Will, on many occasions, heartily rejoice to have, within easy reach,
such an extensive, varied, and curious collection of textiles gathered
from many lands, and wrought in different ages.
For the painter and the decorator it must have a peculiar value.
Until this collection of silken and other kinds of woven stuffs had
been brought to England, and opened for the world’s inspection and
study, an artist had not, either in this country or abroad, any
available means of being correctly true in the patterns of those silks
and velvets with which he wished to array his personages, or of the
hangings for garnishing the walls of the hall in which he laid the
scene of his subject. In such a need, right glad was he if he might go
to any small collection of scanty odds and ends belonging to a friend,
or kept in private hands. So keenly was this want felt, that, but a
few years ago, works of beautiful execution, but of costly price, were
undertaken upon the dress of olden times, and mediæval furniture; yet
those who got up such books could do nothing better than set out in
drawings, as their authorities for both the branches of their subject,
such few specimens as they could pick up figured in illuminated MSS.
and the works of the early masters. Here, however, our own and foreign
artists see before them, not copies, but those very self-same stuffs.
If we go to our National Gallery and look at the mediæval pictures
there, taking note of the stuffs in which those old men who did them
clothed their personages; if, then, we step hither, we shall be struck
by the fact of seeing in these very textiles, duplicates, as far as
pattern is sought, of those same painted garments. For example, in
Orcagna’s Coronation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the blue silk diapered
in gold, with flowers and birds, hung as a back ground; our Lord’s
white tunic diapered in gold with foliage; the mantle of His mother
made of the same stuff; St. Stephen’s dalmatic of green samit, diapered
with golden foliage, are all quite Sicilian in design, and copied from
those rich silks which came, at the middle of the fourteenth century,
from the looms of Palermo. While standing before Jacopo di Casentino’s
St. John, our eye is drawn, on the instant, to the orphrey on that
evangelist’s chasuble, embroidered, after the Tuscan style, with barbed
quatrefoils, shutting in the busts of Apostles. Isotta da Rimini, in
her portrait by Pietro della Francesca, wears a gown made of velvet and
gold, much like some cut velvets here.
In the patterns followed by the Sicilian looms, and those of Italy in
general, may almost always be found the same especial elements. Of
these, one is the artichoke in flower; and in F. Francia’s painting of
the Blessed Virgin Mary with our Lord in her arms, and saints standing
about them,--No. 179,--St. Laurence’s rich cloth of gold is diapered
all over with the artichoke marked out in thin red lines. So, too, in
the picture of V. Cappaccio, No. 750, the cloth-of-gold mantle worn by
our Lord’s mother, as well as the dress of the Doge, are both diapered
with this favourite Italian vegetable. Often is this artichoke shut in
by an oval, made sometimes of ogee arches, with their finials shooting
forwards outside: thus is diapered the cloak of the Madonna, in
Crivelli’s Inthronement--No. 724. Much more frequently, however, this
oval is put together out of architectural cusps--six or eight--turned
inside, and their featherings sprouting out into a trefoil, as in our
own Early English style. Such ovals round an artichoke are well shown
in each of the four pictures by Melozzo da Forli, on the pede-cloth
with which the steps in each of them are covered. Of such a patterned
stuff here we select from several such, for the reader, Nos. 1352, p.
70; 1352A, p. 70.
Stained and patterned papers for wall-hanging are even yet unknown
but in a very few places on the Continent. The employment of them as
furniture among ourselves is comparatively very modern, and came to
England, it is likely, through our trade with China. Though in Italy
the state apartment and the reception rooms of a palace are hung
always with rich damasks, and often with fine tapestry, while some
old examples of gilt and beautifully-wrought leather trailed all over
with coloured flowers and leaves are still to be found, the rooms
for domestic use have their whitewashed walls adorned at best with
a coloured ornamentation, bestowed upon them by the cheap and ready
process of stencilling.
From early times up to the middle of the sixteenth century, our
cathedrals and parish churches, our castles, manorial houses, and
granges, the dwellings of the wealthy everywhere, used to be ornamented
with wall-painting done, not in “fresco,” but in “secco;” that
is, distemper. Upon high festivals the walls of the churches were
overspread with tapestry and needlework; so, too, those in the halls of
the gentry, for some solemn ceremonial.
Our high-born ladies used to spend their leisure hours in working these
“hallings,” as they were called; and while Bradshaw, a monk of St.
Werburgh’s monastery at Chester, sings the praises of the patron-saint
of his church, he gives us a charming picture of how a large hall was
arrayed here in England with needlework, for a solemn feast some time
about the latter end of the fifteenth century.
First of all, according to the then wont, when great folks were bidden
to a feast:--
All herbes and flowers, fragraunt, fayre and swete
Were strawed in halles, and layd under theyr fete.
Clothes of gold and arras were hanged in the hall
Depaynted with pyctures and hystoryes manyfolde,
Well wroughte and craftely.
The story of Adam, Noe, and his shyppe; the twelve sones of Jacob; the
ten plages of Egypt, and--
Duke Josue was joyned after them in pycture,
* * * * *
Theyr noble actes and tryumphes marcyall
Fresshly were browdred in these clothes royall.
* * * * *
But over the hye desse in pryncypall place
Where the sayd thre Kynges sat crowned all
The best hallynge hanged as reason was,
Whereon were wrought the ix orders angelicall,
Dyvyded in thre ierarchyses, not cessynge to call,
_Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus_, blessed be the Trynite,
_Dominus Deus Sabaoth_, thre persons in one deyte.[405]
The tapestries here will afford much help to the artist if he have to
paint a dining room with festive doings going on, any time during the
latter portion of the mediæval period; but such “hallings” are by no
means scarce. Not so, however, such pieces of room hangings as he may
find here at No. 1370, p. 76; No. 1297, p. 296; No. 1465 p. 298. Their
fellows are nowhere else to be met with.
At a certain period, gloves were a much more ornamented and decorative
article of dress than now; and, when meant for ladies’ wear, a somewhat
lasting perfume was bestowed upon them. Among the new year’s day
presents to Tudor Queen Mary, some years before she came to the throne,
was “a payr of gloves embrawret with gold.”[406] A year afterwards, “x
payr of Spanyneshe gloves from a Duches in Spayne,” came to her;[407]
and but a month before, Mrs. Whellers had sent to her highness “a pair
of swete gloves.” Shakespeare, true to manners of his days, after
making the pretended pedler, Autolycus, thus chant the praises of his--
Laura, as white as driven snow;
Cyprus, black as e’er was crow;
Gloves, as sweet as damask roses;
puts this into Mopsa, the shepherdess’, mouth, as she speaks to her
swain:--“Come, you promised me a tawdry lace, and a pair of sweet
gloves.”[408] Here, in this collection, we may find a pair of such
gloves, No. 4665, p. 105. What, though the fragrance that once, no
doubt, hung about them, be all gone, yet their shape and embroideries
will render them a valuable item to the artist for some painting.
[405] Warton’s History of English Poetry, ed. 1840, t. ii. p. 375, &c.
[406] Privy Purse Expenses of the Princess Mary, ed. Madden, p. 144.
[407] Ib. p. 164.
[408] “A Winter’s Tale,” act iv. scene iii.
Manufacturers and master-weavers of every kind of textile, as well as
their workmen, may gather some useful hints for their trade, by a look
at the various specimens set out here before them.
They will, no doubt, congratulate themselves, as they fairly may, that
their better knowledge of chemistry enables them to give to silk, wool,
and cotton, tints and tones of tints, and shades, nay, entire colours
quite unknown to the olden times, even to their elders of a few years
ago: our new-found chemicals are carrying the dyeing art to a high
point of beauty and perfection.
Among the several boasts of the present age one is, that of making
machinery, as a working power in delicate operations, so true, as if
it had been quickened with a life and will and power all its own:
mechanism applied to weaving is, at least for the speed of plain work,
most marvellous; and the improvements of the morrow over those of
yesterday make the wonder grow. But, though having such appliances at
hand, let an able well-taught designer for silken stuffs come hither,
along with a skilled weaver, from Coventry, Glasgow, or Manchester, and
the two will say, that for truthfulness and beauty in the drawing of
the patterns, and their good renderings in the weaving, nothing of the
present day is better, while much is often not so good. Yet these old
stuffs before our eyes were wrought in looms so clumsy, and awkward,
and helpless, that a weaver of the present day laughs at them in scorn.
The man, however, who should happen to be asked to make the working
drawings for several of such textiles, would fain acknowledge that he
had been taught much by their study, and must strive hard before he
might surpass many of them in the often crowded, yet generally clear
combination of parts borrowed from beasts, birds, and flowers, all
rendered with beauty and fittingness.
What has been, may be done again. We know better how to dye; we have
more handy mechanism. Let, then, all those who belong any-wise to the
weaving trade and come hither, go home resolved to stand for the future
behind no nation, either of past or present time, in the ability of
weaving not only useful, but beautiful and artistic textiles.
Before leaving the South Kensington Museum the master weaver may, if
he wishes, convince himself that the so-called tricks of the trade are
not evils of this age’s growth, but, it is likely, older than history
herself. For mediæval instances of fraud in his own line of business,
he will find not a few among the silks from Syria, Palermo, and the
South of Spain.
What we said just now about Lettered Silks, p. lix. should be borne
here in mind. With the Saracens, wherever they spread themselves, the
usage was to weave upon their textiles, very often, either the title
of the prince who was to wear them or give them away, or some short
form of prayer or benediction. By Christian eyes, such Arabic words
were looked upon as the true unerring sign that the stuffs that showed
them came from Saracenic looms--the best of those times--or, in other
terms, were the trade-mark of the Moslem. The Christian and Jewish
weavers in many parts of the East, to make their own webs pass as
Saracenic goods, wrought the Paynim trade-mark, as then understood,
upon them. The forgery is clumsy: the letters are poor imitations of
the Arabic character, and the pretended word runs, as it should, first
correctly, or from right to left, then wrong or backward from left to
right, just as if this part of the pattern--and it is nothing more--had
been intended, like every other element in it, to confront itself
by immediate repetition on the self-same line. Our young folks who
sometimes amuse themselves by writing a name on paper, and while the
ink is wet fold the sheet so that the word is shown again as if written
backwards, get such a kind of scroll.
In many Oriental silk textiles the warp is either of hemp, flax, or
cotton; but this is so easily discoverable that it could hardly have
been done for fraud’ sake. There is however a Saracenic trick, learned
from that people, and afterwards practised by the Spaniards of the
South, for imitating a woof of gold. It is rather ingenious, and we
presume unknown among collectors and writers until now.
For the purpose, the finer sort of parchment was sought out, sometimes
as thin as that now rare kind of vellum called, among manuscript
collectors, “uterine.” Such skins were well gilt and then cut into very
narrow shreds, which were afterwards, instead of gold, woven, as the
woof to the silken warp, to show those portions of the pattern which
should be wrought in golden thread. But as these strips of gilded
parchment were flat, they necessarily gave the stuffs in which they
came all the look of being that costly and much used web called by us
in the fifteenth century “tyssewys,” as we have before noticed, p.
xxxi. Specimens of such a fraudulent textile are to be seen here, Nos.
7067, p. 132; 7095, p. 140; 8590, p. 224; 8601, p. 229; 8639, p. 243,
&c.