Transcriber’s Note: The Table of Contents was added by the Transcriber.
SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM ART HANDBOOKS.
EDITED BY WILLIAM MASKELL.
NO. 1.--TEXTILE FABRICS.
_These Handbooks are reprints of the prefaces or introductions to the
large catalogues of the chief divisions of works of art in the Museum
at South Kensington; arranged and so far abridged as to bring each into
a portable shape. The Lords of the Committee of Council on Education
having determined on the publication of them, the editor trusts that
they will meet the purpose intended; namely, to be useful, not alone
for the collections at South Kensington but for other collections, by
enabling the public at a trifling cost to understand something of the
history and character of the subjects treated of._
_The authorities referred to by the authors will be found named in the
large catalogues; where are also given detailed descriptions of the
very numerous examples in the South Kensington Museum._
TEXTILE FABRICS.
BY
THE VERY REV. DANIEL ROCK, D.D.
WITH NUMEROUS WOODCUTS.
[Illustration]
_Published for the Committee of Council on Education_
BY
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.
1876.
PRINTED BY TAYLOR AND CO.,
LITTLE QUEEN STREET, LINCOLN’S INN FIELDS.
CONTENTS
Page
CHAPTER I 1
CHAPTER II 7
CHAPTER III 14
CHAPTER IV 24
CHAPTER V 35
CHAPTER VI 49
CHAPTER VII 70
CHAPTER VIII 78
CHAPTER IX 88
CHAPTER X 95
CHAPTER XI 104
INDEX 113
LIST OF WOODCUTS.
Page
Indian woman reeling silk 13
Ladies in fifteenth century spinning and weaving 34
Mortuary cloth 44
Silk damask with imitated Arabic letters 46
Ladies in fourteenth century carding and spinning 48
Byzantine Dalmatic 51
Sicilian silk damask 57
Florentine silk damask 62
Part of the Syon Cope 84
Embroidered saddle-cloth 87
Ancient banner of the city of Strasburg 91
Embroidered hangings of a bed 94
Banner of the tapestry workers of Lyons 97
Tapestry of the fourteenth century 98
The weaver, in 1574 100
Tapestry of the fifteenth century 102
State gloves of Louis the thirteenth 112
TEXTILES.
CHAPTER I.
Under its widest acceptation the word “textile” means every kind of
stuff, no matter its material, wrought in the loom. Whether, therefore,
the threads are spun from the produce of the animal, vegetable, or
mineral kingdom; whether of sheep’s wool, goats’ hair, camels’ wool,
or camels’ hair; whether of flax, hemp, mallow, or the filaments drawn
out of the leaves of plants of the lily and asphodel tribes of flowers,
or the fibrous coating about pods, or cotton; whether of gold, silver,
or of any other metal; the webs from all such materials are textiles.
Unlike these are other appliances for garment-making in many countries;
and of such materials not the least curious, if not odd to our ideas,
is paper, which is so much employed for the purpose by the Japanese.
A careful reference to a map of the world will show us the materials
which from the earliest ages the inhabitants of the world had at hand,
in every clime, for making articles of dress.
In all the colder regions the well-furred skins of several families
of beasts could, by the ready help of a thorn for a needle and of
the animal’s own sinews for thread, be fashioned after a manner into
various kinds of clothing.
Sheep, in a primitive period, were bred for raiment perhaps as much
as for food. At first, the locks of wool torn away from the animal’s
back by brambles were gathered: afterwards shearing was thought of
and followed in some countries, while in others the wool was not cut
off but plucked by the hand away from the living creature. Obtained
by either method the fleeces were spun generally by women from the
distaff. This very ancient daily work was followed by women among our
Anglo-saxon ancestors of all ranks of life, from the king’s daughter
downwards. Spinning from a distaff is even now common in many countries
on the continent, particularly so all through Italy. Long ago the name
of spindle-tree was given in England to the Euonymus plant, on account
of the good spindles which its wood affords: and the term “spinster”
as meaning every unmarried woman even of the gentlest blood is derived
from the same occupation. Every now and then from the graves in which
women of the British and succeeding epochs were buried, are picked up
the elaborately ornamented leaden whorls which were fastened at the
lower end of their spindles to give them a due weight and steadiness.
A curious instance of the use of woollen stuff not woven but plaited,
among the older stock of the Britons, was very lately brought to
light while cutting through an early Celtic grave-hill or barrow in
Yorkshire: the dead body had been wrapped, as was shown by the few
unrotted shreds still cleaving to its bones, in a woollen shroud of
coarse and loose fabric wrought by the plaiting process without a loom.
As time passed by it brought the loom, fashioned after its simplest
form, to the far west, and its use became general throughout the
British islands. The art of dyeing soon followed; and so beautiful
were the tints which our Britons knew how to give to their wools that
strangers wondered at and were jealous of their splendour. A strict
rule limited the colour of the official dress assigned to each of
the three ranks into which the bardic order was distinguished to
one simple unbroken shade: spotless white, symbolic of sunlight and
holiness, for the druid or priest; sky-blue, emblem of peace, for the
bard or poet; and green, the livery of the wood and field, for the
teacher of the supposed qualities of herbs and leech-craft. Postulants,
again, asking leave to be admitted into either rank were recognized by
the robe barred with stripes of white, blue, and green, which they had
to wear during the term of their initiation. With regard to the bulk
of the people, we learn from Dion Cassius (born A. D. 155) that the
garments worn by them were of a texture wrought in a square pattern of
several colours; and, speaking of Boadicea, the same writer tells us
that she usually had on, under her cloak, a motley tunic chequered all
over with many colours. This garment we are fairly warranted in deeming
to have been a native stuff, woven of worsted after a pattern in tints
and design like one or other of the present Scotch plaids. Pliny,
who seems to have gathered a great deal of his natural history from
scraps of hearsay, most likely included these ancient sorts of British
textiles with those from Gaul, when he tells us that to weave with a
good number of threads, so as to work the cloths called polymita, was
first taught in Alexandria; to divide by checks, in Gaul.
The native botanical home of cotton is in the east. India almost
everywhere throughout her wide-spread countries arrayed, as she still
arrays, herself in cotton, gathered from a plant of the mallow family
which has its wild growth there; and in the same vegetable produce the
lower orders of people dwelling still further to the east also clothed
themselves.
Hemp, a plant of the nettle tribe and called by botanists “cannabis
sativa,” was of old well known in the far north of Germany and
throughout the ancient Scandinavia. More than two thousand years ago
we find it thus spoken of by Herodotus: “Hemp grows in the country of
the Scythians, which, except in the thickness and height of the stalk,
very much resembles flax; in the qualities mentioned, however, the hemp
is much superior. It grows in a wild state, and is also cultivated.
The Thracians make clothing of it very like linen cloth; nor could any
person, without being very well acquainted with the substance, say
whether this clothing is made of hemp or flax.” From “cannabis,” its
name in Latin, we have taken our word “canvas,” to mean any texture
woven of hempen thread.
Although flax is to be found growing wild in many parts of Great
Britain, it is very doubtful whether for many ages our British
forefathers were aware of the use of this plant for clothing purposes:
they would otherwise have left behind them some shred of linen in one
or other of their many graves. Following, as they did, the usage of
being buried in the best of the garments they were accustomed to, or
most loved when alive, their bodies would have been found dressed in
some small article of linen texture, had they ever worn it.
We must go to the valley of the Nile if we wish to learn the earliest
history of the finest flaxen textiles. Time out of mind the Egyptians
were famous as well for the growth of flax as for the beautiful linen
which they wove out of it, and which became to them a most profitable,
because so widely sought for, article of commerce. Their own word
“byssus” for the plant itself became among the Greeks, and afterwards
among the Latin nations, the term for linens wrought in Egyptian looms.
Long before the oldest book in the world was written, the tillers of
the ground all over Egypt had been heedful in sowing flax, and anxious
about its harvest. It was one of their staple crops, and hence was it
that, in punishment of Pharaoh, the hail plague which at the bidding of
Moses fell from heaven destroyed throughout the land the flax just as
it was getting ripe. Flax grew also upon the banks of the Jordan, and
in Judæa generally; and the women of the country, like Rahab, carefully
dried it when pulled, and stacked it for future hackling upon the roofs
of their houses. Nevertheless, it was from Egypt, as Solomon hints,
that the Jews had to draw their fine linen. At a later period, among
the woes foretold to Egypt, the prophet Isaiah warns her that “they
shall be confounded who wrought in combing and weaving fine linen.”
How far the reputation of Egyptian workmanship in the craft of the loom
had spread abroad is shown us by the way in which, besides sacred,
heathenish antiquity has spoken of it. Herodotus says, “Amasis king
of Egypt gave to the Minerva of Lindus a linen corslet well worthy of
inspection:” and further on, speaking of another corslet which Amasis
had sent the Lacedæmonians, he observes that it was of linen and had
a vast number of figures of animals inwoven into its fabric, and was
likewise embroidered with gold and tree-wool. This last was especially
to be admired because each of the twists, although of fine texture,
contained within it 360 threads, all of them clearly visible.
But we have material as well as written proofs at hand to show the
excellence of old Egyptian work in linen. During late years many
mummies have been brought to this country from Egypt, and the narrow
bandages with which they were found to have been so admirably and,
according even to our modern requirements of chirurgical fitness, so
artistically swathed have been unwrapped. These bandages are often so
fine in their texture as fully to verify the praises of old bestowed
upon the beauty of the Egyptian loom-work. We learn from Sir Gardiner
Wilkinson that “the finest piece of mummy-cloth, sent to England by Mr.
Salt, and now in the British museum, of linen, appears to be made of
yarns of nearly 100 hanks in the pound, with 140 threads in an inch in
the warp and about 64 in the woof.” Another piece of linen, which the
same distinguished traveller obtained at Thebes, has 152 threads in the
warp and 71 in the woof.
Although from all antiquity upwards, till within some few years back,
the unbroken belief had been that such mummy-clothing was undoubtedly
made of linen woven out of pure unmixed flax, some writers led, or
rather misled, by a few stray words in Herodotus (speaking of the
corslet of Amasis, quoted just now) took that historian to mean wool,
and argued that Egyptian textiles wrought a thousand years before
were mixed with cotton. While the question was agitated, specimens of
mummy-cloth were submitted to the judgment of several persons in the
weaving trade deemed most competent to speak upon the matter. Helped
only by the fingers’ feel and the naked eye, some among them agreed
that such textures were really woven of cotton. This opinion was but
shortlived. Other individuals, more philosophical, went to work on
a better path. In the first place they clearly learned, through the
microscope, the exact and never-varying physical structure of both
these vegetable substances. They found cotton to be in its fibre a
transparent tube without joints, flattened so that its inward surfaces
are in contact along its axis and also twisted spirally round its axis;
flax on the contrary is a transparent tube, jointed like a cane and not
flattened or twisted spirally. Examined in the same way, old samples of
byssus or mummy-bandages from Egypt in every instance were ascertained
to be of fine unmixed flaxen linen.