TEXTILE FABRICS.
Weaving is an art that has been practised from prehistoric times.
Grasses, shreds of bark, rushes, bast, &c., were at first woven, and
used as articles of dress and coverings such as we see in use to-day
among the uncivilised tribes of the world. The loom is also a very
ancient invention, and must have been used much earlier than we have any
record of it.
One of the oldest varieties of fabrics made in the loom is that of
linen, the threads of which are prepared from the fibrous parts of the
flax plant stalk. We have not only Biblical evidence of the weaving of
linen by the ancient Egyptians, but the actual material itself, which
has been proved by the strictest scientific analysis to be the product
of the flax plant.
The oldest kind of Egyptian linen was that used for the swathing bands
of the mummies, and was formerly known under the erroneous name of
_byssus_, the latter being a material woven from the filaments or beard
of the _pinna marina_, or sea-caterpillar.
The various methods and processes used in the manufacture of linen are
well illustrated in the Egyptian paintings and bas-reliefs, such as the
beating of the flax, combing, spinning, and weaving in the loom. Some of
the Egyptian linen was exceedingly fine in texture and perfect in
workmanship: a piece of linen found at Memphis had 540 threads to the
inch in the warp.
Linen yarn and the raw flax were exported from Egypt by the Phœnicians
and Carthaginians to Greece, Italy, Germany, Spain, and probably to the
British Isles. The Greek women wove linen for their garments, as the
women of most European countries have done in the ancient and Middle
Ages. Germany, Holland, and Belgium have from early times been the chief
countries for linen manufacture in Europe. Perhaps at the present day
the city of Belfast in Ireland is the most important seat of linen
industry in the world, and Dundee in Scotland might claim the second
place. For the last two hundred years the linen trade of Ulster has been
in a flourishing condition. The English Parliament from the days of
William III. to the present time have encouraged and promoted the trade,
but the initial success of this industry was owing in a great measure to
the skill and energy of Louis Crommelin and the Huguenot colony, who
came to the North of Ireland from France after the Revocation of the
Edict of Nantes (1685), and in the year 1699 finally settled at Lisburn,
near Belfast. A similar colony of French Protestants, who were weavers
by trade, settled in Scotland in 1727 under their leader, Nicholas
d’Assaville.
A great epoch in the history of weaving dates from the time of the
invention of the Jacquard machine, which caused a revolution in nearly
all branches of weaving. Jean-Marie Jacquard (1752-1834), the inventor
of this machine, was a native of Lyons and a silk weaver by trade. The
Jacquard machine is attached to any ordinary loom, and its work consists
in mechanically selecting and raising the warp threads, when the shuttle
passes across the loom, the action being regulated by means of cards
with pierced holes through which the lifting cords or needles pass, the
holes in the cards being arranged or cut in accordance with the
preconceived pattern that ultimately figures in the woven cloth.
The first Jacquard machine used in England was set up in Coventry in the
year 1820.
Silk and its manufacture by the Chinese was known and understood from a
period anterior to the date of 2700 years before the Christian Era.
Perhaps the first knowledge of silk products in Europe was due to the
conquest of Persia and portion of India by Alexander the Great, who came
in contact with the Chinese, or some people who lived beyond India, and
who had probably worn silken garments. To these people the Greeks gave
the general name of the _Seres_. This name was not only given to the
people beyond India by the Romans, but to the silkworm itself.
Aristotle, Virgil, Dionysius the Geographer, and later Pausanias,
mention the _seer_ or spinning-worm, from which the rich and valuable
Oriental garments were made. Pliny says that the Assyrians made silk
from the _bombyx_ and taught the art to the inhabitants of the island of
Cos. Pamphile, the daughter of Plates, made the finest woven silk in the
island of Cos. It is supposed that in the first instance the raw
material found its way from China, through India, Persia, and Arabia, to
the Grecian Isles, and eventually to Italy and Western Europe. In
European countries silk at first was mixed with wool or linen, and
garments of this material were worn by the Romans.
The thin gauze-like silken garments of Cos were of a pure quality and
were imported to Rome in the second century and were reckoned worth
their weight in gold. About this time great quantities of the raw silk
were brought from the East by the overland route and by sea, and in the
end of the fourth century silk had become so cheap as to be within the
reach of the common people (Marcellinus, A.D. 380). Tyre and Berytus
were the chief seats of silk manufacture from which the Roman markets
were supplied.
In the year 552 an event is recorded that revolutionised the manufacture
of silk in Europe. The story is related that two monks, either Greeks or
Persians, were sent as ambassadors to China, and there learnt the arts
and methods of silk production from the natives. They succeeded in
secretly conveying in their hollow cane walking-sticks a quantity of
silkworms’ eggs which they brought to Constantinople, where they were
hatched in warm manure, and the grubs were fed on the leaves of the
mulberry-tree. Very soon after this a royal factory was set up in the
palace at Constantinople. Women weavers were pressed into the Emperor’s
service, and a state monopoly was set up for the manufacture of silk
fabrics.
The introduction of the silkworm did not cheapen the price of silk; on
the contrary, the production of the royal looms were sold at excessive
prices, and far beyond those paid for the material before the silkworm
rearing period in Europe.
The court of the Eastern Empire did not hold the silk-weaving monopoly
long, for very soon after the secret of the rearing of the worms spread
to the Peloponnesus and the isles of Greece, where, from the sixth to
the middle of the twelfth centuries, Europe was supplied with nearly all
the silk it required.
In the year 1130 Roger I., the Norman King of Sicily, brought a colony
of silk weavers from Athens and induced them to settle in Palermo, where
an extensive silk industry was already developed under the former
Saracenic rulers, who were vassals of the independent Fātimy Khalifs of
Egypt, during the ninth and tenth centuries.
After the introduction of the Greek weavers into the Palermo workshops
we find the Siculo-Arabian designs altering from the older circular
panels of Saracenic ornament, which consisted of the designs of birds
and animals placed back to back, or _vis-à-vis_, of Mesopotamian origin,
to bands of birds, animals, and fishes, grotesque and otherwise, mixed
with foliage and scrolls containing mock Arabic inscriptions.
To trace the analysis of patterns in silk fabrics is to trace the
historical development of the fabrics themselves, for pattern and
manufacture, historically considered, have developed side by side.
When we consider the varieties indicated by the names of Byzantine,
Saracenic, or Arabian in its various forms, Italian and French, we shall
find that in the order mentioned the chronological development of
material and pattern run concurrently.
Silk, in its raw state, during the first few centuries of our era
arrived in the principal towns of Asia Minor, in Alexandria in Egypt,
and in Byzantium (Constantinople), from China, by the way of the Indian
Ocean and the Red Sea, and overland by caravans.
The Persians and the Byzantine Greeks, from the first to the eighth
centuries, monopolised the Western silk manufacture, as they already
possessed the looms on which they had made linen, woollen cloth, and
carpet tapestry. It required very little adaptation to convert them into
silk looms, and towards the early part of the seventh century the new
material had firmly established itself in Persia, Syria, and
Constantinople.
The patterns for the most part were symbolic and large in character, and
nearly all of them had their origin in the “Homa,” or sacred “Tree of
Life” (Figs. 259, 260), with the worshippers on either side consisting
of kings or other personages in the act of adoration, such as we find as
a common theme engraved on the Assyrian cylinders, wall decorations, and
bronze platters, which had its origin in the older Egyptian forms. Where
the Sacred Tree, with animals instead of human forms, was made a feature
of in the silk fabrics, the stuff had a Persian development derived from
Babylonian sources, but the Greeks or Byzantines used this pattern for
the sake of expediency, and not in a symbolic sense.
There is a piece of very old Byzantine silk in the Kensington
Collection, and also a piece of the same material in the Silk Museum at
Lyons, which consists of a design of winged personages wrestling with
lions; the pattern is woven in strips, and the colour is a red ground
with white, gold-coloured, blue and green figuring. The style of the
design and peculiarity of the weaving prove it to be of a date anterior
to the eighth century. This particular Byzantine tissue has the red weft
of the ground executed in five different shades of the red colour thrown
crosswise (_lancé croisé_), each shade alternating in three threads by
three; the warp is thick, and the shuttle passes right across the width,
all the material being pure silk—these are the marks by which Byzantine
fabrics are known.
[Illustration: Fig. 259.—Assyrian Homa or Sacred Tree.]
[Illustration: Fig. 260.—Tree of Life, Assyrian.]
It is only in genuine examples of Byzantine Greek fabrics where we find
the human figure is used in the design, or animals of a free and natural
type, as the Byzantine silk designs were invariably taken from Greek
mythological sources and scriptural subjects. Genuine examples of
Byzantine fabrics are very scarce, and the one described is a genuine
example of great value.
When the Arabs under Mohammed had conquered the countries of Persia,
Syria, and the countries south of the Persian Sea, they found already in
these places the manufacture of silk in a flourishing state. From this
time—the ninth century—until the fourteenth, we find that from the
borders of China and India in the east to Africa and Spain in the south
and west—which embraces the countries conquered by the Saracens—the silk
industry was carefully fostered under the Mohammedan rule. Next to
precious stones in importance and value the chiefest treasures of the
Khalifs of Bagdad, Cairo, Fez, and Cordova were silken goods. The
bazaars of the chief towns were filled with the precious material, and
silk fairs or markets were held periodically, chiefly at Antioch, Rey,
Erzeroum, Ispahan, Jerusalem, and Mecca. The Mussulman laws forbade the
faithful to negotiate with the (Christian) infidels, but there was a
saving clause that helped them out of this difficulty, which allowed
them to bargain with the Jews, and these middlemen did not scruple to do
business with either the Christian infidel or Mussulman.
The Jews were then, as they are now, the bankers, merchants, and dealers
in silk and precious stones, and even before this date they were the
purveyors of all kinds of articles of luxury to the wealthy Romans of
the south, the Gallo-Romans of the west, and the Goths of Northern
Europe.
Notwithstanding the laws of excommunication then in force, Italian
Christian merchants, as well as Jews, traded with the Mohammedan world,
and both Jews and Italians travelled over Asia Minor, North Africa,
throughout Italy, Sicily, Spain, France, and England, distributing the
products of Saracenic looms, and establishing silk manufactories in
Christian countries, notably in Sicily and Italy. Shawls, dress goods,
and hangings were then the principal articles of silk manufacture.
Persia was the original place from whence came the best patterns and
materials; it was really the fountain-head of textile designs, and from
thence they spread over Arabia into North Africa, Sicily, and Italy, the
patterns being modified according to the popular taste of the different
countries and by the introduction of various symbolic features.
TEXTILES OF INDIA.
The textiles of India form an important section of the industrial arts
of that country. The materials used in the woven and embroidered fabrics
are silk, cotton, wool, hair, coloured grasses, jute, gold, silver, and
various tinsels.
Among the chief artistic productions in textiles are the _kincobs_, or
silken brocades, made at Ahmedabad and Benares, the embroidered muslin
of Dacca, the pile carpets of Malabar, the rugs of Madras, and the
shawls of Cashmere.
The native excellence, however, in the design, colour, and manufacture
that has characterised these textiles for centuries past is now in
danger of extinction—and great mischief has been done already—from the
influence of European designs, the introduction of magenta and aniline
dyes, and by the competition with European markets, resulting in the
production of cheaper forms of Indian goods. It is only in the case of a
few instances where the textiles are made to order, or under the
patronage of some of the remaining Indian princes, that the traditional
superiority of manufacture is still maintained. Another exception is the
production of the silk brocades, or kincobs (Fig. 261); this is owing in
a great measure to the demand for these goods by the Chinese and other
Orientals, who have not yet adopted the Western ideas of imitating the
European style of dress.
Some of these kincobs are highly ornamented with interwoven gold or
silver-gilt patterns of floral form, others are ornamented as in the
“happy hunting-ground” patterns of Benares manufacture, with flowers,
birds, and animals. This particular form of fabric is no doubt a
survival, through Persian channels, of the embroidered garments of the
ancient Babylonian monarchs.
In the production of cotton goods the trade of the native caste of
weavers has suffered very much by the great importation of Manchester
cottons, and by the establishment of monster cotton power-loom factories
at Ahmedabad and elsewhere. Many natives of the weaver caste have been
obliged to take to agricultural and other less lucrative pursuits, owing
to the partial ruin of their trade by English competition.
[Illustration: Fig. 261.—Kincob of Ahmedabad. (B.)]
Cotton-printing is still, however, an important native industry,
especially in the city of Lucknow, where the colouring and design are
still superior to that of the English or French chintzes. Some of the
best Indian, or rather Indo-Persian, ornament is found on the printed
calico _palampores_, or bed-coverings, made at Masulipatam and other
places. Calicoes woven in varying stripes of coloured threads, checks,
and tartans of all hues, are among the specialities of Indian textiles,
the material being used for trouserings, skirts, and petticoats.
The once-famous Dacca muslins, that on account of their gossamer-like
appearance have been known under the names of “evening dew” and “running
water,” are now almost non-existent, a cheaper and coarser variety
taking their place. Muslins from Dacca and other places embroidered with
silk are still greatly used in India, and are largely exported to the
surrounding Eastern countries, including Turkey and Egypt.
Cotton fabrics interwoven with golden thread were formerly made in great
quantities to meet the wants of the once-powerful native rulers and the
Court retinues, but now, since the English rule in India, this kind of
fabric with many others of a sumptuous nature are much less in demand.
Printing patterns in gold and silver foil is a common method of
decorating dark purple or deep green cottons; muslins are also stamped
with patterns in gold.
Fine gold and silver-gilt wire is used very much in India for
lace-making, weaving, and embroidery. The natives excel all Europeans in
the art of wire-drawing and in the making of gold and silver foil,
tinsels, and spangles. These industries are carried on chiefly in the
cities of Delhi, Lucknow, Ahmedabad, and Lahore.
Silk manufacture is still a flourishing industry in many parts of India,
but, on the other hand, in some places it has declined very much owing
to European competition. The _tasar_ or _tusser_ silk is a native wild
silk, from which a coarser variety of silk is now manufactured in
increasing quantities, and is exported chiefly from Bengal. It is a
useful material, but has not the brilliancy or sheen of the ordinary
silk. Plain silk cloth is made in the Punjaub, and the damasked or
figured variety is made chiefly at Bhawalpur.
Cashmere has been famed for centuries past for its beautiful woollen
shawls made from _pushm_, the wool of the Cashmere goat, and from
camel’s hair wool; the woven material of the latter is known as
“camlet.”
The principal design on the Cashmere shawls is the cone pattern
decorated with a mixture of small flowers, the fillings between the
cones being also a diapering of small floral forms. The cone patterns
are also found on metal work, enamels, and carvings from Cashmere and
its neighbourhood. On the genuine shawls the ornamentation is
embroidered in wide borders, centrepieces, and corner groups of flowers.
The Cashmere shawls have been imitated in woven shawls by the French and
in the Paisley shawls of Scotch manufacture. Some of the costliest
Cashmere shawls are embroidered with a “terrestrial paradise” of singing
birds, flowers, animals, and figures.
Indian ornament or decoration, from its mosaic-like or flattened-out
character, is extremely well suited to the decoration of textile
fabrics. The native ornament consists of a variety of flat renderings of
the daisy (_sventi_), the lotus, the shoe flower (Figs. 91, 92, 261),
knop and flower patterns, parrots, peacocks, lions, tigers, elephants,
men on horseback, hunting or fighting, &c., and is always rendered in
flat tints of alternating colours on flat grounds, in such works as
enamels, tiles, pottery, wall paintings, lac-work, and textiles of all
kinds. Though at times the vice of Indian ornament is illustrated in a
riotous use of small detail, on the whole it is well suited for the
decoration of flat surfaces. In the artistic products of the Mohammedan
people of India, or descendants of Persian settlers, the ornament
invariably consists of Persian or Saracenic types; the former is
distinctly seen in the Masulipatam rugs, carpets, and _palampores_, and
the latter in the various art work of the Mogul period, as, for
instance, in the inlaid marbles and other work of Agra. (Fig. 293.)
The Sassanian Persian designs in silk, as we have seen, were derived
from the more ancient Assyrian and Babylonian embroideries, the motives
of which were invariably the Tree of Life, or “Grove of Ashareh,” with
divinities, priests, or royal worshippers on either side, the whole
usually enclosed in circles.
In the Persian and in the later Mesopotamian Mōsilwork animals took the
place of the human figures, and were often placed back to back, divided
by a stem or piece of floriated ornament—a reminiscence of the sacred
tree—and still enclosed in a circular band. The animals were generally
lions, cheetahs, or were griffin forms, all treated as ornamental
abstractions, and the intervening spaces between the circles were filled
up with forms of parrots or other birds, conventionally treated.
The early Saracenic designs were copies of these (Fig. 262). Later
Saracenic designs had less of the bird and animal forms, and more of the
purely Arabian ornament, with the addition of horizontal bands of Kufic
inscriptions such as texts from the Koran, laudatory compliments to and
names or titles of Sultans and Khalifs for whom the fabrics were made
(Fig. 263).
It is singular that the rich silken fabrics made for and by the Saracens
had nearly always representations of animals in the designs, although
this was contrary to the laws of their faith; but this may be accounted
for by their practice of copying or adapting the forms of decoration
already in use in the countries they had conquered, and their lack of
originality in design during their earlier days was, perhaps, the
strongest motive in causing them to adapt ready-made inventions to their
own uses.
The wearing of pure silken garments was also forbidden by the Mohammedan
religion, but the Saracens got over that difficulty by the mixture of a
few cotton threads with the silken web. The Egyptian Mamlūks (1250-1390)
were very prodigal in the use of silk for dresses, banners, tent
hangings, carpets, and horse clothing, supplied from the looms of Cairo
and Alexandria, and imported from the Eastern centres.
[Illustration: Fig. 262.—Silk Damask; Eleventh Century; Early Saracenic
(L. P.)]
In the thirteenth century the silk industry of the Saracens was in its
greatest vigour, with designs mostly in imitation of the Persian school,
and in the fourteenth the same motives were used, but arranged in rows
of horizontal bands—which is essentially a Greek method—and was due to
the influence of the Greek and Christian Coptic designers. A good
example of this style may be seen in the peacock design, Fig. 264.
[Illustration: Fig. 263.—Silk Fabric of Iconium; Arabian: Thirteenth
Century. (Lyons Museum.)]
On account of the seaboard of Asia Minor having a mixed population of
Jews, Christians, and Saracens, silk fabrics from that country were
decorated with imitations of Persian designs, having the “homa” or “tree
of life,” Christian elements, such as the cross, seen in the “tree of
life” (Fig. 265), and also imitations of Arabic writing. The Syrian
examples of textiles are not so good in material or workmanship as the
Byzantine or old Persian.
[Illustration: Fig. 264.—Arabian Silk Wall Hanging of the Fourteenth
Century. J.]
[Illustration: Fig. 265.—Apostolic Tree of Life, with the Cross Emblem.]
The most interesting development in the design of silk fabrics is that
which took place in Sicily. The Sicilians were first taught the art of
spinning and weaving of silk and the rearing of the silkworm by their
rulers the Saracens of Egypt, and the early designs of the
Siculo-Arabian style have, in addition to the Persian cheetahs, Indian
parrots, and antelopes, such animals of African origin as the giraffe,
elephant, gazelle, and other fauna of that continent. Gold, silver, and
cotton threads were used with the silk in these fabrics.
Mention has been made that in the twelfth century, when the Normans
conquered Sicily, of their bringing silk weavers from Athens and from
other parts of Greece to work at Palermo. Here and at this time (1130) a
distinct alteration of the design took place by the introduction of the
Greek classic and Christian elements of ornament in mixture with some of
the older Saracenic forms.
Mock Arabic inscriptions were also used very much in these Sicilian
fabrics; this may have been done by Christian designers ignorant of
Arabic, in order to give to the fabrics an appearance of Saracenic work,
which, perhaps, made them sell better when exported (Fig. 266).
Another peculiarity of the Palermitan silks is the multitude of elements
found in the designs. All kinds of fabulous animals and birds are used
as in heraldic blazoning: sunbursts, cloud-forms, Christian emblems and
elements occurring as forms of angels with swinging censers, initials of
sacred names, and emblematic plants. The use of these heraldic and
Christian elements was in a great measure due to the influence of the
Crusaders in the Middle Ages. The favourite colouring of the Sicilian
silks was dark red grounds and green foliage; the birds, animals, and
mythological elements were usually woven in gold threads as in the
example given (Fig. 267).
[Illustration: Fig. 266.—Silk Damask; Sicilian; with Imitated Arabic
Characters. (R.)]
Towards the end of the fourteenth century and during the fifteenth the
designs became more floriated, the vine and pomegranate, with vase
forms, were used and were really developments from, and did duty for,
the sacred tree of the early patterns, and instead of a circular framing
the flamboyant or ogival diaper lines were introduced. This repeating
framework was derived from the Saracenic Pointed architecture and
adopted in the ogival Gothic at this date (Figs. 268, 269).
[Illustration: Fig. 267.—Silk Damask; Sicilian; Fifteenth Century.
(L.P.)]
During the sixteenth century the pineapple was used very much under a
variety of modifications as an ornamental form in fabrics (Fig. 269),
and often in company with the pomegranate. This came about after the
discovery of the West Indies, from where the pineapple had been imported
into Europe (Fig. 270). Large-pattern damask diapers, brocades, and
velvets were now made in many places in Italy, with patterns based on
waving lines or ogival forms enclosing bilateral schemes of ornament,
all of which were reminiscences of the “tree of life” patterns, and in
all may be traced the strong influences of Saracenic design.
[Illustration: Fig. 268.—Silk Damask; Florentine; Fifteenth Century.]
From the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, and even later, Lucca in
Tuscany, Genoa, Florence, and Venice were celebrated for the manufacture
of silken brocades and velvets, which have been used for the dresses of
priests, kings, and noblemen, as well as for hangings.
[Illustration: Fig. 269.—Diaper in Velvet Brocade; Italian; Sixteenth
Century.]
The dress patterns of those days were all of a very large size of
diaper, such as are now only used for hangings and furniture coverings.
The Venetian and Spanish pictures of the period contain many
illustrations of these patterns on the dresses of the figures and
hangings of the chambers.
[Illustration: Fig. 270.—Velvet Brocade; Italian; Sixteenth Century.]
In France the silk weaving industry was first established at Lyons about
the middle of the sixteenth century. The designs of the first efforts of
the French weavers were very similar if not copies of the prevailing
Italian school, but soon after became more floral in character, and more
and more realistic renderings of flowers and foliage, until about the
eighteenth century, when they partook of the same character as the
pottery and furniture decoration, which has been already described.
During the Mediæval and Renaissance periods France, like England,
imported silks and velvets from Italy and the East, and their linen and
drapery from Flanders and Germany.
Bruges in Flanders was especially famous during the sixteenth century
for its silks and velvets, and Ypres was even more so for its fine
linens and damasks.
Very little silk was manufactured in England prior to 1629, when about
this date a company of silkmen was formed in London. The Revocation of
the Edict of Nantes in 1685 had the effect of firmly establishing the
manufacture of silk in England by the colony of French refugees who
settled at Spitalfields, St. Giles’s, and Soho in London, and at
Canterbury, Norwich, and Coventry. The trade soon afterwards spread to
Manchester, Macclesfield, and Paisley in Scotland, and the first silk
mill for spinning and throwing was erected at Derby by John Lombe in the
year 1717, which was worked by water power.
The designs for the patterns of English silks have always been more or
less imitations of the prevalent French styles, and, in fact, England
depended largely until late years on the efforts of French designers for
nearly all of its textile patterns. This is not the case, however,
to-day, for very few foreigners are now employed as designers by English
manufacturers.
The chief seat of the velvet manufacture in Germany at the present day
is Crefeld; Switzerland produces great quantities of silk, which is made
chiefly at Zurich and the villages on the banks of the Lake of Zurich,
at Bâsle, and other places.
China, the birthplace of silk, and younger Japan are still famed for
their delicate fabrics in this material, from whence the raw products
are imported extensively into Europe. In America the silk industry has
made great headway of late years, the principal seat of the manufacture
is the town of Paterson in New Jersey.
England has always held its own in the manufacture of woollen goods of
good material, mostly of plain cloth, but sometimes inwrought or woven
with designs of figures, animals, and foliage patterns. At Bath,
Norwich, Worcester, and in the abbeys and great religious houses during
the Middle Ages the monks employed a good deal of their time at the
loom, and considerable quantities of their work were exported to the
Continent during the fourteenth century. The town of Worsted in Norfolk
has given the name—worsted—to a cloth made there from a new preparation
of the woollen yarn, which consisted of a special twisting of the
threads so as to make the yarn of a harder texture. This cloth has been
used for church vestments, hangings, and bed coverings.
Cotton, the woolly product of the cotton-tree, and the cloth made from
it, has been known in India and the East from the earliest times.
Pliny mentions cotton under the name of a fabric called _oxylina_, made
from the cotton that grew about the branches of the _xylon_ or
_gossypium_ tree, or shrub, which grew in India, Upper Egypt, and
Arabia.
The Romans imported cotton fabrics from India, and the priests of
ancient Egypt used it for their dresses.
The cotton plant was cultivated by the Moors in Spain about the
beginning of the tenth century, and they were the first people in Europe
to make cotton fabrics. They are also credited with the invention of
fustian-making (Spanish, _fustes_), a cotton material woven and
afterwards cut precisely like velvet; it is generally thought that as
fustian preceded the manufacture of velvet, the making of the latter may
have been suggested to the Italians by the Spanish fustian.
In the year 1585, after the sacking of Antwerp, some Flemish weavers
settled at Manchester—now the great seat of cotton manufacture in
England—and commenced the new industry of cotton spinning and weaving.
Before this date Manchester and its neighbourhood were noted for the
weaving of linen. The linen yarn was imported from Ireland, woven at
Manchester, and the cloth sent back for distribution and sale in Ireland
and other parts of the kingdom.
The power of production in cotton goods was enormously increased by the
inventions of Arkwright with his water-frame spinning machine,
Hargreaves, who in 1770 invented the spinning-jenny, and by Compton, who
improved on the latter by his invention of the mule-jenny in 1779.
In 1785 Dr. Cartwright invented an automatic loom, which others improved
on, when finally Horrocks, of Stockport, in 1803 brought to a successful
issue his invention of the power-loom now in general use.
Cotton printing and dyeing in colours have been successfully practised
in India, Asia Minor, the Levant, and in the East generally from the
earliest times. The patterns found in the commoner prints and chintzes
of to-day have still reminiscences of Indian and Persian ornament.
Most of the English designs in cotton prints of the more important
classes have a strong tendency to floral patterns of a naturalistic
type, the outcome of the imitation of French silk patterns that were
common in the early part of this century.
Calico block-printing was introduced into England about the middle of
the eighteenth century by Robert Peel—the grandfather of the first
baronet—who cut his own blocks. Printing by means of cylinders was
invented in 1785. Previous to the invention of calico printing “painted
cloths” of linen and other fabrics were used as hangings and in the
general furnishing of English apartments.
EMBROIDERY.
The earliest method of decorating textiles was that of embroidering. It
has been called “painting with the needle,” and is even an older art
than pattern weaving. In some of the oldest monuments of art that are
still in existence, as the bas-reliefs of Egypt and Assyria, there may
be seen representations of the embroidery that formerly decorated the
kings’ garments (see Figs. 162A to 165, former volume), and we have seen
that these were the models for some of the earliest woven patterns. At
first embroidered patterns would be simple geometrical designs, and
afterwards symbolic units mixed with simple floral forms, as many of the
older Egyptian embroidered patterns usually were, until by degrees the
higher forms of patterns with figures or personages and animal forms
were developed by the Chaldeans and Assyrians.
The latter nations, with their inherent love of barbaric splendour and
Asiatic predilections for georgeous colouring, surpassed the Egyptians
in the art of embroidery.
The Persians and surrounding nations inherited from the older races this
love of colour and early traditions of design, which are still seen in
their tapestry, carpets, and embroidered work of all kinds.
The ancient Phrygian and Lydian people, who inhabited a portion of Asia
Minor, were cultured races whom the Greeks and Romans always regarded as
the inventors of embroidery—"_phrygio_" being the Roman word for
embroiderer. The Phrygian embroidered patterns were mostly geometric,
but in the later periods plant and animal forms were also used. Most of
the decoration of the Ionian Greek pottery, consisting of bands of
animals, birds, rosettes, and lozenges, are copies from the embroidered
work of Asia Minor. To-day, even, the women of these parts embroider
their bodices, aprons, head-coverings, and towels in an almost similar
style of ornament.
The rock-cut façades of the Phrygian tombs, unlike the imitated timber
constructions of the Lydian tombs, have sculptured decorations that have
been copied from geometrical forms of embroidery, and in many cases
these façades resemble an embroidered curtain or carpet that would be
hung up to serve the purposes of a door to the entrance of the earlier
square domestic wooden buildings, of which the Phrygian and Lydian tombs
were imitations in stone.
The Assyrian thresholds (Fig. 166, former volume) and many other
sculptures and wall decorations in painted tiles of Chaldean and Persian
origin were usually copies of embroidery, all of which clearly shows
that embroidery and pattern weaving preceded stone, wood, and metal
sculpture.
The Greeks were highly skilled in making embroidery. Homer repeatedly
alludes to this art as an employment for women. Helen of Troy and
Penelope wrought beautiful robes and hangings in their looms,
embroidering them with rich needlework. On a Greek vase from Chiusi,
Penelope is represented at work on a loom of the “high warp”
(_haute-lisse_) or vertical pattern which is used so much to-day by the
embroiderers and carpet weavers of the East. We have many allusions in
the Bible to those who made all kinds of cunning needlework. Josephus
says that the veil of the Temple at Jerusalem “was a Babylonian curtain
embroidered with blue and fine linen, with scarlet and purple, and of a
texture that was wonderful.”
In England, during the Anglo-Saxon times, embroidered work had a great
reputation, so much so that it was greatly prized and in request in
France and other parts of Europe, where it was known as “Anglicum Opus.”
From an inventory of Charles V. of France (1364-80) we learn that he had
a room furnished with English “hullings” or hangings embroidered in
blue, with figures of lions, eagles, and leopards. Embroidery was the
chief occupation of Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman ladies. Bede and other
old historians frequently extolled the excellence of design and
workmanship of the English embroidered palls, copes, corporals,
chasubles, and hangings. After the Conquest and during the Norman period
all kinds of heraldic devices were introduced amongst the ornament and
floriated patterns; sometimes stories and romances were illustrated with
the needle, and belonging to this order the famous Bayeux Tapestry may
be mentioned, which represented in the form of a long frieze the
Conquest of England by the Normans. It is supposed to have been wrought
by Queen Matilda and her maidens, but was probably made to the order of
Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, and brother-in-law to the Queen. It is not only a
celebrated piece of needlework, but is an invaluable record of the
costume of the period (Fig. 271). A coloured photograph of it is now in
the Kensington Museum.
[Illustration: Fig. 271.—Norman Archer from the Bayeux Tapestry.]
About the date of the thirteenth century various technical names were
given to the different kinds of embroidery, such as “_opus plumarium_,”
or, as it is now called, “feather-stitch,” a kind of needlework where
the stitches are laid lengthwise, and not across, overlapping each other
like the feathers in a bird’s plumage; “_opus pulvinarium_,” or
“cushion” style, where the work is done in cross and tent stitch; “_opus
pectineum_,” where the embroidery is made to represent or imitate
weaving, and had the design carried through from front to back of the
foundation material. The Opus Anglicum, so highly prized, seems to have
been a kind of chain-stitch embroidery, giving a granulated surface. The
workwoman would start, for instance, in the case of executing the face
of a human figure, at a point in the centre of the cheek or chin, and
work around it in a circular method, and where the hollows and dimples
would occur, a heated metal rod with a small bulb at the end of it would
be used to press down the cavities.
[Illustration: Fig. 272.—Part of the Orphrey of the Syon Cope; in the
South Kensington Museum.]
In the well-known Syon Cope, an English embroidery of this period (Fig.
272), both the old feather-stitch and the chain-stitch are used as above
described.
[Illustration: Fig. 273.—Carpet from Persia, embroidered in Gold and
Silver on Dark Blue Velvet; Early Eighteenth Century. (S.K.M.)]
The _Crewel_ stitch is a combination of the long and short
feather-stitches, and is adapted for shading effects. In the stitches
known as chain, knotted, and button-hole stitch the thread is looped;
but lies flat in satin-stitch, crewel, darning, tent, and cross
stitches. Satin and darning stitches can be worked so that the design
appears the same on both sides of the cloth, but chain and crewel stitch
only produces the design on one side of the material.
[Illustration: Fig. 274.—State Gloves, formerly belonging to Louis XIII.
(S.K.M.)]
Gold thread has been used very much in all ages in embroidery, and
silver thread also, but unless the latter is varnished or lacquered it
goes black by tarnishing. Gold “passing” is a silver-gilt thread wound
around silk.
In old embroideries and woven tissues a gold thread was made of thin
parchment gilded and twisted around silk: the Japanese used gilded paper
in the same way, and sometimes the pure gold was used in thin, flat,
beaten-out strips for both embroideries and woven fabrics.
In Persia and in the East generally an extensive use is made of cloths
of gold and silver embroidery (Fig. 273) as well as closely-covered
needlework in silk and wool, and another modern kind is white silk
embroidery on white cambric or calico.
Cut work or “appliqué” is another form of embroidery, where flowers,
foliage, ornament, and figures are separately wrought with the needle,
and the spaces cut out of the ground material into which these pieces
were inserted. Many examples of Spanish, Rhenish, and Florentine
needlework may be seen in the Kensington Museum, in which the
architectural portions of the design are woven, and the figures of
saints and other subjects worked on fine canvas and inserted in the
panel spaces. Another and commoner kind of appliqué work is where the
ornamental shapes are cut out of silk, velvet, linen, or woollen
material, and sewed on to the cloth foundation, an edging material being
used consisting of silk cord, gilt leather, or gimp. Appliqué work is
more adapted for hangings and furniture coverings than for dress
material, though it was formerly used for dresses. The illustration
(Fig. 274) gives a very good idea of the style of ornament in Spanish or
French embroidery of the Renaissance period.
TAPESTRY.
Tapestry weaving is an art that requires greater care and skill on the
part of the workman than any other branch of textile manufacture,
especially in that kind known as “storied tapestry,” in which is woven a
design or picture copied from a previously executed cartoon.
Tapestry is woven in the “high warp” (_haute-lisse_) or in the “low
warp” loom: in the former case the loom is vertical, and in the latter
horizontal. The largest sized and the more important kinds of tapestry,
such as the “Gobelins,” are made in the high warp looms.
On account of the skill required, the accuracy and difficulty connected
with the weaving of storied tapestry, it takes a long time to educate
and perfect the training of a tapestry weaver—who must be an artist
himself, so much being left to him in the selection, harmonizing, and
shading of the different colours, even after the design is made that he
is required to copy.
In tapestry weaving the warp is covered by the woof on both its sides.
The warp is divided into two leaves or parts by a thread, and by a glass
rod or tube called the _bâton de croisure_.
“To form the web, the workman takes a shuttle mounted with wool or silk,
the end of which he fastens to the warp to the left of the space to be
covered by the colour in his shuttle; then passing his left hand between
the two leaves, separated by the _bâton de croisure_, he draws towards
him the thread which this shade is to cover; his right hand, passing
between the threads, lays hold of the shuttle, which he brings to the
right, and his left hand taking hold of the coats brings forward the
back thread of the warp, while the right hand returns the shuttle to the
place from which it was first moved. This passing and returning of the
shuttle forms what is called two shoots or a course.” (De Champeaux).
One of the great difficulties of the weaver is the shading off or
gradation of the colours, which is rendered more difficult by the design
being reproduced on the wrong side from the position of the weaver.
Hatching and stippling are resorted to in order to prevent a harsh or
mosaic-like appearance, and it is here that the great skill and artistic
knowledge of the weaver are most required. An extraordinary number of
tones and shades are used in an important piece of work, all of which
require to be fast dyed in colour in order to secure durability of tone
in the fabric. It is said that M. Chevreul, the late famous French
chemist and director of the dyeing department of the Gobelins, had
composed a chromatic prism of 14,420 different tones.
The best wool used in principal tapestry works on the Continent has
always been imported from Kent in England.
The art of tapestry weaving was originally acquired from the East, where
carpets of a floral and ornamental design were woven in the imitation of
the old hand-made embroideries. In Europe the names of Sarazins or
Sarazinois tapestry were given to these products from the fact that they
were made and exported by the Saracens. Perhaps the earliest woven
tapestries of Europe were the Flemish, which were first made towards the
end of the twelfth century. The towns of Arras, Oudenarde, Lille,
Brussels, Valenciennes, Tournay, and Bruges were celebrated for the
manufacture of tapestry, of which the town of Arras was the most
important, hence the old name of “Arras” used in England for all kinds
of storied tapestry.
Flanders was a rich and powerful country during the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, and at that time the ports of Bruges and Antwerp
were the greatest in the world. The various trades were protected by the
great corporations or guilds against the encroachments of the nobles on
their rights, and the most sturdy and turbulent of all the guilds was
that of the Flemish weavers, by reason of their numbers and general
prosperity of their trade. The product of the Flemish looms found its
way to all parts of Europe and particularly to England, and as far as
design and workmanship were concerned, and in the flat treatment of the
former to the material, these old Flemish tapestries have never been
excelled. The flat decorative treatment in the figure subjects of the
earlier work, consisting of allegorical designs and romances by such
artists as Roger van der Weyden, Stuerbout, Hugo van der Goes, and other
artists of the Van Eyck school, were singularly appropriate to the
material, and immensely superior to the more gorgeous effects of colour
and misapplied shading of the later French tapestries. Examples of this
earlier work are still in existence in the museums and palaces of
Europe.
Louis XI., King of France, took the town of Arras in 1477, and this was
practically the death blow to the manufacture of tapestry at that place,
but immediately after this event Brussels under the Burgundian rule rose
to great prosperity. Artists and tapestry weavers flocked to Brussels,
which soon became a great centre of this industry. Designs were sent
from Italy by the Popes and other princes to be woven in tapestry, and
many of the best Italian and Flemish painters made designs for the
Brussels ateliers. Pope Leo X. had the tapestries—now in the
Vatican—from the celebrated cartoons by Raphael, made in Brussels. These
cartoons are now in the Kensington Museum. They were bought by Charles
I. from a tapestry manufactory of Brussels by the advice of Rubens.
Giulio Romano, the Italian painter, Lucas van Leyden, Bernard van Orley,
Jean Mabuse, and other artists of the Renaissance period, furnished
designs for Brussels tapestry.
Owing to the occupation of Flanders by the Spanish (1555-1648), the
palace at Madrid contains the most extensive collection of Flemish
tapestries in existence, which had been chiefly acquired during that
period.
Tapestry making declined and was almost non-existent during the
religious wars of the sixteenth century, but was re-established and
became once more a flourishing industry in the seventeenth century, and
a decree was passed in 1647 for its support by the State.
The subjects of the storied tapestry were now of a more naturalistic
order: hunting scenes, landscapes, and rustic figures were woven from
the designs of the Dutch and Flemish painters of the period, and many of
the designs were copied from French tapestry.
The family of Pannemaker, celebrated at a former period in Brussels, set
up an important atelier in Lille about 1647, which remained in full
working order for about fifty years. Another well-known tapestry master
named Guillaume Werniers (1701-1738) executed many compositions designed
by Teniers.
Among the earliest tapestry manufactories in France was the one
established at Fontainebleau in the year 1539 by Francis I. It was
managed by Philibert Babou, the king’s architect, and Serlio, the
Italian architect and painter, designed some of the tapestries. The same
manufactory existed under Henri II., with Delorme for its director and
Ducerceau as the chief designer. Many tapestry weavers were attracted to
France from Flanders and Italy at this period, and a colony of Flemish
weavers who had settled in Paris were joined to the house of the
Gobelins—a long-established family of scarlet wool dyers—in the Faubourg
Saint Marcel in 1603. The house of the Gobelins had been under royal
patronage for some time previous to the year 1667, when it was bought by
Louis XIV. and henceforth became a royal monopoly.
Lebrun, the painter to the king, was appointed director. Some very heavy
and inappropriate compositions of this painter were copied in the
Gobelins tapestry, but besides these, many purely decorative and
ornamental designs with rich borders were also produced. This was a
period of great activity at the Gobelins factory, when nearly three
hundred workmen and artists were employed. Mignard was the successor of
Lebrun as director of the works (1690), then Mansard the architect.
After him came the Duc d’Antin as director (1708-36), and then M. de
Marigny, under whom many large paintings were reproduced in tapestry,
and smaller designs of Boucher and others. This celebrated factory, like
that of the Sèvres porcelain, still remains under State care and
patronage.
Several other tapestry manufactories existed in Paris from the early
days of the Gobelins, and a new kind of tapestry-carpet called the
Savonnerie—a kind of velvet carpet made in imitation of the Oriental
Turkey-stitch, was introduced into France under the patronage of Henri
IV. (1580-1610), the looms being set up in the Louvre. This carpet
manufactory was united to the Gobelins factory in 1826.
At Beauvais a celebrated manufactory of low warp tapestry has been in
existence from early times, and though some of the Beauvais compositions
are equal to the high warp productions of the Gobelins, the work as a
rule consists of a smaller and more ornamental character of design.
Rheims, Aubusson, and Felletin have also been centres of the French
tapestry industry. Aubusson carpets and tapestry have been noted for
their soft and delicate textures, and have been used very much for
furniture upholstery.
Italy has produced some good storied tapestry in the sixteenth century
(Fig. 275), but has been more celebrated for its velvets, &c.
England has been content to import more tapestry than it has ever
manufactured, although many important works have been executed at
different times in this country. Probably the earliest piece of genuine
English tapestry is that which still adorns the old St. Mary’s Hall or
Council-chamber in Coventry, and may have been made in the fourteenth,
or early fifteenth, century.
In the laws of Edward IV. (1344) tapestry making is mentioned, and in
the reign of Henry VIII., and the year 1509, Sheldon and Hicks set up a
tapestry manufactory at Barcheston in Warwickshire.
[Illustration: Fig. 275.—Dismissal of Hagar and Ishmael by Abraham;
Italian Tapestry; Sixteenth Century.]
The most important tapestry works were those set up at Mortlake, near
London, in the reign of James I., by Francis Crane, and which were
liberally supported by James and his son Charles I. During the reign of
the latter monarch the Mortlake works furnished a great many important
hangings for the royal palaces of Windsor, Hampton Court, Greenwich, and
St. James’s, among which were the reproductions of the celebrated
cartoons of Raphael, which Charles I. had purchased from Brussels. Some
of these tapestries are now preserved in the “Garde Meuble” at Paris.
Mythological subjects, framed with rich borders, were designed by
Francis Cheyne, a native of Saxony, who was the principal artist
employed at the Mortlake works. During the wars of the Commonwealth the
factory was closed, but was re-opened at the Restoration of Charles II.,
who passed some Acts for the encouragement of English tapestry making,
and put restrictions on the great importations of foreign tapestries.
The latter king employed Verrio the painter to make designs for the
Mortlake textiles. On the death of Francis Crane, the founder, in 1703,
the works were finally closed.
Unimportant tapestry works were in existence at Soho and Fulham about
the middle of the eighteenth century. Another attempt at tapestry
weaving was made by a French Protestant refugee named Passavant, who
established a factory at Exeter about the end of the seventeenth
century, and of late years there has been an attempt made to carry on
tapestry weaving at Windsor under the patronage of Her Majesty.
Some excellent work, equal if not superior to some of the best Flemish
tapestry, has been successfully made by William Morris from the designs
of Sir Edward Burne-Jones.
England has given great attention to the manufacture of low warp
carpets, in which she is only excelled by some of the best products of
Oriental looms. The manufacture of printed and woven carpets now forms
one of the most important factors in the national prosperity of England.
Brussels carpets are now made chiefly at Kidderminster; originally they
were made at Wilton. Axminster and Kidderminster carpets are made in
Glasgow, Wilton, and Kilmarnock, and Wilton carpets in Yorkshire.
Turkey carpets are imported chiefly from Smyrna. Persia, India, and
Tunis are still great centres of the Eastern carpet industry. The
carpets from these places are in great request in Europe for their
beauty of colour and design and for their great wearing qualities.
Carpets were originally used as _portières_, table and couch coverings,
but have gradually become coverings for floors, owing to their cheapened
cost of production.
LACE.
Hand-made laces are divided into two great classes—the “needle-point”
and the “pillow-made”; the former is made with a needle on parchment,
and the latter by twisting or plaiting threads from bobbins on a pillow.
Needle-point lace is an offspring of embroidery, and pillow-made lace is
the highest artistic development of twisted and plaited threads. The
foundation lines or threads of the pattern, various kinds of grounds,
and the edging in needle-point lace, are usually worked over with a
button-hole stitch in the ordinary course of making, while this
distinguishing feature of needle-point lace is absent in the pillow-made
varieties.
The earliest forms of lace were known as “lacis,” or darned netting, and
a species of embroidery called “cutwork.” One kind of cutwork consisted
in cutting, vandyking, or scalloping the edges of collars, cuffs, or
garments into various shapes, and overcasting the edges with the
button-hole stitch; another kind was when an embroidered design was
wrought on stretched network, and the pattern wrought in looped stitches
with the needle. This was the transitional form between embroidery and
lace work.
“Lacis,” or darned netting, was worked in regulated stitches on a ground
formed in squares, called “reseuil,” and sometimes it was formed of
pieces of linen cut out and applied to the net. Ornamental open-work of
cut linen and other material embroidered with silks of various colours,
gold and silver threads, and woollen yarns, were made before the
sixteenth century. All these varieties, though akin to lace work,
required some kind of a foundation, but lace consists of a combination
of threads alone, and has no foundation.
Pattern-books were published in Venice of designs for “cutworks” and
embroidery of all kinds as early as 1527, and later, in 1531, a book was
published by Tagliente, giving the descriptions and methods employed for
making the various stitches used in embroidery for hangings, costumes,
and altar-cloths. Some of the geometric designs in this book have been
used for point-lace patterns. The term used by the Italians, _punto in
aere (aria)_, or “point in air,” is thought by Mr. Alan Cole to mean
needle-point lace. The geometric design (Fig. 276) of Genoese point is
something very much akin to the _punto in aria_ patterns.
[Illustration: Fig. 276.—Genoese Point Lace.]
At Antwerp and Cologne, and other cities in Germany and Flanders,
imitations of the Venetian pattern-books were published, which served
the lace makers of those countries for their patterns.
The Flemish lace workers imitated to a great extent the Venetian
patterns, and in later years those of the French.
Lace is made in silk, cotton, flax, and sometimes in gold and silver
thread, aloe-fibre, and hair.
In the early kinds of lace the pattern was united by single threads
covered with button-hole stitch, and edged with little loops, the
flowers or pattern made of compact “clothing,” or woven threads (Fig.
277D), and the ground in its simplest variety by meshes made by plaiting
(Fig. 277A), as in the Brussels and Honiton four-thread ground, or in
other varieties, by simple twisting (Fig. 277B).
The ground or mesh (_réseau_) is usually hexagonal, and is worked
together with the pattern in the Valenciennes, Mechlin, and Buckingham
laces, but in the Brussels and Honiton the ground is worked in
afterwards, or the pattern is sewn on. Other fancy grounds or “fillings”
are called “modes” or “brides,” which consist of little ties ornamented
with “picots” or small loops (see Figs. 280, 284). A more elaborate form
of fillings may be seen in the Brussels and Alençon lappets (Figs. 278,
279); in the latter may be seen lozenges and flat hexagons of a solid
character set in frames of hexagons and on the intersections of the
squares. This groundwork has been termed _réseau-rosacé_.
[Illustration: Fig. 277.—A, Brussels ground; B, Two-thread Mesh; D,
Woven Ground.]
The outline around the pattern in some laces is called the “cordonnet”;
it is an important feature of the Alençon point lace (Fig. 279), where
it consists of a horsehair overcast with a button-hole stitch of thread;
it is also a distinctive mark of the pillow-made Mechlin lace (Fig.
283), but never occurs in the true or _vraie_ Valenciennes.
[Illustration: Fig. 278.—Lappet; Brussels; Eighteenth Century.]
The oldest of white hand-made laces is the Italian needle-point variety,
which is a development of embroidery. It is difficult to give the exact
date of the invention of needle-point lace, for in the earliest
specimens of Italian work, in which the patterns are copied from the
geometric designs of the Venetian pattern-books, they are usually a
mixture of needle-point and of plaited and twisted work, but the latter
may have been done with a hooked needle, and not pillow-made. On the
other hand, before point lace was so universally made by the Venetians,
the pattern-books were published about the middle of the sixteenth
century for _merletti a piombini_, or “lace made with leaden
bobbins”—probably a species of pillow-made lace—and some Italian work of
this kind is still in existence that is quite as early in date as that
of the oldest needlepoint variety. This would prove that there was
little or no difference in the age of either invention, although perhaps
priority ought to be given to the needle-point variety.
[Illustration: Fig. 279.—Lappet; Point d’Alençon; Eighteenth Century.]
Guipure is a name that has been given to lace in which the flowers are
united with ties or “brides picotees” (Fig. 280), but the term guipure
is more properly a kind of filigree work made with stiffened cords like
gimp or wire, the pattern being formed of gimp bent into a flattened
design by the needle, and united where the forms touch each other (Fig.
281).
The patterns in the early laces were, as we have seen, purely geometric
forms, such as squares with circles enclosed, divided by radiating lines
and diagonals, rosettes, lozenges, and small trimming borders of
rectangular panels, all worked on foundation lines that resembled in
some degree the main lines of a spider’s web.
By degrees these patterns developed into a more solid massing of the
flower forms, and the ties, or brides, became more irregular, but at the
same time more evenly distributed.
Sometimes, as in Venetian point lace, the brides had little flowers
worked on them, and in many instances the larger forms were raised to a
considerable height or thickness. The groundwork in some of the scroll
designs of Venetian point laces is composed of regular hexagons, and
this was the starting-point of the future hexagonal mesh grounds.
[Illustration: Fig. 280.—Guipure; Flemish; Seventeenth Century.]
Raised scroll work is peculiar to the Venetian point laces of the best
period—the end of the seventeenth century.
Flemish lace was mostly of the pillow-made variety, but some point work
was also executed, principally at Brussels. Mechlin, Lille, and
Valenciennes were all famous for their pillow-made laces.
Returning to the development of patterns in lace, we find that France
led the way in design from the early years of the eighteenth century.
Prior to this time, Colbert, the Minister of Louis XIV.—whose
far-sightedness in the matters of art did so much for France—succeeded
in establishing lace-making centres at Alençon, Argentan, Quesnoy,
Arras, Rheims, &c., and the patterns of lace then in favour partook of
the prevailing style of Louis-Quatorze ornament with a mixture of floral
forms, more or less realistic in character (Fig. 279). The latter
illustration is that of a lappet of “point d’Alençon” fabric, which is
the most elaborate and most expensive of all French laces. Another
French point lace is that known as “point d’Argentan,” and if not a
variety of Alençon lace, is very much like it. This lace is noted for
its clear and strong-meshed ground.
[Illustration: Fig. 281.—Guipure Lace; Italian; Seventeenth Century.]
Valenciennes lace, made in the French town of that name, is one of the
oldest pillow-made laces, dating from the fifteenth century; the best
Valenciennes, however, has been made at Yprès, and is a very soft and
flat variety of fabric, with the meshes plaited, not twisted, has no
cordonnet around the edges, and is very floral in design. “Fausse”
Valenciennes is an irregular and slightly coarser variety than the
“vraie” or true Valenciennes. Mechlin lace is similar in design to
Valenciennes, but has the cordonnet outline, and has the meshes of the
ground partly twisted and partly plaited (Fig. 283).
Lille and Arras laces have fine single grounds: four of the six sides of
the mesh are formed by the twisting of two threads, and the other two
sides by simply crossing the threads. Lille was formerly famous for its
black straight-edged laces. Chantilly laces were made in white and black
silk, but now similar black silk laces are made at Bayeux in Normandy,
and at Auvergne, an old-established centre. Laces are now made in all
kinds of materials.
[Illustration: Fig. 282.—Finest Raised Venetian Point.]
Brussels lace has always been a much-prized variety: it is made both in
the “_point à l’aiguille_” or needle-point, and in “_point plat_” or
pillow-made, and sometimes it is a mixture of both, where the flowers
are made separate in needle-point and are worked in afterwards to the
various “modes” and mesh or net grounds. The Brussels mesh is peculiar
in having two of its hexagonal sides longer than the other four, the
former two being plaited with four threads, while the latter four are
composed of a two-thread twist, and the cordonnet is well raised around
the pattern and is plaited. The patterns in Brussels lace are of all
kinds, but are chiefly imitations of French designs; it is a common
thing to find Alençon and other French patterns copied in this lace. In
France, Brussels lace was known by the name of “point d’Angleterre,”
from the fact that great quantities of it were imported, and also
smuggled into England during its prohibited importation in the
lace-weaving period of Charles II.
[Illustration: Fig. 283.—Border of Mechlin Lace.]
Ancient Spanish point-lace was like the Venetian raised work, but much
of the so-called Spanish lace was really Flemish, and was largely
imported from the Spanish Netherlands.
Honiton in Devonshire, and Buckinghamshire are the chief centres of the
lace making in England. Honiton lace is pillow-made, and is similar to
Brussels in fabrication, the designs of which were originally sprigs of
flowers, but have developed to a kind of guipure work held together by
“brides” (Fig. 284).
[Illustration: Fig. 284.—Honiton; Modern.]
Buckinghamshire lace is also pillow-made, and resembles Flemish lace in
design, but is a little more irregular and weaker in drawing.
Irish lace is known under the name of Carrickmacross—a kind of cut linen
work; Limerick—a species of embroidery; and point lace, made in Ulster
and elsewhere in Ireland (Fig. 285).
Many efforts have been made in recent years to revive the Irish
lace-making industry, which have been attended with a good measure of
success, particularly in the schools attached to the convents.
A great modern revival of lace making has taken place in the island of
Burano, near Venice, which dates from the year 1872. This is due to the
energy and ability of Madame Bellario, assisted by the patronage of the
Queen of Italy and other members of the royal family. The variety made
is the needle-point, and the designs are mostly good copies of the old
Venetian and seventeenth-century French patterns.
[Illustration: Fig. 285.—Irish Point; Modern.]
Machine-made lace has been brought to an advanced state of perfection,
and Nottingham in England, where the first machines were set up, is now
the great centre of this industry. The machine on which lace is made is
a development of the stocking-knitting machine, and lace nets were first
made on these machines about 1770. Heathcote, of Nottingham, invented
the bobbin net machine, and Leaver invented the lace machine which is
still in use with various improvements and modifications. Almost any
kind of lace can now be imitated by the machine, but it is easily
distinguished from the hand-made varieties by the greater regularity of
texture, the absence in the machine-made point lace of any imitation of
the button-hole stitch and of the elaborate plaiting that is found in
the pillow hand-made laces.