The countries whence silks came to England are numerous; we find early
notices of Antioch, Tarsus, Alexandria, Damascus, Byzantium, Cyprus,
Trip or Tripoli, and Bagdad, and later of Venice, Genoa, and Lucca. To
fix the localities of others would be but guess work.
At the beginning of the fourteenth century a silk called “_Acca_”
is occasionally mentioned: and, from the description, it must have
been a cloth of gold shot with coloured silk, figured with animals:
William de Clinton, earl of Huntingdon, gave to St. Alban’s monastery
a whole vestment of cloth of gold shot with sky-blue and called cloth
of Acca. It would look as if this stuff took its name from having been
brought to us through the port of Acre: and Macri, in his valuable
Hierolexicon, says that the name of the ancient Ptolemais in Syria was
so written.
What in one age and at a particular place happened to be well made and
therefore was eagerly sought for, at a later period and in another
place was better wrought and at a lower price. Time, indeed, changed
the name of the market, but did not alter in any great degree either
the quality of the material or the style of the design wrought upon it.
Throughout the kingdom of the Byzantine Greeks the loom had to change
its gearing very little. The Saracenic loom, whether in Asia, Africa,
or Spain, was always Arabic, though Persia could not forget her old
traditions about the “hom” or tree of life, and cheetahs, and birds
of various sorts. With regard to the whole of Asia, its many peoples
from the earliest ages knew how not only to weave cloth of gold but
to figure it with birds and beasts. In later times, Marco Polo in the
thirteenth century found exactly the same kinds of textile known in the
days of Darius still everywhere, from the shores of the Mediterranean
to the far east. What he says of Bagdad he repeats in fewer words
about many other cities. In finding their way to England these fabrics
received, if not in all at least in most instances, the names of the
seaports in the Mediterranean where they had been shipped.
For beautifully wrought and figured silk, one of the few terms that
still outlive the mediæval period is Damask.
China, no doubt, was the first country to ornament its silken webs with
a pattern. India, Persia, and Syria, then Byzantine Greece, followed,
but at long intervals between, in China’s footsteps. Stuffs so figured
brought with them to the west the name “diaspron” or diaper, bestowed
upon them at Constantinople. But about the twelfth century the city of
Damascus, even then long celebrated for its looms, so far outstripped
all other places for beauty of design that her silken textiles were in
demand everywhere; and thus, as often happens, traders fastened the
name of Damascen or Damask upon every silken fabric richly wrought and
curiously designed, no matter whether it came or not from Damascus. At
last, samit, having long been the epithet betokening all that was rich
and good in silk, was forgotten, and diaper, from being the very word
significant of pattern, became a secondary term descriptive of merely a
part in the elaborate design on damask.
Baudekin, that sort of costly cloth of gold spoken of so much during so
many years in English literature, took (as was said before) its famous
name from Bagdad. Many specimens of baudekin in the South Kensington
collection furnish proofs of the ancient weavers’ dexterity in their
management of the loom, and especially of the artists’ taste in setting
out their intricate and beautiful designs. An identification between
very many samples there brought together of ancient textiles in silk
and the descriptions of similar stuffs given us in those valuable
records, our old church inventories, might be carried on if necessary
to a very lengthened extent.
Dorneck was the name given to an inferior kind of damask wrought of
silk, wool, linen thread and gold, in Flanders. This was manufactured
towards the end of the fifteenth century mostly at Tournay; which city
in Flemish was often called Dorneck--a word variously spelt as Darnec,
Darnak, Darnick, and sometimes even Darness.
The guild of the blessed Virgin at Boston had a care cloth of “silke
dornex” and church furniture. The “care cloth” was a sort of canopy
held over the bride and bridegroom as they knelt for the nuptial
blessing, according to the Salisbury rite, at the marriage mass. At
Exeter dorneck was used in chasubles for orphreys. A specimen of
dorneck may be seen, no. 7058. It is several times mentioned in the
York fabric rolls.
Buckram, so called from Bokkara where it was originally made, in the
middle ages was much esteemed for being costly and very fine; and
consequently fit for use in church vestments and for secular personal
wear. “Panus Tartaricus” or Tartary cloth is often spoken of. John
Grandison, bishop of Exeter in 1327, gave to his cathedral flags of
white and red buckram; and among the five very rich veils for covering
the moveable lectern in that church three were lined with blue
“bokeram.” As late as the beginning of the sixteenth century this stuff
was held good enough for lining to a black velvet gown for a queen,
Elizabeth of York. The coarse thick fabric which now goes by the name
is very different from the older production known as “bokeram.”
Burdalisaunder, Bordalisaunder, Bourde de Elisandre, with other
varieties in spelling, is a term often to be met with in old wills and
church inventories. In the year 1327 Exeter had a chasuble of Bourde de
Elisandre of divers colours: and from the Yorkshire wills we find that
sometimes it was wide enough for half a piece to form the adornment of
a high altar.
“Bord” in Arabic means a striped cloth; and we know, both from
travellers and the importation of the textile itself, that many tribes
in north and eastern Africa weave stuffs for personal wear of a pattern
consisting of white and black longitudinal stripes. St. Augustin,
living in north Africa near the modern Algiers, speaks of a stuff
for clothing called “burda” in the end of the fourth and beginning
of the fifth century. It is not impossible that the curtains for the
tabernacle as well as the girdles for Aaron and his sons, of fine
linen and violet and purple and scarlet twice dyed, were wrought with
this very pattern, so that in the “burd Alisaunder” we behold the
oldest known design for any textile. This stuff in the middle ages
was a silken web in different coloured stripes, and specimens also
may be found at South Kensington. Though made in many places round
the Mediterranean this silk took its name, at least in England, from
Alexandria.
Fustian, of which we still have two forms in velveteen and corduroy,
was originally wove at Fustat on the Nile, with a warp of linen thread
and a woof of thick cotton, so twilled and cut that it showed on one
side a thick but low pile; and the web thus managed took its name of
Fustian from that Egyptian city. At what period it was invented we do
not rightly know, but we are well aware it must have been brought very
early to this country; for our countryman St. Stephen Harding, when a
Cistercian abbot and an old man about the year 1114, forbade chasubles
in his church to be made of anything but fustian or plain linen. The
austerity of his rule reached even the ornaments of the church. From
such a prohibition we are not to draw as a conclusion that fustian was
at the time a mean material; quite the contrary, although not splendid
it was a seemly textile. Years afterwards, in the fourteenth century,
Chaucer tells us of his knight:--
Of fustian he wered a gepon.
In the fifteenth century Naples had a repute for weaving fustians; and
our English churchwardens, not being learned in geography or spelling,
made some odd mistakes in their accounts about this as about some other
continental stuffs: “Fuschan in appules” for fustian from Naples is
droll; yet droller still is “mustyrd devells,” for a cloth made in
France at a town called Mustrevilliers.
Muslin, as it is now throughout the world so from the earliest
antiquity, has been everywhere in Asia in favourite use both as an
article of dress and as furniture. Its cloud-like thinness and its
lightness were not the only charms belonging to this stuff: it was
esteemed equally as much for the taste with which stripes of gold had
been woven in its warp. As we learn from the travels of Marco Polo, the
further all wayfarers in Asia wandered among eastern nations the higher
they found the point of excellence which had been reached in weaving
silk and gold into splendid fabrics. The silkworm lived and thrived
there and the cotton plant also was in its home, its birth-place, in
those regions.
Like many cities of central Asia, Mosul had earned for itself a
reputation of old for the beauty of its gold-wrought silken textiles.
Cotton grew all around in plenty; the inhabitants, especially the
women, were gifted with such quick feeling of finger that they could
spin thread from this cotton of more than hair-like fineness. Cotton
with them took the place of silk in the loom; and gold was not
forgotten in the weaving. Their work, not only because it was so much
cheaper but from its own peculiar beauty and comeliness, won for itself
a high place in common estimation: and the name of the town where it
was wrought in such perfection was given to it as its distinctive name.
Hence, whether wove with or without gold, we call this cotton web
muslin, from the Asiatic city of Mosul.
Cloth of Areste is another term for woven stuffs, to be found in our
old English deeds and inventories. The first time we meet it is in an
order given, 1244, by Henry the third for finding two cloths of Areste
with which two copes were to be made for royal chapels. Again it comes
a few years later at St. Paul’s, which cathedral A. D. 1295 had, besides
a dalmatic and tunicle of this silk “white silk of Areste diapered,” as
many as thirty and more hangings of the same texture.
From the description of these pieces we gather that this so-called
cloth of Areste must have been both beautiful and rich, being for
the most part cloth of gold figured elaborately; some with lions and
double-headed eagles, others, for example, with the death and burial of
our Lord.
We are not disposed to agree with the suggestion that this cloth was
a kind of arras. Arras had not won for itself a reputation for its
tapestry before the fourteenth century. Tapestry itself is too thick
and heavy for use in vestments; yet this cloth of Areste was light
enough for tunicles, and when worn out was sometimes condemned at St.
Paul’s to be put aside for lining other ritual garments. Among the
three meanings for the mediæval “Aresta” one is any kind of covering.
It seems, therefore, probable that these cloths of Areste took their
name not from the place where they had been woven, but from the use to
which they were generally put; namely, for hangings about churches.
Moreover, tapestry or Arras work, being thick and heavy, could never
have been employed for such light use as that of apparels nor would
it have been diapered like silk, yet we find “Areste” to have been so
fashioned and so used.
Silks also were distinguished through their colours and shades of
colours: and the men who drew up the mediæval inventories seem to have
been gifted with a keen eye for varieties of shades and tints. For
instance, a chasuble at St. Paul’s is set down, late in the thirteenth
century, as made of samit dyed in a purple somewhat bordering on a
blood-red tone. Tarsus colour is often mentioned: and it was, probably,
some shade of purple. The people of Tarsus no doubt got from their
murex, a shell-fish of the class mollusca and purpurifera family to
be found on their coast, their dyeing matter; and when we remember
what changes are wrought in the animal itself by the food it eats, and
what strong effects are made by slight variations in climate, even
atmosphere, upon materials for colouring in the moment of application,
we may easily understand how the difference arose between the two tints
of purple.
“Cloth of Tarsus” itself was of a rare and costly kind, of fine goats’
hair and silk. The tint was some shade of royal purple. Chaucer tells
us that
The great Emetrius, the king of Inde,
Upon a stede bay, trapped in stele,
Covered with cloth of gold diapred wele,
Came riding like the god of armes Mars.
His cote armure was of a cloth of Tars,
Couched with perles, etc.
Other cities besides Tarsus gave their names to various shades of
purple; according as they were dyed at Antioch, Alexandria, or Naples.
Each place had a particular shade which distinguished it from the
others. It is not now possible to ascertain what were the exact
distinctions of tint. Sky-blue was a colour everywhere in church use
for certain festivals throughout England. In the early inventories the
name for that tint is “Indicus,” “Indus,” reminding us of our present
_indigo_. In later lists it is called “Blodius,” not sanguinary but
blue. Murrey, or a reddish brown, is also often specified.
Silks woven of two colours, so that one of them showed itself unmixed
and quite distinct on one side, and the second appeared equally clear
on the other--a thing sometimes now looked upon as a wonder in modern
weaving--might occasionally be met with here at the mediæval period:
Exeter cathedral had, in 1327, a silk cloth “of red colour inside and
yellow outside.” At York, in 1543, there was “a vestment of changeable
silke,” “besides one of changeable taffety for Good Friday.”
Marble silk had a weft of several colours so woven as to make the
whole web look like marble, stained with a variety of tints. There were
many such vestments in old St. Paul’s. During full three centuries
this marble silk found great favour among us; for Henry Machyn, in his
curious diary, tells us how “the old qwyne of Schottes rod thrught
London,” and how “then cam the lord tresorer with a C. gret horsse and
ther cotes of marbull,” etc., to meet her the 6th of November, 1551.