The history of an art must, more or less, include that of its raw material.

This is too true to be disputed, but in the art of embroidery it opens out such endless avenues, through such vast regions of technical study, that we must acknowledge the difficulty, or rather the impossibility, of including in one volume even a tithe of the information already collected.

I shall, therefore, only dedicate a few pages to the history of those fibres which have always been most important in the different phases of our civilization.

Among books on textile materials, I must again name the “Textrinum Antiquorum,” by Yates. His premature death, and the loss that the world of art and manufacture has sustained by the chain of his invaluable researches being broken, cannot be appreciated but through the study of the first and only volume of this already rare book, from which I venture to quote largely.

Semper’s “Der Stil” is a work of reference on this subject, so valuable that it should, by a good translation, be placed within the reach of non-German scholars.

From Colonel Yule’s “Marco Polo,” and his abundant notes, we learn much of Asiatic textile art in the thirteenth century, and its early traditions in the immutable East, and Sir G. Birdwood’s books on this Indian art are most instructive.

Egyptian textiles are splendidly illustrated by Sir Gardiner Wilkinson. All these modern writers quote Pliny and the Periplus;[130] and Pliny quotes all the classic authors, from Homer to his day. Here is a wide field for gathering information regarding the materials for embroidery in past ages.

When we use the phrase “raw material” so glibly, with an Æsthetic contempt for that which the art of man has neither manipulated nor reorganized, we show our own coarse appreciation, if not ignorance, of the wonderful inherent beauty and microscopic delicacy of form, colour, and substance of those materials which we fashion for our own uses.

Few know the structure of the tender filaments of wool, flax, cotton, and silk; or that each has its peculiar form and attributes, and its individual capabilities for the purposes for which they appear to us to have been created, i.e. the clothing and adornment of man’s dress and his home.

I should like to draw attention to these well-attested facts.

Seen through a microscope, the forms of these raw materials differ greatly.

Flax is difficult to describe, as it varies according to the soil and climate it comes from. Its fibre, however, has always a shiny outer surface, and is transparent, cylindrical, and pipe-like; apparently with breaks or joints like those of a cane.

Cotton also varies so much in its own kind, that every description is different and somewhat puzzling. Semper says that it approaches the ribbon form, with thickened edges, and is like a half-cylinder twisted spirally; but when wetted with oil, it swells into a complete cylinder.[131] Wool and hair are hollow pipes without joints. Woollen fibres look like cylindrical snakes with a scaly surface. This roughness gives wool a clinging power which exceeds that of any other material, except the hair of some few animals.[132]

Silk threads consist of twin pipes laid parallel, and held together by the varnish with which they are glazed. Silk is tough and elastic.

The qualities needed for textile materials may be thus enumerated: Pliability, toughness (i.e. tensile strength), and intrinsic durability.

Of course, the material must to a certain degree influence the style of the fabric, and its selection must be according to the effect intended to be produced.[133] The fashions of the day, and the needs of the special manufacture, must greatly modify the choice of materials, which fluctuate, often disappear, and sometimes revive again.

Certain materials which have been, at one period, much admired, have been entirely lost; and indeed we may say that the only permanently employed textiles are wool, flax, cotton, and silk, which apparently never can be superseded. With them, all domestic requirements can be satisfied, and all artistic and decorative fabrics produced, varied, and perfected; and these, from all time recorded in history, have been enriched and glorified with gold, either inwoven or embroidered.

The game of “animal, vegetable, or mineral” might well be played with textiles only. Nothing has been alien to the crafts which from time immemorial have spun, woven, felted, netted, and embroidered.

The materials now in general use, and which, once known, have never been abandoned, I have already named, and shall discuss their history separately; they are wool, flax, cotton, and silk. To these I must add hemp, both wild and cultivated.

Hemp is a kind of nettle. It was grown in Colchis, and in those cool regions which did not produce flax. Hemp is hardly grown in India, except to extract from it the narcotic, Cannabis Indica. It was a northern production used throughout Scandinavia. Herodotus (iv. 14) says, “Hemp grows in the land of the Scythians, in a wild state, but it is now cultivated.” From its Latin name, cannabis, comes our canvas, which has always been much used as a ground for counted stitches and backing for embroidery, its stiffness being its qualification for such purposes.[134]

Jute (a rough sort of hemp) has been long an article of commercial importance for the manufacture of coarse-figured fabrics, dyed and woven, sometimes embroidered.

The fibre of the Aloe has been used in the Riviera for laces and “macrami” (knotted fringes).

The fibres of grasses, such as the “Honduras silk grass” (Rhea or Ramie), valuable for beauty, fineness, and toughness, have been worked or woven into stuffs.[135] This material is now coming into notice. Spartum is often named for coarse weaving;[136] also the fibres of barks, especially those of palm branches.[137]

Another substance of classic use, and even now employed, though rather as a curiosity than as an article of commerce, is the silky filament produced by the shell-fish pinna; and also the fibres of certain sea-weeds.

Fur and hair, especially that of camels and goats, has always been much prized.[138] We have seen both African and Indian striped or primitively decorated rugs of wool, touched here and there with scraps of cotton or silk, or some other odd material; and amongst them, tufts of human hair. The sentiment that motived the use of human hair has been either love or hate—the votive or the triumphal. We know that Delilah was not a stranger to this art. She wove into her web Samson’s seven locks of strength, and “fastened them with a pin” (Judges xvi.).

In the thirteenth century it was the custom for ladies to weave their own hair into their gifts to favoured knights. King Ris, if he had received any such token from his lady-love, returned it with interest; for he sent her a mantle in which were inwoven the beards of nine conquered kings, a tenth space being left for that of King Arthur, which he promised to add in course of time.[139]

Leather has been from the remotest antiquity employed for the art of embroidery, either for the ground, as in the mantle of Boadicea, made of skins with the fur turned inwards and the leather outside, dressed, and embroidered on the seams;[140] or else as fine inlaid and onlaid application, as in the “funeral tent of an Egyptian queen” in the museum at Boulac, which is certainly the earliest specimen of needlework decoration that exists.[141] (Pl. 44.) The old Indian embroideries in leather are generally applied one on another. The North American Indians also embroider on leather.[142]

Feather work will be discussed under the heading of “Opus Plumarium.”[143]

On the surface of textiles many substances have been fastened down, in order to give brilliancy to the general effect—skins of insects, beetles’ wings, the claws and teeth of various animals.[144]

Asbestos linen is the only mineral substance, besides gold, silver, and tin,[145] that has been employed in embroidery. It has the remarkable quality of indestructibility by fire. Asbestos linen can be cleansed by fire instead of water.[146] It is a soapy crystal, found in veins of serpentine and cipolino in Cyprus, and other Greek islands. Pliny says it was woven for the funeral obsequies of monarchs, as it preserved the ashes apart, being itself unharmed by the fires of cremation. There are several fragments existing, found in tombs. One of these is in the British Museum.[147]

Marco Polo speaks of a stone fibre found at Chinchin, which answers in description to asbestos. It was spun by mixing it with threads of flax soaked in oil; and when woven, was passed through the fire to remove the flax and the oil.[148]

A miraculous napkin of asbestos was long kept at Monte Casino.

Coral, pearls, and beads of many forms have been used for the enrichment of embroideries, and for decorating textiles. The whole surface of the original fabric has often been entirely covered with them, or the pattern itself has been worked in nothing else. Pearls are constantly seen worked on dress, coats-of-arms, and embroidered portraits. Seed pearls, large coarse pearls, and sometimes fine and precious ones, were surrounded with gold thread embroidery. Coral was so much used in Sicilian embroideries, and so little elsewhere, that one gives the name of “Sicilian” to all such work; but occasionally we find coral embroideries in Spain and elsewhere (Pl. 32).

Portion of Dalmatic embroidered by Blanche, Queen of Charles IV. of Bohemia (fifteenth century).
The figures in pearls, on a background of beaten gold. Bock’s “Liturgische GewÄnder.” Vol. i. taf. xi. Beads of glass were common in Egypt from the earliest times, strung together by threads so as to form breastplates rather than necklaces. Whence beads originally came we cannot tell, but it seems that the Phoenicians dropped them on all the shores of the world. Then, as now, savages had a passion for beads, and civilized men and women still admire them as trimmings. In the Middle Ages they were sometimes worked into pictures.[149]

In as far as materials are essential to the art of embroidery, I must restrict myself to the history of silk, wool, flax, cotton, and gold. With these all the finest works have been executed for the artistic adornment of dress and hangings. All other materials have been occasional experiments, or else were resorted to in the absence or ignorance of the above five most important factors in our domestic civilization. The history of wool must take precedence as being that of the original, if not the first, of textile materials.

2. WOOL.

The wool of sheep and the hair of goats were used very early in the world’s history for clothing, and probably also for hangings. The earliest civilizations plaited, span,[150] wove, and felted them.

There is no reason to suppose that goats and sheep preceded the creation of man. No early fossils record them. Our sheep are supposed by zoologists to be descended from the Argali or Ovis Ammon of LinnÆus, inhabiting the central regions of Asia.[151]

It is possible that plaited grasses may have preceded wool. But though certain prehistoric specimens are supposed to have been found in Spain, yet of this there is but imperfect proof.

The pastoral tribes wandering over those fair regions that extend from Khotan to Arabia, following their flocks and herds, and studying where best to feed, increase, and multiply them, and obtain from them the finest texture of wool, are spoken of nowhere more than in the collected books of the Old Testament, open to us all; and there we learn how important a place these shepherds held in the world’s civilization. “Watching their flocks by night,” they watched the stars also, and they were astronomers; seeking the best pastures and fodder, they learned to be botanists, florists, and agriculturalists. They became also philosophers, poets, prophets, and kings.[152] Job and his country were enriched through the breeding of sheep. The seven daughters of Jethro, the High-priest, tended their father’s flocks.

The Arabians were always great breeders of sheep. The Greeks and Romans, from Homer to Virgil, sang of the herdsman’s life. Our Lord Himself did not disdain to be called “the Good Shepherd.”[153]

The merchants who traded from the Arabian Gulf to Egypt, and across thence to the shores of the Mediterranean, and the Phoenicians of Sidon who brought overland their bales of raw material and manufactured Oriental fabrics, knew well where to find the best goods for their customers; and we hear frequently whence came this or that coloured wool. Chemmis, the city of Pan, retained its celebrity in the woollen trade down to the conquest of Egypt by the Romans. Nineveh and Babylon encouraged the manufactures and commerce in woollen tents, wall-hangings, and carpets. Nowhere were they so richly embroidered.[154]

Solomon purchased woollens from Egypt. Damascus supplied the Tyrians with wool for their rugs. The stuffs and textile fabrics of wool, of the Chinese, Assyrians, and Chaldeans, are recorded in the earliest writings of the human race. How much their decoration depended on weaving, and how much on embroidery, we cannot tell. The products of the Babylonian looms are alluded to in the Book of Joshua,[155] and also by Ezekiel.[156]

Assyrian stuffs were always celebrated for their splendid colours and various designs; among which were hunting scenes, battles, and special emblematic adornments.[157]

From Miletus came the wool valued most highly by the Greeks. Spain produced the best black, and the north of Italy the best white wool. The Narbonensian and Egyptian wools were supposed to be the most durable, and when they became shabby, were dipped again and served another generation.

From Yates’ account of the great variety of wools, remarkable for their fine texture, their whiteness,[158] their blackness,[159] or their redness, their cool or their warm tints, it is evident that the ancients valued highly these different qualities.[160] The cloths that were of greatest account were of the finest or the warmest kinds. The sheep of Miletus, Attica, Megaris, and Tarentum were clothed in jackets, in order to preserve the fineness and whiteness of their own coats, and to protect them from being torn by the thorny bushes in their pastures. Columella calls them the “covered” and the “soft,” and says they were often kept in the house.

We find notices of the peculiarities of the various national breeds, caused by the soil on which their pasture grew, and the rivers and streams at which they drank, and these peculiarities were, if possible, encouraged. There is evidence also that some improvement of the breeds by crossing was practised in early times.

As in all the life of the Greeks, the religious element had much influence in perfecting their flocks of sheep—only the most beautiful animals were considered worthy of sacrifice to the gods.

A few of the rare specimens of stuffs which have been rescued from tombs, especially in the Crimea, and in the Fayoum, in Egypt, show a wool so fine and shining that it might be taken for silk, and the beauty of the weaving is marvellous, and much varied in style.

A warrior’s tomb in the district of Kuban contained a funeral pall, covering the sarcophagus, measuring at least three metres and a half each way, woven of brown wool, in twelve narrow strips sewn together and afterwards painted. The ground is yellowish, the design brown. The figures repeat mythical subjects, and alternate with patterns, and there is a border. One strip contains a scene from the story of Peleus and Thetis. Apparently this is Attic design. The coloured dresses worn by women of rank, and hung on the statues of the gods, were sometimes painted, sometimes stamped, and often embroidered, and they were nearly all of woollen fabrics.

One of the great advantages of wool is its power of absorbing colour, as the pigment sinks into its very fibre, instead of clinging to the surface. It can be dyed of deeper colours than flax, cotton, or silk.

Pliny tells us that Tanaquil combed, span, and wove her wool, and she herself made the royal mantle which Servius Tullius used to wear, and it was covered with a wavy pattern (undulata). Thence came the custom that when a maiden became a bride, her attendants carried a distaff trimmed with combed wool, and a spindle with yarn upon it. The robes worked by Tanaquil were dedicated by Servius Tullius to the statue of Fortune in her temple at Rome, and were still hanging there in the days of Tiberius.[161] Pliny remarks that it was a wonder that it neither fell from the image, nor was eaten by the moths, during five hundred and sixty years. He gives us interesting details of the weaving of woollen cloths, and speaks of the thick coarse wool with “great thick hair,” used for carpets from the time of Homer. The same passage mentions felt. He tells us of the cloths with a curly nap, used in the days of Augustus; of the “papaverata” woven with flowers resembling poppies; and we hear from him of the cloth of divers colours woven in Babylon, and called thence Babylonica; and the Alexandrian webs, with many-coloured threads (polymita)[162], comparing them with those made in Gaul; and those woven by the Parthians.[163]

We have already said that the wool of Miletus was a proverbial favourite with the Greeks. Eustathius speaks of the excellence of the Milesian carpets and hangings. Virgil represents the virgins of Cyrene spinning Milesian wool dyed of a deep sea-green.[164]

In the British Museum is a fragment of Egyptian woollen or worsted embroidery on white linen, discoloured by its use as mummy wrapping; but the stitches of worsted remain a perfectly clear bright crimson and indigo blue. This shows how wool absorbs the colour and retains it. Even when the surface is faded, it can be made to emit it again by chemical processes.

In tombs in the Crimea have been found variously woven and adorned woollen fabrics. There are fragments resembling in their texture a fine rep—a sort of corded stuff; another material resembling a woollen crÊpe, or fine “nun’s gauze.” This veiled a golden wreath. Then there is a stuff like what is now called “atlas”—a kind of woollen satin. Some woollens are woven simply like linen; some are wide, some very narrow, sewn together in strips, woven in meandering designs. One, like a piece of Gobelin tapestry, has a border of ducks with yellow wings and dark green heads and throats,[165] and then another with a pattern of stags’ heads. This description recalls the specimens on plate 16 and plate 39.

From these tombs are collected stuffs of wool, woven and embroidered in gold with combinations of many colours; and, in fact, through this collection, now placed in the Museum at St. Petersburg, we become aware that 300 B.C. the Greeks had learned all the secrets of the art of weaving wool. They, however, lost it, and it is only in India that its continuity was never broken. Indian looms still weave, of the finest fleeces, such shawls of Babylonian design as repeat the texture of the ancient Greek garments. But were they Greek? or did those beautiful woven fabrics come from Persia or India?[166]

The first we know of Scandinavian wool for dress, is a fragment from a Celtic barrow in Yorkshire—a woollen plaited shroud. This fabric was an advance upon the original northern savage costume—a sheep-skin fashioned and sewn with a fish-bone for a needle, sinews for thread, and a thorn for a pin. But we must imagine that some use was made, besides plaiting, of the spun wool, of which the early northern women have left us evidence, in the whorls of their spindles, from prehistoric times.

Wool has always appeared to be a natural material for dress. It is warm in winter, light in summer, and is always beautiful as it hangs in lovely soft draperies, heavy enough to draw the fabric into graceful curved lines, and yet capable of yielding to each movement in little rippling folds, covering, but not concealing the forms to which they cling. Classical draperies are explained by it. What the Italians call the “eyes of the folds,” are particularly beautiful in woollens, and lend themselves to sculpturesque art.

The other natural use of wool is for carpets. We have the evidence of the imitations, in mosaic, of carpets from the stone floors in Nineveh (now in the British Museum), that the art of weaving large and small rugs, and the principles of composition for such purposes was at that date well understood. The carpet-weaving traditions of Babylon appear to have been inherited by the occupiers of the soil, as it is supposed that the Saracens learned from Persia the art of weaving pile carpets, and imported thence craftsmen into Spain. We can trace Persian carpet patterns in Indian floor coverings. The Greeks called them tapetes; and the Latins adopted the name; and hence the Italian tapeti, French tapis, and our word tapestry.

As artistic material, to which the world owes much beauty and comfort, woollens have always played a great part in the decorations of our houses, as of our garments. Fabrics have been made of them of every description, from the cheapest and commonest to the most refined; but if woollen stuffs are to be beautiful, they must be fine, and worked or embroidered by hand.

Woollens brocaded or figured are not so effective as silken hangings. Woollen velvets are without light, dull and heavy. Still, even amongst our English fabrics, there have always been varieties of texture[167] and adaptations to different effects, and some are beautiful. Worsted thread, so called from Worsted, in Norfolk, where the materials for weaving and embroidering are manufactured, has always been very important in embroidery. Worsteds after a time gave way to a very beautiful material, called “German wool,” which again has yielded the supremacy to “crewels”[168] (resembling the old worsteds). These crewels are nearly the same in substance and in their loose texture as the threads prepared from wool for tapestry weaving.

We may claim, in England, the superiority in this manufacture, though we are constantly receiving from France novelties which give us good hints, and urge us to keep pace with the science of the Gobelins in their woollen dyes. The French, in return, employ our wools, especially those of Lincolnshire, in their tapestry workshops.

The wool and hair of goats should be a study by itself. They have from the earliest times been used in India for the finest and softest fabrics, such as the lovely shawls of Cashmere and the neighbouring provinces. Cloth of Tars in the Middle Ages is supposed to be what is now called Cashmere.

3. FLAX.

Boyd Dawkins tells us that “The art of spinning and the manufacture of linen were introduced into Europe in the Neolithic age, and have been preserved with little variation from that period to the present day, in certain remote parts of Europe, having only been superseded in modern times by the complicated machinery so familiar to us. The spindle and distaff, or perforated spindle whorls, are of stone, pottery, or bone, such as are constantly found in Neolithic tombs and habitations. Thread from the Swiss lake cities is proved to be of flax, and there is evidence of weaving in some sort of loom.”[169]

The meaning of the word Byssus has been disputed; some authorities asserting that it includes both flax and cotton fabrics. Without the aid of the microscope, the dispute as to whether the material of the Egyptian mummy wrappings was cotton or flax, or a mixture of the two, would never have been settled; but now that the difference of the structure of each has been clearly ascertained, we know that cotton was never employed in Egypt, except for certain domestic uses. The mummy wrappings are entirely linen. Cotton was forbidden for the priests’ dress in the temple, though they might wear it when not on duty.[170]

There are specimens of Egyptian painted or printed patterns on fine linen in the British Museum;[171] and it is curious to see in Egyptian mural paintings the same patterned chintzes on furniture that were common a hundred years ago in England. Both must have come from India, and therefore were certainly cotton fabrics.

Herodotus says the mummy cloths were of “byssine sindon,” which may be translated “linen cloth.”[172] Cotton he calls “tree wool.”

Yates has carefully argued the whole question, and, we think, has proved that byssus was flax, and not cotton. [173] He quotes Philo, who certainly must have believed that it was made of flax, from the description he gives of its appearance and qualities, which in no way apply to cotton or hemp. He says that “The Jewish high priests wore a linen garment of the purest byssus—which was a symbol of firmness, incorruption, and of the clearest splendour, for fine linen is very difficult to tear. It is made of nothing mortal, and becomes brighter and more resembling light, the more it is cleansed by washing.”[174]

Here is another quotation: “Cloth of byssus symbolizes firm faith. Its threads surpass even ropes of broom in firmness and strength.”[175] Pliny says the flax grown in Egypt was superior to any other, and it was exported to Arabia and India.[176] The first known existing fragment of flax linen in Europe was taken from the tomb of the Seven Brothers in the Crimea. Its date is 300 B.C.

In Solomon’s time the Jews evidently depended upon Egypt for their fine linen. Herodotus describes the corselet of Amasis, the fineness of the linen, and the embroidered decorations of men and animals, partly gold and partly tree wool (i.e. cotton).[177]

All the finest linen certainly came then from Egypt, and was much finer than any that is now made. That we call cambric, was woven there many centuries before it was made in Cambray.[178]

Through the Phoenicians the fine linen came to Rome, as appears from the following notice of embroidery on linen by Flavius Vopiscus, in his “Life of the Emperor Carinus:” “Why should I mention the linen cloths brought from Tyre and Sidon, which are so thin as to be transparent, which glow with purple, or are prized on account of their laborious embroideries?”[179]

The history of a fine embroidered linen curtain for a Roman house might have been this:—Grown in Egypt; carried to Nomenticum (Artois), and there woven; taken to India to be embroidered, and thence as merchandise to Rome.

While flax was making its way northward, the Celts must also have taken it across Europe from their resting-place, after emigrating from the East. The word linen—lin-white—is a Celtic epithet, whereas flax is an Anglo-Saxon word.[180]

The Atrebates wove linen in Artois, 1800 years ago. Jerome speaks of their “indumenta,” or shirts of fine linen; and the great weavers of to-day are still the Flemish descendants of the Atrebates. Their Celtic descent is witnessed in the Irish by their superiority in the crafts of the loom.

The fine laces of Venice, France, and Belgium are all of linen, i.e. flaxen thread. Clearness and strength in these delicate fabrics cannot be obtained with cotton, which, especially when it is washed, swells and fluffs, and never has the radiant appearance and purity of flax.

Embroidery is always a natural accompaniment of fine linen. Those that are still preserved to us from early and Middle-Age times are nearly all on linen, if not on silk. The woollen fragments are very few and imperfect. They have been invariably “fretted” by the moth.

White needle embroidery is mostly worked in linen-thread, though cotton-thread has been used a great deal, and is very fit for the purpose.

4. COTTON.

Cotton was native to India,[181] as flax was to Egypt. It not only was grown, woven, and printed there from the remotest antiquity, but was cultivated nowhere else. The Egyptians do not appear to have grown it till the fourteenth century A.D., though they had long imported it as raw material, and as plain and printed webs.[182] It was called tree-wool.

It was first woven in Italy in the thirteenth century, and used for making paper; and in the sixteenth, the plant was grown in the south of Europe. From Italy it was carried into the Low Countries, and only reached England in the seventeenth century,[183] so lately has the great staple of our manufactures first belonged to us.

The fibre of cotton has neither the strength nor the durability of flax or silk, but it is the third in the group of the most universally qualified materials for all purposes of domestic textile art, ranging from carpets and sails, to fine chintzes for dress, and filmy muslins. The cloudy effect of these delicate fabrics is their own peculiar beauty. Muslins for hangings, printed or embroidered, have always been a luxury from India; they were called “carbasa,” and were much esteemed in Rome as a protection against the sun.[184]

But we have much earlier notice of them, as being the curtains described in the Book of Esther, hung with silver rings to the pillars of marble in the banqueting hall at Susa or Shushan: “blue and white muslin” (i.e. carpas,[185] mistranslated “green” in the Authorized Version), “fastened with cords of fine linen and purple.”

The word “carbasina” occurs in a play by Statius, evidently translated from a writer of the new Greek comedy period. It may be inferred, therefore, that the Greeks used cotton 200 B.C.[186] A century before, Nearchus (one of Alexander’s admirals) speaks of the cotton-trees in India as if they were a new discovery. Yates gives us many quotations from Latin classical authors, proving the common use of cotton. Its Latin name was bambacinum, from bombax, hence the Italian bambagio, bambagino, bambasino.

The variety of cotton fabrics in India is very numerous, each having its distinctive beauties and qualities inherited by tradition from early times. They are enumerated and described in Sir G. Birdwood’s “Arts of India.” Almost all of them have been made to carry embroideries—the transparent muslins, [187] as well as the fine cloths, and the stronger and thicker fabrics.[188]

Most old English houses contain some hangings of thickly woven cotton, probably Indian, worked in crewel or worsted, of the time of James I., or a little earlier; and beautiful patterns wrought in silk or thread, on fine cotton linen, reminding one of the arabesques of the Taj Mahal, succeeded those of the Jacobean style.

Transparent muslins were often embroidered in gold and silver, or spangled and embossed with beetles’ wings; and gold, silver, and silk were lavished on Indian cotton grounds, as well as on silken stuffs. Linen was not much embroidered in India, but often printed like chintz.

Buckram, or plush of cotton, was certainly imported from the East to England, from the thirteenth century to the time of Elizabeth. There is at Ashridge, in Hertfordshire, a small jacket of very fine cotton-plush amongst the baby linen prepared by Elizabeth for the expected heir of Philip and Mary, and there are other small dresses of this material of the date of James I. A similar material called fustian is also named by Marco Polo as a cotton fabric; it is supposed to have been made in Egypt by the Arabs. This sort of cotton-plush, variously manipulated, is repeatedly mentioned by Herr Graf’schen in his “Catalogue of Egyptian Textiles from the Fayoum.”

Plano Carpini says the tunics of the Tartars were “bacramo,” or else of baudichin (cloth of gold). Falstaff’s “men in buckram” may be thus explained.[189] I have already said that cotton is inferior in its qualities to silk and flax, except in the production of transparent muslins. Its peculiarity is its tendency to “crinkle” or crumple in wearing, therefore it does not present a smooth flat surface, except by means of dressing, which unfits it for clinging effects but suits printed patterns. Such stuffs as workhouse sheeting, imitating certain fabrics of the sixteenth century, and which it has been the fashion of late to cover with embroidery, do not repay, by effective beauty, the trouble bestowed upon them.

5. GOLD.

A somewhat profane French writer, giving his ideas on the Creation, says that gold, the latest metal, was expressly created for the demoralization of mankind. This is an ugly version of the fact that it is found on the surface of the earth’s crust, and that its beauty and worth makes it a desirable possession for which men will ever contend.

Gold adorns every work of the artistic animal—man. It is the most becoming setting to all other beautiful things, the most gorgeous reflection of light and colour, the richest and softest background, the most harmonious medium for high lights. In all works of decoration it represents sunshine where it is not, and doubles it where it is. The word “illumination” in books belongs to the gilded illustrations of immortal thoughts.

In embroideries, as grounding or as pattern, gold gives the glory: “Her clothing is of wrought gold.” The raiment of needlework is comparatively ineffective without golden lights or background. As colour, it never can offend the eye, except when used to accentuate aggressively a vulgar pattern, or when it flashes and dazzles from over-polish and too lavish expenditure.

Silver follows gold as a splendid element in decoration,[190] but it is not of such universal application and use; and when employed together, the proportion of gold should preponderate. Golden tissues belong to the earliest civilizations.

Sir G. Birdwood says that “The art of gold brocades is older than the Code of Manu.... The excellence of the art passed in the long course of ages, from one place to another; and Babylon, Tarsus, Alexandria, Baghdad, Damascus, Antioch, Tabriz, Sicily, and Tripoli successively became celebrated for their gold and silver-wrought tissues, silks, and brocades.... Through every disguise (and mingling of style) it is not impossible to infer the essential identity of the brocades with the fabrics of blue, purple, and scarlet, worked in gold, of ancient Babylonian art.”[191]

The Israelites wove gold with their coloured woollens for the use of the sanctuary, and probably brought the art from Egypt; though I am not aware of any gold-woven stuffs from Egyptian tombs.[192]

Indian and Chinese stuffs were from time immemorial woven with gold.

The historians of Alexander the Great continually name gold as a material in dress.[193] Arrian, Justin, and Quintus Curtius, all speak of golden tissues as part of the luxury of the East. We hear of Darius’ dress woven with golden hawks; and of the golden spoils of Persepolis; the dresses worn by Alexander’s generals, and all his attendants clothed in purple and gold. Then, perhaps, the Babylonian tradition was brought to Europe; and ever after, purple and gold became the state apparel for courtiers as well as kings.[194]

The hangings of scarlet, purple, and gold used at the nuptials of Alexander, and at his funeral, and his pall of the same material, point to the fact that gold was a recognized element in splendid textile weaving, as well as in the earliest ornamental embroideries.[195]

Attalus II., king of Pergamus, was credited with being the inventor of gold weaving, but this must have been a mistake, as it was practised long before his time; but he may have devised some splendid golden tissues, which were called “Attalic,” in honour of the king’s patronage.[196] As, however, the gold flat plate or wire was probably that woven before his time,[197] it is possible that he may have invented or patronized the making of thread of gold, by twining it round flax or cotton.[198] Pliny says gold may be woven or spun like wool without any admixture of wool or flax,[199] and he quotes as examples the golden garment of Agrippina, and that worn by Tarquinius Priscus, mentioned by Verrius.

It appears that the Egyptians knew the art of drawing gold wire, as some pieces have been found in their jewellery;[200] but we know not by what process it was worked, either then, or in the dark ages.

A mechanic of Nuremberg, in the fourteenth century, invented a machine for the purpose; and this art of drawing wire was introduced into England 200 years later, in 1560.

The pure cut gold was in use in Rome to a late date.[201] St. Cecilia, martyred 230 A.D., was buried with her golden mantle lying at her feet; and in 821, when Pope Pascal opened her grave, he found the evidence of her martyrdom in that splendid garment, showing that it had been soaked in blood.[202]

There were found under the foundations of the new Basilica of St. Peter’s, the bodies of Probus Anicius and his wife, Proba Faltonia, in a wrapping of gold.

Dr. Rock gives us more examples,[203] but we will only add that of the wife of the Emperor Honorius, who in the year 400 A.D. was buried in a golden dress, which in 1544 was removed from her grave, and being melted, weighed 36 lbs.[204]

The Anglo-Saxon tomb opened at Chessell Down, in the Isle of Wight, contained fragments of a garment or wrapping woven with flat gold “plate.” These remains are now in the British Museum.

Childeric was buried at Tournai, 485 A.D., and his dress of strips of pure gold was discovered and melted in 1653. But gold thread also was then very generally used in weaving gold tissues.

Claudian describes a Christian lady, Proba, in the fourth century, preparing the consular robes for her two sons on their being raised to the consulate:[205]—

Pure gold was woven in the dark ages in England. St. Cuthbert’s maniple at Durham is of pure gold thread. John Garland says the ladies wove golden cingulÆ in the thirteenth century; and Henry I., according to Hoveden, was clothed in a robe of state of woven gold and gems of almost “divine splendour.”[206]

A wrapping of beautiful gold brocade covered the coffin of Henry III. when his tomb was opened in 1871.[207]

The cope of St. Andrew at Aix, in Switzerland, is embroidered in a very simple pattern, with large circles containing St. Andrew’s crosses.[208] This is worked in silver wire gilt, and is Byzantine of the twelfth century. In the writings of the Middle Ages we find constant reference to different golden fabrics. Among them are “samit” or “examitur” (a six-thread silk stuff, preciously inwoven with gold threads);[209] and “ciclatoun,”[210] which was remarkable for the lightness of its texture, and was woven with shining gold threads—but though light, it was stiff enough to carry heavy embroidery. We hear also of “baudekin,” “nak,” and cloth of pall. “Camoca” is “kincob.”

There appears to be a link between embroidery in gold and the jewellers’ work which in the Dark and Middle Ages was so often applied to ecclesiastical and royal dress and hangings. This link was beaten gold work, “aurobacutos,” “beaten work,” or “batony.”[211] Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick in the time of Henry VI., went over to France, having a “coat for my lord’s body, beat with fine gold (probably heraldic designs). For his ship, a streamer forty yards long and eight broad, with a great bear and griffin, and 400 ‘pencils’ with the ‘ragged staff’ in silver.” This mode lasted some time; for in 1538, Barbara Mason bequeathed to a church a “vestment of green silk beaten with gold.” Probably this beaten gold was really very thick gold-leaf laid on the silk or linen ground, as we see still in some Sicilian and Arab tissues. The embroidered banners taken from Charles le TÉmÉraire, at Grandson, are finished with broad borders of gilded inscriptions, such as might be called beaten gold work.[212]

But besides this thick gold-leaf, there was another mode of enriching embroideries. LaminÆ of gold were cut into shapes, and finished the work by accentuating the design in Eastern embroideries; They are found also in Greek tombs, and in the Middle Ages they varied from the little golden spangle to many other forms—circular rings, stars, crescents, moons, leaves, and solid pendant wedges of gold, all which approached the art of the goldsmith.

Fig. 19.
Spangles.

Enamel was soon added to the enrichment of these golden spangles, plates, or discs, which were enlarged to receive a design.[213] Of this style of embellishment we know none so striking as the saddle in the Museum at Munich, said to have been taken from a Turkish general in the fifteenth century. This is Italian of the finest cinque-cento style: blue velvet, covered with beautiful gold embroidery, and every vacant space filled with spangles of endless forms, and of precious goldsmiths’ and enamellers’ work. The Persian stirrups attached to it are of a totally different style of enamelling and jewellery, and speak for themselves, and for the school they came from.[214]

Window Hanging, by Gentil Bellini, from a Portrait of Mahomet II., property of Sir H. Layard.

Dr. Rock describes part of a chasuble wrought by Isabella of Spain and her maids of honour, in which the flowing design is worked out in small moulded spangles of gold and silver, set so as to overlap each other and give the effect of scales.

To a late period, gold and silver embroideries, enriched with spangles, have been lavished on the head-dresses and stomachers of the peasantry throughout the north of Europe and Switzerland.[215]

Pearls and gems, either threaded like beads, or in golden settings, are to be studied in the early pictures of the German and French schools; and the Anglo-Saxons excelled in such enrichments.

Sir Henry Layard has a portrait of the fifteenth century, of the Sultan Mahomet II., by Gentil Bellini, from which has been copied the accompanying beautiful embroidered design of a window-hanging.[216] The grace of the lines, and the delicate taste with which the gems are set in the work, are a lesson in art (pl. 33). India sent to Europe more art in gold thread than has ever been produced amongst us from our own workshops.[217]

The people of Goa, mostly Arabs, embroidered for the Portuguese those wonderful fabrics, glittering with gold and radiant with colours, which cover the beds and hang the rooms throughout Portugal and Spain.[218] The precious metals (often forming the whole grounding) were employed without stint; the patterns being either embroidered in coloured silks and gold; or on velvets or satins, with gold alone or mixed with silver.

The fine gold threads for embroidery, which have preserved their brilliancy for so many centuries, such as we find worked in Charlemagne’s dalmatic, in Aelfled’s maniple, and in the mitres of Thomas À Becket, are certainly Oriental. To England they came in the bales of the merchants who brought us our silk, and even our needles, from India. Later we imported and copied the different ways of giving effect to inferior metals, and the Spaniard’s gilt parchment thread reached us from their Moorish manufactories.[219]

Designs were sometimes, in the sixteenth century, worked in gold twisted with coloured silks, sometimes only stitched down with them. The badges of the Order of the Dragon, instituted by the Emperor Sigismund, were thus embroidered, and placed on the cloaks of the knights. The work was so perfect that it resembled jewels of enamelled gold. Two ancient ones are in the Museum at Munich. Gold or silver or base metal wire was, in the later Middle Ages and down to our own times, much employed in the form of what is called “purl,” i.e. coiled wire cut into short lengths, threaded on silk, and sewn down. German, Italian, and English embroideries were often enriched with this fabric. Sometimes the wire was twisted with coloured silks before it was coiled. There are beautiful specimens of this work of the days of Queen Elizabeth.

Still, throughout Europe the best works were carried out with the best materials, and these always came from the East. But we sometimes find that the pressure of circumstances has for a time caused the employment of adulterated metals that have perished; and thus many fine works of art have been spoiled.[220]

The use of bad materials has therefore been as unfortunate for art as that of pure gold, which has tempted so many ignorant persons to burn golden embroideries and tapestries, and melt down the ore they contain. How little of all that human skill and invention have carefully elaborated is now preserved to us! To gold and silver textiles their materials have been often a fatal dower.

It has sometimes puzzled any but the most experienced embroiderers to distinguish between the stuffs woven with the golden threads on the surface, and finely brocaded or patterned in the loom; and those other cloths, embroidered by hand, which have been so manipulated that hardly an atom of the gold can be detected at the back. This is done by a technical mode of treating the surface, which is more easily shown than described. The gold is really drawn into the spaces between the threads of the canvas or linen grounding, but never pulled through. For many reasons this is an advantage, and when executed cunningly, as it was in England in the twelfth century, it is rich, beautiful, lasting, and economical. It is a peculiar mark of the “opus Anglicanum,” and it is to be seen in the mitre at Munich, where this stitch is employed on a white satin ground;[221] also in the working of the two pluvials at San Giovanni Laterano at Rome, and at the Museum at Bologna, as well as that at Madrid, which are all three English of the thirteenth century, by design as well as by stitches.

I cannot close this chapter without naming the many schools of gold embroidery in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. The King of Bavaria has an establishment for gold work, and this is very finely carried out, highly raised, and richly designed.[222] In Spain there is also a Royal School, where stately works are executed.

It is to be regretted that the modern designs are motiveless, and not so beautiful as the old ones, and it is very difficult to have any ancient piece of work copied exactly. Little modernisms creep in wherever the pattern has to be fitted into a new shape; for the accomplished needlewoman is seldom an artist.

All honour is due to certain manufacturers at Lyons who are working in the spirit of the old masters, and have been seriously considering how best to reproduce the beautiful soft surface of the gold thread of which the secret was lost in the fifteenth century.[223]

The old Chinese flat gold was, about the sixteenth century, superseded by what was manufactured in Spain, and is no longer imported or, perhaps, even made.

6. SILK.

The origin and history of silk is learnedly and elaborately discussed in Yates’ “Textrinum Antiquorum.” He gives us his authorities, and literal translations for the benefit of the unlearned, who cannot read the original texts. I have availed myself without hesitation of his quotations, and of the carefully considered opinions he has drawn from them.

It has been already said that wool and flax preceded silk in Egyptian, Greek, and Roman manufactures. There is no certain mention of silk in the Books of the Old Testament.[224] Silk is, however, named in the Code of Manu.[225] No shred of silk has been found in any Egyptian tomb, nor till lately, and with one exception only, in those of the Greeks.

Auberville says, “La soie ne fit son apparition en Europe que 300 ans avant notre Ère.”[226]

Pamphile, daughter of Plates, of Cos, is said by Aristotle to have there first woven silk (300 B.C.). Probably raw silk was brought to Cos from the interior of Asia, and Pamphile is by some supposed to have “effilÈd” the solid manufactured silks, and woven them again into gauzy webs. Yates suggests that it is possible that Pamphile obtained cocoons and unwound them, as the passage in Aristotle may be so interpreted.

The specimen of early silk-weaving which we have above alluded to, was taken out of the “Tomb of the Seven Brothers” at Kertch, in the Crimea, and is of the third century B.C. It consists of several bits of very transparent painted silk. These fragments are an actual and yet a contemporary witness to the truth of the tradition of Pamphile’s Coan webs, which are of the same date: possibly they were her handiwork.

1. Classical Silk. Greek. (Semper’s “Der Stil,” p. 192.) 2. Classical Silk. Roman. (Auberville, pl. 4.)

Whether Pamphile’s silk gauzes were the only fine webs of Cos,[227] is a disputed question. She has the credit of being the first to clothe victorious generals in triumphal garments, and she has been immortalized by her cleverness and industry. Both Aristotle and Pliny assert that she first invented the Coan webs, and that some of them were of silk is undoubted. The question is, How came it there? whence and by what route? and what country was its original home and birthplace?

After stating the pros and cons of the question, how and where did silk first make its appearance, Sir G. Birdwood concludes that both the worm and the cocoon were known to the Greeks and Romans, by report and rare specimens, from the time of Alexander’s return from his Indian campaign.[228]

Of course the remains of these fabrics are extremely scarce; and, in fact, only two are at present known to me besides the Kertch specimen. The first is given in Semper’s “Der Stil,” and is evidently classical Greek or Roman; but the silk material might have been effilÈd from an Oriental stuff (pl. 34, No. 1). The second must have been originally a Roman pattern, modified by the Persian loom in which it was woven. This may have been a Roman triumphal robe of the date of Julius CÆsar (pl. 34, No. 2).

It is clear that Chinese silken stuffs were not generally known in Southern Europe till the time of Julius CÆsar, who displayed a profusion of silks in some of his splendid theatrical representations.

How silk first arrived from the East is disputed; some say it came by the Red Sea, and other authorities believe it was brought from China, vi Persia, by land.

But it is not necessary that it should have entered our civilization by only one gate. The Periplus Maris ErythrÆi makes frequent mention of the trade in silks, through India, by the Indus to the coasts of the Erythrean Sea. They were also brought through Bactria to Barygaza, near Surat, from a city called Thina (China?). The author of the Periplus, of course, refers to some place in the country vaguely called Serica.[229]

That the trade which brought it into Europe was difficult and limited, is proved by the fact that silk continued, even as late as the third century of our era, to be an article of luxury, of which the manufacture and use continued to be the subject of legal enactments and restrictions, for 600 years after Pamphile’s first essay in silk-weaving in Cos.

“The Seres” was the name given by the ancients to the nation which produced silk; and it was undoubtedly that accepted for the distant region now called China, including Corea, and later, the kingdom of Khotan. The first mention of these people as a distinct nation is by Mela (iii. 7), who speaks of them as an “honest people, who bring what they have to sell, and return for their payments.”[230]

The prevailing idea amongst the Greeks was that silk was combed from the trees. Seneca says:—

This was, till lately, believed to be only a fiction, intended to hide the truth and enhance the value of the new Coan material. But it is now ascertained that some of the wild silk in China is carried by the silkworm round the trees, wrapping them up, as it were, in large, untidy cocoons; so that, as usual, tradition had truth for its foundation.

There was always much mysterious report about the new material. Dionysius Periegetes tells of a barbarous people called the Seres, who “renounce the care of sheep and oxen, but who comb the coloured flowers of the desert, and with them produce woven precious stuffs, of which they make figured garments, resembling the flowers of the field in beauty, and in texture the web of the spider.”[232]

There is no doubt that as Egypt was the first to weave linen, and India to produce cotton textiles, so in China originated the material of silk and its manufacture.

M. Terrien de la Couperie, who has deciphered the Archaic books of the Chinese Records, sees there excellent linguistic proofs that the Chinese nation was originally a fragment of the first Babylonian civilization. He there finds that when these Accadians arrived on the furthest eastern coast of Asia, they met with and enslaved an aboriginal race, who already cultivated the silkworm, and wove and worked its produce, and were called by them “the Embroiderers.”[233]

This is supposed to have been an historical event contemporary with the life of Abraham, and, therefore, 5000 years old.

The Chinese say that Tekin or Sin, the son of Japhet, instructed his children in painting, sculpture, and embroidery, and in the art of preparing silk for different woven fabrics.[234]

Whether we are justified or not in believing in so very early a date, at any rate we must remember that it is now ascertained that silk was used in China 2600 years before our era.

Auberville says there is a legend that the Empress Si-ling-chi[235] (2600 B.C.) had the happy inspiration to invent the unwinding of the cocoon before the insect cut the threads; and for this discovery she was placed among the divinities.

Before her time, they had certainly for more than 300 years used the precious material in its mutilated condition.[236]

Some centuries later the Emperor Chan received tribute in linens and silken stuffs. Tissues of many colours were painted or richly embroidered.[237]

In the second century A.D., a prince of Khotan,[238] Kiu-sa-tan-na, was desirous of obtaining from China the eggs of the silkworm, but his request was refused; and it was prohibited that either eggs of the silkworm or seed of mulberry-trees should cross the border.

Then the King of Khotan asked for a Chinese princess in marriage, and this favour being granted, he found means to inform the lady privately that in her future kingdom she would find no silk to weave or work. The dread of such an aimless life roused all her womanly instincts. Defiance of the law, love of smuggling, and the wish to please her husband and benefit her future people, gave her courage to conceal the eggs and seeds in the folds of her dress and the meshes of her beautiful hair, and so she carried a most precious dower into her adopted country.[239] Thus was broken the spell which for more than 3000 years had confined the secret of China within the fence of its wonderful wall; and later on, A.D. 530, the eggs were brought to Byzantium.[240]

From China, therefore, comes our silk.[241] We may say it is traced to the beginning; but how far back had the archÆologist to grope before he could find it!

I transcribe a few more quotations from Yates’ translations and authorities.[242]

In the Hippolytus of Euripides, 383, PhÆdra loquitur:—

Lucan describes the transparent material which veiled Cleopatra’s form:—

Pliny’s account of silk and its manufacture is mostly fanciful, though founded on half-known facts.

The Latin poets of the Augustan age speak of silk attire with other luxurious customs from the East.[243] The Roman senate, in the reign of Tiberius, decreed that only women should wear silk, on account of its effeminacy. Silk was accumulated for the wardrobes of the empresses till A.D. 176, when Marcus Aurelius, “the Philosopher,” sold all the imperial ornaments and the silken robes of his empress by auction in the Forum of Trajan.[244]

We learn that silk was precious and fabulously esteemed to the end of the second century A.D.; but it is seldom mentioned in the third century.

Ælius Lampridius speaks of a silken cord with which to hang himself, as an imperial extravagance on the part of Heliogabalus (and of this only one strand was silk); and he mentions that Alexander Severus rarely allowed himself a dress of silk (holosericum), and only gave away robes of partly silken substance.

Flavius Vopiscus says that Aurelian had no dress wholly of silk (holosericum).[245] His wife begged him to allow her a shawl of purple silk, and he replied, “Far be it from me to permit thread to be reckoned worth its weight in gold!”—for a pound of gold was then worth a pound of silk.

Flavius Vopiscus further states that the Emperor Carinus, however, gave away silken garments, as well as dresses of gold and silver, to Greek artificers, players, wrestlers, and musicians.[246]

Yates gives us a translation of an edict of Diocletian, giving a maximum of prices for articles in common use in the Roman empire. It reads like a tailor’s or a dress-maker’s bill of to-day:—

A monument at Tivoli is erected to the memory of his estimable wife, Valeria Chrysis, by “M. N. Poculus, silk manufacturer.” This was probably an imperial office in the fourth century.[248]

From the first to the sixth centuries, poets and historians continually speak of silk,[249] praising its beauty or blaming it as extravagance or luxury; but according to Yates, all the information we collect from these sources requires to be tested as to accuracy, and is often erroneous.

I have spoken of the first silk-weaving in Cos, 300 B.C. The first arrival of the silkworm in Europe was in the sixth century, 900 years later. Cosmas Indicopleustes and another monk brought eggs from China in the hollow staves they carried in their hands. This was a great event in European commerce. The eggs were solemnly presented to the Emperor Justinian, and the monopoly of their cultivation is to be found in his law-ordaining codex.[250]

The monopoly of the silk manufactures was confined to the area of the imperial palace of Constantinople, but the cultivation of the worm gradually spread over Greece, Asia Minor, and India.

The first allusion to the use of silk in the Christian Church is by Gregory Nazianzen (A.D. 370), “Ad Hellenium pro Monarchis Carmen:” “Silver and gold some bring to God, or the fine thread by Seres spun.”[251] Basil illustrates the idea of the resurrection by the birth of the butterfly from the cocoon.[252]

Paul the Silentiary (A.D. 562) alludes to the frequent use of silk in the priests’ vestments at the Church of St. Sophia at Constantinople.

Bede relates that the first Abbot of Wearmouth went to Rome for the fifth time in A.D. 685, and brought back with him two scarves or palls of incomparable workmanship, and entirely of silk, with which he purchased land of three families at the mouth of the Wear. Bede’s own remains were wrapped in silk.

Auberville gives us, in his “Tissus,” specimens of Roman silks between the first and seventh centuries, but he cannot fix their exact date.[253]

The finest webs of Holosericum from the imperial looms were generally bestowed upon the Church, and thus consecrated, the earliest ascertained specimens that have survived have been preserved; and of these, most have been found in the tombs of saints, bishops, and kings who were buried in priestly as well as in royal garments.[254]

Among the silk and satin fabrics, the tissue called “Imperial” is mentioned by several early English authors. Roger de Wendover and Matthew Paris describe the apparition of King John as clad in “royal robes of Imperial.”[255] William de Magna Villa brought from Greece, in 1170, a stuff called Imperial, “marbled” or variegated, and covered with lions woven in gold.

In the Eastern Empire, this industry after a time fell into the hands of the Jews; and in 1161, Benjamin of Tudela says the city of Thebes contained about 2000 Jewish silk-weavers.

The breeding of the worm in Europe seems to have been confined to Greece from the time of Justinian to the twelfth century; but in 1148, Roger, King of Sicily, brought as prisoners of war, from Corinth, Thebes, and Athens, many silk-weavers, and settled them at Palermo. “Then might be seen Corinthians and Thebans of both sexes, employed in weaving velvet stoles interwoven with gold, and serving like the Eretrians of old among the Persians.”[256]

Hugh Falcandus[257] has left a description of the Royal manufactory at Palermo, and the Hotel de Tiraz which absorbed all the smaller Saracenic factories already started. The Hotel de Tiraz had four great workshops, in which were separately carried on the weaving of plain tissues, velvets, examits and satins, and flowered stuffs (damasks), and lastly, gold brocades and embroideries. It was from the last that proceeded the real works of art, and the embroideries with pearls and precious stones.[258] The highest efforts of the loom were apparently finished with the needle,[259] as in the figured textiles of Egypt.

The continuity of Sicilian textile designs from the sixth to the sixteenth centuries (a thousand years) is very remarkable. Owing to its originally strongly stamped Oriental character, great knowledge of the arts of weaving, spinning, and dyeing silk is required to enable any one to assign an exact date to materials which only remodelled their style three times.

Dr. Rock’s rules for deciphering these three dates may, however, be easily learned, as they are broad and simple. In his comprehensive “Introduction to the Textiles in the Kensington Museum” (p. lxvii) he says that the three defined periods of silk-weaving in Sicily are: First, from the time of Justinian to the Hohenstaufen (from the sixth to the twelfth century); secondly, from the accession of Frederick I. (Barbarossa), 1152, to Charles IV., 1347 (twelfth to fourteenth centuries); the third period is of one century only, from 1347 to 1456.

The first period especially shows African animals, such as the giraffe and the different kinds of antelopes, mixed with Arabian mottoes; and the patterns are generally woven with gold. This is merely gilt parchment, the silk being mingled with cotton.

Peacock Pattern. Silk Wrapping on the body of St. Cuthbert. Durham.

The second period, beginning in the twelfth century, shows the arrival of Count Roger’s Persian and Greek workmen, captives from Thebes, Corinth, and Athens. The fresh designs show fragments of Greek taste, such as masks and foliage, and give one a slight foretaste of the Renaissance.[260]

These semi-classical echoes are contemporary in the Sicilian looms with such Norman motives as a crowned sovereign riding with a hawk upon his wrist.

This description singularly applies to the relics removed from the tomb of St. Cuthbert, at Durham, in 1827; among which are fragments of three wrappings, or garments of silk, so suggestive of the artistic traditions of many nationalities, and the long descent of patterns, recognizable after the lapse of centuries, that a description of them, accompanied by illustrations, can hardly fail to be interesting. They are all now reduced by time to a rich golden brown, though there are indications that blue, green, and red have been woven into their fabric, and there are also on one of them traces of gilding. The first (plate 35) shows Oriental conventional peacocks, double-headed and collared, framed within circles which slightly intersect each other, thus giving the opportunity for varying the original motive by breaking up the rolling arabesqued pattern, and uniting the stems and flowers contained in the border. The spaces between the circles are filled in with gryphons in pairs, of the Babylonian stamp, thick limbed with strongly-marked muscles. There is a border or guimp, Persian in character, in which are small crosses surmounting repetitions of the crenelated pattern found in Assyrian ornament.

The second piece of silk contains a large rosace. Scattered about it are repetitions of the Persian leaf or tree of life, and the border consists of kneeling hares or fawns between a Persian arabesque and a corded line. The mixture of Egyptian and Assyrian styles is remarkable throughout, till we come to the centre of the rosace, where we find a most incongruous man in armour on horseback with a hawk on his wrist, giving the Norman stamp of the reigning house and influence in Sicily. The central subject is exactly repeated on an embroidered twelfth century chasuble in the treasury of the Cathedral of Bamberg, only that a royal crown and robes are worn by the horseman (pl. 36).[261]

The third specimen is the most noteworthy (plate 37). There is nothing of Assyrian here, but it reminds one of Egyptian and Greek art, and at once suggests Count Roger’s Greek slaves at the Sicilian looms, but the design is probably of a much earlier date, and the subject is puzzling. A piece of drapery resembling an Egyptian sail with its fringes[262] (pl. 38) is looped up on each side to the head of a thyrsus, and above it hangs a large cluster of fruits. The lower part of the drapery rests upon water, and is somewhat like a boat, with ducks swimming towards it, and fish disporting themselves in the rippling waves. Between the circles the ducks are repeated, facing a shield enriched with rows of the crenelated pattern surmounted by a vine.

These fragments have belonged each to a very large and freely woven silk shawl or mantle. The circles are about two feet across. There is a different arrangement of the threads in each web, giving different fine diapers, and the last described has a raised pattern which might have been intended to represent water.

Norman and Persian Type.

A Silk Wrapping on the body of St. Cuthbert. Durham.

GrÆco-Egyptian Style.

A Silk Wrapping on the body of St. Cuthbert. Durham.

Boat with coloured sail, from the tomb of Rameses III. at Thebes. (Wilkinson’s “Ancient Egyptians,” iii. p. 211.) Explanatory of the design on St. Cuthbert’s silk shroud, pl. 37. It is most likely that in the twelfth century, or even a little later, the body of St. Cuthbert was wrapped in these shawls, and so left when at the Reformation, his shrine was destroyed, and the coffer containing his remains buried in the same place, and piously concealed till our own day. I shall describe the beautiful embroideries in which the body had been clothed in the tenth century when I come to the subject of English work.

The third period of silk-weaving art is unmistakably Sicilian. At the end of the thirteenth century and beginning of the fourteenth, Palermo struck out her own line. The Greek cross appears in various forms. The designs are of a wonderful richness and capricious ingenuity. They show alike Asiatic, African, and European animals, and every kind of mythological creature—griffins, dragons, dogs, and harts, with large wings; swans, pheasants, and eagles, single or double-headed, often pecking at the sun’s rays; beautifully drawn foliage and flowers, and heraldic emblems and coats-of-arms. One peculiarity of the third period is the frequent use of green patterns on “murrey”-coloured grounds.

All this splendour of design was commonly lavished on poor material. The silks continued to be mixed with cotton, and the gold, or rather the gilding, was so base that it has almost always become black on the foundation strips of parchment or paper.[263] The heraldic silks are mostly of the time of the Crusades, when the distinguished pilgrims and warriors, especially the English, made Sicily their half-way house to the Holy Land, and brought from thence fabrics woven to suit their tastes. In Auberville’s book we find, under the dates of many centuries, the most remarkable fragments now known. On portrait-tombs and in some very ancient pictures are figured beautiful silks woven in gold, which are recognizable at once by their Arab-Sicilian style. Of this type, the remarkable fragment of the dress of Richard II., in the Kensington Museum, dates itself, by carrying the cognizances of his grandfather and his mother, and the portrait of his dog Math.[264]

The last period of the Sicilian silks is especially marked by the inscriptions being mostly nonsense, and only woven in as ornament, with the forms of Arab lettering.[265]

Sir G. Birdwood says that whether the Saracens found the manufacture of silk already established in India or not, they certainly influenced the decorative designs. He adds that kincobs are now woven at Ahmedabad and Benares, identical in design with the old Sicilian brocades; while the Saracenic Sicilian silks abound in patterns which prove their origin in Assyrian, Sassanian, or Indian art.

We know that the Saracens introduced colonies of Persian, and probably Indian workmen into Spain, after the beginning of the ninth century, to assist them in their architecture and textile manufactures, and in return the Mogul emperors of Delhi invited many Italian and French designers into India.

The Taj and other buildings in Rajpootana are decorated with exquisite mosaics coeval with those of Austin of Bordeaux. Their styles of art in textiles, and in other materials, have acted and reacted upon each other; and nothing throws more light on the affinities and the development of the modern decorative arts of Europe than the history of the introduction, under Justinian, of the silk manufactures from the East into the West.[266]

From Palermo, all the stages of the manufacture of silk spread themselves over Italy and into Spain. According to Nicolo Tegrini, the flourishing silk-weavers of Lucca having been ejected from the city in the early part of the fourteenth century, carried their art elsewhere, and even to Germany, France, and Britain.[267]

Italian weavers went to Lyons in 1450, and so started the silk industry that it has steadily increased till now. It gives employment to about 31,000 looms and 240,000 workpeople of both sexes.

The Moors, when they overflowed into Iberia, carried with them all their Orientalisms, traditions, manufactures, and designs; thus disobeying their prophet, who forbade the use of silk except to women. Senhor F. de Riano tells us that from the ninth to the eleventh centuries, Spain was producing fine silk tissues. The Moorish Cordovese writer, Ash-Shakandi, who lived in the beginning of the thirteenth century, says, “Malaga is famous for its manufactures of silks of all colours and patterns, some of which are so rich that a suit made of them will cost many thousands. Such are the brocades with beautiful designs and the names of the Caliphs, Ameers, and other wealthy people woven into them.”[268]

The same author, speaking of the manufactures of silk at Almeria, says that thence came the brightest colours; and Al-Makhari adds a list of precious silk tissues, naming the “Tiraz,” the “Iscalaton,” and the robes called each by its own special name.[269] Ash-Shakandi also mentions the looms of Murcia, and its carpets.[270]

When the Moors were driven from Spain, the silk works of Malaga and Almeria were ruined. But those of Valencia became famous, and flourish to this day. Talavera della Reina also produces fine ecclesiastical fabrics, and at Toledo the ancient traditions are preserved, and they still weave sixteenth-century designs.

In Italy, Genoa, Florence, and Milan followed the Sicilian silk manufactures, and each has left specimens of the craft, of which Rock has pointed out the marked individualities.

The rich stuffs with inscriptions inwoven in gold, in the Middle Ages, were called “literatis.” The designs of Lucca at first imitated the Moorish Sicilian type; and introduced as their speciality, white figures, such as angels in white garments, and exchanged the Oriental intricate patterns for a bolder and simpler style.

Venice, of course, also showed at first the Oriental impress; but she soon struck out a line of her own; and her especial invention was shown in weaving, from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, square pieces of silken tissue, representing sacred subjects.

Florentine tissues, especially their velvet and gold brocades, were particularly splendid, and can be recognized by the loops of gold thread drawn to the surface and left there. Of these early Florentine gold brocades we have still beautiful examples in the palls of our City companies and in ancient ecclesiastical vestments. The loops of gold have been the custom since the thirteenth century, and still prevail in certain traditional fabrics, for instance, in the banners woven annually for the prizes at the horse races in Florence. The Corsini family, who have for many generations and for hundreds of years competed in these races, had, in their princely palace at Rome, a room entirely hung with the silk of these gorgeous banners.

In Hungary, Queen Gisela, in the eleventh century, established looms for weaving silk; and many convents throughout Europe and in England wove silken tissues for the service of the Church, till the great manufactures absorbed these partially private enterprises.[271]

Individual exertion produced copies, or motives that are taken from Eastern, Southern, or Northern inspirations; but it is only in large national schools of arts or crafts that an absolutely recognizable style becomes apparent. For example, the early French silks from monastic establishments are not remarkable for either style or texture till the sixteenth century, when they came to the front as a national manufacture, and have held the highest place in silk-weaving ever since.

The Flemish towns of Ypres, Ghent, and Mechlin were known for their silken webs in the thirteenth century, and at that time innumerable small schools of the craft seem to have covered Europe. They are constantly named in the lists of fine furnishings in Germany. In England, France, and Germany, as well as in the Low Countries, each convent had, besides its silk-weaving looms, its workshops for embroideries on silk, woollens, and linens, borrowing from the Byzantine Empire, Sicily, and Spain, their designs and patterns.

About this time (the thirteenth century), Marco Polo resided and travelled in Asia. He visited the principal cities of Syria, Persia, Khotan, and Cathay, and from him we have information of the different Asiatic textiles, generally bearing the name of the city where they were woven. He names, for instance, the mediÆval “baudas” and “baudakin” (with endless modifications in the spelling), from Baghdad. This afterwards gave the word baldachino to the awning or canopy over the altar, which it retained even when textiles had given place to marbles and mosaics.[272]

Satin is only found named in catalogues about the fourteenth century. But the dalmatic of Charlemagne, at Rome, is embroidered on a stout blue satin, and has never been transferred; and at Constantinople, Baldwin II., at his coronation in 1204, was shod and clothed in vermilion satin embroidered with jewels; while all the Venetian and French barons present were clad in satin.[273] Semper and Bock believe that it had been a Chinese material long before it reached Europe.

Satin was often called “blattin,” in connection with the colour of the cochineal insect (blatta), whose dye was invariably used for satin. We cannot tell, however, which was certainly named from the other.[274]

In the poem of “The Lady of the Fountain,” translated by Lady Charlotte Guest from the Welsh ballads of the thirteenth century, silk and satin are often named. At the opening of the poem, King Arthur is described seated on a throne of rushes, covered with a flame-coloured satin cloth, and with a red satin cushion under his elbow.

Fiery red was the orthodox colour for satin. In old German poems we find it described as “pfellat,” always as being fiery. One kind of pfellat was called salamander.[275] Bruges satins were the most esteemed in the Middle Ages. Chaucer speaks of “satin riche and newe.”[276]

Satin and velvet are the contrasting silken materials. In satin the threads are laid along so that the shining surface ripples with every ray of sunshine, and the shadows are melted into half-lights by the reflections from every fold. It makes a dazzling garment, splendid in its radiant sheen; whereas in velvet, where each thread is placed upright and shorn smoothly, all light is absorbed and there are no reflections, and the whole effects are solemn, rich, and deep.[277] Some of the oldest velvets resemble plush in the length of their pile, and have not the dignity of velvet.

Semper, from the different derivations that have been suggested, selects the connection of the word “velvet” (German, Felbert) with “welf,” the skin or fur of an animal.[278]

Among the gifts to Charlemagne (ninth century) from Haroun el Raschid were velvets; and the earliest existing specimen we know of is named by Bock as being in the Pergament Codex at Le Puy, in VendÔme, where, amongst other curious interleaved specimens of weaving, is a fine piece of shorn silk velvet.[279]

Marco Polo, in the thirteenth century, frequently speaks of velvet as an Asiatic fabric. It is first known as a European textile in Lucca, about 1295, and we may therefore say that it was imported from the East.[280]

In the next chapter on colour I have noticed the curious fact that the word purple was sometimes used to mean colour, and sometimes to express the texture of velvet, thus confounding the two; but I have also pointed out that it had other meanings, and had become a very comprehensive word for everything that expressed richness and warmth. While examining and judging embroideries, we must be careful not to be deceived by the different dates often occurring in the grounding and the applied materials. Much embroidery was worked on fabrics that were already old and even worn out; and others have been transferred centuries ago, and perhaps more than once, to fresh grounds.[281]

This sometimes causes a good deal of difficulty in dating specimens. One should begin by ascertaining whether the needlework was originally intended to be cut out (opus consutum), and so laid on a ground of another material, and worked down and finished there.

Of course it is always evident and easily ascertained, whether the work has been transferred at all. If so—and from each succeeding transference—small fragments may be found showing on the cut edges. You will often see remains of two or more of these layers, reminding you of the three Trojan cities dug up at different depths under each other at Hissarlik.

In judging each specimen the acumen of the expert is needed to obtain a correct opinion, and he should not only be an archÆologist, but a botanist and a herald besides;[282] and, in fact, no kind of knowledge is useless in deciphering the secrets of human art. But even when so armed, he is often checked and puzzled by some accidental caprice of design or mode of weaving, and after wasting trouble and time, has to cast it aside as defying classification.

It is, however, as well to note these exceptions, as, when compared, they sometimes explain each other.

What I have said regards, of course, the historical and archÆological side of the study of textiles, and I have treated of them as being either the origin or the imitations of different styles of embroidery, and so inseparably connected with the art which is the subject and motive of this book; and not only in this does the connection between them exist, but in the fact that as embroideries always need a ground, silken and other textiles are an absolute necessity to their existence.

For these reasons alone I have given this chapter on materials, short and imperfect, but suggesting further research into the writings of the authors I have quoted, and, I hope, exciting the interest of the reader.

[130] Periplus of the Erythrean Sea.