady. This house belonged to
 and was administered by Canons Regular of St. Anthony. The town where
 it stood was Didier-la-Mothe, better known as Bourg S. Antoine. During
 the troubled times in France this great wealthy hospital, here fitly
 represented like a town of itself, by those lofty walls and that tall
 wide gateway, had been plundered: hence, one of its brothers is shown
 upbraiding Avarice for her evil doings, of which those sad tokens of
 moneyless purses, well-searched rent-books, and ransacked title-deeds
 are still dangling on her car. If not all, most, at least, of the
 persons here figured are meant, as is probable, to be characterized
 as the likenesses of the very individual victims and the victimizers
 portrayed upon this tapestry.


Tapestry Wall-hanging; subject, Abraham’s upper servant meeting Rebecca
at the spring of water. Flemish, late 17th century.

 At top, in the middle of the broad border, a tablet gives us the
 following inscription:--Cumque pervenisset (servus?) ad fontem et sibi
 (aquam?) petiisset et Batuelis filia Rebecca ex hydria potum dedisset
 et camelis haustis et filio Abrahe eam fore conjugem oraculo cognovit.

 In the twenty-fourth chapter of Genesis we read how Abraham in his
 old age sent his eldest servant unto his own country and kindred,
 thence to bring back a wife for his son Isaac; and how that man, at
 his master’s behest, immediately took ten camels, carrying something
 of all his lord’s goods with him, and went on to Mesopotamia, to the
 city of Nahor; and how, when he had reached that place, and had made
 a halt without the town near a well of water, in the evening, at the
 time that women were wont to come out to draw water, he besought
 Heaven that the maid to whom he should say, “Let down thy pitcher, I
 pray thee, that I may drink, and she shall say, Drink, and I will give
 thy camels drink also--let the same be she that Thou hast appointed
 for thy servant Isaac.” This faithful steward had not yet ended these
 words within himself, and behold Rebecca came out, the daughter of
 Bathuel the son of Milcha, wife to Nahor, the brother of Abraham, and
 spoke and did as this servant had wished: and then he gave her golden
 earrings and bracelets.

 As was fitting, the whole scene is laid in the open air, amid a
 charming landscape scattered all over with buildings. To the left, in
 the foreground, we behold a maid with a pitcher getting water out of
 a large square tank, ready, as it seems, for a second serving-woman
 to carry off, and who is coming back with another pitcher empty to
 be again refilled. In the middle ground a young woman, who carries a
 large pot of water on her head, is clambering over a wooden fence, and
 going towards an arch or bridge leading to a house.

 Right in the centre of the piece stands Rebecca, with one foot resting
 on a slab of veined marble, on which is placed a richly ornamented
 vase; and from out another like vessel, which she holds up in both her
 hands, she is giving drink to the steward Eliezer, who is respectfully
 bending forwards while carrying to his lips this same pitcher to
 slake his thirst. A kind of short sword, or anelace, dangles from his
 girdle, and a long stout staff lies by his feet upon the ground. Two
 tall trees with vines twining about them overshadow the spot. In the
 distance stand several camels burdened; but behind him, some of his
 men, having unloaded one or two of those beasts, are opening certain
 gaily ornamented trunks, and looking out, no doubt, the bracelets and
 earrings to be afterwards given to Rebecca. In the background are fine
 large buildings, fortifications, a castle, and a palace-like erection
 conspicuous for its tall tower and cupola, besides the walls of a
 little town.

 The piece is framed with a very elaborately designed broad border,
 containing accessories which show a strong leaning towards the
 ornamentation that grew out of the classicism that burst forth at the
 end of the fifteenth century all over Europe.

 On the lower band, standing one at each side of a short pedestal, or
 rather low dado, are, back to back, two bearded grotesques, each of
 which is made up of a human head and face having three goats’ horns
 growing out of the forehead, and of a wyvern’s body, holding aloft
 in one of its claws a tall tapering torch. Further on comes a series
 of spaces peopled with emblematic personages, and separated from one
 another by two little naked winged boys standing on a highly elaborate
 zocle, and with the left hand swinging by a cord, at each end of which
 hang from a ring, and done up in bunches, fruits and flowers. In the
 first space is “Prudentia,” bearing in her right hand a long-handled
 convex mirror, in her left, a human skull; in the second space, upon
 a sort of throne, sits “Sollicitudo,” upholding in her right hand an
 oblong square time-piece, while on her left, with her elbow propped
 up by one arm of her chair, she leans her head as if buried in deep
 thought; in the third space sits “Animi-(Probitas)” with both her arms
 outstretched, as if reprovingly; in the fourth space we have “Ceres,”
 the heathen goddess of corn: crowned with a wreath of the centaurea
 flowers, she carries ears of wheat in her right hand, in her left,
 a round flat loaf of bread; in the fifth space, “Liberalitas,” who,
 from the emblems in her hands, must have been meant to personify not
 generosity but freedom, for in her right hand she shows us a hawk’s
 jesses, with the bells and their bewits, and on her left wrist, or,
 as it should be phrased, the “fist,” the hawk itself without jesses,
 bells, lunes, or tyrrits on--in fact quite free.

 At the left side of the upright portion of the border, stands first,
 within an architectural niche, “Circumspectio,” or Wariness, who,
 while she gathers up with her right hand her flowing garments from
 hindering her footsteps, with her left, holds an anchor upright, and
 carries on her wrist a hawk with two heads, one looking behind, the
 other before, fit token of keen-sightedness, which, from a knowledge
 of the past, strives to learn wisdom for the future. Higher up
 “Adjuratio” is standing, with her right hand outstretched afar, as if
 in warning of the awfulness of the act, and her left hand held upon
 her bosom in earnest of the truth of what she utters, whilst all about
 her head, as if enlightened from heaven, shines a nimb of glory. Last
 of all on this side, we have “Bonus zelus,” or Right-Earnestness, in
 the figure of a stout, hale husbandman, who is about clasping within
 his right arm two straight uprooted saplings, evidently apple-trees,
 by the fruit hanging from the wisp which binds them at their middle
 height.

 Going to the right-hand strip, we find, at the lower end, occupying
 her niche, “Pudicitias,” (sic), figured as a young maiden, who holds
 upon her breast with her left arm a little lamb, which, with her
 uplifted right hand, and the first two fingers put out according to
 the Latin rite, she seems to be blessing. In his own niche, and just
 overhead, we see “Requisicio,” or Hot-wishfulness, who is shown to
 us under the guise of a young knight, girt with an anelace, which
 hangs in front of him: in the hollow of his left outstretched hand he
 carries a heart--very likely as his own--all on fire. The last of this
 very curious series is “Diligentia,” as a matronly woman, who, with
 one hand keeping the ample folds of her gown from falling about her
 feet, carries the branch of a vine in the other hand.

 From the quantities of dulled and blackish spaces all over the
 border-ground, and amid the draperies upon the figures in this
 tapestry, it is evident that much gold thread was woven into it, so
 that when fresh from the loom it must have had a splendour and a
 richness of which at present we can image to ourselves but a very
 faint idea. Though the glitter of its golden material is gone for
 ever, its artistic beauty cannot ever fade. Much gracefulness in the
 attitudes, several happy foreshortenings, and a great deal of good
 drawing all about this design, show that the man who made the cartoon
 must have deeply studied the great masters of Italy, and, in an
 especial manner, those belonging to the Roman school: unfortunately,
 like all of them, he too had forgot to learn what was the real
 Oriental costume, and followed a classic style in dress, which, as he
 has given it, is often very incorrect.


Tapestry Wall-hanging; subject, Tobit, the father, sending his son
to the city of Rages for the recovery of the moneys lent to Gabael.
Flemish, late 17th century.

 Sitting in the open air, we see first the elder Tobit. Well stricken
 in years, and blind, he is leaning his right hand upon a staff; in
 his left hand he holds a folded document--the note-of-hand signed by
 Gabael. Thinking that he must die in a short time, he has called to
 his side his well-beloved child the young Tobias, and after having
 given him the most wholesome counsel for his religious and moral
 behaviour through life, speaks of his own burial, and how he wishes
 that when his wife Sarah’s days are done, the boy should lay his
 mother’s body by his father’s in the grave. As an ending to this
 discourse, the elder Tobias said, “‘I signify this to thee, that I
 committed ten talents to Gabael--at Rages in Media. Seek thee a man
 which may go with thee, whiles I yet live--and go and receive the
 money.”

 Then Tobias going forth, found a beautiful young man, standing girded,
 and as it were ready to walk; and not knowing that he was an angel of
 God, he saluted him and said: “Canst thou go with me to Rages, and
 knowest thou those places well?” To whom the angel said: “I will go
 with thee, and I know the way well.” Then Tobias going in told all
 these things to his father; and all things being ready, Tobias bade
 his father and his mother farewell, and he and the angel set out both
 together; and when they were departed, his mother began to weep;
 and Tobias went forward, and the dog followed him.--Book of Tobit,
 chapters iv. v.

 Seated, and leaning his right hand upon his staff, the old man is
 outstretching with his left to his starting son the note-of-hand to
 Gabael, behind him stands his wife Sarah weeping; before him is his
 son, who, leaning his long travelling staff against his shoulder, with
 his left hand is about to take the important document from his father,
 at the same time that he turns himself half round and points with his
 right hand to the angel behind him, as if to comfort his father in
 the knowledge that he is to have such a good companion for his guide.
 The angel, who carries a traveller’s staff in his left hand, holds
 out his right towards the young man, as telling his father and mother
 how carefully he would lead him to Rages, and bring him safely home
 again. Last of all, and standing beneath a tree we find a saddled
 ass with a large gaily ornamented pilgrim’s wooden bottle for water
 hanging by its side, and the ass’s head is turned round as if looking
 on the faithful dog that is lying on the ground ready to follow his
 young master on the way. Magnificent buildings arise as a background
 to the spot where we see old Tobit seated, and standing behind him his
 weeping wife Sarah. On the threshold of their own fine house behind
 them there stands in a niche the statue of Moses, who is figured with
 the two horns upon his forehead, as representing the light that shone
 about his face, and darted all around it in rays like horns, as he
 came from Sinai a second time with tables of the law: his left hand
 leans upon those two tables that stand beside him; and on his right
 arm lies a long scroll.

 The borders all about the piece are made up of wreathed boughs
 of foliage, from out of which peep forth fruits and flowers. The
 left-hand strip shows a peacock perched upon the stem of a vine, and
 little boys are shooting blunt-headed arrows at it: on the strip
 to the right, other little boys are disporting themselves amid the
 branches, playing music, one beating a drum, a second blowing the
 flute, others clambering up amid the roses, fruits and flowers; one
 little fellow, conspicuous for his dress, is waving a flag in great
 delight: on the lower border children are at their gambols with
 equally graceful energy. At every one of the four corners is a large
 circle, wrought in imitation of bronze, all in gold, but now so faded
 that the smallest lustre from the metal is lacking. They were figured
 by the means of outlines done in brown silk, each with a subject drawn
 from the Book of Tobit. In the circle, at the upper left-hand corner,
 we observe the young Tobias going out from his father to seek, as he
 had bidden him, for some trusty guide to Gabael’s house; in the lower
 round of the same side the wished-for companion, Raphael in his angel
 shape, has been brought in, and is speaking with the blind old man.
 Looking at the circle on the upper right-hand of the border we see the
 same Tobit giving comfort to his sorrowing wife Sarah, just as both
 have been left by their son gone on his journey.

 Gold-covered thread has been much employed all about this fine
 specimen of tapestry; but, like too many other instances of misapplied
 economy in material, this exhibits nothing but blotches of dirty
 brownish black in those laces which should have shone with gold.


Tapestry Wall-hanging; ground, rather white; subject, a feast. French,
or Gobelin, 18th century. Lent by the Board of Works.

 Within a large stone hall, roughly built and festooned, is spread a
 long well-provided table, at which the guests, male and female, are
 sitting: in the foreground are the servants, some of whom are shown in
 very daring but successful foreshortenings, reminding us somewhat, on
 the whole, of one of Paolo Veronese’s banquets, though here we behold
 a rustic building in a garden, not an architectural hall in a Venetian
 palace.


Tapestry Wall-hanging; ground, mostly white; subject, Cupid among the
rustics. French, or Gobelin, 18th century. Lent by the Board of Works.

 Amid the ruins of an Ionic temple in the foreground we have a
 shepherd and his dog fast asleep, while a winged youthful genius is
 hovering just above, and scattering very plentifully poppy-flowers
 all about the spot. Behind, a young little Cupid, seated on a cloud,
 is surrounded by a crowd of rustics, men and women, thronging, as it
 were, to hear him. As in the other fellow-piece to this, the colouring
 is cheerful and very pleasing, in parts so soft and well graduated in
 their tones, and so remarkable for their foreshortenings. From their
 large size they must have been intended for some great hall, and
 seemingly were all wrought for the same spacious room.


Tapestry Hangings for Pilasters; ground, brown; design, arabesques done
in red, blue, and yellow. French, early 18th century. Lent by the Board
of Works.

 These two pieces seem to have been especially wrought to cover some
 pilasters in a hall, and not to border any larger production of the
 loom.



[Illustration]



INDEX I.



  ABRAM and MELCHISEDECH figured, 88, 328.

  ABRAHAM’s servant meeting Rebecca at the well, 333.

  _Adderbury_ Church, Oxon, monster sculptures outside of, 157.

  AHASUERUS and ESTHER, figured, 307.

  Alhambra, 55.

  Alb, apparels for, 65, 146, 199.

  ---- fine mediæval one, 268.

  Algerine embroidery, 18.

  _Almeria_, its fine silks, 63.

  Altar, cere-cloth for, 160.

  Altar-cloths, 60, 62, 73, 79, 265.

  Altar-curtains, 51, 201.

  Altar-frontals, 14, 31, 87, 101, 265, 266, 267.

  Altar-frontlets, 62, 265.

  Amices, 185, 195.

  Amice, apparel for, 34, 186, &c.

  ANASTASIUS BIBLIOTHECARIUS, quoted, 155, 161.

  Angels, nine choirs of, 22, 281.

  Animals, see Zoology.

  Anjou, Royal House of, 32.

  ANN of Bohemia, Richard II.’s queen, 53.

  Annunciation of the B. V. Mary, figured, 2, 186, 247.

  ANTHONY, S., figured, 253, 254.

  ---- Canons Regular of, 332.

  ---- fire of, or erysipelas, 332;
       hospital for the cure of it at _Bourg S. Antoine_ in the south of
        France, 332.

  Apparels for Albs, 65, 146, 149, 181, 199, 268.

  ---- for amices, 34, 185, 187, 195, 234.

  Apparels for dalmatics and tunicles, 206.

  Apocalypse quoted, 288.

  Applied or cut-work, 2, 17, 20, 21, 77, 81, 146, 199, 215, 265.

  Arabic inscriptions, real, 179, 232, 238, 243.

  ---- pretended, 25, 29, 45, 53, 76, 122, 125, 137, 138, 146, 177,
         181, 213, 220, 234.

  Araneum opus, 162.

  Architectural design on stuffs, 10, 32, 33, 108, 131, 150, 233, 252.

  Armorial bearings of--
    BRANDENBURG, 63.
    BASSINGBURN, DE, 285.
    _Bohemia_, 63.
    BOTILER, Le, 283, 285.
    BYGOD, 285.
    CHAMBOWE(?), 285.
    CHAMPERNOUN, 284.
    _Castile and Leon_, 282.
    _Cleves_, 22, 246.
    CLIFFORD, 283.
    _England_, 246, 284.
    EVERARD, 283.
    _France_, 84.
    FERRERS, 282.
    FRETIE, 214.
    FITTON, 148.
    FITZ ALAN, 284.
    GRANDISON, one of the coats, 284.
    GENEVILLE, 282.
    GOLBORE or GROVE, 285.
    HAMPDEN(?), 284.
    Knights Templar’s badge, 283.
    LIMESI or LINDSEY, 283.
    LUCY, 285.
    MARCK, DE LA, 22.
    MONTENEY of _Essex_, 284.
    MORTIMER, ROGER DE, 285.
    PANDOLFINI, 143.
    PERCY, 284.
    RIBBESFORD (?), 285.
    SHELDON, 284.
    SPENCER, 283.
    THORNELL of _Suffolk_, 148.
    TYDESWALL, 284.
    WARWICK, 282.

  Assumption of the B. V. Mary figured, 89, 272, 273, 276, 278.

  Atonement, symbol of, 30.

  _Aubusson_ tapestry and carpets, 306.

  _Audenaerde_ famous for its tapestry, 294.

  Avarice personified, and progress of, figured, 329.

  ἀχειροποίητος, what, 249.


  Bags, liturgical, 188, 263;
    Persian travelling, 83.

  Balaam’s prophecy quoted from Numbers, xxiv. 17, 285.

  Balm cloth, 19, 20.

  _Bamberg_ cathedral, stuffs there, 153.

  Banners for church processions, 259.

  _Bath_, old English vestments found hidden in a house at, 88.

  _Bayeux_, so-called tapestry, piece of, 6.

  Beads, embroidery in, 169.

  ---- making of, at Venice, 169.

  ---- or rosary, for prayers, 263.

  Beasts, see Zoology.

  Beauvais tapestry, 307.

  Bed-quilts, 20, 86, 104, 293;
    hangings, 107.

  BELETH, JOHN, quoted, 277.

  BERNARD, ST., chasuble of, 159.

  Birds, see Zoology.

  Bishops’ liturgical stockings, 56.

  Bissus or Byssus, what, 25, 152, 175, 239.

  BLACK PRINCE, 129.

  Blessing, the liturgical, how given in the Latin rite, 187;
    figured as given with the left or wrong hand, 71.

  BLICKIN VON LICHTENBERG, ANNA, 94.

  Block printing on linen, 118, 120, 183, 184, 234.

  ---- on diaper, 61.

  ---- on silk, 31.

  BOCK, Rev. Dr., quoted, 25, 26, 29, 34, 45, 49, 52, 55, 58, 60, 89,
        122, 123, 151, 152, 155, 158, 162, 165, 169, 175, 184, 187,
        207, 223, 242, 247, 252, 264, 270.

  _Bohemia_, arms of, 63;
             ANN of, 63.

  Bordering, or Lace, 160.

  Borsa, the Italian, gibeciere or pouch, 3.

  Boots or legging, like stockings, worn by bishops while
        pontificating, 56.

  Botany--
    Flowers:
      Artichoke, bloom of, 64, 137.
      Bignonia, or trumpet flower, 75.
      Centaurea, or corn-flower, 47, 49, 53, 62, 89, 99, 258.
      Fleur-de-lis, 5, 27, 29, 32, 35, 59, 91, 110, 116, 130, 138, 162,
        167, 196, 226.
      Frittilary, 66.
      Foxglove, or digitalis, 66.
      Honeysuckle, 73.
      Heartsease, or pansey, 259.
      Ivy, 132.
      Lily, 69, 89, 110, 115, 257, 310.
      Penstemon, 66.
      Pinks, 115.
      Pomegranate, 11, 12, 13, 14, 20, 66.
      Rose, 20, 34, 47, 59, 61, 107, 188, 193, 195.
      Trefoil, 137.
      Tulips, 42, 62.
    Fruits, &c.:
      Acorns, 115, 202, 245.
      Apples (?), 137.
      Arbutus unedo, or strawberry tree, 110.
      Artichoke, 36, 47, 60, 62, 64, 65, 66, 69, 70, 72, 73, 80, 114,
        115, 116, 118, 129, 130, 134, 145, 152, 192, 256.
      Grapes, 49, 69, 74, 75, 163, 241, 245.
      Mulberry, 65.
      Oranges (?), 137.
      Pomegranate, 7, 48, 50, 66, 73, 91, 114, 115, 128, 134, 191, 192,
        193, 197, 199, 228, 256, 258.
      Strawberry, 110.
      Wheat-ears, 90, 113, 137, 177.
    Trees:
      The Homa, hom, or sacred tree of the Persians, 84, 140, 154, 213,
        215, 216, 238.
      Oak-leaves, 202, 245.
      Vine, 163, 245.

  Box for corporals, 112, 193, 194.

  ---- for reservation of the consecrated Host, from Maundy Thursday
        till Good Friday, 112.

  _Brandenburg_, arms of, 63.

  Brocades, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 19, 20, 29, 114, 116, 117, 122, 126, &c.

  BROOKE, the Collection, 312.

  Bouchier Knot, 168.

  Bourgtheroud, Hotel de, at Rouen, 294.

  Boy-bishop, 85.

  Bugles, 169.

  Burse, or corporal-case, 144, 145, 194.

  Byssus, see Bissus.

  Byzantine stuffs, 155, 159, 160, 161, 219, 222.


  C, the letter, interlaced, 5, 38.

  _Cairo_, 57.

  Canvas, what kind of stuff meant by the word in old inventories, 185.

  Cap, scull, 16;
    of estate or state, 86.

  CAPUANUS, PETRUS, quoted, 286.

  Carpet, 66, 83, 209, 248;
    see Pedalia, or Pede-cloth.

  CAXTON, his translation of the “Legenda Aurea,” quoted, 275, 277.

  Cendal, 163.

  Cere-cloth, for laying immediately over the altar-stone, 160.

  Chairs, seat-covers for, 110.

  Charles I.’s scull-cap, 16.

  Chasubles, 1, 5, 13, 21, 76, 81, 82, 88, 142, 208, 213, 264, 266, 269.

  Chaucer quoted, 64.

  Cheetahs, see Zoology.

  Chinese silks, &c. 1, 8, 11, 12, 16, 75.

  Choirs, nine, of angels, 22, 281.

  “Church of our Fathers,” quoted, 19, 34, 36, 46, 85, 103, 170, 174,
        181, 186, 194, 196, 202, 203, 205, 206, 210, 239, 248, 265.

  Clare, Margaret de, Countess of Cornwall, 6.

  CLEVES, princely house of, 246.

  CLEVES, its armorial bearings, 22.

  Cloth, Corpus Christi, what, 202, 260.

  ---- for crozier, 174, 250.

  ---- for lectern, 210, &c.

  ---- for pyx, 202, 260.

  ---- of estate, 107.

  ---- of gold or lama d’oro, 204, 208.

  Cluny, Hotel de, at Paris, 212.

  Cobham college and church, Kent, iron lectern once at, 213.

  Cobweb stuff, so-called, 162.

  Collars of Orders--
    St. Michael, 84;
    The Holy Ghost, 84.

  _Cologne_, 61, 187;
    painting in cathedral, 187;
    woven stuffs for church use, see orphreys of web.

  ---- embroidery, 61, 66, 67, 246.

  Colours, murrey, once such a favourite in England, 9.

  ---- pink or gules, and green, somewhat peculiar to Parlermitan
        looms, 165, 170, 178, &c.

  ---- those used in the Latin as well as the Greek rite, 172;
    black in services for the dead, 197.

  Copes, 2, 15, 80, 207, 275.

  ---- hoods of, 67, 144, 198;
    in England, how shaped, 41.

  Coral beads, 169.

  _Cornelimünster_, abbey of, 26;
    sudary of our Lord there, 26.

  Coronation of the B. V. Mary figured, 236, 272, 280.

  Corporals or square pieces of altar linen, 144, 145, 194, 195.

  ---- cases for keeping, 112, 144, 145, 194;
     see Burse.

  Corpus Christi cloths, 202, 260.

  Costume, mediæval, 78.

  Counterpane, 271.

  _Coventry_, its famous gild, 289, &c.

  Coverlets, 20, &c.

  Cracowes or pointed shoes, so called, 53.

  Cradle-coverlets, 4, 13, 66, 67, 100, 103, 104, 110.

  Crape, 126.

  Creeping to the cross, ceremony of, on Good Friday, 174.

  Crescent moon and star, symbolical of our Lord and His church, 285.

  Crochet work, 18, 72.

  Cross, St. Andrew’s, 161, 229;
    the so-called Y cross, 82.

  ---- cramponnée, 161;
    flory, 161;
    foliated, 218;
    pommée, 140.

  ---- filfod, 161.

  ---- gammadion, 161.

  ---- Greek, figured on stuffs, 160.

  ---- creeping to, ceremony of, 174.

  Crown, supposed, of King Edward the Confessor, 153.

  ---- of St. Edgitha, 153.

  Crozier, napkin for, 174, 250.

  Crucifixion figured, 6, 30, 82, 83, 142, 276.

  ---- with four nails, 30.

  ---- old English manner of figuring, 276.

  Crystal balls, 206.

  CURETÓN, Dr., quoted, 179.

  Curtains, 7, 12, 13, 15.

  ---- for the altar, 51, 201.

  Cushions, 4, 59, 111, 142, 174, 273.

  ---- used in the liturgy, 59, 174.

  Cut-purse, what meant by the expression, 3.

  Cut-work, 22, 76, 141, 189, 199, 259, 292;
    see Applied work.

  Cyrillian alphabet, the, 172.


  Daisies, the symbolism of, 149, see Botany--Flowers.

  Dalmaticks, 76, 143, 206, 214, 266.

  Dalmatics, apparels on, 206.

  Damask, Chinese, 75.

  Damasks, figured with pictorial subjects, 165, 184, &c., see “Stuffs
        historiated.”

  Damask in linen, 73, 201, 203, 238.

  ---- in linen and woollen, 202.

  ---- in silk, 10, 11, 13, 15, 25, 41, 42, 43, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52,
        55, 56, 57, 62, 67, 72, 73, 74, 81, 113, 114, 115, 116, 121,
        124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 133, 136, 137, 138,
        139, 140, 152, 154, 155, 156, 159, 160, 162, 163, 168, 190,
        191, 196, 197, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 213, 215, 216, 221,
        224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 233, 234, 237, 238, 239, 240,
        241, 244, 245, 251, 256, 274.

  Damask in silk and cotton, 60, 166, 167, 230, 231, 262.

  ---- in silk and gold, 46, 47, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 60, 63, 64, 65,
        66, 113, 129, 130, 132, 134, 137, 138, 139, 146, 151, 159, 162,
        164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 170, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 183,
        184, 191, 193, 201, 213, 224, 225, 227, 228, 233, 234, 235,
        237, 238, 241, 243, 247, 273.

  ---- in silk and hemp, 164.

  ---- in silk and linen, 74, 130, 136, 154, 166, 204, 243, 262, 264.

  ---- in silk and silver, 161, 177, 183.

  ---- in silk, wool, linen, thread, and gold, 129.

  DANIEL, the book of, quoted, 227.

  Design, architectural, upon stuffs, 10, 32, 33, 108, 131, 150, 233,
        252.

  _Didier-la-Mothe_ or _Bourg S. Antoine_ hospital at for those struck
        with S. Anthony’s fire or erysipelas, 332.

  DIOGENES, subjects, in tapestry, from the life of, 303, &c.

  Door-curtains, 7, 12, 13, 15.

  Dorneck, a coarser kind of damask so called, 129.

  Dory, John, the fish so called, 151.

  Dove, emblem of the Holy Ghost, 58.

  Dragon, the five-clawed Chinese, 1.

  Dress, Lady’s, 14, 18;
    and the Brooke Collection, 313, &c.

  DUC, M. VIOLLET LE, quoted, 212.

  DUGDALE’s St. Paul’s, quoted, 151.

  _Durham_, Anglo-Saxon embroidered vestments kept in the cathedral
        library at, 205.


  Eagle, double-headed, 26, 28, 37, 86.

  ---- German, of Charles V. of Spain, 7.

  Edward I., how he knighted his son, 287;
    and swore by the swans that he would wage war against Scotland,
        _Ib._

  Egyptian gauze, 57;
    linen, 25;
    silk, 56;
    taffeta, 57.

  Elephant, 45.

  ---- and Castle, 170.

  Embroidery, Chinese, 7, 12, 16.

  ---- English, 5, 6, 16, 88, 147, 275, 283.

  ---- Flemish, 119, 144, 198, 248.

  ---- Florentine, 58, 91, 111, 120, 142, 214.

  ---- French, 85, 110, 219, 226.

  ---- German, 51, 53, 58, 59, 60, 66, 103, 108, 119, 120, 139, 140,
        150, 153, 156, 158, 165, 166, 186, 187, 189, 190, 196, 206,
        207, 216, 218, 249, 250, 252, 253, 254, 257, 258, 269.

  ---- Indian, 86, 262.

  ---- Italian, 71, 145, 199, 271.

  ---- Persian, 270.

  ---- Sicilian, 149.

  ---- Spanish, 65, 82, 204.

  ---- Syrian, 262.

  ---- Venetian, 168.

  ---- in quilting, 14, 16, &c.

  ---- in waving lines, 59.

  ---- done in beads, 44, 169, 190.

  ---- as cut-work and applied, 146, 189, 199, 248.

  ---- in gold wire, 220.

  ---- in gold and silver wire, 150.

  ---- done in solid silver gilt wire, 150, 220.

  ---- in pearls and precious stones, 199.

  ---- with goldsmith’s work amid it, 168, 169, 186, 199, 223, 233.

  ---- in silk, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 12, 13, 16, 34, 103, 117, 120, 133,
        144, 153, 155, 156, 166, 168, 181, 217, 252, 271, 273, 275.

  ---- on linen in silk, 29, 58, 60, 65, 119, 186, 187, 189, 258, 262.

  ---- on linen in thread, 31, 51, 120.

  ---- done in thread, 19, 20, 53, 58.

  ---- done in worsted, 140, 256, 262, 269.

  ---- figured with birds, 16, 158.

  ---- historic, 7, 91, 147, 150, 269, 273.

  ---- flowers, 4, 5, 11, 12, 13, 16, 121, 199, 213.

  ---- figured with saints, 2, 6, 56, 58, 88, 111, 116, 144, 145, 146,
        147, 149, 151, 165, 186, 187, 189, 190, 198, 207, 217, 244,
        248, 250, 254, 258.

  English chintz, 84.

  ---- conventional flowers in embroidery, 88.

  ---- purse, 106.

  ---- quilting, 16, &c.

  ---- tapestry, 306.

  ---- textiles in a ribbon-like shape, 24, 33, 38, 161, 217, 218,
        219, 221.

  ---- embroidery, 5, 6, 16, 88, 147, 275, 283;
       and “The Brooke Collection,” 312, &c., passim.

  ---- silks, “The Brooke Collection,” passim, 312.

  ---- velvet, “The Brooke Collection,” passim, 312.

  ---- small hand-loom woven strips for stoles, &c., 24, 33, 38, 217,
        218, 219, 221.

  Erysipelas, or St. Anthony’s fire, hospital for, in France, 332.

  ESTHER and AHASUERUS, figured in tapestry, 307.

  Eucharist, how borne to the sick and dying, 188.

  ---- reservation of, 194, 203.

  EUSEBIUS, quoted, 280.

  Evangelists’ symbols, 149.

  EZECHIEL, quoted, 281.


  Fan, the liturgic, 60.

  Fates, the three, figured, 309.

  Fenrir, the Scandinavian fabled water-wolf, 151.

  _Festival_, the old English so-called book, quoted, 147, 276.

  Filfod, or Full-foot, 161, 174, 242, 249.

  Fish, figured, 151.

  FITTON, arms of the family of, 148.

  Flemish embroidery, 3, 117, 248, 255.

  ---- linen, damask, or napery, 34, 61, 73, 75, 124, 203, 205, 255,
        263.

  ---- linen, block-printed, 118, 120, 234.

  ---- napery, 34, 75, 124, 255.

  ---- silk damask, 190, 191, 197, 252.

  ---- tapestry, 294, 299, 300, 301, 302, 303, 307, 328, 329, 330, 335.

  Flemish velvet, 254, 255, 264.

  Florentine embroidery, 58, 91, 111, 120, 142, 214.

  ---- silk, damasked, 202, 215;
    figured with angels, 36, 133.

  ---- silk and linen, 264.

  ---- velvets, plain, 12, 142.

  ---- velvets, with gold, 85, 144, 145.

  ---- velvets, raised, 18, 82, 144, 145.

  ---- web for orphreys, 89, 136, 142, 260, 291.

  Flowers, see Botany.

  ----, the English conventional, in embroidery, 88.

  Foot-cloths, 140, 263.

  Frames for enamels, 34, 85.

  FRASER, or FRAZER, Scotch family of, 274.

  French cloth of gold, 204, 208.

  ---- cut-work, 81, 292.

  ---- embroidery, 5, 7, 14, 19, 21, 29, 107, 205, 226.

  ---- gloves, 105.

  ---- heraldry, 14, 29, 130.

  ---- lace (gold), 131.

  ---- lectern-veil, 141.

  ---- purses, 89, 106.

  ---- quilting, 13, 104.

  ---- satin, 8, 14, 21, 104.

  ---- silk, brocaded, 9, 15, 105.

  ---- silk, damasked, 13, 204, 205, 206.

  ---- tapestry, 302, 303, 304.

  ---- velvet, 14, 106.

  ---- webs, 29, 130.

  FRETIE, LODEWICH, 214.

  Fringe of gold, 145;
    of silk, 252, 266.

  Frontals to altars, 14, 31, 87, 101, 265, 266, 267, 293.

  Frontlets, 62, 251, 257, 265.


  G, the letter as an initial (for Gabriela?), 236.

  Gabriel the archangel, how figured, 186, 217.

  Gammadion, 34, 60, 127, 174, 175, 185, 242, 249.

  GARLAND, JOHN, noticed, 38, 162, 217.

  Gauze, 57.

  GEISPITZHEIM, HENRY VON, 94;
    his armorials, 93.

  Genoa brocade, 114, 134.

  Genoa damask, 115, 116, 201.

  ---- silk, 12.

  ---- velvet, 3, 18, 62, 90, 107, 110, 145, 192, 199, 200, 263.

  ---- velvet raised, 18, 62, 107, 134.

  Geography of textiles, &c.;
    see Index II.

  German embroidery, 18, 21, 34, 35, 42, 51, 58, 61, 92, 99, 100, 101,
        103, 104, 116, 133, 144, 153, 158, 165, 185, 187, 207, 246,
        249, 252, 253, 261, 263.

  ---- embroidery on linen in silk, 29, 55, 59, 60, 62, 109, 133, 139,
        174, 186, 187, 196, 242, 250, 261, 266, 267, 270.

  ---- embroidery on linen in thread, 31, 35, 60, 79, 235, 267.

  ---- embroidery in thread, 18, 31, 42, 92, 99.

  ---- embroidery in worsted, 66, 79, 108, 246, 266, 269.

  ---- napery, 190.

  ---- netting, 175, 245, 267.

  ---- silk and linen, 192, 270.

  ---- tapestry, 296, 298.

  ---- velvet, 260.

  ---- webs, 61, 62, 63, 64, 69, 80, 82, 116, 117, 118, 119, 174, 175,
        252, 253.

  Gianitore, a fish, and what, 151.

  Gibeciere, 3.

  Gilds, English, 289.

  ---- their Corpus Christi plays, 289.

  ---- at Coventry, 289.

  ---- their members, 289.

  ---- their vestments, 289.

  Gilt parchment, 140, 224, 229, 244.

  ---- vellum; see gilt parchment.

  Gimp, 102.

  GIOTTO, 186.

  ---- and his school of painting, 186.

  Girdles, 57, 126, 205, 218, 219.

  Girdle at Prato, of the B. V. Mary, 261, 272, 280, 282.

  GLOVER, ROBERT, Somerset herald, quoted, 148.

  Gloves, ladies’, 105.

  Gobelins tapestry, 302, 305.

  Golden Legend, Caxton’s English translation quoted, 275, 277.

  Goldsmith’s work found upon embroidery and textiles;
    see Silversmith’s work.

  Good Friday’s celebration, 113.

  Good Friday rite among the Greeks, 113, 173.

  ---- rite among the Latins, 113, 174.

  Grail, or Grayle, the liturgic book, what, 34.

  Granada textiles, 26, 27, 60, 65, 73, 128, 161, 166.

  GRAUNT, Master Thomas, 289.

  Greek, alb, chitonion, 171.

  ---- dalmatic or stoicharion, 171.

  ---- ritual noticed, 113, 124, 126, 171, 191, 205.

  ---- stoicharion or dalmatic, 171.

  ---- textiles, 27, 28, 33, 36, 123, 124, 126, 127.

  ---- mixed with cotton, 27, 126, 219.

  ----, thread, 33, 123.

  Green, colour of, 57, 281.

  Gregory’s (St.), “Pity,” what, 34.


  HABACUC, 277.

  HAMAN, fall of, figured, 308.

  HAMPDEN, arms of (?)
   287.

  Hand, in benediction, 54.

  Hangings of velvet, 17, 18, 107.

  ---- for walls, wrought of cut-work, and figured with the romance of
        Sir Guy, of Warwick, and the Northumbrian “worm” or dragon, 77.

  Hare, its symbolic meaning, 237.

  Harts, lodged, 43.

  HENRY II, emperor of Germany, 153;
    tunic of, 153, 154.

  Heraldry, 14, 19, 22, 28, 32, 37, 38, 39, 40, 63, 73, 76, 84, 93,
        103, 104, 108, 128, 130, 143, 148, 175, 177, 181, 183, 196,
        203, 204, 205, 207, 209, 214, 246, 253, 260, 263, 264, 266,
        267, 269, 273, 282, 283, &c.

  “Hierurgia,” the work so entitled, quoted, 171, 185, 196, 203, 205.

  HOLLIS, the brothers’, “Monumental Effigies of Great Britain,”
        quoted, 269.

  Holosericus, what, 155.

  Holy loaf, what, 263.

  Hom, or Homa, the Persian sacred tree, 84, 140, 154, 213, 216, 238.

  Hood, the, upon English copes, how shaped, 41.

  Hoods of copes, 2, 3, 41, 144, 198, 260, 272.

  Ωρολογιον, or Horologion, one of the Greek ritual books quoted, 172.

  Hotel de Bourgtheroud at Rouen, 294.

  HOHENSTAUFEN, House of, 29, 38.

  Housing, 204.

  HUNSDON, Lord, gave silk stockings to Queen Elizabeth, 200.


  Illuminated MSS., gauze between leaves of, 57.

  Incarnation, mystery of, how symbolized, 236.

  Indian embroidery, 14.

  Initials--
    Two C’s interlaced, 5, 38.
    G, 236.
    L and K, 73.
    R, 52.
    V, four V’s put crosswise, 28.

  Inscriptions, 206, 214, 223, 226, 250, 257, 265, 269, 270, 273.

  Inscriptions in Arabic, see Arabic.

  ---- in German, 93, 256, 296.

  ---- in Greek (Cyrillian letters), 172.

  ---- in Latin, 31, 62, 66, 80, 82, 89, 111, 119, 148, 166, 176, 187,
        201, 206, 210, 211, 223, 226, 257, 264, 265, 269, 305, 329.

  ----, mediæval, German, 296, 298.

  ISAIAS quoted, 281.

  Italian altar-frontals, 87, 101, 293.

  ---- bed-quilt, 293.

  ---- cut-work applied, 17, 20, 293.

  ---- silk damask, 11, 13, 15, 25, 33, 46, 56, 58, 60, 73, 74, 81,
        115, 129, 130, 136, 162, 163, 165, 196, 206, 227, 230, 233,
        239, 240, 242, 256, 258.

  ---- damask, in silk brocaded with gold, 13, 46, 56, 58, 60, 117,
        162, 165, 170, 176, 213, 233, 235.

  ---- silk, damasked in gold, 177, 181, 183, 241.

  ---- in silver, 183.

  Italian silk, damasked in silk and cotton, 37, 60, 181, 230, 262.

  ---- in silk and hemp, 164.

  ---- in silk and linen, 37, 124, 130, 176, 204, 243.

  ---- embroidery, 4, 12, 34, 58, 87, 91, 101, 120, 121, 244, 293.

  ---- fringe, 293.

  ---- lace, (silk), 271.

  ---- net-work, 3, 4, 101, 162.

  ---- quilting, 14.

  ---- satin, 14.

  ---- velvet in silk, 9, 17, 62, 70, 72, 88.

  ---- velvet in silk, raised, 62, 80, 87, 89, 185, 194, 258.

  ---- velvet in worsted, 12.

  ---- web, 221.


  JAMES I, 273.

  JAMESON, Mrs. quoted, 198.

  Jerusalem, the two stars, symbols of, 55.

  John Dory, fish so called, 151.

  Jubinal’s work on tapestry noticed, 86.


  KENNEDY, Margaret, one of the ladies in waiting on Mary Queen of
        Scots at her beheading, 203.

  Keys, St. Peter’s, one gold, the other silver, 6.

  KNIGHT’s History of England quoted, 203.

  Knot, the Bouchier, 168.

  ---- the Wake and Ormonde, 250.

  Knots, 160, 229, 244.

  ---- petty, 120, 146.

  ----, love, 123, 157.

  Kraken, the Scandinavian fabled sea-monster, 236.


  Lace, old English, 6.

  ---- gold, 6, 131, 160, 197, 249.

  ---- nuns’, so called, 73.

  ---- open-worked, 13.

  ---- silk, 241, 271.

  ---- silk, and velvet, 85.

  ----, worsted, 249.

  ----, woollen and linen, for carriage-trimmings, 191.

  Lama d’oro, or cloth of gold, 204.

  Lamb, Holy, 58.

  Languages, see “Inscriptions.”

  Languages--
    German mediæval, 296, 298.

  Latin rite, 187.

  Lappet of a mitre, 51.

  Lap-cloths, bishop’s, 19, 20.

  Lavabo cloths, 203.

  Leather gilt, and used as edging, 65, 78.

  Lectern cloths or veils, 20, 141, 145, 210, 261.

  Legend, the English Golden, quoted, 275, 277.

  ----, the Golden, translated by Caxton, quoted, 278, 284, 285.

  Λειτουργία των προηγιασμενων, 113.

  Lent, and Passion-tide, liturgic colours for, 36, 133.

  Lenten vestments, 133.

  “Letters,” the “Paston,” noticed, 289.

  Linen, or byssus, 25, 152, 175, 239.

  ---- diaper, 61.

  ----, embroidered, 29, 65, 71, 181, 185, 190, 235, 242, 246, 249,
        250, 251, 255, 256.

  ---- and gold tissue, 169.

  ----, printed, 118, 120, 183, 184, 234.

  ---- and woollen, 246.

  Lion, the symbol of Christ, 156.

  Liturgical appliances, of rare occurrence in public collections, 99,
        112, 120, 142, 171, 174, 184, 186, 188, 196, 202, 205, 210,
        242, 243, 250, 263.

  Loaf, see Holy Loaf.

  ---- holy, what, 263.

  LOKE, the Scandinavian god, 151.

  Lombardy, once famous for its opus araneum, or cobweb weaving, 162.

  London wrought stuffs, 161.

  Lord, our, how figured on the cross, 276.

  Louvre, museum of, silks in, 44.

  Love knots, 157.

  _Lucca_ damasked silks, 15, 50, 65, 145, 163, 235, 244.

  ---- damasked silk, brocaded in gold, 243.

  ---- velvets, 62, 72, 192, 259.

  LYDGATE quoted, 288.

  _Lyons_, damasked silk, 19, 20, 91, 105.

  ----, brocaded in gold and silver, 91.

  ----, in silver, 19.


  M, the letter figured on stuffs, 156, 166, 182, 222, 230, 241.

  Madonna del Cardellino, 215.

  ---- della Cintola, subject of, how treated in the Italian schools,
        267.

  Magdalen College, Oxford, and its builder Waneflete’s fine liturgical
        shoes, 46.

  “Man of Sorrows,” our Lord as the, 34.

  MANDEVILLE, Sir John’s, travels, quoted, 178.

  Maniples, 35, 38, 45, 46, 53, 88, 116, 121, 138, 156, 252, 292.

  MARCK, DE LA, armorial bearings of the House of, 22.

  Marguerite, La, what the flower signifies, 149.

  MARTIN’s (Pere), learned and valuable work--“Mélanges d’Archéologie,”
        quoted, 44, 130.

  Mary, the B. V., her assumption, how figured on the Syon cope, 276.

  ---- on Florentine textiles, 291. See “Assumption.”

  ----, B. V., the death and burial of, how figured on the Syon cope,
        277.

  ----, St., of Egypt, her legend figured, 54.

  ---- Queen of Scots, and the cloth over her face when she was
        beheaded, 203.

  Mass of the Presanctified, 113.

  Matilda, the Norman William’s queen, and the Bayeux so-called
        tapestry, 7.

  Maundy Thursday, mass on, 112, 194.

  Melchizedek and Abram, figured, 88, 328.

  Memling and his school of painting, 198.

  MERCŒUR, House of, 30.

  Michael the archangel, how figured, overcoming Satan, 30, 275.

  Midgard, the Scandinavian fabled serpent, 151.

  Milan, famed for its looms, 162.

  Milanese embroidery, 3.

  ---- lace, 197.

  ---- net-work, 200.

  ---- steel-work, 3.

  ---- velvet raised, 7.

  Missal-cushion, 142.

  Missal, the Roman, quoted, 142.

  ---- the Salisbury, quoted, 284.

  Mitre, lappets of, 51, 85.

  Monstrance for liturgical use, what, 184.

  Moon, crescent, 220, 243.

  ---- crescent, symbolism of, 288.

  ---- figured in pictures of the Crucifixion, 30.

  Moorish tissue, 123.

  Moresque, Spanish, 51, 55, 121, 124, 125, 152, 160, 180, 240, 244.

  Moslem use, stuffs for, 57, 61.

  Mund or ball, so called, 276.

  ---- how anciently divided, 276.

  Munich, the Maximilian museum at, 153, 154.

  _Murano_ and its manufacture of beads, 169.

  Murrey-colour liked in the mediæval period by the English, 9.

  Musical instruments, mediæval, 23, 157.

  Mythology, Scandinavian, 150.


  Napery--
    Flemish, 34, 61, 73, 75, 124, 203, 205, 255, 263.
    German, 62.

  Napkins for crozier, 174, 250.

  ---- embroidered, 99, 100, 101, 261.

  Napkin of linen, 35.

  ---- for pyx, 202, 260.

  Neapolitan embroidery, 13.

  ---- silk, 13.

  NECKAM, ALEXANDER, quoted, 286.

  Needlework, 79, 99, 100, 101, 262.

  ---- old English, the admired “opus Anglicum,” 147, 275, 281, 288.

  ---- old English, how to be known, 288.

  Net-work, 3, 4, 61, 101, 107, 175, 200, 245.

  _Newburg_, near Vienna, robes at, 38.

  Newmarket, king’s house at, 302;
    tapestries from, 302.

  Nineveh sculptures, 25, 122.

  Numbers, Book of, quoted, 288.

  Nuns’ lace, 73.

  _Nuremberg_, old tapestry wrought at, 298.

  Nursery rhymes, old English, 103.


  O, the, or zero form of ornamentation, 225, 227, 228.

  OAKDEN, RALF, Esq., gift of old English embroidered apparels, 147.

  Odilia, a French lady-embroideress, 30.

  Opus Anglicum, 275, 281, 288.

  ---- Araneum, 162, 210.

  ---- Plumarium, 288, 289.

  Oriental damasked silk, 25, 128, 132, 136, 140, 154, 155, 160, 251.

  ---- brocaded in gold, 25, 133, 137, 138, 151, 156.

  ---- modern damasked silk, 21.

  ---- brocaded in gold and silver, 21.

  ---- very fine linen, or byssus, 239.

  Orphreys, embroidered, 1, 6, 21, 29, 55, 68, 76, 82, 117, 120, 143,
        145, 168, 189, 244, 245, 247, 252, 253, 254, 259, 265.

  ---- of web, or woven stuff for the purpose, 28, 33, 61, 62, 68, 80,
        83, 89, 112, 116, 118, 119, 136, 143, 161, 174, 175, 191, 201,
        207, 208, 252, 253, 265, 291.

  Orphrey web, Venetian, 71, 112, 271, 272.

  _Orvieto_, altar-frontal from, 101.

  OSMONT’s “Volucraire,” or Book on Birds, 286.

  Ostrich-feathers figured, 19, 129.


  _Palermo_, stuffs woven at, 38, 44, 45, 53, 130, 131, 139, 150, 163,
        165, 170, 228, 232.

  ---- its “Tiraz,” or silk-house, 232.

  Pallæ or palls, what, 194, 196.

  ---- or liturgical palls, 196.

  Palls for casting over tombs in churches, 56.

  Palm-branch carried by St. John Evangelist at the burial of the B. V.
        Mary, 278.

  ---- held by the Jew as figured on the Syon cope, 280.

  PANDOLFINI, armorials of the family of, 143.

  Paper, gilt and stamped out like flowers pasted on silken stuffs, 43.

  Papyonns, or cheetahs, 154, 178.

  Parchment, gilt, 140, 224, 229, 244.

  ---- gilt and woven into silken stuffs, 132, 140, 224, 229, 244;
    the trade trick learned from the Moors by the southern Spaniards,
        244.

  Parrots; see Zoology--Birds.

  “Paston Letters” noticed, 289.

  Pastoral amusements, 295, &c.

  ---- literature, 294.

  Paul’s, S. cathedral, London, vestments once belonging to, 151.

  Peacock, oaths sworn by the, 287.

  ---- symbolism of the, 286, &c.

  Pedalia or Pede-cloths, 209, 210, 263.

  Persian carpeting, 83.

  ---- damask, silk brocaded in gold, 133.

  ---- damask, silk and worsted, 84.

  ---- embroidery, 270.

  ---- satin, 270.

  ---- tunic, 270.

  Peter’s, St., fish, 151.

  Pin, an old one (?), 254.

  PITRA, Dom, now Cardinal, quoted, 286.

  Pity, the so-called, of St. Gregory, what, 34, 194.

  Plumarium Opus, what, 288, 289.

  Pomegranate; see Botany--Fruits.

  ---- ensign of Queen Catherine of Arragon, 134.

  ---- ensign of Spain, especially of Granada, 7.

  ---- symbolic meaning of, 13.

  Polystauria or stuffs figured all over with the sign of the cross,
        161.

  Porphyreticum, what, 155.

  Pouch, 3.

  _Prato_, church of, 261.

  Presanctified, mass of, 113.

  Printing by block, on silk, 31, &c.;
    see Block printing.

  Psalms, Book of, quoted, 281.

  Purses, 3, 89, 106.

  ---- liturgical, 188, 263.

  Pyx cloth, 202, 260.


  Quilting, 14, 16.

  ---- English, 16.

  Quilts, 4, 5, 13, 14, 16, 86, 104, 293.


  R, the letter, wrought upon a silken stuff, 52.

  Rain-drops, shower of, 52, 54, 239, &c.

  RAINE, Mr., his St. Cuthbert, noticed, 205.

  RAPHAEL’s Madonna del Cardellino, 215.

  REBECCA meeting ABRAHAM’s servant at the well, figured in tapestry,
        333.

  Relics, bag for, 42.

  Reredos of embroidered linen, 53, 235.

  Resurrection, how figured on woven stuffs, 113, 272.

  ---- of our Lord, how embroidered upon the Syon cope, 276.

  Rhenish cut or applied work, 21, 258.

  ---- embroidery, 2, 52, 247, 258.

  Ribbon, green silk and gold thread, 121.

  RICHARD II.’s monumental effigy in Westminster Abbey, 269.

  Rite, Greek, noticed, 113, 124, 126, 171, 191, 205.

  ---- Latin, 113, 124, 172, 187, 188, 191, 194, 205.

  Rock crystal, balls of, used on vestments, 206.

  Romance, the, of Sir Guy of Warwick, figured, 77.

  Rosary-beads, 263.

  Rose of England, 134.

  ---- red and white, 188.

  ROVERE DELLA, family of, 115.

  Ruthenic work, 171.


  Saddle-bags, 84.

  Saddle-cloth, 204.

  ---- Saints, figured

  S. Andrew, Apostle, 158, 279.

  S. Ann, mother of the B. V. Mary, 147, &c.

  S. Anthony of Egypt, 253, 254.

  S. Bartholomew, Apostle, 270.

  S. Bernard, 198.

  S. Bernard’s life, 198.

  St. Blase, 38.

  S. Catherine of Alexandria, 253.

  S. Christina, and her life, 142.

  S. Dorothy, 211.

  Santa Francesca Romana, and her life, 92.

  S. James, Apostle, called of Compostella, 280.

  S. James the Less, Apostle, 280.

  S. Jerome, 142.

  S. John, Evangelist, 142, 145, 276, &c.

  S. Kilian or Kuln, 187.

  S. Louis, King of France, 144.

  S. Lucy, 142, 211.

  S. Mark, Evangelist, 111.

  S. Mary, B. V., 148, 210, 211, 236, 251, 260, 272, 273, 276, 279.

  St. Mary of Egypt, 54.

  S. Mary Magdalen, 30, 209, 211, 280.

  S. Michael, Archangel, 30, 275.

  S. Odilia, 187.

  S. Onuphrius, hermit, 2.

  S. Paul, Apostle, 146, 278, 279.

  S. Peter, Apostle, 145, 149, 278, 279.

  S. Philip, Apostle, 149, 280.

  S. Simon, Apostle, 149, 210.

  S. Stephen, stoning of, 6, 38.

  S. Thomas, Apostle, 279, 280;
    see “Girdle at Prato.”

  S. Ubaldo, 102.

  S. Ursula, 211, 247.

  Saints’ tombs, 56.

  Salisbury rite, noticed, 34, 36.

  SAMPSON slaying the lion, figured, 123.

  Saracenic damask, 127, 178, 244.

  Sashes, 21.

  Satin, 8, 9, 13, 14, 16, 20, 110, 113.

  ----French, 110.

  ---- Italian, 113.

  Scandinavian mythology, 150.

  Scarf, 18.

  ---- liturgical, 105.

  SCHÖN MARTIN, 207.

  School, Umbrian, of painting, 184, 186.

  ---- of Umbria for painting, 247;
    and its beauty, 247.

  Sclaves, 172.

  Scotch embroidery, 273.

  SCOTT, SIR WALTER, quoted, 3.

  Scull-cap, 16.

  SHAW’s “Dresses and Decorations of the Middle Ages,” quoted, 86.

  Shoe, liturgical, 46.

  Shower of rain-drops, figured, 54, 239.

  Sicilian stuffs, 28, 29, 32, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47,
        48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 76, 115, 127, 130, 132, 137, 139, 146,
        150, 154, 156, 158, 159, 163, 164, 165, 167, 168, 169, 178,
        179, 180, 215, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230,
        231, 234, 238, 239, 242, 245, 266, 268, 269, 274.

  Sicilian cendal, 163.

  ---- damasks, figured with beasts and flowers, 47, 50, 51, 52, 53,
        127, 130, 137, 139, 146, 150, 164, 166, 178, 179, 269.

  ---- damasks in silk, 32, 53, 76, 115, 132, 137, 156, 159, 163, 168,
        169, 180, 215, 226, 227, 239, 245, 274.

  ---- damasks in silk, brocaded in gold, 28, 29, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41,
        43, 45, 46, 47, 50, 51, 52, 53, 126, 130, 139, 146, 150, 159,
        164, 165, 167, 168, 224, 227, 228, 231, 232, 234, 238, 242,
        266, 268, 269.

  ---- damasks, silk and cotton, 41, 44, 230.

  ---- damasks, silk and cotton, brocaded in gold, 39, 45, 48.

  ---- damasks, in silk and thread, 154, 223.

  ---- damasks, silk and thread, brocaded in gold, 48, 49, 238.

  ---- damasks in linen thread, brocaded in gold, 169.

  ---- damask or tapestry, silk, cotton, and wool, 158.

  ---- embroidery, 149, 158, 159.

  ---- lace, silk, and gold, 160, 161.

  ---- taffeta, 75, 121.

  ---- tissue or web, 222.

  Silk-house, or Tiraz, at Palermo, 232.

  Silk gauze, 57.

  Silks, block-printed, 31.

  Silk mixed with cotton, 5, 24, 26, 27, 33, 37, 39, 41, 42, 43, 44,
        47, 60, 126, 152, 181, 219, 226.

  ---- mixed with linen, 27, 33, 37, 122, 123, 124, 176, 192, 220, 223.

  ---- worsted, 84, 114;
    see Damask.

  ---- net-work, 200.

  Silversmith’s work amid embroidery, 168, 169, 186, 199, 223, 233.

  Sindon, the Greek liturgical embroidery, so-called, 170.

  ---- or pyx-cloth of the old English ritual, 202, 260.

  Sorrows, Man of, our Lord figured as, 34.

  ---- the B. V. Mary, of, 69.

  SOTHENER, MASTER STEPHEN, and his fine picture in Cologne cathedral,
        187.

  Spangles, 186, 190, 223.

  Spanish carpeting, 209, 248.

  ---- crochet work, 20.

  ---- damasked silk, 36, 48, 67, 72, 73, 74, 115, 121, 126, 128, 129,
        168, 182, 216, 224, 225, 240, 248.

  Spanish damasks, brocaded in gold, 50, 62, 66, 116, 132, 193, 229.

  ----, in silver, 177.

  ---- embroidery, 65, 81, 204.

  Spanish-Moresco stuffs, 51, 121, 124, 125, 152, 160, 180, 241, 244.

  ---- net-work, 20.

  ---- stuffs, cotton and linen, 224.

  ----, linen, and gilt parchment, 140, 224.

  ----, silk and cotton, 26, 47, 166.

  ----, linen, 122, 166.

  ---- of wool and hemp, 209.

  ---- of wool and thread, 114.

  ---- taffetas, 47.

  ---- velvets, 81, 135, 189, 207, 291, 292.

  SPENSER quoted, 64.

  Spicilegium Solesmense quoted, 286.

  Spider, figured, 182.

  Star and Crescent, their symbolism, 285.

  Star, symbolism of, 55, 272, 285.

  Stauracin, 124, 127, 160, 161.

  “Stella Maris,” or “Star of the Sea,” one of the old symbolical
        attributes of the B. V. Mary, 272.

  State cap, 86.

  Stauracina, what, 124, 161.

  Stenciled satin, 113.

  Stitchery of a fine kind, 4, 7, 19.

  Stockings, silk, one of the first pair made in England, given to
        Queen Elizabeth, and now belonging to the Marquis of Salisbury,
        200.

  Stoles, 24, 44, 58, 138, 185, 222, 235.

  ----, 58, 121, 191.

  Stones, precious, used, 81, 82, 199.

  STOTHARD, MRS., 7.

  Strap-shaped ornamentation on textiles, as well as in bookbindings,
        201.

  Stuffs, loom-wrought, with history-pieces, 271, 272.

  Stuffs, &c.,
    Of the Adoration of the Magi or three Kings, 186.
    Of Angels, 142, 143.
    ---- holding crescents, 234.
    ---- a monstrance, 184.
    Of Angels swinging thuribles, and carrying crowns of thorns and
        crosses in their hands, 36.
    Of the Annunciation, 247.
    Of the Assumption of the B. V. Mary, 272, 273.

  Stuffs figured with--
    Beasts, 5, 25, 32, 41, 42, 43, &c.
    Birds, 26, 28, 29, 32, 37, 41, 42.
    Men and beasts, 122.
    With a Chinese subject, 75.
    Of the coronation in heaven of the B. V. Mary, 272.
    Of Emblems of the Passion, 133.
    Figured with flowers and fruits, 11, 13, 15, 41, 42.
    Of a king on horseback, with hawk on hand, &c., 223.
    Of a man or woman with hawk on wrist, 233.
    Of the B. V. Mary, with our Lord as a child in her arms, or on her
        lap, 63, 71, 271, 272.
    Of St. Mary of Egypt, 54.
    Of St. Peter, apostle, 136.
    Of the resurrection.
    Of Sampson overcoming the lion, 122.
    Of women gathering dates, 165.

  Subdeacon’s liturgical veil worn over the shoulders, 144.

  Sudary of our Lord, 26.

  Sun-beams and rain-drops figured, 54, 239.

  Sun and moon figured in art-works of the Crucifixion, 30.

  Surplices, 239.

  ---- of transparent linen, 239.

  Symbolism, 149, 236, 237, 272, 276, 285, 311, 329, 330, 331, 332.

  Syon Nunnery, beautiful cope once belonging to, 275.

  Syrian crape drapered with a pattern, 126.

  ---- stuffs, 125, 127, 139, 213, 215, 216, 221.

  ---- damask in silk and cotton, 24, 152.

  ---- damask, silk and gold, 122, 178, 180, 238.

  ---- damask, silk and linen thread, 42, 136, 220.


  Table-covers, 16, 19, 92, 108, 141.

  Taffeta, 47.

  ---- Egyptian, 56, 57.

  ---- Sicilian, 75, 121.

  Tangier stuff, 123.

  Tapestry, 6, 158, 294, &c.

  Tapestry--
    English, 306.
    Flemish, 294, 299, 300, 301, 302, 303, 307, 328, 329, 333.
    French, 302, 303, 304, 305, 306, 307, 309.
    German, 296, 298.

  Tassels on dalmatics, 206.

  TAYLOR’s “Glory of Regality,” quoted, 153.

  Tetuan stuff, 123.

  THAUN, PHILLIPPE DE, quoted, 236.

  The Three Wise Men, clothed and crowned as kings going to
        Bethlehem, 148.

  THORNELL of Suffolk, arms of, 148.

  Thread embroidery, 19, 20, 53, 58.

  Throne-room in Roman princely houses, 87, 107.

  Tiles, glazed for paving, 183.

  Tiraz or silk-house at Palermo, 232.

  TOBIT, the elder, sending his son to Rages, figured, 335.

  Toca, what, 204.

  Tombs in churches, palls for throwing over, 56.

  Trimming for carriages, 191.

  ---- vestments, 193.

  Tunicle, 143.

  Turkish net, 61.

  Tyrian purple, so called, 155, 159, 160, 219.


  The U form of ornamentation, 227, 228.

  Unicorn, hunting of the, 53, 236.

  Umbrian school of painting, 184, 186, 247.


  V, the letter, put cross-wise, 28.

  Vallombrosa, book from the monastery at, 87.

  Varnicle or Vernicle, 198, 248.

  Vasari, quoted, 261.

  Veil for lectern, 20, 141, 145, 212, 261.

  Veil or scarf worn over his shoulders by the subdeacon, 144, 145.

  Velvet, brocaded in gold, 62, 65, 85, 107, 134, 135, 144, 185, 189,
        193, 198, 259.

  Velvet, cut and applied, 17, 20.

  ---- embroidered, 198, 200, 204.

  ---- figured, 17, 62, 135, 192, 193, 207.

  ---- freckled with golden loops, 257.

  ----, pile upon pile, 1, 257.

  ----, plain, 2, 3, 9, 14, 143, 199, 204, 206.

  ----, raised, 4, 18, 62, 65, 69, 70, 72, 80, 82, 87, 89, 90, 107,
        110, 134, 135, 144, 145, 185, 193, 200, 254, 256, 257, 258, 263.

  ----, English, see Brooke Collection, 312, &c.
    ---- Flemish, 254, 255, 264.
    ---- Florentine, 1, 18, 82, 85, 142, 144, 145, 198, 256, 257.
    ---- French, 14, 89, 106.
    ---- Genoa, 3, 18, 62, 90, 107, 110, 134, 145, 192, 199, 200, 263.
    ---- Italian, 65, 89, 90, 199.
    ---- Lucca, 62, 72, 192, 198, 259.
    ---- Spanish, 81, 135, 189.

  Venetian beads, 169.

  ---- damask, 54, &c.

  ---- embroidery, 44, 168.

  ---- embroidery in beads, 169.

  ---- lace, 141.

  ---- table-covers, 141.

  ---- webs, 71, 112, 271, 272.

  Vestments often blazoned with armorial bearing of those who gave
        them, 22, 148, 214, 282.

  ----, English, 41, 146, 275.

  VINCENT, FRANCOIS ANDRE, 302.

  VIOLLET, LE DUC, quoted, 212.

  VIRGILIUS, subjects from, figured in tapestry, 300, 301, 302.


  WALLER’s brasses, noticed, 181.

  WANEFLETE’S, BP., liturgical shoes, 46.

  Warwick, Sir Guy of, and the Northumbrian dragon, figured, 79.

  Webs, 28, 33, 61, 62, 63, 64, 71, 80, 112, 116, 117, 118, 119, 136,
        143, 161, 174, 175, 191, 201, 217, 221, 222, 223, 257, 261,
        271, 272, 291.

  Wire of pure metal gold, or silver, 220.

  Wise men or Magi, adoration of, figured, 3.

  Wire, pure metal, 220.

  Witsuntide, stuff for, in the ritual, 226.

  Witsunday, how signified, 2.

  Worsley, The, sepulchral brass, 181.

  Worsted and thread, 114.

  ---- work, 61, 79.

  WYDEROYD, Pastor S. Jacobi Colon, 189.


  Y, the cross so called, 81, 82.

  _York_, cloth of gold, found in a grave at the cathedral of, 251.

  _Yprès_, 34, 61, 73, 75.


  Zoology--
    Beasts:
      Antelopes, 46, 47, 52, 234.
      Boars, wild, 180.
      Cheetahs, or papyonns, 74, 136, 137, 154, 178, 215, 234.
      Deer, 108, 226, 242.
      Dogs, 33, 42, 45, 50, 52, 124, 138, 155, 165, 168, 180, 223, 233,
        241, 336.
      Elephant, 45; and castle, 170.
      Gazelles, 179, 234.
      Giraffes, 225, 228.
      Hares, 240, 310.
      Harts, 41, 42, 43, 51, 118.
      Hounds, 49, 76, 167.
      Leopards, 154, 163, 164, 214.
      Lions, 27, 30, 33, 42, 49, 57, 111, 122, 131, 137, 138, 146, 165,
        177, 183, 218.
      Monkey, 108, 310.
      Oxen, 214.
      Panther, 250.
      Papyonns; see cheetah.
      Squirrels, 58.
      Stags, 53, 99, 166, 180.
      Talbot, or English blood-hound, 223.
      Toad, 310.
      Weasel, or stoat, 310.
      Wolf, 158.
    Beasts, emblematic, 140, 156, 163, 311.
    Beasts, heraldic, 5, 40, 41, 46, 47, 52, 53, 58, 59, 60, 156, 161,
        217, 218, 228, 246, 267.
      Elephant and Castle, 170.
      Griffins, 5, 29, 32, 40, 47, 49, 130, 131, 154, 155.
      Leopard, noued, 164.
      Libbards, 240.
      Lion, noued, 165.
      Lioncels, 5.
      Wyverns, 40, 47, 131, 133, 158, 159, 163, 168, 228.
    Beasts, monsters, 3, 25, 30, 40, 41, 42, 99, 106, 150, 155, 157,
        158, 160, 177, 181, 217, 218, 222, 226, 251.
      Kraken, 236.
      Mermaid, 251.
      Midgard Serpent, 151.
      Satyr, 3.
      Sphinxes, 181.
      The Wolf Fenrir, 151.
    Beasts, symbolical:
      Hare, of man’s soul, 237, 311.
      Lion, of Christ, 156.
      Monkey, of mischief and lubricity, 311.
      Monoceros or unicorn, of Christ as God-man, 237.
    Birds:
      Cocks, 39.
      Cockatoos, 133, 228.
      Cranes, 164.
      Doves, 124, 218, 310;
        symbol of love, 311.
      Ducks, wild, 229.
      Eagles, 7, 25, 26, 40, 43, 50, 51, 76, 81, 129, 137, 138, 158,
        163, 164, 178, 180, 183, 229, 232, 233.
      Hawks, 155, 166, 223, 226, 233.
      Hoopoes, 45, 137, 146.
      Owls, 3.
      Parrots, 119, 131, 139, 140, 154, 159, 166, 168, 241, 242, 244.
      Peacocks, 154, 250.
      Pelican, 214.
      Pheasants, 60.
      Swans, 49, 166, 179, 232.
      Wild ducks, 229.
    Birds, heraldic, or monster things with wings:
      Dragon, 1.
      Eagle, double-headed, 7, 37, 86.
      Griffins, 5, 29, 32, 40, 47, 49, 131.
      Harpies, 329, 330.
      Wyverns, 40, 47, 131, 158, 159, 163, 168, 228, 330.
    Fish, 151.
    ----, Sr. Peter’s, the Italian Gianitore, or our John Dory, 151.
    Insects:
      Butterflies, 16, 44, 66.
      Spider, 182.
    Shells, 7.
    Snakes, 177.



[Illustration]



INDEX II.

GEOGRAPHY OF TEXTILES.


EUROPE.

  ENGLAND:
      Chintz.
      Embroidery.
      Quilting.
      Satins.
      Silks.
      Tapestry.
      Velvets.
      Webs, ribbon-like.

  FLANDERS:
      Embroidery.
      Lace.
      Linen, block-printed.
      Linen, damasked.
      Napery.
      Silk, damasked.
      Tapestry.
      Velvets.

  FRANCE:
      Cloth of gold.
      Embroidery.
      Lace in gold.
      Quilting.
      Silks, brocaded.
      Silks, damasked.
      Tapestry.
      Velvets.
      Webs.

  GERMANY:
    _Cologne_, and other Rhenish towns:
      Embroidery in silk, in thread, in worsted.
      Napery.
      Silk and linen.
      Tapestry.
      Velvet.
      Webs in silk, in silk and linen.

  GREECE:
      Silks.
      Silks mixed with cotton.
      Silks mixed with linen thread.
      Byzantine stuffs historied.

  ITALY:
    _Florence_:
      Embroidery.
      Silks, damasked.
      Silks, historied.
      Silks mixed with linen.
      Velvets, pile upon pile.
      Velvets, plain.
      Velvets wrought with gold.
      Velvets raised.
      Webs, historied.
    _Genoa_:
      Silks, brocaded in gold.
      Silks, damasked.
      Velvets, plain.
    _Italian_ Textiles, &c.:
      Applied or cut-work.
      Embroidery.
      Fringe.
      Lace.
      Quilting.
      Satins.
      Satins, brocaded in gold and silver.
      Silks, brocaded in gold.
      Silks, damasked.
      Silks mixed with cotton.
      ---- with hemp.
      ---- with flax.
      Velvets raised.
      Velvets of silk.
      Velvets of worsted.
      Webs.
    _Lombardy_:
      Cob-web weaving.
      Lace.
    _Lucca_:
      Silks, brocaded in gold.
      Silks, damasked.
      Velvets.
    _Milan_:
      Embroidery.
      Lace.
      Velvets.
      Velvets, raised.
    _Naples_:
      Embroidery.
      Silks.
    _Reggio_:
      Silks, damasked.
    _Sicily_:
      Cendal.
      Damasks in linen, brocaded in gold.
      Embroidery.
      Lace in silk and gold.
      Silks, brocaded in gold.
      Silks, damasked.
      Silks mixed with cotton.
      Silks mixed with cotton and wool.
      Silks mixed with flaxen thread.
      Silk taffeta.
      Silk webs.
    _Venice_:
      Embroidery.
      Embroidery in beads.
      Laces in gold.
      Silks, damasked.

  SPAIN:
      Carpeting.
      Crochet-work.
      Embroidery.
      Silks, brocaded in gold and silver.
      Silks, damasked.
      Silks mixed with gilt parchment.
      Silks mixed with cotton and linen thread.
      Silks mixed with linen thread.
      Silks mixed with linen thread, and gilt parchments.
      Stuffs of wool and hemp.
      Stuffs of wool and thread.
      Taffetas.
      Velvets.


ASIA.

  CHINA:
      Embroidery.
      Satins.
      Silks.
      Silks, damasked.

  INDIA:
      Embroidery.
      Linen.

  PERSIA:
      Carpeting.
      Embroidery.
      Satins.
      Silks.
      Silks, brocaded in gold.
      Silks, damasked.
      Silks mixed with wool.

  SYRIA:
      Crape.
      Silks, brocaded in gold.
      Silks, damasked.
      Silks mixed with cotton.
      Silks mixed with linen.


AFRICA.

  ALGIERS:
      Embroidery.
      Fine linen.

  EGYPT:
      Byssus or very fine linen.
      Gauze.
      Silks.
      Silks mixed with cotton.
      Taffetas.

  MOROCCO:
    _Tangier_:
      Silks.
    _Tetuan_:
      Silks.


       *       *       *       *       *

  CHISWICK PRESS:--PRINTED BY WHITTINGHAM AND WILKINS,
  TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE.



Transcriber's Notes


A number of typographical errors were corrected silently.

Cover image was created by the transcriber and is donated to the public
domain.

Two small illustrations were recreated by the transcriber and are
donated to the public domain.

First index entry for emblematic beasts corrected to page 140 from page
198.

There are two items numbered 1376. The first is probably correct as it
references a matching image.



*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Textile Fabrics _ A Descriptive Catalogue of the Collection of Church-vestments, Dresses, Silk Stuffs, Needlework and Tapestries, forming that Section of the Museum" ***

Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.