The art of working with the needle flowers, fruits, human and animal
forms, or any fanciful design, upon webs woven of silk, linen, cotton,
wool, hemp, besides other kinds of stuff, is so old that it reaches far
into the prehistoric ages.
Those patterns, after so many fashions, which we see figured upon the
garments worn by men and women in Egyptian and Assyrian monuments, but
especially on the burned-clay vases made and painted by the Greeks
during their most archaic as well as later times, or we read about in
the writings of that people, were not wrought in the loom, but done by
the needle.
The old Egyptian loom--and that of the Jews must have been like
it--was, as we know from paintings, of the simplest shape, and seems
to have never been able to do anything more diversified in the
designs of its patterns than straight lines in different colours,
and at best nothing higher in execution than checker-work: beyond
this, all else was put in by hand with the needle. In Paris, at the
Louvre, are several pieces of early Egyptian webs coloured, drawings
of which have been published by Sir Gardner Wilkinson in his short
work “The Egyptians in the time of the Pharaohs.”[297] There are two
pieces of the same textile scarlet, with one brede woven of narrow
red stripes on a broad yellow stripe, the other border being a broad
yellow stripe edged by a narrow scarlet one, both wrought up and down
with needlework; the second piece of blue is figured all over in
white embroidery with a pattern of netting, the meshes of which shut
in irregular cubic shapes, and in the lines of the reticulation the
mystic “gammadion” or “fylfot” is seen. Of them Sir J. G. Wilkinson
says:--“They are mostly cotton, and, though their date is uncertain,
they suffice to show that the manufacture was Egyptian; and the many
dresses painted on the monuments of the eighteenth dynasty show that
the most varied patterns were used by the Egyptians more than 3000
years ago, as they were at a later period by the Babylonians, who
became noted for their needlework.”[298] Other specimens of Egyptian
embroidery were on those corslets sent to Grecian temples by Amasis,
about which we have before spoken (p. xiv.)
[297] P. 42.
[298] Ibid. p. 41.
That the Israelites embroidered their garments, especially those worn
in public worship, is clear from several passages in the Book of
Exodus. The words “embroidery” and “embroidered” that come there so
frequently in our English versions are not to be understood always to
mean needlework, but on occasions the tasteful weaving in stripes of
the gold, violet, and purple, and scarlet twice dyed, and fine twisted
linen; the pomegranates at the bottom of Aaron’s tunic between the
golden bells, and wrought of four of these stuffs, were, it is likely,
made out of such coloured shreds, and of that kind which is now called
cut-work.
Picking up from Greek and Latin writers only, as was his wont, those
scraps of which his Natural History is made, Pliny tells us, even in
Homer, mention is made of embroidered cloths, which originated such
as by the Romans are called “triumphal.” To do this with the needle
was found out by the Phrygians, hence such garments took the name
Phrygionic: “Pictas vestes jam apud Homerum fuisse unde triumphales
natæ. Acu facere id, Phryges invenerunt ideoque Phrygioniæ appellatæ
sunt.”[299] He might have added that the only word the Romans had to
mean an embroiderer was “Phrygio,” which arose from the same cause.
Many passages in Virgil show that from Western Asia the Romans learned
their knowledge of embroidery, and borrowed the employment of it on
their garments of State; besides, “those art-wrought vests of splendid
purple tint:”--“arte laboratæ vestes ostroque superbo,”[300] brought
forth for the feast by the Sidonian Dido, the Phrygian Andromache
bestows upon Ascanius, as a token of her own handicraft, garments shot
with gold and pictured, as well as a Phrygian cloak, along with other
woven stuffs--
Fert picturatas auri subtemine vestes,
Et Phrygiam Ascanio chlamydem, &c.[301]
and Æneas veils his head for prayer with the embroidered hem of his
raiment--
Et capita ante aras Phrygio velamur amictu.[302]
[299] Lib. viii. c. 47.
[300] Æneid i. 643.
[301] Ibid. iii. 482.
[302] Ibid. iii. 545.
In Latin while an embroiderer was called a Phrygian, “Phrygio,”
needlework was denominated “Phrygium,” or Phrygian stuff; hence,
when, as often happened, the design was wrought in solid gold wire or
golden thread, the embroidery so worked got named “auriphrygium.” From
this term comes our own old English word “orphrey.” Though deformed
after so many guises by the witless writers of many an inventory of
church goods, or by the sorry cleric who in a moment of needful haste
had been called upon to draw up a will; other men, however small
their learning, always spelled the word “orphrey,” in English, and
“auriphrygium,” in Latin. In the Exeter inventory, given by Oliver,
“cum orphrey de panno aureo, &c. cum orphrais, &c.”[303] are found;
and the cope bequeathed by Henry Lord de Scrope, A.D. 1415, had its
“orphreis” “embraudata nobiliter cum imaginibus,” &c.[304] The many
beautiful orphreys on the Lincoln vestments are fully described in
the “Monasticon Anglicanum:”[305] no one could be more earnest in
commanding the use on vestments of the auriphrygium, or embroidered
“orphrey” than St. Charles Borromeo.[306]
While Phrygia in general, Babylon in particular became celebrated for
the beauty of its embroideries: “colores diversos picturæ intexere
Babylon maxime celebravit et nomen imposuit;”[307] and those who have
seen the sculptures in the British Museum brought from Nineveh, and
described and figured by Layard, must have witnessed how lavishly the
Assyrians must have adorned their dress with that sort of needlework
for which one of their greatest cities was so famous.
Up to the first century of our era, the reputation which Babylon had
won for her textiles and needlework still lived. Josephus, himself
a Jew, who had often been to worship at Jerusalem, tells us that
the veils of its Temple given by Herod were Babylonian, and of the
outer one that writer says:--“there was a veil of equal largeness
with the door. It was a Babylonian curtain, embroidered with blue
and fine linen, and scarlet and purple, and of a texture that was
wonderful.”[308]
[303] Pp. 330, 335-336.
[304] Rymer’s Fœdera, t. ix. p. 272.
[305] T. viii. pp. 1290, new edition.
[306] Church of our Fathers, t. i. p. 453.
[307] Pliny, lib. viii. c. 47.
[308] Wars of the Jews, b. v. c. 5; Works translated by Weston, t. 4,
p. 121.
What the Jews did for the Temple we may be sure was done by Christians
for the Church. The faithful, however, went even further, and wore
garments figured all over with passages from Holy Writ wrought in
embroidery. From a stirring sermon preached by St. Asterius, bishop of
Amasia in Pontus, in the fourth century, we learn this. Taking for his
text, “a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen,”
this father of the Church, while upbraiding the world for its follies
in dress, lets us know that some people went about arrayed like painted
walls, with beasts and flowers all over them; while others, pretending
a more serious tone of thought, dressed in clothes figured with a
sketch of all the doings and wonders of our Lord. “Strive,” thunders
forth St. Asterius, “to follow in your lives the teachings of the
Gospel, rather than have the miracles of our Redeemer embroidered upon
your outward dress.”[309]
To have had so many subjects shown upon one garment, it is clear that
each must have been done very small, and all wrought in outline;
a style which is being brought back, with great effect, into
ecclesiastical use.
Of the embroidery done by Christian ladies abroad during the Lower
Roman Empire, we have already spoken, p. xxxv. Coming to our own land,
and its mediæval times, we find how at the beginning of that period
our Anglo-Saxon sisters knew so well to handle their needle. The many
proofs of this we have brought forward in another place.[310]
The discriminating accuracy with which our old writers sought to follow
while noting down the several kinds of textile gifts bestowed upon a
church is as instructive as praiseworthy. Ingulph did not think it
enough to say that abbot Egelric had given many hangings to the Church
of Croyland, the great number of which were silken, but he must tell
us, too, that some were ornamented with birds wrought in gold, and
sewed on--in fact, of cut-work--other some with those birds woven
into the stuff, other some quite plain:--“Dedit etiam multa pallia
suspendenda in parietibus ad altaria sanctorum in festis, quorum
plurima de serico erant, aureis volucribus quædam insita,
quædam intexta, quædam plana.”[311]
So also the care often taken by the writers of inventories, like him
who wrote out the Exeter one, to mention how some of the vestments had
nothing about them but true needlework, or, as they at times express
it, “operata per totum opere acuali,” may be witnessed in that useful
work, “The Lives of the Bishops of Exeter,” by Oliver.[312]
By the latter end of the thirteenth century embroidery, as well
as its imitation, got for its several styles and various sorts
of ornamentation mixed up with it a distinguishing and technical
nomenclature; and the earliest document in which we meet with
this set of terms is the inventory drawn up, A.D. 1295, of the
vestments belonging to our London St. Paul’s Cathedral: herein,
the “opus plumarium,”[313] the “opus pectineum,”[314] the “opus
pulvinarium,”[315] cut-work, “consutum de serico,”[316] “de serico
consuto,”[317] may be severally found in Dugdale’s “History of St.
Paul’s.”
[309] Ceillier, Hist. Gen. des Auteurs Sacrés et Ecclesiastiques, t.
viii. p. 488.
[310] The Church of our Fathers, t. ii. p. 267, &c. &c.
[311] Ingulphi Hist. ed. Savile, p. 505, b.
[312] Pp. 336, 344, &c.
[313] P. 320.
[314] P. 316.
[315] P. 319.
[316] P. 320.
[317] P. 319.
The “opus plumarium” was the then usual general term for what is now
commonly called embroidery; and hence, in some old inventories, we
meet with such notices as this:--“capæ opere plumario factæ id est,
brudatæ.”
This term was given to embroidery needlework because the stitches were
laid down never across but longwise, and so put together that they
seemed to overlap one another like the feathers in the plumage of a
bird. Not inaptly then was this style called “feather-stitch” work,
in contradistinction to that done in cross and tent stitch, or the
“cushion-style,” as we shall, a little further on, have occasion to
notice next.
Among the many specimens here done in feather-stitch, in all ages, we
would especially instance No. 84, p. 3.
The “opus pulvinarium,” or “cushion style,” was that sort of embroidery
like the present so-called Berlin-work. As now, so then it was done in
the same stitchery, with pretty much the same materials, and put if not
always, at least often, to the same purpose of being used for cushions,
upon which to sit or to kneel in church, or uphold the mass-book at
the altar; hence its name of “cushion-style.” In working it, silken
thread is known to have been often used. Among other specimens, and in
silk, the rare and beautiful liturgical cushion of a date corresponding
to the London inventory, is to be seen here, No. 1324, p. 59. Being
so well adapted for working heraldry, from an early period till now,
this stitch has been mostly used for the purpose; and the emblazoned
orphreys, like the narrow hem on the Syon cope, are wrought in it.
The oldest, the most elaborate, the best known sample in the world,
and what to us is more interesting still from being in reality not
French but English needlework, is the so-called, but misnamed, Bayeux
tapestry, a shred of which is in this collection, No. 675, p. 6. Of all
this more anon, § IV.
The “opus pectineum” was a kind of woven-work imitative of embroidery,
and used as such, in truth, about which we have a description in the
Dictionary of the Londoner, John Garland, who thus speaks of the
process: “Textrices ducunt pectines cum trama quæ trahitur a spola et
pano,” &c.[318] From this use of a comb-like instrument--“pecten”--in
the manufacture the work itself received the distinctive appellation
of “pectineum,” or comb-wrought. Before John Garland forsook England
for France, to teach a school there, he must have often seen, while
at home, his countrywomen sitting down to such an occupation; and the
“amictus de dono dominæ Kathærinæ de Lovell de opere pectineo,”[319]
may perhaps have been the doing of that same lady’s own hands.
[318] Ed. H. Geraud, Paris sous Philippe le Bel. p. 607.
[319] Dugdale’s Hist. of St. Paul’s, p. 319.
Of such work as this “opus pectineum,” or comb-drawn, wrought by
English women here at home, we have several specimens in this
collection, pp. 24, 33, 38, &c.
Foreign ones are plentifully represented in the many samples of such
webs from Germany, especially from Cologne, pp. 61, 62, 63, &c.
Likely is it that Helisend, the bold young lady from the south of
England, and one of the waiting maids to the English Maud, queen of
David, king of Scotland, _circa_ A.D. 1150, got, from her cunning
in such work, the reputation of being so skilful in weaving and
church-embroidery:--“operis texturæ scientia purpuraria nobilis
extiterat, et aurifrixoria artificiosæ compositionis peroptima super
omnes Angliæ mulieres tunc temporis principaliter enituerat.”[320]
Our mediæval countrywomen were so quick at the needle that they could
make their embroidery look as if it had been done in the loom--really
woven. Not long ago, a shred of crimson cendal, figured in gold and
silver thread with a knight on horseback, armed as of the latter time
of Edward I., was shown us. At the moment we took the mounted warrior
to have been, not hand-worked, but woven, so flat, so even was every
thread. Looking at it however through a glass and turning it about, we
found it to have been unmistakably embroidered by the finger in such a
way that the stitches for laying down upon the surface, and not drawing
through the gold threads and thus saving expense, were carried right
into the canvas lining at the back of this thin silk. After this same
manner was really done, to our thinking, all the design, both before
and behind upon that fine English-wrought chasuble, No. 673, p. 5.
At the latter end of the thirteenth century our women struck out for
themselves a new way of embroidery. Without leaving aside the old and
usual “opus plumarium,” or feather-stitch, they mixed it with a new
style, both of needlework and mechanism. So beautiful and telling was
the novel method deemed abroad, that it won for itself from admiring
Christendom the complimentary appellation of “opus Anglicum,” or
English work. In what its peculiarity consisted has long been a
question and a puzzle among foreign archæological writers; and a living
one of eminence, the Canon Voisin, vicar general to the bishop of
Tournai, while noticing a cope of English work given to that church,
says:--“Il serait curieux de savoir quelle broderie ou quel tissu on
designait sous le nom de _opus Anglicum_.”[321]
[320] Reginaldi Dunelmensis Libellus, &c. Ed. Surtees Society, p. 152.
[321] Notice sur les Anciennes Tapisseries de la Cathedral de Tournai,
p. 16.
But the reader may ask what is
THE OPUS ANGLICUM, OR ENGLISH WORK,
about which one heard so much of old?
Happily, we have before us in the present collection, as well as
elsewhere in this country, the means of helping our continental friends
with an answer to their question.
Looking well into that very fine and invaluable piece of English
needlework, the Syon cope, No. 9182, p. 275, we find that for the human
face, all over it, the first stitches were begun in the centre of the
cheek, and worked in circular, not straight lines, into which, however,
after the further side had been made, they fell, and were so carried
on through the rest of the fleshes; in some instances, too, even all
through the figure, draperies and all. But this was done in a sort of
chain stitch, and a newly practised mechanical appliance was brought
into use. After the whole figure had thus been wrought with this kind
of chain stitch in circles and straight lines, then with a little thin
iron rod ending in a small bulb or smooth knob slightly heated, were
pressed down those middle spots in the faces that had been worked in
circular lines; as well, too, as that deep wide dimple in the throat,
especially of an aged person. By the hollows thus lastingly sunk, a
play of light and shadow is brought out, that, at a short distance,
lends to the portion so treated a look of being done in low relief.
Chain stitch, then, worked in circular lines, and relief given to parts
by hollows sunk into the faces, and other portions of the persons,
constitute the elements of the “opus Anglicum,” or embroidery after the
English manner. How the chain-stitch was worked into circles for the
faces, and straight lines for the rest of the figures, is well shown by
a wood-cut, after a portion of the Steeple Aston embroideries, given in
the Archæological Journal, t. iv. p. 285.
Though, indeed, not merely the faces and the extremities, but the dress
too of the persons figured, were sometimes wrought in chain-stitch, and
afterwards treated as we have just described, the more general practice
was to work the draperies in our so-called feather-stitch, which used
to be also employed for the grounding, but diapered after a pretty,
though simple, zig-zag design, as we find in the Syon cope.
Apart from its stitching in circles, and those hollows, there are
elements in the design for sacred art-work almost peculiar to mediæval
England. Upon the rood loft in old Westminster Abbey, stood hard by the
cross two six-winged seraphim, each with his feet upon a wheel; so,
too, in the Syon cope, as well as in English needlework on chasubles
and copes, wrought even late in the fifteenth century. When, therefore,
such angel-figures are found on embroideries, still to be seen in
foreign hands, a presumption exists that the work is of English
production.
How highly English embroideries were at one period appreciated by
foreigners may be gathered from the especial notice taken of them
abroad; and spoken of in continental documents. Matilda, the first
Norman William’s queen, stooped to the meanness of filching from
the affrighted Anglo-Saxon monks of Abingdon their richest church
vestments, and would not be put off with inferior ones.[322] Other
instances we have given.[323] In his will, dated A.D. 1360, Cardinal
Talairand, bishop of Albano, speaks of the English embroideries on
a costly set of white vestments.[324] Ghini, by birth a Florentine,
but, in the year 1343, bishop of Tournai, bequeathed to that cathedral
an old English cope, as well as a beautiful corporal of English
work--“cappam veterem cum imaginibus et frixio operis Anglicani. Item
unum corporale de opere Anglicano pulchrum,” &c.[325] Among the copes
reserved for prelates’ use in the chapel of Charles, Duke of Bourgogne,
brother-in-law to our John Duke of Bedford, there was one of English
work, very elaborately fraught with many figures, as appears from this
description of it: “une chappe de brodeure d’or, façon d’Engleterre,
à plusieurs histoires de N.D. et anges et autres ymages, estans en
laceures escriptes, garnie d’un orfroir d’icelle façon fait à apostres,
desquelles les manteulx sont tous couvers de perles, et leur diadesmes
pourphiler de perles, estans en manière de tabernacles, faits de deux
arbres, dont les tiges sont toutes couvertes de perles et à la dite
chappe y a une bille des dites armes, garnie de perles comme la dessus
dicte.”[326]
Besides textiles, leather was at one time the material upon which our
embroiderers exercised the needle; and the Exeter inventory, drawn
up A.D. 1277, mentions, for its bier, a large pillow covered with
leather figured with flowers: “magnum cervical co-opertum coreo cum
floribus.”[327]
[322] Chronicon Monasterii de Abingdon, p. 491.
[323] Church of our Fathers, t. iv. p. 271, &c.
[324] Texier, Dictionnaire, d’Orfeverie, p. 195.
[325] Voisin, Notice sur les Anciennes Tapisseries, p. 17.
[326] Les Ducs de Bourgogne, t. ii. p. 244, ed. Le Comte de Laborde.
[327] Ed. Oliver, p. 298.
While so coveted abroad, our English embroidery was highly prized and
well paid for here at home. Henry III. had a chasuble embroidered
by Mabilia of Bury St. Edmund’s;[328] and Edward II. paid a hundred
marks--a good round sum in those days--to Rose, the wife of John de
Bureford, a citizen and mercer of London, for a choir-cope of her
embroidering, and which was to be sent to Rome for the Pope as an
offering from the queen.[329]
Though English embroidery fell on a sudden from its high estate, it
never died. All along through those years, wasted with the wars of
the Roses, the work of the English needle was very poor, very coarse,
and, so to say, ragged; as, for instance, the chasuble here, No. 4045,
p. 88. Nothing whatsoever of the celebrated chain-stitch with dimpled
faces in the figures can be found about it. Every part was done in the
feather-stitch, slovenly put down, with some few exceptions, among
which may be enumerated the three rich English copes with pointed
hoods running, like one here, p. 207, through the orphreys, still to
be seen in the Chapter Library at Durham, and other vestments of the
period in private hands. During the early part of the seventeenth
century our embroiderers again struck out for themselves a new style,
which consisted in throwing up their figures a good height above
the grounding. Of this raised work there is a fine specimen in the
fourth of those Durham copes. It is said to have been wrought for and
given by Charles I. to that cathedral. This red silk vestment is well
sprinkled with bodiless cherubic heads crowned with rays and borne up
by wings; while upon the hood is shown David, who is holding in one
hand Goliath’s severed head; and the whole is done in highly raised
embroidery. Belonging to a few of our aristocracy are bibles of the
large folio size, covered in rich white silk or satin, and embroidered
with the royal arms done in bold raised-work. Each of such volumes is
said to have been a gift from that prince to a forefather of the man
who now owns it; and a very fine one we lately saw at Ham House.
This style of raised embroidery remained in use for many years; and
even yet to be found are certain quaint old looking-glasses, the broad
frames of which are overlaid with this kind of raised embroidery,
sometimes setting forth, as in the specimen No. 892, p. 319, of the
Brooke collection here, the story of Ahasuerus and Esther, or a passage
in some courtship carried on after the manners of Arcadia.[330]
[328] Issue Rolls, p. 23.
[329] Issue Rolls, p. 133.
[330] Archæological Journal, t. xviii. 191.
Occasionally on work of an earlier period, some element or another of
this raised style may be found; for instance, in that fine Rhenish
embroidery, Nos. 1194-5, p. 21, the bushiness of hair on all the
angels’ heads, is striking, but this is done with little locks of
auburn coloured silk.
But a very few people, at the present moment, have the faintest idea
about the labour, the money, the length of time often bestowed of old
upon embroideries which had been sketched as well as wrought by the
hands of men, each in his own craft the ablest and most cunning of that
day. In behalf of this our own land, we may gather evidences strewed
all over the present Introduction: as a proof of the self-same doings
elsewhere, may be set forth a remarkable passage given, in his life
of Antonio Pollaiuolo, by Vasari, where he says: “For San Giovanni in
Florence there were made certain very rich vestments after the design
of this master, namely, two dalmatics, a chasuble, and a cope, all
of gold-wove velvet with pile upon pile--di broccato riccio sopra
riccio--each woven of one entire piece and without seam, the bordering
and ornaments being stories from the life of St. John, embroidered with
the most subtile mastery of that art by Paolo da Verona, a man most
eminent of his calling, and of incomparable ingenuity: the figures are
no less ably executed with the needle than they would have been if
Antonio had painted them with the pencil; and for this we are largely
indebted to the one master for his design, as well as to the other
for his patience in embroidering it. This work took twenty-six years
for its completion, being wholly in close stitch--questi ricami fatti
con punto serrato--which, to say nothing of its durability, makes the
work appear as if it were a real picture limned with the pencil; but
the excellent method of which is now all but lost, the custom being
in these days to make the stitches much wider--il punteggiare piu
largo--whereby the work is rendered less durable and much less pleasing
to the eye.”[331] These vestments may yet be seen framed and glazed in
presses around the sacristy of San Giovanni.[332] Antonio died A.D.
1498. The magnificent cope once belonging to Westminster Abbey, and
now at Stonyhurst and exhibited here, A.D. 1862, is of one seamless
piece of gorgeous gold tissue figured with bold wide-spreading foliage
in crimson velvet, pile upon pile, and dotted with small gold spots;
it came, it is likely, from the same loom that threw off these San
Giovanni vestments, at Florence.”
[331] Vite de’ piu Eccellenti Pittori, &c., di G. Vasari, Firenze, F.
Le Monnier, 1849. t. v. pp. 101, 102; English translation, by Mrs.
Foster, t. ii. p. 229.
[332] Ib.
OUR OLD ENGLISH OPUS CONSUTUM, OR CUT WORK,
in French, “appliqué,” is a term of rather wide meaning, as it takes in
several sorts of decorative accompaniments to needlework.
When anything--flower, fruit, or figure--is wrought by itself upon
a separate piece of silk or canvas, and afterwards sewed on to the
vestment for church use, or article for domestic purpose, it comes to
be known as “cut-work.” Though often mixed with embroidery, and oftener
still employed by itself upon liturgical garments; oftenest of all, it
is to be found in bed-curtains, hangings for rooms and halls, hence
called “hallings,” and other items in household furniture.
Of cut-work in embroidery, those pieces of splendid Rhenish needlework
with the blazonment of Cleves, all sewed upon a ground of crimson silk,
as we see, Nos. 1194-5, p. 21. The chasuble of crimson double-pile
velvet, No. 78, p. 1, affords another good example. The niches in which
the saints stand are loom-wrought, but those personages themselves are
exquisitely done on separate pieces of fine canvass, and afterwards let
into the unwoven spaces left open for them.
A Florentine piece of cut-work, No. 5788, p. 111, is alike remarkable
for its great beauty, and the skill shown in bringing together so
nicely, weaving and embroidery. Much of the architectural accessories
is loom-wrought, while the extremities of the evangelists are all
done by the needle; but the head, neck, and long beard are worked by
themselves upon very fine linen, and afterwards put together after
such a way that the full white beard overlaps the tunic. Another and
a larger example, from Florence, of the same sort, is furnished us at
No. 78, p. 1. Quite noteworthy too is the old and valuable vestment,
No. 673, p. 5, in this regard, for parts of the web in the back orphrey
were left open, in the looms for the heads, and extremities of the
figures there, to be done afterwards in needlework. Such a method of
weaving was practised in parts of Germany, and the web from the looms
of Cologne, No. 1329, p. 61, exhibits an example.
Other methods were bade to come and yield a quicker help in this
cut-work. To be more expeditious, all the figures were at once shaped
out of woven silk, satin, velvet, linen, or woollen cloth as wanted,
and sewed upon the grounding of the article. Upon the personages thus
fashioned in silk, satin, or linen, the features of the face and the
contours of the body were wrought by the needle in very narrow lines
done in brown silk thread. At times, even thus much of embroidery
was set aside for the painting brush, and instances are to be found
in which the spaces left uncovered by the loom for the heads and
extremities of the human figures, are filled in by lines from the brush.
Often, too, the cut-work done in these ways is framed, as it were, with
an edging, either in plain or gilt leather, hempen, or silken cord,
exactly like the leadings of a stained glass window.
Belonging to ourselves is an old English chasuble, the broad cross,
at the back of which is figured with “The Resurrection of the Body.”
The dead are arising from their graves, and each is wrought in satin,
upon which the features on the face, and the lineaments of the rest of
the body, are shown by thin lines worked with the needle in dark brown
silk; and the edge, where each figure is sewed on the grounding, is
covered with a narrow black silk cord, after much the same fashion as
the lectern-veil here, No. 7468, p. 141, of silk and gold cut work.
Instances there are wherein, instead of needlework, painting was
resorted to; No. 8315, p. 189, shows us a fine art-work in its way,
upon which we see the folds of the white linen garment worn by our
Lord, marked by brown lines put in with the brush, while the head and
extremities, and the ground strewed with flowers, are wrought with
the needle. No. 8687, p. 258, gives us a figure where the whole of
the person, the fleshes and clothing, are done in woven silk cut out,
shaded and featured in colours by the brush with some little needlework
here and there upon the garments. In that old specimen, No. 8713,
p. 270, such parts of the design as were meant to be white are left
uncovered upon the linen, and the shading is indicated by brown lines.
Perhaps in no collection open anywhere to public view could be found a
piece of cut-work so full of teaching about the process, and its easy
way of execution, as the one here, No. 1370, p. 76; to it we earnestly
recommend the attention of such of our readers as may wish to learn all
about this method.
For the invention of cut-work or “di commesso,” as Vasari calls
it, that writer tells us we are indebted to one of his Florentine
countrymen: “It was by Sandro Botticelli that the method of preparing
banners and standards in what is called cut-work, was invented; and
this he did that the colours might not sink through, showing the tint
of the cloth on each side. The baldachino of Orsanmichele is by this
master, and is so treated,” &c., and this work serves to show how much
more effectually that mode of proceeding preserves the cloth than do
those mordants, which, corroding the surface, allow but a short life to
the work; but as the mordants cost less, they are more frequently used
in our day than the first-mentioned method.[333]
However accurate such a statement may be regarding Italy in general,
and Tuscany in particular, it is, nevertheless, utterly untrue as
applicable to the rest of the world. In this collection may be seen a
valuable piece of this same cut-work--or as Vasari would call it “di
commesso”--by French hands, fraught with a story out of our English
Romance, and done towards the end of the fourteenth century, No. 1370,
p. 76. Now, as Botticelli was born A.D. 1457, and died A.D. 1515, he
came into being almost a whole century too late to have originated such
a process of ornamental needlework, which was well known and practised
in these parts so many years before the birth of that Florentine
painter.
[333] Vite de’ piu Eccellenti Pittori, &c., di G. Vasari, t. v. p. 121;
English translation, t. ii. p. 239.
There are some accessories, in mediæval embroidery, which ought not to
be overlooked here.
In some few instances,
GOLD, AND SILVER GILT,
in very many more, wrought after the smith’s cunning into little
star-like flowers--broader, bigger, and more craftily fashioned than
our modern spangles--are to be found sewed upon the silks or amid the
embroidery in the specimens before us, particularly those from Venice
and its main-land provinces in Italy, and from Southern Germany. At No.
8274, pp. 168-9, we have a part of an orphrey embroidered on parchment,
and having along with its coral, gold beads, and seed pearls, small
bosses and ornaments in gilded silver stars; it is Venetian, and of
the second half of the twelfth century. No. 8307, pp. 185-6 is a linen
amice, the silken apparel of which has sewed to it large spangle-like
plates in gilded silver struck with a variety of patterns, showing
how the goldsmith’s hand had been sought by the Germans of the
fifteenth century to give beauty to this silken stuff. The fine piece
of ruby-tinted Genoa velvet, which was once the apparel for the lower
hem of an alb, is sprinkled somewhat thickly with six-rayed stars of
gold and silver; but those made of the latter metal have turned almost
black: here we have a sample of Lombard taste in this matter, of the
ending of the fifteenth century. Silver-gilt spangles wrought to figure
six-petalled flowers on a fine example of gold tissue, under No. 8588,
pp. 222-3, present us with a German craftsman’s work, in the fourteenth
century. No. 8612, p. 233, is not without its value in reference to
Italian taste. All over, this curious now fragmental piece of silk
damask, has at one time been thickly strewed with trefoils cut out of
gilt metal, but very thin, and not sewed but glued on to the silk: many
of these leaves have fallen off, and those remaining turned black.
From among these examples a few will show the reader how the goldsmith
had been tasked to work upon them as jeweller also, and gem the
liturgical garments to which these shreds belong, with real or imitated
precious stones. In the orphrey upon the back of that very rich fine
crimson velvet chasuble, No. 1375, pp. 81-2, the crossed nimb about
our Lord’s head is gemmed with stones set in silver gilt; and the
sockets still left on the piece of crimson velvet, No. 8334, p. 199,
unmistakably speak for themselves.
Besides precious stones, coral, and seed-pearls,
GLASS,
coloured and wrought into small beads and bugles, is another of those
hard materials, the presence of which we find in this collection. As
now, so far back during the mediæval period, the Venetians, at the
island of Murano, wrought small glass beads and bugles of all colours,
as well as pastes--smalti--in every tint for mosaics, and imitations of
jewels. This art, which they had learned from the Greeks, they followed
with signal success; and likely is it that from Venice came the several
specimens of glass--blue, like lapis lazuli--which we still see on
that beautiful frontal in Westminster Abbey,[334]--the work of our
countryman Peter de Ispagna,[335] the member of an old Essex family.
At No. 8276, pp. 168-9, is a piece of an orphrey for a chasuble,
plentifully embroidered with glass beads and bugles, which shows how
much such a style of ornament was used towards the latter end of the
twelfth century, at least in Lower Germany, and some of the Italian
provinces. Belonging to St. Paul’s, London, A.D. 1295, among many other
amices, there was one having glass stones upon it; “amictus ... ornatus
lapidibus vitreis magnis et parvis per totum in capsis argenteis
deauratis, &c.”[336]
[334] Church of our Fathers, 1, p. 235.
[335] Monumenta Vetusta, vi. p. 26.
[336] Dugdale’s St. Paul’s, p. 318.
ENAMEL.
Another form of glass fastened by heat to gold and copper--enamel,
the invention neither of Egypt, Greece, nor Italy, but of our own old
Britons,[337] was extensively employed as an adornment upon textiles.
Besides the examples we have given,[338] that gorgeous “chesable of red
cloth of gold with orphreys before and behind set with pearls, blue,
white and red, with plates of gold enamelled, wanting fifteen plates,
&c.”[339] bestowed by John of Gaunt’s duchess of Lancaster, upon
Lincoln Cathedral, is another instance to show how such a kind of rich
ornamentation was sewed to garments, especially for church use, in such
large quantities.
[337] Philostratus, Icon. L. 1. cap. 528.
[338] Church of our Fathers, t. i. p. 469.
[339] Dugdale’s Mon. Anglic. t. VIII. p. 1281.
Here, in England, the old custom was to sew a great deal of goldsmith’s
work, for enrichment, upon articles meant for personal wear, as well
as on ritual garments. When our first Edward’s grave, in Westminster
Abbey, was opened, A.D. 1774, on the body of the king, besides other
silken robes, was seen, a stole-like band of rich white tissue put
about the neck, and crossed upon his breast: it was studded with
gilt quatrefoils in filigree work and embroidered with pearls. From
the knees downwards the body was wrapped in a pall of cloth of gold.
Concerning attire for liturgical use, the fact may be verified in those
instances we have elsewhere given.[340] When Henry III., in the latter
end of his reign, bestowed a frontal on the high altar in Westminster
Abbey, besides carbuncles in golden settings, as we have just read, p.
xxxvi, we may have observed that along with several larger pieces of
enamel, there were as many as 866 smaller ones--the “esmaux de plique”
of the French--all fastened on this liturgical embroidery.
A good instance of the appliance of figured solid gold or silver, upon
church vestments, is the following one of a cope beaten all over with
lions in silver, given by a well-wisher to Glastonbury Abbey:--“dederat
unam capam rubeam cum leonibus laminis argenteis capæ infixis, &c.”[341]
In the Norman-French, for so long a period in use at our Court, silken
stuffs thus ornamented were said to be “batuz,” or as we now say beaten
with hammered-up gold. Among the liturgical furniture provided by
Richard II. for the chapel in the castle of Haverford, were “ii rydell
batuz”--two altar-curtains beaten (no doubt with ornaments in gilt
silver.)[342]
[340] Church of Our Fathers, i. 360, 362, 469, &c.
[341] Johannes Glastoniensis, p. 203.
[342] Kalendars of the Treasury, &c. ed. Palgrave, t. iii. p. 359.
For the secular employment of this same sort of decoration, we have
several curious examples. Our ladies’ dresses for grand occasions were
so adorned, as we may see in the verses following:--
In a robe ryght ryall bowne,
Of a redd syclatowne,
Be hur fadur syde;
A coronell on hur hedd sett,
Hur clothys wyth bestes and byrdes wer bete,
All abowte for pryde.[343]
A.D. 1215 our King John sent an order to Reginald de Cornhull and
William Cook to have made for him, besides five tunics, five banners
with his arms upon them, well beaten in gold: “quinque banerias de
armis nostris bene auro bacuatas” (_sic_).[344] The _c_ for _t_ must be
a misprint in the last word.
An amice at St. Paul’s had on it the figures of two bishops and a king
hammered up out of gilt silver: “amictus ornatus cum duobus magnis
episcopis et uno rege stantibus argenteis deauratis.”[345]
From the original bill for fitting out one of the ships in which
Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, during the reign of Henry VI., went over to
France, where he had been appointed to a high command, we gather hints
which throw light upon this as well as several matters belonging to
this Introduction. Among other items for the above-named equipage are
these:--“Four hundred pencils (long narrow strips, may be of silk, used
as flags), beat with the Raggedstaff in silver; the other pavys (one
of two shields, likely of wood, and fastened outside the ship at its
bows), painted with black, and a Raggedstaff beat with silver occupying
all the field; one coat (perhaps of silk, but no doubt blazoned with
the Beauchamp’s arms,) for my Lord’s body, beat with fine gold; two
coats (like the foregoing) for heralds, beat with demi gold; a great
streamer for a ship of forty yeards in length and eight yeards in
breadth, with a great Bear and Griffin holding a Raggedstaff poudred
full of Raggedstaffs; three penons (small flags) of satten; sixteen
standards of worsted entailed with the Bear and a chain.”[346] The
quatrefoils on the robe of our First Edward, the silver lions on the
Glastonbury cope, the beasts and birds on the lady’s gown, the Bear,
and Griffin, and Raggedstaff belonging to the Beauchamp’s blazoning,
and all such like enrichments--mostly heraldic--put upon silken stuffs,
were cut out of very thin plates of gold or silver, so as to hang upon
them lightly, and were hammered up to show in low relief the fashion
of the flower and the lineaments of the beast or bird meant to be
represented.
In fact, such a style of ornamentation done in gold or silver, stitched
on silken stuffs made up into liturgical garments, knights’ coats of
arms, ladies’ dresses, heralds’ tabards, or flags and penoncels, was
far more common once than is now thought. It had struck out for itself
a technical expression. In speaking of it men would either write
or say, “silk beaten with gold or silver,” as the case might be--a
meaning, by the way, for the word “beat,” quite overlooked by our
lexicographers; yet, making her will as late as the year 1538, Barbara
Mason bequeathed to a church “a vestment of grene sylke betyn with
goold.”[347]
[343] Ancient English Metrical Romances, t. iii. pp. 8, 9.
[344] Close Rolls, ed. D. Hardy, p. 193.
[345] Dugdale, p. 318.
[346] Dugdale’s Baronage of England, i. 246.
[347] Bury Wills, p. 134.
The badge on the arm of the livery coat once commonly worn, and
yet rowed for by the Thames watermen, as well as the armorials
figured, before and behind, upon the fine old picturesque frocks
of our buffetiers--the yeomen of the Royal guard, called in London
“beefeaters,”--help to keep up the tradition of such a style of
ornament in dress.
_Spangles_, when they happened to be used, were not like such as are
now employed, but fashioned after another and artistic shape, and put
on in a different manner. Before me lies a shred from the chasuble
belonging to the set of vestments wrought, it is said, by Isabella of
Spain and her maids of honour, and worn the first time high mass was
sung in Granada, after it had been taken by the Spaniards from the
Moors. Upon this shred are flowers, well thrown up in relief, done in
spangles on a crimson velvet ground. These spangles--some in gold, some
in silver--are, though small, in several sizes; all are voided--that
is, hollow in the middle--with the circumference not flat, but convex,
and are sewed on like tiles one overlapping the other, and thus produce
a rich and pleasing effect. Our present spangles, in the flat shape,
are quite modern.
Sadly overlooked, or but scantily employed on modern embroideries, is
the process of
DIAPERING,
after so many graceful and ever-varying forms to be found almost always
upon mediæval works of the needle.
The garments worn by high personages in the embroidery, and meant to
imitate a golden textile, were done in gold _passing_ sometimes by
itself, sometimes with coloured silk thread laid down alternately aside
it, so as to lend a tinge of green, crimson, pink, or blue, to the
imagined tissue of the robe, as if it were made of a golden stuff shot
with the adopted tint.
For putting on this gold passing, it was of course required to sew it
down. Now, from this very needful and mechanical requirement, those
mediæval needlewomen sought and got an admirable as well as ingenious
element of ornamentation, and so truthful too. Of this our ladies at
this day, seem, from their work, to have a very narrow, short idea.
Taking thin (usually red) silk, and while fastening the golden or
silver passing, they dotted it all over in small stitches set exactly
after a way that showed the one same pattern. So teeming were their
brains in this matter that hardly the same design in diapering is twice
to be found upon the same embroidered picture. With no other appliance
they were thus enabled to lend to their draperies the appearance of
having been, not wrought by the needle, but actually cut out of a piece
of textile, and for which they have been sometimes mistaken.
Of the many samples here of this kind of diapering we select one or
two--Nos. 1194-5, p. 21, which is so very fine, and of itself quite
enough for showing what we wish to point out, and to warrant our
praises of the method; No. 8837, p. 200, is another worth attention.
THREAD EMBROIDERY,
after several of its modes, is represented here; and though the
specimens are not many, some of them are splendid.
By our English women, hundreds of years gone by, among other
applications of the needle, one was to darn upon linen netting or
work thereon with other kinds of stitchery, religious subjects for
Church-use; or flowers and animals for household furniture.
In this country such a sort of embroidering was called
net-work--filatorium--as we learn from the Exeter Inventory, where
we read that its cathedral possessed, A.D. 1327, three pieces of
it, for use at the altar--one in particular for throwing over the
desk: “tria filatoria linea, unde unum pro desco.”[348] From their
liturgical use, as we have noticed, p. 212, they were more generally
named lectern-veils, and as such are spoken of, in the same Devonshire
document: “i lectionale de panno lineo operato de opere acuali,
&c.”[349] Of those narrow, light, and moveable lecterns over which
these linen embroideries were cast, Exeter had three--two of wood,
another which folded up (see p. 212 here,) of iron: “i descus volubilis
de ferro, pro Evangelio supra legendo; ii alia lectrina lignea.”[350]
Almost every one of these thread embroideries were wrought during
the fourteenth century, and several of them for the service of the
sanctuary, either as reredos, frontal, or lectern-veil; and while those
described at pp. 19, 20, 31, 53, 60, 71, 99, 120, 242-3, 249, 261-7,
deserve consideration, a more complete and an especial notice is due
to those two very fine ones under Nos. 8358, p. 210, and 8618, p. 235.
As early as A.D. 1295, St. Paul’s had a cushion covered with knotted
thread: “pulvinar opertum de albo filo nodato.”[351]
[348] Ed. Oliver, p. 312.
[349] Ib. p. 356.
[350] Ib. p. 329.
[351] Dugdale, p. 316.
QUILTING,
too, must not be forgotten here; and a short look at Nos. 727, p. 14,
and 786, p. 16, will be sufficient to make us understand how, in hands
guided by taste, a work of real, though humble art, may be brought out
and shewn upon any article, from a lady’s skirt to a gentleman’s daily
skull-cap, by such a use of the needle.
_Crochet_, knitting done with linen thread, and in the convents
throughout Flanders, as well as the thick kinds of lace wrought there
upon the cushion with bobbins, came, under the name of nun’s lace, to
be everywhere much employed, from the sixteenth century and upwards,
for bordering altar-cloths, albs, and every sort of towel required in
the celebration of the liturgy. No. 1358, p. 72, is a good example.