In Woven Stuffs there are Styles nicely defined, and Epochs easily discernible.

[184]Ed. Oliver, p. 298.

[185]Ib. p. 312.

[186]Plate v. p. 53.

[187]Plate xii. p. 141.

[188]Dugdale’s St. Paul’s, p. 318.

[189]Ib.

[190]York Fabric Rolls, p. 230.

[191]Hist. Anglic. Script. X. t. i. p. 602, ed. Twysden.

[192]Rog. de Wendover, Chronica, t. iv. p. 127, ed. Coxe.

[193]P. 322.

[194]Fabric Rolls, p. 310.

Was a costly stuff much employed and often spoken of in our literature during many years of the mediæval period.

Ciclatoun, as we have elsewhere remarked, was the usual term during centuries throughout Western Europe, by which those showy golden textiles were called. When, however, Bagdad, or Baldak, standing where once stood the Babylon of old, took and held for no short length of time the lead all over Asia in weaving, every kind of fine silks and in especial golden stuffs shot, as now, in different colours, cloths of gold so tinted became every where known more particularly among us English as “baldakin,” “baudekin,” or “baudkyn,” or silks from Baldak. At last the earlier term “ciclatoun” dropped quite out of use. With this before him the reader will hereafter more readily understand several otherwise puzzling passages in many of our old writers in poetry and prose, as well as in the inventories of royal furniture and church vestments.

Our kings and our nobility affected much this rich stuff for the garments worn by them on high occasions. When,A.D.1247, girding in Westminster Abbey William de Valence his uterine brother, a knight, our Henry III. had on a robe of baudekin, or cloth-of-gold, likely shot with crimson silk: “Dominus Rex veste deaurata facta de preciosissimo Baldekino et coronula aurea, quæ vulgariter garlanda dicitur redimitus, sedens gloriose in solio regio, fratrem suum uterinum, baltheo militari gaudenter insignivit.”[195]In the year 1259 the master of Sherborn Hospital in the north, bequeathed to that house a cope made of cloth-of-gold, or “baudekin:”—“Capam de panno ad aurum scilicet Baudekin cum vestimento plenario de panno Yspaniæ ad aurum.”[196]

But these Bagdad or Baldak silks, with a weft of gold known among us as “baudekins” were often wove very large in size, and applied here in England to especial ritual purposes. As a thanks-offering after a safe return home from a journey, they were brought and given to the altar; at all the solemn burials of our kings and queens, and other great ones, each of the many mourners, when offertory time came, went to the illuminated hearse,—one is figured in the “Church of Our Fathers,”[197]—and strewed a baudekin of costly texture over the coffin. Artists or others who wish to know the ceremonial for that occasion, will find itset forth in the descriptions of many of our mediæval funerals. At the obsequies of Henry VII. in Westminster Abbey:—“Twoe herauds came to the Duke of Buck. and to the Earles and conveyed them into the Revestrie where they did receive certen Palles which everie of them did bringe solemply betwene theire hands and comminge in order one before another as they were in degree unto the said herse, thay kissed theire said palles and delivered them unto the said heraudes which laide them uppon the kyngs corps, in this manner: the palle which was first offered by the Duke of Buck. was laid on length on the said corps, and the residewe were laid acrosse, as thick as they might lie.”[198]In the same church at the burial of Anne of Cleves,A.D.1557, a like ceremonial of carrying cloth-of-gold palls to the hearse was followed.[199]

[195]Matt. Paris, p. 249.

[196]Wills, &c. of the Northern Counties of England, Surtees Society, p. 6.

[197]Tom. ii. p. 501.

[198]Lelandi Collectanea, t. iv. p. 308.

[199]Excerpta Historica, p. 312.

Among the many rich textiles belonging to St. Paul’s, London,A.D.1295, are mentioned: “Baudekynus purpureus cum columpnis et arcubus et hominibus equitantibus infra, de funere comitissæ Britanniæ. Item baudekynus purpureus cum columpnis et arcubus et Sampson fortis infra arcus, de dono Domini Henrici Regis. Duo baudekyni rubei cum sagittarijs infra rotas, de dono E. regis et reginæ venientium de Wallia, Unus Baudekynus rubei campi cum griffonibus, pro anima Alianoræ reginæ junioris,”[200]&c. At times these rich stuffs were cut up into chasubles: “Casula de baudekyno de opere Saracenico,”[201]as was the cloth-of-gold dress worn by one of our princesses at her betrothal: “Unam vestimentum rubeum de panno adaurato diversis avibus poudratum, in quo domina principessa fuit desponsata.”[202]The word “baudekin” itself became at last narrowed in its meaning. So warm, so mellow, so fast were all the tones of crimson which the dyers of Bagdad knew how to give their silks, that without a thread of gold in them, the mere glowing tints of those plain crimson silken webs from Bagdad won for themselves the name of baudekins. Furthermore, when they quite ceased to be partly woven in gold, and from their consequent lower price and cheapness got into use for cloths of estate over royal thrones, on common occasions, the shortened form of such a regal emblem, the canopy hung over the high altar of a church, acquired, and yet keeps its appellation, at least in Italy, of “baldachino.”

[200]Dugdale’s St. Paul’s, pp. 328-9.

[201]Ibid. p. 331.

[202]Inventory of the Chapel, Windsor Castle, Mon. Ang. viii. 1363.

How very full in size, how costly in materials and embroidery, must have sometimes been the cloth of estate spread overhead and behind the throne of our kings, may be gathered from the “Privy Purse Expenses of Henry the Seventh,” wherein this item comes: “To AntonyCorsse for a cloth of an estate conteyning 47½ yerds, £11 the yerd, £522 10s.”[203]

About the feudal right, still kept up in Rome, to a cloth of estate, among the continental nobility, we have spoken,p. 107of this catalogue, where a fragment of such a hanging is described.

The custom itself is thus noticed by Chaucer:—

Yet nere and nere forth in I gan me dressInto an hall of noble apparaile,With arras spred, and cloth of gold I gesse,And other silke of easier availe:Under the cloth of their estate sauns faileThe king and quene there sat as I beheld.[204]

Yet nere and nere forth in I gan me dress

Into an hall of noble apparaile,

With arras spred, and cloth of gold I gesse,

And other silke of easier availe:

Under the cloth of their estate sauns faile

The king and quene there sat as I beheld.[204]

[203]Excerpta Historica, p. 121.

[204]Poems, ed. Nicolas, t. vi. p. 134.

This same rich golden stuff asks for our notice under a third and even better known name, to be found all through our early literature as

The cloak (in Latin pallium, in Anglo-Saxon paell) of state for regal ceremonies and high occasions, worn alike by men as well as women, was always made of the most gorgeous stuff that could be found. From a very early period in the mediæval ages, golden webs shot in silk with one or other of the various colours—occasionally blue, oftener crimson—were sought out, as may be easily imagined, for the purpose, through so many years, and everywhere, that at last each sort of cloth of gold had given to it the name of “pall,” no matter the immediate purpose to which it might have to be applied, and after so many fashions. Vestments for church use and garments for knights and ladies were made of it. Old St. Paul’s had chasubles and copes of cloth of pall: “Casula de pal, capa chori de pal, &c.”[205]

In worldly use, if the king’s daughter was to have a

Mantell of ryche degrePurple palle and armyne fre.[206]

Mantell of ryche degre

Purple palle and armyne fre.[206]

So in the poem of Sir Isumbras—

The rich queen in hall was set;Knights her served, at hand and feetIn rich robes of pall.[207]

The rich queen in hall was set;

Knights her served, at hand and feet

In rich robes of pall.[207]

[205]Hist. ed. Dugdale, p. 336.

[206]The Squire of Low Degree.

[207]Ellis’s Metrical Romances, t. iii. p. 167.

For state receptions, our kings used to send out an order that the houses should be “curtained” all along the streets which the procession would have to take through London, “incortinaretur.”[208]How this was done we learn from Chaucer in the “Knight’s Tale,”[209]

By ordinance, thurghout the cite largeHanged with cloth of gold, and not with sarge;

By ordinance, thurghout the cite large

Hanged with cloth of gold, and not with sarge;

as well as from the “Life of Alexander:”—

Al theo city was by-hongOf riche baudekyns and pellis (palls) among.[210]

Al theo city was by-hong

Of riche baudekyns and pellis (palls) among.[210]

Hence, when Elizabeth, our Henry VII.’s queen, “proceeded from the Towre throwge the Citie of London (for her coronation) to Westminster, al the strets ther wich she shulde passe by, were clenly dressed and besene with clothes of Tappestreye and Arras. And some strets, as Cheepe, hangged with riche clothes of gold, velvetts, and silks, &c.[211]“As late asA.D.1555, at Bow chyrche in London was hangyd with cloth of gold and with ryche hares (arras).”[212]

Those same feelings which quickened our doughty knights and high-born ladies to go and overspread the bier of each dead noble friend, with costly baudekins or cloths of gold, so the church whispered and she whispers us still to do, in due degree, the same to the coffin in which the poor man is being carried to the grave beneath a mantle of silk and velvet. The brother or the sister belonging to any of our old London gilds had over them, however lowly they might have been in life, one or other of those splendid hearse-cloths which we saw in this museum, among the loans, in the ever memorable year 1862.

This silken textile interwove with gold, first known as “ciclatoun,” on account of its glitter, then as “baudekin,” from the city where it was best made, came at last to be called by the name of “pall.” Whether employed on jubilant occasions, for a joyful betrothal, or a stately coronation, or for a sorrowing funeral, it mattered not, it got the common term of “cloth of pall,” which we yet keep up in that velvet covering for a coffin, a burial pall.

[208]Matt. Paris, p. 661.

[209]V. 2569-70.

[210]Warton’s Hist. of English Poetry, t. ii. p. 8.

[211]Leland’s Collectanea, t. iv. p. 220.

[212]Machyn’s Diary, p. 102.

are of no uncommon occurrence, and some examples may be seen in this collection.

A celebrated Mohammedan writer, Ebn-Khaldoun, who died about the middle of the fifteenth century, while speaking of that spot in an Arab palace, the “Tiraz,” so designated from the name itself of the rich silken stuffs therein woven, tells us that of the attributes of all Saracenic kings and sultans, and which became a particular usage for ruling dynasties, one was to have woven the name of the actual prince, or that special ensign chosen by his house, into the stuffs intended for their personal wear, whether wrought of silk, brocade, or even coarser kind of silk. While gearing his loom, the workman contrived that the letters of the title should come out either in threads of gold, or in silk of another colour from that of the ground. The royal apparel thus bore about it its own especial marks emblematic of the sultan’s wardrobe, and so became the distinguishing ensigne of the prince himself, as well as for those personages around him, who were allowed, by their official rank in his court, to wear them, and those again upon whom he had condescended to bestow such garments as especial tokens of the imperial favour, like the modern pelisse of honour. Before the period of their having embraced Islamism the Kings of Persia used to have woven upon the stuffs wrought for their personal use, or as gifts to others, their own especial effigies or likeness, or at times the peculiar ensign of their royalty. On becoming Mussulmans, the rulers of that kingdom changed the custom, and instead of portraiture substituted their names, to which they added words sounding to their ears as foreboding good, or certain formulas of praise and benediction.[213]Wherever the Moslem ruled, there did he set up the same practice; and thus, whether in Asia, in Egypt, or other parts of Africa, or in Moorish Spain, the silken garments for royalty and its favoured ones, showed woven in them the prince’s name, or at least his chosen badge. The silken garments wrought in Egypt for the far-famed Saladin, and worn by him as its Kalif, bore very conspicuously upon them the name of that conqueror.

In our old lists of church ornaments, frequent mention is found of vestments inscribed, like pieces here, with words in real or pretended Arabic; and when St. Paul’s inventory more than once speaks of silken stuffs, “de opere Saraceno,” we lean to the belief that, though not all, some at least of those textiles were so called from having Arabic characters woven on them. Such, too, were the letters on the red pall, figured with elephants and a bird, belonging to Exeter: “Palla rubea cum quibusdam literis et elephantis et quadam avi in superiori parte.”[214]Later, our trade with the South of Spain and the Moors there, led us to call such words on woven stuffs Moorish, as we find in old documents, thus Joane Lady Bergavenny bequeaths (A.D.1434) a “hullyng (hangings for a hall) of black, red, and green, with morys letters, &c.”[215]

The weaving of letters in textiles is neither a Moorish, nor Saracenic invention; ages before, the ancient Parthians used to do so, as we learn from Pliny: “Parthi literas vestibus intexunt.” A curious illustration of silken stuffs so frequently bearing letters, borrowed in general from some real or supposed oriental alphabet, is the custom which many of the illuminators had of figuring very often on frontals and altar canopies, made of silk, meaningless words; and the artists of Italy up to the middle of the sixteenth century did the same on the hems of the garments worn by great personages, in their paintings. On the inscribed textiles here, the real or pretended Arabic sentence is written twice on the same line, once forwards, once backwards.

[213]Silvestre De Sacy, Chrestomathie Arabe, t. ii. p. 287.

[214]Oliver, p. 298.

[215]Test. Vet. i. p. 228.

single and double-headed, may frequently be found in the patterns of old silks. In all ages certain birds of prey have been looked upon by heathens as ominous for good or evil. Of this our own country affords us a mournful example. Upon the standard which was carried at the head of the Danish masters of Northumbria was figured the raven, the bird of Odin. This banner had been woven and worked by the daughters of Regnar Lodbrok, in one noontide’s while; and those heathens believed that if victory was to follow, the raven would seem to stand erect, and as if about to soar before the warriors, but if a defeat was impending, the raven hung his head and drooped his wings; as we are told by Asser: “Pagani acceperunt illud vexillum quod Reafan nominant: dicunt enim quod tres sorores Hungari et Habbæ filiæ videlicet Lodebrochi illud vexillum texuerunt et totum paraverunt illud uno meridiano tempore: dicunt etiam quod, in omni bello ubi præcederet idem signum, si victoriam adepturi essent, appereret in medio signi quasi corvus vivens volitans: sin vero vincendi in futuro fuissent, penderet directe nihil movens.”[216]Another and a more important flag, that which Harold and his Anglo-Saxons fought under and lost at Hastings, is described by Malmesbury as having been embroidered in gold, with the figure of a man in the act of fighting, and studded with precious stones, all done in sumptuous art:

“Quod (vexillum) erat in hominis pugnantis figura auro et lapidibus arte sumptuosa intextum.”[217]

Still farther down in past ages, known for its daring and its lofty flight, the eagle was held in high repute; throughout all the East, where it became the emblem of lordly power and victory, often it is to be seen flying in triumph over the head of some Assyrian conqueror, as may be witnessed in Layard’s Work on Nineveh.[218]Homer calls it the bird of Jove. Upon the yoke in the war chariot of the Persian king Darius sat perched an eagle as if outstretching his wings wrought all in gold: “Auream aquilam pinnas extendenti similem.”[219]The sight of this bird in the air while a battle raged was, by the heathen looked upon as an omen boding victory to those on whose side it hovered. At the battle of Granicus those about Alexander saw or thought they saw fluttering just above his head, quite heedless of the din, an eagle, to which Aristander called the attention of the Macedonians as an unmistakable earnest of success: “Qui circa Alexandrum erant, vidisse se crediderunt, paululum super caput regis placide volantem aquilam non gemitu morientium territam Aristander ... militibus in pugnam intentis avem monstrabat, haud dubium victoriæ auspicium.”[220]The Romans bore it on their standards; the Byzantine emperors kept it as their own device, and following the ancient traditions of the east, and heedless of their law that forbids the making of images, the Saracens, especially when they ruled in Egypt, had the eagle figured on several things about them, sometimes single at others double-headed, which latter was the shape adopted by the emperors of Germany as their blazon; and in this form it is borne to this day by several reigning houses. No wonder then that eagles of both fashions are so often to be observed woven upon ancient and eastern textiles.

Very likely, as yet left to show itself upon the walls of the citadel at Cairo, and those curious old glass lamps hung up there and elsewhere in the mosques, the double-headed eagle with wings displayed, which we find on royal Saracenic silks, was borrowed by the Paynim from the Crusaders, as it would seem, and selected for its ensign by the government of Egypt in the thirteenth century, which will easily account for the presence of that heraldic bird upon so many specimens from Saracenic looms, to be found in this collection. The “tiraz,” in fact, was for silk like the royal manufactory of Dresden and Sèvres china, or Gobelin’s looms for tapestry, and as the courts of France for its mark or ensign fixed upon the two LLs interlaced, and the house of Saxony the two swordsplaced saltire wise, so at least for Saladin and Egypt, in the middle ages the double-headed eagle with its wings outstretched, was the especial badge or ensign. In the same manner the sacred “horm,” or tree of life, between the two rampant lions or cheetahs may be the mark of Persia.

As early asA.D.1277 Exeter Cathedral reckoned among her vestments several such; for instance, a cope of baudekin figured with small two-headed eagles: “Capa baudekyn cum parvis aquilis, ij capita habentibus;”[221]and our Henry III.’s brother, Richard the king of Germany, gave to the same church a cope of black baudekin, with eagles in gold figured on it: “Una capa de baudek, nigra cum aquilis deauratis.”[222]Many other instances might be noticed all through England.

[216]Asserius, De Rebus Gestis Ælfredi, ed. Wise, p. 33.

[217]Will. Malmes. Gesta Regum Anglorum, t. ii. p. 415, ed. Duffus Hardy.

[218]Plates, 18, 20, 22.

[219]Quintus Curtius, Lib.III.cap. iii. p. 7.

[220]Ibid. Lib.IV.cap. xv. p. 72.

[221]Oliver, p. 299.

[222]Ibid.

As in architecture, sculpture, and painting, ancient and modern, so

Hitherto no attempt has been anywhere made to distribute olden silken textiles into various schools, and as the present is the first and only collection which has in any country been thrown open as yet to the public, the occasion seems a fitting one to warrant such an endeavour of classification.

With no other than the specimens here before us, we think we see them fall into these several groups—Chinese, Persian, Byzantine, Oriental or Indian, Syrian, Saracenic, Moresco-Spanish, Sicilian, Italian, Flemish, British, and French.

Chineseexamples here are very few; but what they are, whether plain or figured, they are beautiful in their own way. From all that we know of the people, we are led to believe their own way two thousand years ago is precisely theirs still, so that the web wrought by them this year or two hundred years ago, likeNo. 1368, p. 75, would not differ hardly in a line from their textiles two thousand years gone by, when Dionysius Periegetes wrote that, the “Seres make precious figured garments, resembling in colour the flowers of the field, and rivalling in fineness the work of spiders.” In the stuffs, warp and woof are of silk, and both of the best kinds.

Persiantextiles, even as we see them in this collection, must have been for many centuries just as they were ever figured, and may be, even now, described by the words of Quintus Curtius, with some little allowance for those influences exercised upon the mind of the weaver by his peculiar religious belief, which would not let the lowliest workman forget the“homa,” or tree of life. When Marco Polo travelled through those parts, in the thirteenth century, and our countryman, Sir John Mandeville, a hundred years later, the old love for hunting wild beasts still lived, and the princes of the country were as fond as ever of training the cheetah, a kind of small lion or leopard, for the chase, as we have noticed,p. 178.

When the design is made up of various kinds of beasts and birds, real or imaginary, with the sporting cheetah nicely spotted among them; and the “homa” conspicuously set forth above all; sure may we be that the web was wrought by Persians, and on most occasions the textile will be found in all its parts to be woven from the richest materials.

As an illustration of the Persian type of style,No. 8233, p. 154, may be taken as a specimen.

For trade purposes, and to make the textile pass in the European market as from Persia, the manner of its loom was often copied by the Jewish and the Christian weavers in Syria, as we shall have to notice just now.

The ByzantineGreeks, for their textiles from the time when in the sixth century they began to weave home-grown silk, made for themselves a school of design which kept up in their drawing not a little of the beauty, breadth, and flowing outline which had outlived among them the days of heathenish art. Along with this a strong feeling of their Christianity showed itself as well in many of the subjects which they took out of holy writ, as in the smaller elements of ornamentation. Figures, whether of the human form or of beasts, are given in a much larger and bolder size than on any other ancient stuffs. Though there be very few known specimens from the old looms of Constantinople, the one here,No. 7036, p. 122, showing Samson wrestling with a lion, may serve as a type. In the year 1295 old St. Paul’s Cathedral, here in London, would seem to have possessed several splendid vestments made of Byzantine silk, as we note in the samples to be namedinfraunder the head of Damask.

The way in which those Greeks gave a pattern to the stuff intended more especially for liturgical purposes is pointed out while speaking about “Stauracin” and the “Gammadion,” a form of the cross with which they powdered their silks;p. lii.

The world-wide fame of the Byzantine purple tint is attested by our Gerald Barry, whose words we quote further on. As a sample of the Byzantine loom in “diaspron,” or diapering, we would refer toNo. 1239, p. 26.

The specimens here from the Byzantine, and later Greek loom, are not to be taken as by any means appropriate samples of its general production.They are poor in both respects—material and, when figured, design—as may be seen at pp.27,28,33,36,123,124,126,219, &c.

Orientalancient silks and textiles have their own distinctive marks.

From Marco Polo, who wandered much over the far east, some time during the thirteenth century, we learn that the weaving there was done by women who wrought in silk and gold, after a noble manner, beasts and birds upon their webs:—“Le loro donne lavorano tutte cose a seta e ad oro e a uccelli e a bestie nobilmente e lavorano di cortine ed altre cose molto ricamente.”[223]

Out of the several specimens here from Tartary and India, during our mediæval period, we pick one or two which show well the meaning of those words uttered by that great Venetian traveller, while speaking about the textiles he saw in those countries. The dark purple piece of silk, figured in gold with birds and beasts, of the thirteenth century,No. 7086, p. 137, is good; but better still for our purpose is the shred,No. 7087, p. 138, of blue damask, with its birds, its animals, and flowers wrought in gold, and different coloured silks.

What India is, it has ever been, famous for its cloud-like transparent muslins, which since Marco Polo’s days have kept till now even that oriental name, through being better than elsewhere woven at Mosul.

[223]I Viaggi di Marco Polo, ed. A. Bartoli, Firenze, 1865, p. 345.

TheSyrianschool is well represented here by several fine pieces.

The whole sea-board of that part of Asia Minor, as well as far inland, was inhabited by a mixture of Jews, Christians, and Saracens; and each of these people were workers in silk. The reputation of the neighbouring Persia had of old stood high for the beauty and durability of her silken textiles, which made them to be sought for by the European traders. Persia’s outlet to the west for her goods, lay through the great commercial ports on the coast of Syria. Setting, like Persia used to do, as it were, her own peculiar seal upon her figured webs, by mingling in her designs the mystic “homa,” to the European mind this part of the pattern became, at first, a sort of assurance that those goods had been thrown off by Persian looms. By one of those tricks of imitation followed then, as well as now, the Syrian designers for the loom threw this “homa” into their patterns. This symbol of “the tree of life,” had no doubt been a borrow by Zoroaster from Holy Writ.[224]Neither to the Christian’s eye, nor to the Jew’s, nor Moslem’s, was there in it anything objectionable; all three, therefore, took it and made it a leading portion of design in the patterns of their silks; and hence is it that we meet it so often. Thoughdone with perhaps a fraudulent intention of palming on the world Syrian for real Persian silks, those Syrians usually put into their own designs a something which spoke of their peculiar selves and their workmanship. Though there be seen the “homa,” the “cheetah,” and other elements of Persian patterns, still the discordant two-handled vase, the badly imitated Arabic sentence, betray the textile to be not Persian, but Syrian.No. 8359, p. 213, will readily exemplify our meaning. Furthermore, perhaps quite innocent of any knowledge about Persia’s first belief, and her use of the “homa” in her old religious services, the Christian weavers of Syria, along with the Zorasterian symbol, put the sign of the cross by the side of that “tree of life,” as we find upon the piece of silk,No. 7094, p. 140. Another remarkable specimen of the Syrian loom isNo. 7034, p. 122, whereon the Nineveh lions come forth so conspicuously. As a good example of well-wrought “diaspron” or diaper,No. 8233, p. 154, may be mentioned, along withNo. 7052, p. 127.

[224]Genesis ii. 9.

Saracenicweaving, as shown by the design upon the web, is exemplified in several specimens before us.

However much against what looks like a heedlessness of the Koran’s teachings, certain it is that the Saracens, those of the upper classes in particular, felt no difficulty in wearing robes upon which animals and the likenesses of other created things were woven; with the strictest of their princes, a double-headed eagle was a royal heraldic device, as we have shown,p. lxiii. Stuffs, then, figured with birds and beasts, with trees and flowers, were not the less of Saracenic workmanship, and meant for Moslem wear. What, however, may be looked for upon real Saracenic textures is a pattern consisting of longitudinal stripes of blue, red, green, and other colour; some of them charged with animals, small in form, other some written, in large Arabic letters, with a word or sentence, often a proverb, often a good wish or some wise saw.

As examples we would point toNo. 8288, p. 178, and7051, p. 127. For a fair specimen of diapering,No. 7050, p. 127, whileNo. 8639, p. 243, presents us with a design having in it, besides the crescent moon, a proof that architectural forms were not forgotten by the weaver-draughtsman, in his sketches for the loom.

Later, in our chapter on Tapestry, we shall have occasion to speak about another sort of Saracenic work or tapestry, of the kind called abroad, from the position of its frame, of the basse lisse.

Moresco-Spanish, or Saracenic textiles, wrought in Spain, though partaking of the striped pattern, and bearing words in real or imitated Arabic, had some distinctions of their own. The designs shown upon these stuffs are almost always drawn out of strap-work, reticulations, orsome combination or another of geometrical lines, amid which are occasionally to be found different forms of conventional flowers. Specimens are to be seen here at pp.51,55,121,124,125,186,240, &c. Sometimes, but very rarely, the crescent moon is figured as in the curious piece,No. 8639, p. 243. The colours of these silks are usually either a fine crimson, or a deep blue with almost always a fine toned yellow as a ground. But one remarkable feature in these Moresco-Spanish textiles is the presence, when gold is brought in, of an ingenious though fraudulent imitation of the precious metal, for which shreds of gilded parchment cut up into narrow flat strips are substituted, and woven with the silk. This, when fresh, must have looked very bright, and have given the web all the appearance of those favourite stuffs called here in England “tissues,” of which we have already spoken,p. xxiii.

We are not aware that this trick has ever been found out before, and it was only by the use of a highly magnifying glass that we penetrated the secret. Our suspicion was awakened by so often observing that the gold had become quite black. Examples of this gilt vellum may be seen here, at Nos.7095, p. 140;8590, p. 224;8639, p. 244; &c.

When the Christian Spanish weavers lived beyond Saracenic control, they filled their designs with beasts, birds, and flowers; but even then the old Spanish fine tone of crimson is rather striking in their webs, as is evidenced in the beautiful piece of diaper,No. 1336, p. 64.

Spanish velvets—and they were mostly wrought in Andalusia—are remarkably fine and conspicuous both for their deep soft pile, and their glowing ruby tones; but when woven after the manner of velvet upon velvet, are very precious: a good specimen of rich texture, and mellow colouring is furnished by the chasuble atNo. 1375, p. 81.

TheSicilianschool strongly marked the wide differences between itself and all the others which had lived before; and the history of its loom is as interesting as it is varied.

The first to teach the natives of Sicily the use of cotton for their garments, and how to rear the silkworm and spin its silk, were, as it would seem, the Mahomedans, who, in coming over from Africa, brought along with them, besides the art of weaving silken textiles, a knowledge of the fauna of that vast continent—its giraffes, its antelopes, its gazelles, its lions, its elephants. These Mussulmans told them, too, of the parrots of India and the hunting sort of lion,—the cheetahs, that were found in Asia; and when the stuff had to be wrought for European wear, imaged both beast and bird upon the web, at the same time that they wove a word in Arabic, of greeting to be read among the flowers. Like all other Saracens, those in Sicily loved to mingle gold in their tissues; and, to sparethe silk, cotton thread was not unfrequently worked up in the warp. When, therefore, we meet with beasts taken from the fauna of Africa, such, especially, as the giraffe, and the several classes of the antelope family—in particular the gazelle—with, somewhere about, an Arabic motto—and part of the pattern wrought in gold, which, at first poor and thin, is now become black, as well as cotton in the warp, we may fairly take the specimen as a piece of Sicily’s work in its first period of weaving, all so Saracenic to the eye. Even when that Moslem nation had been driven out by the Normans, if many of its people did not stay as workmen in silk at Palermo, yet they left their teachings in weaving and design behind them, and their practices were, years afterwards, still followed.

Now we reach Sicily’s second epoch.

While at war with the Byzantines, in the twelfth century, Roger, King of Sicily, took Corinth, Thebes, and Athens, from each of which cities he led away captives all the men and women he could find who knew how to weave silks, and carried them to Palermo. To the Norman tiraz there, these Grecian new comers brought fresh designs, which were adopted sometimes wholly, at others but in part and mixed up with the older Saracenic style, for silks wrought under the Normano-Sicilian dynasty. In this second period of the island’s loom we discover what traces the Byzantine school had impressed upon Sicilian silks, and helped so much to alter the type of their design. On one silk, a grotesque mask amid the graceful twinings of luxuriant foliage, such as might have been then found by them upon many a fragment of old Greek sculpture, was the pattern, as we witness, atNo. 8241, p. 158; on another, a sovereign on horseback wearing the royal crown, and carrying as he rides a hawk upon his wrist—token both of the love for lordly sports at the period, and the feudalism all over Italy and Christendom, shown in the piece,No. 8589, p. 223; on a third,No. 8234, p. 154, is the Greek cross, along with a pattern much like the old netted or “de fundato” kind which we have described,p. liii.

But Sicily’s third is quite her own peculiar style. At the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth century, she struck out of herself into quite an unknown path for design. Without throwing aside the old elements employed till then especially, all over the east, and among the rest, by the Mahomedans, Sicily put along with them the emblem of Christianity, the cross, in various forms, on some occasions with the letter V. four times repeated, and so placed together as to fall into the shape of this symbol, like what we find atNo. 1245, p. 28; in other instances the cross is floriated, as atNo. 1293, p. 47.

From the far east to the uttermost western borders of the Mediterraneanthe weavers of every country had been in the habit of figuring upon their silks those beasts and birds they saw around them: the Tartar, the Indian, and the Persian gave us the parrot and the cheetah; the men of Africa the giraffe and the gazelle; the people of each continent the lions, the elephants, the eagles, and the other birds common to both. From the poetry and sculpture of the Greeks and Romans could the Sicilians have easily learned about the fabled griffin and the centaur; but it was left for their own wild imaginings to figure as they have, such an odd compound in one being as the animal—half elephant, half griffin—which we see inNo. 1288, p. 45. Their daring flights of fancy in coupling the difficult with the beautiful, are curious; in one place,No. 1302, p. 50, large eagles are perched in pairs with a radiating sun between them, and beneath dogs, in pairs, running with heads turned back, &c.; in another,No. 1304, p. 51, running harts have caught one of their hind legs in a cord tied to their collar, and an eagle swoops down upon them; and the same animal, in another place, on the same piece has switched its tail into the last link of a chain fastened to its neck; on a third sample,No. 8588, p. 222, we behold figured, harts, the letter M floriated, winged lions, crosses floriated, crosses sprouting out on two sides withfleurs-de-lis, four-legged monsters, some like winged lions, some biting their tails. Exeter Cathedral had a cloth of gold purple cope, figured with “draconibus volantibus ac tenentibus caudas proprias in ore,”[225]doves in pairs upholding a cross, &c. Hardly elsewhere to be found are certain elements peculiar to the patterns upon silks from mediæval Sicily; such, for instance, as harts, and demi-dogs with very large wings, both animals having remarkably long manes streaming far behind them,No. 1279, p. 41; harts again, but lodged beneath green trees, in a park with paling about it, as inNo. 1283, p. 43, andNo. 8710, p. 269; that oft-recurring sun shedding its beams with eagles pecking at them, or gazing undazzled at the luminary, pp.48,50,137, but sometimes stags, as at pp.54,239, carrying their well attired heads upturned to a large pencil of those sunbeams as they dart down upon them amid a shower of rain-drops. Of birds, the hawk, the eagle, double and single headed, the parrot, may be found on stuffs all over the east; not so, however, with the swan, yet this majestic creature was a favourite with Sicilians, and may be seen here often drawn with great gracefulness, as at Nos.1277, p. 41;1299, p. 49;8264, p. 166;8610, p. 232, &c.

Back to Index Next