Section VI.—Artists and Manufacturers

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 beenbrought 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 sweteWere strawed in halles, and layd under theyr fete.Clothes of gold and arras were hanged in the hallDepaynted with pyctures and hystoryes manyfolde,Well wroughte and craftely.

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 marcyallFresshly were browdred in these clothes royall.But over the hye desse in pryncypall placeWhere the sayd thre Kynges sat crowned allThe 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]

Duke Josue was joyned after them in pycture,

Theyr noble actes and tryumphes marcyallFresshly were browdred in these clothes royall.

Theyr noble actes and tryumphes marcyall

Fresshly were browdred in these clothes royall.

But over the hye desse in pryncypall placeWhere the sayd thre Kynges sat crowned allThe 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]

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 atNo. 1370, p. 76;No. 1297, p. 296; No.1465p. 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;

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 astheir 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 ofthe 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.

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