The Israelites wove gold with their coloured woollens for the use of the sanctuary, and probably brought the art from Egypt; though I am not aware of any gold-woven stuffs from Egyptian tombs.[192]
Indian and Chinese stuffs were from time immemorial woven with gold.
The historians of Alexander the Great continually name gold as a material in dress.[193]Arrian, Justin, and Quintus Curtius, all speak of golden tissues as part of the luxury of the East.
We hear of Darius’ dress woven with golden hawks; and of the golden spoils of Persepolis; the dresses worn by Alexander’s generals, and all his attendants clothed in purple and gold. Then, perhaps, the Babylonian tradition was brought to Europe; and ever after, purple and gold became the state apparel for courtiers as well as kings.[194]
The hangings of scarlet, purple, and gold used at the nuptials of Alexander, and at his funeral, and his pall of the same material, point to the fact that gold was a recognized element in splendid textile weaving, as well as in the earliest ornamental embroideries.[195]
Attalus II., king of Pergamus, was credited with being the inventor of gold weaving, but this must have been a mistake, as it was practised long before his time; but he may have devised some splendid golden tissues, which were called “Attalic,” in honour of the king’s patronage.[196]As, however, the gold flat plate or wire was probably that woven before his time,[197]it is possible that he may have invented or patronized the making of thread of gold, by twining it round flax or cotton.[198]
Pliny says gold may be woven or spun like wool without any admixture of wool or flax,[199]and he quotes as examples the golden garment of Agrippina, and that worn by Tarquinius Priscus, mentioned by Verrius.
It appears that the Egyptians knew the art of drawing gold wire, as some pieces have been found in their jewellery;[200]but we know not by what process it was worked, either then, or in the dark ages.
A mechanic of Nuremberg, in the fourteenth century, invented a machine for the purpose; and this art of drawing wire was introduced into England 200 years later, in 1560.
The pure cut gold was in use in Rome to a late date.[201]St. Cecilia, martyred 230A.D., was buried with her golden mantle lying at her feet; and in 821, when Pope Pascal opened her grave, he found the evidence of her martyrdom in that splendid garment, showing that it had been soaked in blood.[202]
There were found under the foundations of the new Basilica of St. Peter’s, the bodies of Probus Anicius and his wife, Proba Faltonia, in a wrapping of gold.
Dr. Rock gives us more examples,[203]but we will only add that of the wife of the Emperor Honorius, who inthe year 400A.D.was buried in a golden dress, which in 1544 was removed from her grave, and being melted, weighed 36 lbs.[204]
The Anglo-Saxon tomb opened at Chessell Down, in the Isle of Wight, contained fragments of a garment or wrapping woven with flat gold “plate.” These remains are now in the British Museum.
Childeric was buried at Tournai, 485A.D., and his dress of strips of pure gold was discovered and melted in 1653. But goldthreadalso was then very generally used in weaving gold tissues.
Claudian describes a Christian lady, Proba, in the fourth century, preparing the consular robes for her two sons on their being raised to the consulate:[205]—
“The joyful mother plies her knowing hands,And works on all the trabea golden bands;Draws the thin strips to all the length of gold,To make the metal meaner threads enfold.”
“The joyful mother plies her knowing hands,And works on all the trabea golden bands;Draws the thin strips to all the length of gold,To make the metal meaner threads enfold.”
Pure gold was woven in the dark ages in England. St. Cuthbert’s maniple at Durham is of pure gold thread. John Garland says the ladies wove golden cingulæ in the thirteenth century; and Henry I., according to Hoveden, was clothed in a robe of state of woven gold and gems of almost “divine splendour.”[206]
A wrapping of beautiful gold brocade covered the coffin of Henry III. when his tomb was opened in 1871.[207]
The cope of St. Andrew at Aix, in Switzerland, is embroidered in a very simple pattern, with large circles containing St. Andrew’s crosses.[208]This is worked in silver wire gilt, and is Byzantine of the twelfth century.
In the writings of the Middle Ages we find constant reference to different golden fabrics. Among them are “samit” or “examitur” (a six-thread silk stuff, preciously inwoven with gold threads);[209]and “ciclatoun,”[210]which was remarkable for the lightness of its texture, and was woven with shining gold threads—but though light, it was stiff enough to carry heavy embroidery. We hear also of “baudekin,” “nak,” and cloth of pall. “Camoca” is “kincob.”
There appears to be a link between embroidery in gold and the jewellers’ work which in the Dark and Middle Ages was so often applied to ecclesiastical and royal dress and hangings. This link was beaten gold work, “aurobacutos,” “beaten work,” or “batony.”[211]Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick in the time of Henry VI., went over to France, having a “coat for my lord’s body, beat with fine gold (probably heraldic designs). For his ship, a streamer forty yards long and eight broad, with a great bear and griffin, and 400 ‘pencils’ with the ‘ragged staff’ in silver.” This mode lasted some time; for in 1538, Barbara Mason bequeathed to a church a “vestment of green silk beaten with gold.” Probablythis beaten gold was really very thick gold-leaf laid on the silk or linen ground, as we see still in some Sicilian and Arab tissues. The embroidered banners taken from Charles le Téméraire, at Grandson, are finished with broad borders of gilded inscriptions, such as might be called beaten gold work.[212]
But besides this thick gold-leaf, there was another mode of enriching embroideries. Laminæ of gold were cut into shapes, and finished the work by accentuating the design in Eastern embroideries; They are found also in Greek tombs, and in the Middle Ages they varied from the little golden spangle to many other forms—circular rings, stars, crescents, moons, leaves, and solid pendant wedges of gold, all which approached the art of the goldsmith.
Includes examples of round, cabochon and moon shaped spangles
Fig. 19.Spangles.
Enamel was soon added to the enrichment of these golden spangles, plates, or discs, which were enlarged to receive a design.[213]Of this style of embellishment we know none so striking as the saddle in the Museum at Munich, said to have been taken from a Turkish general in the fifteenth century. This is Italian of the finest cinque-cento style: blue velvet, covered with beautifulgold embroidery, and every vacant space filled with spangles of endless forms, and of precious goldsmiths’ and enamellers’ work. The Persian stirrups attached to it are of a totally different style of enamelling and jewellery, and speak for themselves, and for the school they came from.[214]
Pl. 33.Curving vine patterns with cabochon jewels and pearls, and a central crownSee larger image
Pl. 33.
Window Hanging, by Gentil Bellini, from a Portrait of Mahomet II., property of Sir H. Layard.
Dr. Rock describes part of a chasuble wrought by Isabella of Spain and her maids of honour, in which the flowing design is worked out in small moulded spangles of gold and silver, set so as to overlap each other and give the effect of scales.
To a late period, gold and silver embroideries, enriched with spangles, have been lavished on the head-dresses and stomachers of the peasantry throughout the north of Europe and Switzerland.[215]
Pearls and gems, either threaded like beads, or in golden settings, are to be studied in the early pictures of the German and French schools; and the Anglo-Saxons excelled in such enrichments.
Sir Henry Layard has a portrait of the fifteenth century, of the Sultan Mahomet II., by Gentil Bellini, from which has been copied the accompanying beautiful embroidered design of a window-hanging.[216]The grace of the lines, and the delicate taste with which the gems are set in the work, are a lesson in art (pl.33).
India sent to Europe more art in gold thread than has ever been produced amongst us from our own workshops.[217]
The people of Goa, mostly Arabs, embroidered for the Portuguese those wonderful fabrics, glittering with gold and radiant with colours, which cover the beds and hang the rooms throughout Portugal and Spain.[218]The precious metals (often forming the whole grounding) were employed without stint; the patterns being either embroidered in coloured silks and gold; or on velvets or satins, with gold alone or mixed with silver.
The fine gold threads for embroidery, which have preserved their brilliancy for so many centuries, such as we find worked in Charlemagne’s dalmatic, in Aelfled’s maniple, and in the mitres of Thomas à Becket, are certainly Oriental. To England they came in the bales of the merchants who brought us our silk, and even our needles, from India. Later we imported and copied the different ways of giving effect to inferior metals, and the Spaniard’s gilt parchment thread reached us from their Moorish manufactories.[219]
Designs were sometimes, in the sixteenth century, worked in gold twisted with coloured silks, sometimes only stitched down with them. The badges of the Order of the Dragon, instituted by the Emperor Sigismund, were thus embroidered, and placed on the cloaks of the knights. The work was so perfect that it resembled jewels of enamelled gold. Two ancient ones are in the Museum at Munich.
Gold or silver or base metal wire was, in the later Middle Ages and down to our own times, much employed in the form of what is called “purl,” i.e. coiled wire cut into short lengths, threaded on silk, and sewn down. German, Italian, and English embroideries were often enriched with this fabric. Sometimes the wire was twisted with coloured silks before it was coiled. There are beautiful specimens of this work of the days of Queen Elizabeth.
Still, throughout Europe the best works were carried out with the best materials, and these always came from the East. But we sometimes find that the pressure of circumstances has for a time caused the employment of adulterated metals that have perished; and thus many fine works of art have been spoiled.[220]
The use of bad materials has therefore been as unfortunate for art as that of pure gold, which has tempted so many ignorant persons to burn golden embroideries and tapestries, and melt down the ore they contain. How little of all that human skill and invention have carefully elaborated is now preserved to us! To gold and silver textiles their materials have been often a fatal dower.
It has sometimes puzzled any but the most experienced embroiderers to distinguish between the stuffs wovenwith the golden threads on the surface, and finely brocaded or patterned in the loom; and those other cloths, embroidered by hand, which have been so manipulated that hardly an atom of the gold can be detected at the back. This is done by a technical mode of treating the surface, which is more easily shown than described. The gold is really drawn into the spaces between the threads of the canvas or linen grounding, but never pulled through. For many reasons this is an advantage, and when executed cunningly, as it was in England in the twelfth century, it is rich, beautiful, lasting, and economical. It is a peculiar mark of the “opus Anglicanum,” and it is to be seen in the mitre at Munich, where this stitch is employed on a white satin ground;[221]also in the working of the two pluvials at San Giovanni Laterano at Rome, and at the Museum at Bologna, as well as that at Madrid, which are all three English of the thirteenth century, by design as well as by stitches.
I cannot close this chapter without naming the many schools of gold embroidery in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. The King of Bavaria has an establishment for gold work, and this is very finely carried out, highly raised, and richly designed.[222]In Spain there is also a Royal School, where stately works are executed.
It is to be regretted that the modern designs are motiveless, and not so beautiful as the old ones, and it is very difficult to have any ancient piece of work copied exactly.Little modernisms creep in wherever the pattern has to be fitted into a new shape; for the accomplished needlewoman is seldom an artist.
All honour is due to certain manufacturers at Lyons who are working in the spirit of the old masters, and have been seriously considering how best to reproduce the beautiful soft surface of the gold thread of which the secret was lost in the fifteenth century.[223]
The old Chinese flat gold was, about the sixteenth century, superseded by what was manufactured in Spain, and is no longer imported or, perhaps, even made.
The origin and history of silk is learnedly and elaborately discussed in Yates’ “Textrinum Antiquorum.” He gives us his authorities, and literal translations for the benefit of the unlearned, who cannot read the original texts. I have availed myself without hesitation of his quotations, and of the carefully considered opinions he has drawn from them.
It has been already said that wool and flax preceded silk in Egyptian, Greek, and Roman manufactures. There is no certain mention of silk in the Books of the Old Testament.[224]Silk is, however, named in the Code of Manu.[225]
No shred of silk has been found in any Egyptian tomb, nor till lately, and with one exception only, in those of the Greeks.
Auberville says, “La soie ne fit son apparition en Europe que 300 ans avant notre ère.”[226]
Pamphile, daughter of Plates, of Cos, is said by Aristotle to have there first woven silk (300B.C.). Probably raw silk was brought to Cos from the interior of Asia, and Pamphile is by some supposed to have “effilèd” the solid manufactured silks, and woven them again into gauzy webs. Yates suggests that it is possible that Pamphile obtained cocoons and unwound them, as the passage in Aristotle may be so interpreted.
The specimen of early silk-weaving which we have above alluded to, was taken out of the “Tomb of the Seven Brothers” at Kertch, in the Crimea, and is of the third centuryB.C.It consists of several bits of very transparent painted silk. These fragments are an actual and yet a contemporary witness to the truth of the tradition of Pamphile’s Coan webs, which are of the same date: possibly they were her handiwork.
Pl. 34.1. Reclining human figures; 2. Human and animal figuresSee larger image
Pl. 34.
1. Classical Silk. Greek. (Semper’s “Der Stil,” p. 192.) 2. Classical Silk. Roman. (Auberville, pl. 4.)
Whether Pamphile’s silk gauzes were the only fine webs of Cos,[227]is a disputed question. She has the credit of being the first to clothe victorious generals in triumphal garments, and she has been immortalized by her cleverness and industry. Both Aristotle and Pliny assert that she first invented the Coan webs, and that some of them were of silk is undoubted. The question is, How cameit there? whence and by what route? and what country was its original home and birthplace?
After stating theprosandconsof the question, how and where did silk first make its appearance, Sir G. Birdwood concludes that both the worm and the cocoon were known to the Greeks and Romans, by report and rare specimens, from the time of Alexander’s return from his Indian campaign.[228]
Of course the remains of these fabrics are extremely scarce; and, in fact, only two are at present known to me besides the Kertch specimen. The first is given in Semper’s “Der Stil,” and is evidently classical Greek or Roman; but the silk material might have been effilèd from an Oriental stuff (pl.34, No. 1). The second must have been originally a Roman pattern, modified by the Persian loom in which it was woven. This may have been a Roman triumphal robe of the date of Julius Cæsar (pl.34, No. 2).
It is clear that Chinese silken stuffs were not generally known in Southern Europe till the time of Julius Cæsar, who displayed a profusion of silks in some of his splendid theatrical representations.
How silk first arrived from the East is disputed; some say it came by the Red Sea, and other authorities believe it was brought from China,viâPersia, by land.
But it is not necessary that it should have entered our civilization by only one gate. The Periplus Maris Erythræi makes frequent mention of the trade in silks, through India, by the Indus to the coasts of the Erythrean Sea. They were also brought through Bactria to Barygaza, near Surat, from a city called Thina (China?). The author of the Periplus, of course, refers to some place in the country vaguely called Serica.[229]
That the trade which brought it into Europe wasdifficult and limited, is proved by the fact that silk continued, even as late as the third century of our era, to be an article of luxury, of which the manufacture and use continued to be the subject of legal enactments and restrictions, for 600 years after Pamphile’s first essay in silk-weaving in Cos.
“The Seres” was the name given by the ancients to the nation which produced silk; and it was undoubtedly that accepted for the distant region now called China, including Corea, and later, the kingdom of Khotan. The first mention of these people as a distinct nation is by Mela (iii. 7), who speaks of them as an “honest people, who bring what they have to sell, and return for their payments.”[230]
The prevailing idea amongst the Greeks was that silk was combed from the trees. Seneca says:—
“Nor with Mæonian needle mark the web,Gathered by Eastern Seres from the trees.”Seneca the Tragedian, “Herc. Ætæus,” 644.[231]
“Nor with Mæonian needle mark the web,Gathered by Eastern Seres from the trees.”
Seneca the Tragedian, “Herc. Ætæus,” 644.[231]
This was, till lately, believed to be only a fiction, intended to hide the truth and enhance the value of the new Coan material. But it is now ascertained that some of the wild silk in China is carried by the silkworm round the trees, wrapping them up, as it were, in large, untidy cocoons; so that, as usual, tradition had truth for its foundation.
There was always much mysterious report about the new material. Dionysius Periegetes tells of a barbarouspeople called the Seres, who “renounce the care of sheep and oxen, but who comb the coloured flowers of the desert, and with them produce woven precious stuffs, of which they make figured garments, resembling the flowers of the field in beauty, and in texture the web of the spider.”[232]
There is no doubt that as Egypt was the first to weave linen, and India to produce cotton textiles, so in China originated the material of silk and its manufacture.
M. Terrien de la Couperie, who has deciphered the Archaic books of the Chinese Records, sees there excellent linguistic proofs that the Chinese nation was originally a fragment of the first Babylonian civilization. He there finds that when these Accadians arrived on the furthest eastern coast of Asia, they met with and enslaved an aboriginal race, who already cultivated the silkworm, and wove and worked its produce, and were called by them “the Embroiderers.”[233]
This is supposed to have been an historical event contemporary with the life of Abraham, and, therefore, 5000 years old.
The Chinese say that Tekin or Sin, the son of Japhet, instructed his children in painting, sculpture, and embroidery, and in the art of preparingsilkfor different woven fabrics.[234]
Whether we are justified or not in believing in so very early a date, at any rate we must remember that it is now ascertained that silk was used in China 2600 years before our era.
Auberville says there is a legend that the EmpressSi-ling-chi[235](2600B.C.) had the happy inspiration to invent the unwinding of the cocoon before the insect cut the threads; and for this discovery she was placed among the divinities.
Before her time, they had certainly for more than 300 years used the precious material in its mutilated condition.[236]
Some centuries later the Emperor Chan received tribute in linens and silken stuffs. Tissues of many colours were painted or richly embroidered.[237]
In the second centuryA.D., a prince of Khotan,[238]Kiu-sa-tan-na, was desirous of obtaining from China the eggs of the silkworm, but his request was refused; and it was prohibited that either eggs of the silkworm or seed of mulberry-trees should cross the border.
Then the King of Khotan asked for a Chinese princess in marriage, and this favour being granted, he found means to inform the lady privately that in her future kingdom she would find no silk to weave or work. The dread of such an aimless life roused all her womanly instincts. Defiance of the law, love of smuggling, and the wish to please her husband and benefit her future people, gave her courage to conceal the eggs and seeds in the folds of her dress and the meshes of her beautiful hair, and so she carried a most precious dower into her adopted country.[239]Thus was broken the spell which for morethan 3000 years had confined the secret of China within the fence of its wonderful wall; and later on,A.D.530, the eggs were brought to Byzantium.[240]
From China, therefore, comes our silk.[241]We may say it is traced to the beginning; but how far back had the archæologist to grope before he could find it!
I transcribe a few more quotations from Yates’ translations and authorities.[242]
In the Hippolytus of Euripides, 383, Phædraloquitur:—
“Remove, ye maids, the vests whose tissue glaresWith purple and with gold; far be the redOf Syrian murex; this the shining threadWhich furthest Seres gathers from the boughs.”
“Remove, ye maids, the vests whose tissue glaresWith purple and with gold; far be the redOf Syrian murex; this the shining threadWhich furthest Seres gathers from the boughs.”
Lucan describes the transparent material which veiled Cleopatra’s form:—
“Her snowy breast shines through Sidonian threads,First by the comb of distant Seres struck;Divided then by Egypt’s skilful hand,And with embroidery transparent made.”
“Her snowy breast shines through Sidonian threads,First by the comb of distant Seres struck;Divided then by Egypt’s skilful hand,And with embroidery transparent made.”
Pliny’s account of silk and its manufacture is mostly fanciful, though founded on half-known facts.
The Latin poets of the Augustan age speak of silk attire with other luxurious customs from the East.[243]The Roman senate, in the reign of Tiberius, decreed that only women should wear silk, on account of its effeminacy.
Silk was accumulated for the wardrobes of the empresses tillA.D.176, when Marcus Aurelius, “the Philosopher,” sold all the imperial ornaments and the silken robes of his empress by auction in the Forum of Trajan.[244]
We learn that silk was precious and fabulously esteemed to the end of the second centuryA.D.; but it is seldom mentioned in the third century.
Ælius Lampridius speaks of a silken cord with which to hang himself, as an imperial extravagance on the part of Heliogabalus (and of this only one strand was silk); and he mentions that Alexander Severus rarely allowed himself a dress of silk (holosericum), and only gave away robes of partly silken substance.
Flavius Vopiscus says that Aurelian had no dress wholly of silk (holosericum).[245]His wife begged him to allow her a shawl of purple silk, and he replied, “Far be it from me to permit thread to be reckoned worth its weight in gold!”—for a pound of gold was then worth a pound of silk.
Flavius Vopiscus further states that the Emperor Carinus, however, gave away silken garments, as well as dresses of gold and silver, to Greek artificers, players, wrestlers, and musicians.[246]
Yates gives us a translation of an edict of Diocletian, giving a maximum of prices for articles in common usein the Roman empire. It reads like a tailor’s or a dress-maker’s bill of to-day:—
A monument at Tivoli is erected to the memory of his estimable wife, Valeria Chrysis, by “M. N. Poculus, silk manufacturer.” This was probably an imperial office in the fourth century.[248]
From the first to the sixth centuries, poets and historians continually speak of silk,[249]praising its beauty or blaming it as extravagance or luxury; but according to Yates, all the information we collect from these sources requires to be tested as to accuracy, and is often erroneous.
I have spoken of the first silk-weaving in Cos, 300B.C.The first arrival of the silkworm in Europe was in the sixth century, 900 years later. Cosmas Indicopleustes and another monk brought eggs from China in the hollow staves they carried in their hands. This was a great event in European commerce. The eggs were solemnly presented to the Emperor Justinian, and the monopoly of their cultivation is to be found in his law-ordaining codex.[250]
The monopoly of the silk manufactures was confinedto the area of the imperial palace of Constantinople, but the cultivation of the worm gradually spread over Greece, Asia Minor, and India.
The first allusion to the use of silk in the Christian Church is by Gregory Nazianzen (A.D.370), “Ad Hellenium pro Monarchis Carmen:” “Silver and gold some bring to God, or the fine thread by Seres spun.”[251]Basil illustrates the idea of the resurrection by the birth of the butterfly from the cocoon.[252]
Paul the Silentiary (A.D.562) alludes to the frequent use of silk in the priests’ vestments at the Church of St. Sophia at Constantinople.
Bede relates that the first Abbot of Wearmouth went to Rome for the fifth time inA.D.685, and brought back with him two scarves or palls of incomparable workmanship, and entirely of silk, with which he purchased land of three families at the mouth of the Wear. Bede’s own remains were wrapped in silk.
Auberville gives us, in his “Tissus,” specimens of Roman silks between the first and seventh centuries, but he cannot fix their exact date.[253]
The finest webs of Holosericum from the imperial looms were generally bestowed upon the Church, and thus consecrated, the earliest ascertained specimens thathave survived have been preserved; and of these, most have been found in the tombs of saints, bishops, and kings who were buried in priestly as well as in royal garments.[254]
Among the silk and satin fabrics, the tissue called “Imperial” is mentioned by several early English authors. Roger de Wendover and Matthew Paris describe the apparition of King John as clad in “royal robes of Imperial.”[255]William de Magna Villa brought from Greece, in 1170, a stuff called Imperial, “marbled” or variegated, and covered with lions woven in gold.
In the Eastern Empire, this industry after a time fell into the hands of the Jews; and in 1161, Benjamin of Tudela says the city of Thebes contained about 2000 Jewish silk-weavers.
The breeding of the worm in Europe seems to have been confined to Greece from the time of Justinian to the twelfth century; but in 1148, Roger, King of Sicily, brought as prisoners of war, from Corinth, Thebes, and Athens, many silk-weavers, and settled them at Palermo. “Then might be seen Corinthians and Thebans of both sexes, employed in weaving velvet stoles interwoven with gold, and serving like the Eretrians of old among the Persians.”[256]
Hugh Falcandus[257]has left a description of the Royal manufactory at Palermo, and the Hotel de Tiraz which absorbed all the smaller Saracenic factories already started.The Hotel de Tiraz had four great workshops, in which were separately carried on the weaving of plain tissues, velvets, examits and satins, and flowered stuffs (damasks), and lastly, gold brocades and embroideries. It was from the last that proceeded the real works of art, and the embroideries with pearls and precious stones.[258]The highest efforts of the loom were apparently finished with the needle,[259]as in the figured textiles of Egypt.
The continuity of Sicilian textile designs from the sixth to the sixteenth centuries (a thousand years) is very remarkable. Owing to its originally strongly stamped Oriental character, great knowledge of the arts of weaving, spinning, and dyeing silk is required to enable any one to assign an exact date to materials which only remodelled their style three times.
Dr. Rock’s rules for deciphering these three dates may, however, be easily learned, as they are broad and simple. In his comprehensive “Introduction to the Textiles in the Kensington Museum” (p. lxvii) he says that the three defined periods of silk-weaving in Sicily are: First, from the time of Justinian to the Hohenstaufen (from the sixth to the twelfth century); secondly, from the accession of Frederick I. (Barbarossa), 1152, to Charles IV., 1347 (twelfth to fourteenth centuries); the third period is of one century only, from 1347 to 1456.
The first period especially shows African animals, such as the giraffe and the different kinds of antelopes, mixed with Arabian mottoes; and the patterns are generally woven with gold. This is merely gilt parchment, the silk being mingled with cotton.
Pl. 35.Stylised peacock forming an oval motifSee larger image
Pl. 35.
Peacock Pattern. Silk Wrapping on the body of St. Cuthbert. Durham.
The second period, beginning in the twelfth century, shows the arrival of Count Roger’s Persian and Greekworkmen, captives from Thebes, Corinth, and Athens. The fresh designs show fragments of Greek taste, such as masks and foliage, and give one a slight foretaste of the Renaissance.[260]
These semi-classical echoes are contemporary in the Sicilian looms with such Norman motives as a crowned sovereign riding with a hawk upon his wrist.
This description singularly applies to the relics removed from the tomb of St. Cuthbert, at Durham, in 1827; among which are fragments of three wrappings, or garments of silk, so suggestive of the artistic traditions of many nationalities, and the long descent of patterns, recognizable after the lapse of centuries, that a description of them, accompanied by illustrations, can hardly fail to be interesting. They are all now reduced by time to a rich golden brown, though there are indications that blue, green, and red have been woven into their fabric, and there are also on one of them traces of gilding. The first (plate35) shows Oriental conventional peacocks, double-headed and collared, framed within circles which slightly intersect each other, thus giving the opportunity for varying the original motive by breaking up the rolling arabesqued pattern, and uniting the stems and flowers contained in the border. The spaces between the circles are filled in with gryphons in pairs, of the Babylonian stamp, thick limbed with strongly-marked muscles. There is a border or guimp, Persian in character, in which are small crosses surmounting repetitions of the crenelated pattern found in Assyrian ornament.
The second piece of silk contains a large rosace. Scattered about it are repetitions of the Persian leafor tree of life, and the border consists of kneeling hares or fawns between a Persian arabesque and a corded line. The mixture of Egyptian and Assyrian styles is remarkable throughout, till we come to the centre of the rosace, where we find a most incongruous man in armour on horseback with a hawk on his wrist, giving the Norman stamp of the reigning house and influence in Sicily. The central subject is exactly repeated on an embroidered twelfth century chasuble in the treasury of the Cathedral of Bamberg, only that a royal crown and robes are worn by the horseman (pl.36).[261]
The third specimen is the most noteworthy (plate37). There is nothing of Assyrian here, but it reminds one of Egyptian and Greek art, and at once suggests Count Roger’s Greek slaves at the Sicilian looms, but the design is probably of a much earlier date, and the subject is puzzling. A piece of drapery resembling an Egyptian sail with its fringes[262](pl.38) is looped up on each side to the head of a thyrsus, and above it hangs a large cluster of fruits. The lower part of the drapery rests upon water, and is somewhat like a boat, with ducks swimming towards it, and fish disporting themselves in the rippling waves. Between the circles the ducks are repeated, facing a shield enriched with rows of the crenelated pattern surmounted by a vine.
These fragments have belonged each to a very large and freely woven silk shawl or mantle. The circles are about two feet across. There is a different arrangement of the threads in each web, giving different fine diapers, and the last described has a raised pattern which might have been intended to represent water.