CHAPTER IV.

MATERIALS.

1. RAW MATERIALS.

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).

[Illustration: 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

Phœnicians 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 Phœnicians 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 Phœnicians 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]--

"The joyful mother plies her knowing hands,

And works on all the trabea golden bands;

Draws the thin strips to all the length of gold,

_To make the metal meaner threads enfold_."

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.

[Illustration: 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]

[Illustration: Pl. 33.

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.

[Illustration: Pl. 34.

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,

_viâ_ 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:--

"Nor with Mæonian needle mark the web,

Gathered by Eastern Seres from the trees."

Seneca the Tragedian, "Herc. Ætæus," 644.[231]

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_:--

"Remove, ye maids, the vests whose tissue glares

With purple and with gold; far be the red

Of Syrian murex; this the shining thread

Which furthest Seres gathers from the boughs."

Lucan describes the transparent material which veiled Cleopatra's

form:--

"Her snowy breast shines through Sidonian threads,

First by the comb of distant Seres struck;

Divided then by Egypt's skilful hand,

And with embroidery transparent made."

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:--

DENARII.

To the tailor, for lining a fine vest 6

To the same, for an opening of an edging of silk 50

To the same, for an opening and an edging of a mixed

tissue of silk and flax 30

For an edging of a coarser vest 4[247]

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.

[Illustration: Pl. 35.

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.

[Illustration: Pl. 36.

NORMAN AND PERSIAN TYPE.

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

[Illustration: Pl. 37.

GRÆCO-EGYPTIAN STYLE.

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

[Illustration: Pl. 38.

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.

FOOTNOTES:

[130] Periplus of the Erythrean Sea.

[131] It is described by Yates as having the appearance

of a flat ribbon, with the edges thickened like a hem.

[132] This rough bark is probably the reason that it

absorbs colour into its substance (perhaps under the

scales); and it may also account for its being capable

of felting.

[133] It may be laid down as a fundamental rule in

technical style, that the product shall preserve the

peculiar characteristics of the raw material.

Unfortunately, the artist is often ignorant of the

qualities of the fabric for which he is designing, and

the workman who has to carry it out is a mechanic, in

these days, instead of a craftsman.

[134] Molochinus, or malva silvestris (wild hemp),

Yates, pp. 292-317, is sometimes spoken of as a mallow,

sometimes as a nettle. In the Vocabulary of Papias (A.D.

1050) it is said that the cloth called molocina is made

from thread of mallow, and used for dress in Egypt.

Garments of molochinus were brought from India,

according to the Periplus (see Pliny, 146, 166, 170,

171). It was seldom used by the ancients, but both

Greeks and Romans made it serve for mats and ropes. The

Thracians wove of it garments and sheets. It is not

named in the Scriptures.

[135] See Gibbs' "British Honduras."

[136] Spartum was a rush. Pliny says it was used for the

rigging of ships.

[137] The bark of trees such as the Hybiscus Tiliaceus,

and that of the Birch (see Yates, p. 305-6). Birch bark

was embroidered, till latterly, by the Indian women in

North America with porcupines' quills. Pigafetta says

(writing in the sixteenth century) that in the kingdom

of Congo many different kinds of stuff were manufactured

from the palm-tree fibre. He instances cloths on which

patterns were wrought, and likewise a material

resembling "velvet on both sides."

[138] "Camoca" or caman in the Middle Ages is supposed

to have been of camels' hair, mixed with silk. Edward

the Black Prince left to his confessor his bed of red

caman, with his arms embroidered on each corner. Rock

(p. xliv) gives us information about the tents and

garments of camels' hair found throughout the East,

wherever the camel flourishes and has a fine hairy

winter coat, which it sheds in the heat. The coarser

parts are used for common purposes, and the finest serve

for beautiful fabrics, especially shawls. Marco Polo

tells of beautiful camelots manufactured from the hair

of camels; and of the Egyptian coarse and very fine

fabrics woven of the same materials.

[139] "Le Chevalier à Deux Epées" (quoted by Dr. Rock),

and Lady Wilton, "Art of Needlework," p. 128.

[140] See p. 359, _post_, for Boadicea's dress.

[141] See Mr. Villiers Stuart's "Funeral Tent of an

Egyptian Queen."

[142] The Moors in Spain excelled in leather-work and

embroidery upon it; and Marco Polo describes the

beautiful productions of the province of Guzerat, of

leather inlaid and embroidered with gold and silver

wire. Yule's "Marco Polo," p. 383.

[143] See chapter on Stitches.

[144] See Chardin, vol. i. p. 31.

[145] Tin, called "laton," was used to debase the metal

threads in the Middle Ages. It is also named as a

legitimate material for metal embroideries.

[146] For all information about asbestos, see Yates, pp.

356, 565.

[147] There is one at the Barberini Palace at Rome. A

sheet, woven of asbestos, found in a tomb outside the

Porta Maggiore, is described by Sir J. E. Smith in his

"Tour on the Continent" (vol. ii. p. 201) as being

coarsely spun, but as soft and pliant as silk. "We set

fire to it, and the same part being repeatedly burnt,

was not at all injured."

[148] See Yule's "Marco Polo," vol. i. pp. 215, 218, and

Yates, p. 361.

[149] There are specimens of bead-work pictures at St.

Stephen's at Coire, in the Marien-Kirche at Dantzic, and

elsewhere. See Rock, p. cv. This is, in fact, mosaic in

textiles, without cement.

[150] Witness the stone whorls for the spindles in our

prehistoric barrows, and the "heaps" of the lake cities.

[151] Yates, "Textrinum Antiquorum," p. 129.

[152] An Egyptian Dynasty called themselves the Shepherd

Kings.

[153] Yates gives endless quotations to show how ancient

and how honourable an occupation was that of tending

sheep.

[154] Semper, i. p. 139. The cover of the bed on which

was laid the golden coffin in the tomb of Cyrus was of

Babylonian tapestry of wool; the carpet beneath it was

woven of the finest wrought purple. Plautus mentions

Babylonian hangings and embroidered tapestries. See

Birdwood's "Indian Arts," i. p. 286.

[155] Joshua vii.

[156] Ezekiel xxvii. 22.

[157] Semper, "Der Stil," i. p. 138.

[158] Yates, pp. 79, 91, 93, 99, 102, 445. Lanæ Albæ.

"The first, Apulia's; next is Parma's boast;

And the third fleece Altinum has engrossed."

Martial, xiv. Ep. 155.

Martial also speaks of the matchless Tarentine togæ, a

present from Parthenius:--

"With thee the lily and the privet pale

Compared, and Tibur's whitest ivory fail;

The Spartan swan, the Paphian doves deplore

Their hue, and pearls on the Erythrean shore."

Martial, viii. Ep. 28.

[159] The sheep of Tarentum, from the days of the Greek

colonists, were famed, as they are still, for the warm

brown tints on their black wool. Pliny says that this is

caused by the weed _fumio_, on which they browsed.

Swinburne says, in his "Travels in the Two Sicilies,"

that there the wool is so tinged by the plant now called

_fumolo_, which grows on the coast.

[160] See Blümner's "Technologie," p. 92; also "Comptes

Rendus de la Commission Impériale Archéologique" of St.

Petersburg, 1881; also the Catalogue Raisonnée of Herr

Graf'schen's Egyptian Collection of Textiles at Vienna.

[161] See Pliny's "Natural History," viii. 74, § 191.

Tanaquil is credited with the first invention of the

seamless coat or cassock.

[162] The Gauls in Britain wove plaids or tartans. See

Rock, p. xii; Blümner, pp. 152-54; Birdwood, p. 286.

[163] Pliny, "Natural History," book viii., 73, 74.

[164] "Georgics," iv. 334; Yates, p. 35.

[165] "Comptes Rendus de la Commission Impériale

Archéologique," St. Petersburg, 1881. Much of this

Gobelin weaving has lately been found in Egypt. See

"Katalog der Teodor Graf'schen Fünde in Ægypten," von

Dr. J. Karabacek.

[166] Semper considers that the famous Babylonian and

Phrygian stuffs were all woollen, and that gold was

woven or embroidered on them. See "Der Stil," i. p. 138.

[167] Worcester cloth was forbidden to the Benedictines

by a Chapter of that Order at Westminster Abbey in 1422,

as being fine enough for soldiers, and therefore too

good for monks. See Rock's Introduction, p. lxxviii.

[168] Both these fabrics are represented in Egyptian and

Greek fragments, and are equally well preserved.

[169] Boyd Dawkins, "Early Man in Britain," pp. 268,

275.

[170] See Wilkinson, "Ancient Egyptians," vol. iii. p.

116; Yates, p. 23.

[171] It appears that the art of printing textiles was

known in Egypt in the time of Pliny. See Yates, p. 272,

quoting Apuleius, Met. l. xi.; also see Wilkinson,

"Ancient Egyptians," vol. ii. p. 196, pl. xii.

[172] See Yates, "Textrinum Antiquorum," pp. 268, 335;

Herodotus, ii. 86. Herodotus and Strabo speak of

Babylonian linen, cited by Yates, p. 281.

[173] "Textrinum Antiquorum," pp. 267-80. A peculiarity

of Egyptian linen is that it was often woven with more

threads in the warp than in the woof. A specimen in the

Indian Museum, South Kensington, shows in its delicate

texture 140 threads in the inch to the warp, and 64 to

the woof. Another piece of fine linen has 270 to the

warp, and 110 to the woof. Generally there are twice or

three times as many threads, but sometimes even four

times the number. Wilkinson gives a probable reason for

this peculiarity. See Wilkinson's "Ancient Egyptians,"

vol. i. chap. ix. pp. 121-226. See Rock's Introduction,

p. xiv.

[174] De Somniis, vol. i. p. 653. Yates, p. 271.

[175] Philo, cited by Yates, p. 271.

[176] Paulinus ad Cytherium, cited by Yates, p. 273.

[177] Herodotus, l. ii. c. 182, l. iii. c. 47.

Rawlinson's Trans.

[178] Proverbs vii. 16.

[179] Yates, p. 291. Denon describes a tunic found in a

sarcophagus, which he examined, and says: "The weaving

was extremely loose, of thread as fine as a hair, of two

strands of twisted flax fibre."--Auberville's "Ornement

des Tissus," p. 4. Some marvellously fine specimens of

such cambric may be seen at the South Kensington Museum

and the British Museum.

[180] Not that we have any remains of flax linen from

their tombs.

[181] It was carried thence, at a prehistoric date, to

Assyria and Egypt.

[182] There is no proof that it was grown in Egypt till

the fourteenth century A.D., when it is mentioned for

the first time in a MS. of that date of the "Codex

Antwerpianus." See Yates, Appendix E, p. 470.

[183] Birdwood, p. 241.

[184] Puggaree. Yates says that cotton has always been

supposed to be the best preserver against sunstroke, p.

341.

[185] _Carpas_, the proper Oriental name for cotton, is

found in the same sense in the Sanskrit, Arabic, and

Persian languages. Yates, p. 341.

[186] In the Æneid, the garment of Chloreus the Phrygian

is thus described:--

"His saffron chlamys, and each rustling fold

Of muslin (_carpas_), was confined with glittering gold."

Æneid, xi. 775.

[187] Dakka muslins are the most esteemed. Their poetic

names, "running water," "woven air," "evening dew," are

more descriptive than pages of prose. See Birdwood, ii.

p. 259.

[188] Chintzes, calicoes, fine cloths, and strong

tent-cloths, cotton carpets, &c., &c. Forbes Watson

classifies the calicoes as being white, bleached and

unbleached, striped, &c., printed chintzes, or

pintadoes. See Birdwood, p. 260.

[189] For Buckram and Fustian, see Rock, pp. lxxxv,

lxxxvi. In Lady Burgeweny's (Abergavenny) will, 1434,

she leaves as part of the furnishings of her bed "of

gold of swan," two pairs of sheets of Raine (Rennes),

and a pair of fustian. Anne Boleyn's list of clothes

contains "Bokerams, for lining and taynting," gowns,

sleeves, cloaks, and beds. Rock, lxxxvi. Renouard, in

his "Romaunce Dictionary," quotes the following: "Vestæ

de Polpia e de Bisso qui est bacaram." For the antiquity

of this fabric, see Herr Graf'schen's Catalogue of

Textiles from the Fayoum.

[190] See Yates, p. 300, citing "Herod's silver

apparel."

[191] "Indian Arts," ii. p. 237.

[192] Rock, p. xxv. Yates (p. 3) says they cut their

gold for wearing apparel into thin plates, and did not

draw it into wire, as it is translated in the Vulgate

(Exodus xxxix.). The ephod made by Bezaleel was of fine

linen, gold, violet, purple, and scarlet, twice dyed,

with embroidered work. This tradition must have guided

the artist who designed the ephod in the National Museum

at Munich, in the seventeenth century, for a prince

boy-bishop.

[193] Quintus Curtius says that many thousands, clothed

in these costly materials, crowded out of Damascus to

meet Alexander.

[194] There is a very ancient local tradition at Shŭsh,

that A.D. 640, in the reign of the Kaliph Omar, the body

of the prophet Daniel was found, wrapped in cloth of

gold, in a stone coffin; and, by order of the victorious

general, it was placed in one of glass, and moored to

the bridge which spanned the branch of the Euphrates

flowing between the two halves of the city, so that the

waters flowed over it. See "Chaldea and Susiana," by

Loftus, and Sir G. W. Gore Ouseley's translation of a

Persian version of "The Book of Victories." Alexander is

said to have been buried in a glass coffin. (See

Wilkinson's "Ancient Egyptians," ii. p. 102, note †.)

[195] Yates, pp. 367-70; Rock, p. xxvi.

[196] "Aura intexere eadem Asiâ invenit Attalus Rex unde

nomen Attalicis."--Pliny, viii. c. 48, and Yates, p.

371. The reign of Attalus II. was B.C. 159-188.

[197] "And they did beat the gold into plates, and cut

it into wires, and work it into the blue, and the

purple, and the fine linen."--Exod. xxxix.

[198] See Yates, p. 371; and Bock, xxxiii.

[199] Pliny, xxxiii. In the Museum at Leyden there is a

shred of gold cloth found in a tomb at Tarquinia, in

Etruria. This is a compactly woven covering over bright

yellow silk.

[200] Gold wire is still worked through leather at

Guzerat. See Birdwood, p. 284, Ed. 1880. Marco Polo

mentions this embroidery 600 years ago. Bk. iii. chap.

xxvi. (Yule). The hunting cuirass of Assurbanipal (pl.

1) appears to be so worked, and of such materials. Also

see Wilkinson, "Ancient Egyptians," vol. iii. p. 130.

This gold for weaving was beaten into shape with

hammers.

[201] Pope Eutichinus, in the third century, buried many

martyrs in golden robes.

[202] "Liber Pontificalis," t. ii. p. 332.

[203] See Rock, pp. xxvii, xxxv; and Parker's "Use of

the Levitical Colours," p. 49.

[204] See Yates, p. 376.

[205] Rock, p. xxxv. The toga picta, or trabea, part of

the official dress of her sons.

[206] Hoveden's "Annal." p. 481, Ed. Savile; Rock, p.

xxx.

[207] See "Archæologia," 1880, pp. 317, 322; also Pl.

74, No. 20 (_post_).

[208] Bock, "L. Gewänder," taf. ix. vol. i.

[209] Rock, p. xxxvii.

[210] Ciclatoun, according to Rock, p. xxxix, is a

common Persian name for such tissues in the East. This,

in common with nasick, nak, and many other beautiful

tissues, was wrought in gold with figures of birds and

beasts.--Yule's "Marco Polo," ed. 1875, i. p. 65.

Dr. Rock quotes the old ballad,--

"In a robe right royall bowne,

Of a red ciclatoune,

Be her fader's syde;

A coronall on her hede sett,

Her clothes with byrdes of gold were bette

All about for pryde."

[211] In St. Paul's in London there was formerly an

amice adorned with the figures of two bishops and a

king, hammered out of silver, and gilt. Dugdale, ed.

1818, p. 318. See also Rock, pp. xxix-xxxii.

[212] Museum at Berne.

[213] A piece of Venetian work to be seen at the South

Kensington Museum is an altar frontal, worked in coral,

gold beads, seed pearls, and spangles. All jewellers'

work, including enamel, was much admired and introduced

into their embroideries. (See Rock's Introduction to

Catalogue of the Kensington Museum, pp. civ-cviii, ed.

1870.)

[214] On this gorgeous piece of Italian art there are

added a number of buttons (for we can give them no other

name), with crosses and hearts under crystal, which seem

to have belonged to another period and workmanship, or

else are to be attributed to a superstitious feeling on

the part of the maker, who placed these Christian signs,

perhaps, surreptitiously, and for the good of his own

soul.

[215] The Museum of National Art at Munich has a fine

collection of gold and silver, spangled, and black bead

head-dresses, now mostly antiquated, though in peasant

dress it yet survives.

[216] It is embroidered in gold, with red silk and gems;

and I have elsewhere said that it probably issued from

the Hotel de Tiraz at Messina.

[217] Terry, in his "Voyage to the East Indies," speaks

of the rich carpets (p. 128): "The ground of some of

these is silver or gold, about which such arabesques in

flowers and figures as I have before named are most

excellently disposed."

[218] These of late years have been the most gorgeous

objects at exhibitions of old needlework, and the

ambition and despair of collectors.

[219] Gold thread was also made of gilt paper, equally

by the Moors and the Japanese.

[220] In Aikin's "Life of James I.," p. 205, we have a

curious account of the monopoly of gold thread, that had

been granted, with others, to George Villiers, Duke of

Buckingham. The thread was so scandalously debased with

copper as to corrode the hands of the artificers, and

even the flesh of those who wore it. This adulterated

article they sold at an exorbitant price, and if they

detected any one making a cheaper or better article,

they were empowered to fine or imprison them, while a

clause in their patent protected themselves. The

manufacturers of this base metal thread were two

Frenchmen, Mompesson and Michel, and Edward Villiers,

the Marquis' brother, was one of the firm. Doubtless

they drove for a time a roaring trade, as gold

embroideries were then universally worn, both by men and

women; but the House of Commons interfered, and the

monopoly was abolished.

[221] Mitre of white satin, with two figure subjects in

flat gold--the martyrdom of St. Stephen, and that of St.

Thomas of Canterbury.

[222] The School of Gold Embroidery at Munich produces

work of a richness and precision which has, perhaps,

never been excelled. The raised parts of the design are

first cast in soft hollow "carton," and the gold is

worked on it and into the recesses with the help of a

fine stiletto, which pioneers the needle for each

stitch. This is embroidery "on the stamp," but without

padding.

[223] Bock, "L. Gewänder," vol. i. p. 48. Prizes are

offered at Lyons for the best mode of manufacturing gold

and silver thread that will not tarnish.

[224] Yates says, pp. 160-162: "Whether silk was

mentioned in the Old Testament cannot, perhaps, be

determined. After fully considering the subject,

Braunius decides against silk being known to the Hebrews

in ancient times ('De Vestitu Heb. Sacerdotum,' i. c.

viii.)." The contrary opinion is founded on the passage,

"I clothed thee with broidered work, and shod thee with

badger-skins. I girded thee about with fine linen, and

covered thee with silk" (_meshi_).--Ezekiel xvi. But the

translation is disputed.

[225] "Code of Manu," xi. 168; xii. 64. Yates,

"Textrinum Antiquorum," p. 204.

[226] Auberville, "Ornement des Tissus," p. ii.

[227] Yates (pp. 173, 174) believes that "Cos" should

always be read for Cios, about which there seems to be

some confusion. Chios has also been substituted for the

name of "Cos," the island.

There is no doubt that the Roman ladies obtained their

most splendid garments from Cos--perhaps of wool as well

as of silk.

[228] Birdwood, "Textile Arts of India," ii. p. 269.

[229] Yates, "Textrinum Antiquorum," p. 204.

[230] Yates, "Textrinum Antiquorum," note (*), p. 184.

Aristotle (fourth century B.C.), however, had already

given evidence respecting the use of silk, which was

adopted and repeated by Pliny, Clemens Alexandrinus, and

Basil. Aristotle tells the story of Pamphile. One

thousand years later Procopius (sixth century A.D.) says

the raw material was then brought from the East, and

woven in the Phœnician cities of Tyre and Berytus.

See Yates, pp. 163, 164.

[231] Ibid., note (*), p. 184.

[232] Yates, "Textrinum Antiquorum," p. 181.

[233] I have mentioned this already, to prove the

antiquity of the art of embroidery. Here I repeat it in

reference to the first mention of silk. (See p. 38

_ante_.)

[234] "Bibliothèque Orientale de M. Herbelot," ed. 1778,

vol. iii. p. 19.

[235] Auberville, p. 2; Yates (pp. 172, 173) calls her

Si-ling, wife of Hoang-ti, and quotes the "Resumé des

Principaux Tractes Chinois," traduits par Stanislas

Julien, 1837, pp. 67, 68.

[236] Auberville, "Histoire des Tissus," pp. 2-4; "Du

Halde," vol. ii. pp. 355, 356 (8vo edition, London,

1736).

[237] Related by Klaproth, the Russian Orientalist.

[238] Yates, p. 238. "History of Khotan," translated by

M. Abel Rémusat, pp. 55, 56.

[239] Khotan or Little Bucharia would, in common

parlance, be included in Serica; and therefore silk

exported thence to Europe would have been perfectly

described as coming from the Seres. Yates, p. 231, 232.

[240] Yates, p. 231.

[241] While in Europe the arts of daily use and

decoration were struggling for life after many

interruptions and revolutions, the civilization of

Japan, which is nearly contemporary with Christianity,

spent itself in perfecting to the most exquisite finish

the arts which had been imported from China and Corea.

Japan also inherited the power and the tradition of

concealment, and so Europe remained unconscious, until

the last century, of the miraculous arts which a

semi-barbarous people were cultivating--_not_ for

commercial purposes. Auberville, "Tissus," pp. 2-4.

[242] Yates, pp. 175-184.

[243] Yates, p. 176. The silken flags attached to the

gilt standards of the Parthians inflamed the cupidity of

the army of Crassus. The conflict between them took

place 54 B.C. About thirty years after this date, Roman

luxury had reached its zenith--

"The insatiate Roman spreads his conquering arm

O'er land and sea, where'er heaven's light extends."

"Petronius Arbiter," c. cxix.

After these words he says that among the richest

productions of distant climes, the Seres sent their "new

fleeces."

[244] Yates, p. 183.

[245] "Holosericum," whole silk; "subsericum," partly

cotton, hemp, or flax. The longitudinal threads or warp,

cotton; the cross threads, silk. Rock, "Textile

Fabrics," p. xxxvii (ed. 1870).

[246] Yates, p. 195.

[247] Yates, p. 198. For the value of the denarius, see

Waddington, "Edit. de Diocletien," p. 3.

[248] Gruter, tom. iii. p. 645; Yates, p. 205.

[249] Yates, p. 246. The words "silk" and "satin" are

spoken of by Yates as having two derivations--the one

imported to us through Greece and Italy, the other from

Eastern Asia, through Slavonia, by the north of Europe.

[250] Yates, p. 231; who remarks, p. 203, that the laws

of Justinian are not directed against the use of silk as

a luxury, but rather as appropriating it as an imperial

monopoly and source of revenue.

[251] Tom. ii. p. 106 (ed. 1630). See Yates, p. 213.

[252] Yates, p. 214.

[253] Auberville, Plate 4. Amongst these are what he

calls "Consular silks." These are, or may be, included

in the palmated class, as they are evidently woven for

triumphal occasions. One of the most remarkable has

every mark of Oriental design. It represents a picture

in a circle, repeated over and over again, of a warrior

in his quadriga. Black or coloured slaves drive the

horses, either running beside them or standing upon

them; and other slaves carry beasts on their shoulders,

and are stooping to give them drink at a trough. The

space between the circles is filled in with the tree of

life, growing out of its two horns. The colours are

purple and gold. He places this between the first and

seventh centuries (see pl. 34).

[254] There are, however, a few that have not had the

security of the tomb, and yet have survived, such as the

chasuble and maniple at Bayeux, of the seventh century,

and Charlemagne's dalmatic.

[255] Roger de Wendover, "Chronica," t. iv. p. 127, ed.

Coxe. Quoted by Rock from Ralph, Dean of St. Paul's. See

Rock, Introduction, p. lv.

[256] Roger de Wendover, "Chronica," t. iv., ed. Coxe;

also Yates, "Textrinum Antiquorum," pp. 243, 244.

[257] In the twelfth century. Semper, i. p. 38.

[258] See illustration from the portrait of Sultan

Mahomet II., by Gentil Bellini. _Ante_, p. 146, Plate

33.

[259] See Semper, p. 157.

[260] The Sicilian type of design in silk-weaving was

carried into Germany about the end of the second period.

We are informed by Auberville that there existed at that

time a manufacture of ecclesiastical stuffs at Leipzig,

from which he gives us fine examples.

[261] See Bock's "Liturgische Gewänder," vol. ii. Taf.

xxxiii. The pattern is twelfth century "metal work,"

embroidered in gold.

[262] See Wilkinson's "Ancient Egyptians," iii., pl.

xvi.; v., pl. xxxiv. In general, a scarf floats from the

prow or from the oars.

[263] The Crusaders carried away splendid booty from the

towns they took and ransacked. As it was the great

gathering-place of all Eastern and Western nations,

Jerusalem was a mart for rich merchandise from Persia,

Arabia, Syria, and Phœnicia, till the times of the

Latin kings. Antioch, as well as Jerusalem, yielded the

richest plunder. Matthew Paris (a contemporary

historian), speaking of what was taken at Antioch, 1098,

says, "At the division of costly vessels, crosses,

weavings, and silken stuffs, every beggar in the

crusading army was enriched." Alexandria, as early as

the middle of the sixth century, A.D., had been the

depôt for the silken stuffs of Libya and Morocco. Here

is a wide area opened to us for suggestions as to the

origin and traditions of patterns in silk textile art.

See Bock's "Liturgische Gewänder," vol. i. pp. 29, 30.

[264] Rock, Introduction, p. ccxlviii, and p. 268, No.

8710.

[265] The weaving of inscriptions in textiles is not a

Saracenic invention. Pliny says it was a custom among

the Parthians. See Rock's "Textile Fabrics," p. lxi.

"In allusion to lettered garments, Ausonius thus

celebrates Sabina, of whom we otherwise know nothing:--

"'They who both webs and verses weave,

The first to thee, oh chaste Minerva, leave;

The latter to the Muses they devote.

To me, Sabina, it appears a sin

To separate two things so near akin;

So I have writ these verses on my coat.'"

See Lady Wilton on "Needlework," p. 53.

[266] Birdwood, "Indian Arts," p. 274.

[267] Yates, "Textrinum Antiquorum," p. 244; Tegrini,

"Vita Castruccii," in Muratore, "Ital. Script.," t. xi.

p. 1320.

[268] Riano, "Cat. of Loan Exhibition of Spanish Art in

South Kensington Museum," 1882, p. 46.

[269] In Hoveden's account of the fleet of Richard I.

coasting the shores of Spain, he speaks of the delicate

and valuable textures of the silks of Almeria. Rog.

Hoveden, Ann., ed. Savile, p. 382. Rock, p. xx.

[270] Bock, pp. 39, 40, quotes from Anastasius and the

Abbot of Fontenelle, proving that silken rugs were

manufactured in Spain by the Moors.

[271] Auberville, "Histoire des Tissus," p. 14.

[272] Yule's "Marco Polo," p. 224. "Baudakin" from

Baghdad, "damask" from Damascus. "Baudakin" was woven

with beasts, birds, and flowers in gold.

[273] "Récit de Robert Clari." He was one of the

companions of Ville d'Hardouin, and a witness to the

coronation of Baldwin II. See Auberville's "Histoire des

Tissus," p. 21.

[274] Satin is called by Marco Polo "zettani," and he

says it came from Syria. The French called it "zatony;"

the Spaniards named it "aceytuni," which is probably

derived from "zaituniah," the product of Zaiton. Yates

(p. 246) gives the derivations of the words satin and

silk; the one imported to us through Greece and Italy,

the other from Eastern Asia, through Slavonia and

Northern Europe.

[275] Ibid. In the Wigalois, a story is told of a cavern

in Asia full of everlasting flames, where costly fellat

was made by the Salamanders, which was fireproof and

indestructible.

[276] "Man of Lawe's Tale: Canterbury Pilgrims."

[277] "Ohitos terciopelos" (three-piled-velvet eyes) is

a pretty Spanish phrase, describing the soft, dark,

shadowy eyes of the Spanish girls.

[278] The Italian word _velluto_ means "shaggy."

[279] Bock, i. pp. 99-101.

[280] Buckram was sometimes a silken plush, but

generally was woven with cotton. This was also Asiatic,

and named by travellers of the twelfth and thirteenth

centuries. I have already mentioned it as a textile in

the chapter on cotton. When woven of silk it belongs to

the class of velvets.

[281] Elsewhere I have spoken of the embroideries of the

early Christian times found in the Fayoum, in Egypt.

These afford notable examples of the ancient method in

putting in patches on a worn or frayed garment. They

invariably embroidered them, and so added a grace to the

old and honoured vestment, and justified the classical

appellation, "Healer of clothes" for a darner. The

comparatively modern additions of the restorer, are in

ancient as in later specimens, often a puzzle to the

archæologist.

[282] The specimens in the South Kensington Museum,

where Dr. Rock gives their approximate dates, are most

useful to the student of this subject.