THE STORY OF TEXTILES
The story of the evolution of textiles (any woven material) is
fascinating, and like the history of every art, runs parallel with the
history of culture and progress in the art of living,--physical,
mental and spiritual.
To those who feel they would enjoy an exhaustive history of textiles
we recommend a descriptive catalogue relating to the collection of
textiles in the South Kensington Museum, prepared by the Very Rev.
Daniel Rock, D.D. (1870).
In the introduction to that catalogue one gets the story of woven
linens, cottons, silks, paper, gold and silver threads, interspersed
with precious jewels and glass beads--all materials woven by hand or
machine.
The story of textiles includes: 1st, woven materials; 2nd, embroidered
materials; 3rd, a combination of the two, known as "tapestry." If one
reads their wonderful story, starting in Assyria, then progressing to
Egypt, the Orient, Greece, Rome and Western Europe, in any history of
textiles, one may obtain quickly and easily a clear idea of this
department of interior decoration from the very earliest times.
The first European silk is said to have been in the form of
transparent gauze, dyed lovely tones for women of the Greek islands, a
form of costume later condemned by Greek philosophers.
We know that embroidery was an art three thousand years ago, in fact
the figured garments seen on the Assyrian and Egyptian bas-reliefs are
supposed to represent materials with embroidered figures--not woven
patterns--whereas in the Bible, when we read of embroidery, according
to the translators, this sometimes means woven stripes.
PLATE IX
An ideal dining-room of its kind, modern painted furniture,
Empire in design. In this case yellow with decoration in white.
Curtains, thin yellow silk.
Note the Empire electric light fixtures in hand-carved gilded
wood, reproductions of an antique silver applique. Even the steam
radiators are here cleverly concealed by wooden cases made after
Empire designs.
The walls are white and panelled in wood also white.
[Illustration: _Dining-room in Country House, Showing Modern Painted
Furniture. Style Directoire._]
The earliest garments of Egypt were of cotton and hemp, or mallow,
resembling flax. The older Egyptians never knew silks in any form, nor
did the Israelites, nor any of the ancients. The earliest account of
this material is given by Aristotle (fourth century). It was
brought into Western Europe from China, via India, the Red Sea
and Persia, and the first to weave it outside the Orient was a maiden
on the Isle of Cos, off the coast of Asia Minor, producing a thin
gauze-like tissue worn by herself and companions, the material
resembling the Seven Veils of Salome. To-day those tiny bits of gauze
one sees laid in between the leaves of old manuscript to protect the
illuminations, as our publishers use sheets of tissue paper, are said
to be examples of this earliest form of woven silk.
The Romans used silk at first only for their women, as it was
considered not a masculine material, but gradually they adopted it for
the festival robes of men, Titus and Vespasian being among those said
to have worn it.
The first silk looms were set up in the royal palaces of the Roman
kings in the year 533 A.D. The raw material was brought from the East
for a long time but in the sixth century two Greek monks, while in
China, studied the method of rearing silk worms and obtaining the
silk, and on their departure are said to have concealed the eggs of
silk worms in their staves. They are accredited with introducing the
manufacture of silk into Greece and hence into Western Europe. After
that Greece, Persia and Asia Minor made this material, and Byzantium
was famed for its silks, the actual making of which got into the hands
of the Jews and was for a long time controlled by them.
Metals (gold, silver and copper) were flattened out and cut into
narrow strips for winding around cotton twists. These were the gold
and silver threads used in weaving. The Moors and Spaniards instead of
metals used strips of gilded parchment for weaving with the silk.
We know that England was weaving silk in the thirteenth century, and
velvets seem to have been used at a very early date. The introduction
of silk and velvet into different countries had an immediate and
much-needed influence in civilising the manners of society. It is hard
to realise that in the thirteenth century when Edward I married
Eleanor of Castile, the highest nobles of England when resting at
their ease, stretched at full length on the straw-covered floors of
baronial halls, and jeered at the Spanish courtiers who hung the walls
and stretched the floors of Edward's castle with silks in preparation
for his Spanish bride.
The progress of art and culture was always from the East and moved
slowly. Do not go so far back as the thirteenth century. James I of
England owned no stockings when he was James VI of Scotland, and had
to borrow a pair in which to receive the English ambassador.
In the eleventh century Italy manufactured her own silks, and into
them were woven precious stones, corals, seed pearls and coloured
glass beads which were made in Greece and Venice, as well as gold and
silver spangles (twelfth and thirteenth centuries).
Here is an item on interior decorations from Proverbs vii, 16; "I have
woven my bed with cords, I have covered it with painted tapestry
brought from Egypt." There were painted tapestries made in Western
Europe at a very early date, and collectors eagerly seek them (see
Plate XIV). In the fourteenth century these painted tapestries were
referred to as "Stained Cloth."
Embroidery as an art, as we have already seen, antedates silk
weaving. The youngest of the three arts is tapestry. The oldest
embroidery stitches are: "the feather stitch," so called because they
all took one direction, the stitches over-lapping, like the feathers
of a bird; and "cross-stitch" or "cushion" style, because used on
church cushions, made for kneeling when at prayer or to hold the Mass
book.
Hand-woven tapestries are called "comb-wrought" because the instrument
used in weaving was comb-like.
"Cut-work" is embroidery that is cut out and appliqued, or sewed on
another material.
Carpets which were used in Western Europe in the Middle Ages are
seldom seen. The Kensington Museum owns two specimens, both of them
Spanish, one of the fourteenth and one of the fifteenth century.
In speaking of Gothic art we called attention to the fostering of art
by the Church during the Dark Ages. This continued, and we find that
in Henry VIII's time those who visited monasteries and afterward wrote
accounts of them call attention to the fact that each monk was
occupied either with painting, carving, modelling, embroidering or
writing. They worked primarily for the Church, decorating it for the
glory of God, but the homes of the rich and powerful laity, even so
early as the reign of Henry III (1216-1272), boasted some very
beautiful interior decorations, tapestries, painted ceilings and
stained glass, as well as carved panelling.
Bostwick Castle, Scotland, had its vaulted ceiling painted with
towers, battlements and pinnacles, a style of mural decoration which
one sees in the oldest castles of Germany. It recalls the illumination
in old manuscripts.