Section II.—EMBROIDERY.

The art of working with the needle flowers, fruits, human and animal forms, or any fanciful design, upon webs woven of silk, linen, cotton, wool, hemp, besides other kinds of stuff, is so old that it reaches far into the prehistoric ages.

Those patterns, after so many fashions, which we see figured upon the garments worn by men and women in Egyptian and Assyrian monuments, but especially on the burned-clay vases made and painted by the Greeks during their most archaic as well as later times, or we read about in the writings of that people, were not wrought in the loom, but done by the needle.

The old Egyptian loom—and that of the Jews must have been like it—was, as we know from paintings, of the simplest shape, and seems to have never been able to do anything more diversified in the designs of its patterns than straight lines in different colours, and at best nothing higher in execution than checker-work: beyond this, all else was put in by hand with the needle. In Paris, at the Louvre, are several pieces of early Egyptian webs coloured, drawings of which have been published by Sir Gardner Wilkinson in his short work “The Egyptians in the time of the Pharaohs.”[297] There are two pieces of the same textile scarlet, with one brede woven of narrow red stripes on a broad yellow stripe, the other border being a broad yellow stripe edged by a narrow scarlet one, both wrought up and down with needlework; the second piece of blue is figured all over in white embroidery with a pattern of netting, the meshes of which shut in irregular cubic shapes, and in the lines of the reticulation the mystic “gammadion” or “fylfot” is seen. Of them Sir J. G. Wilkinson says:—“They are mostly cotton, and, though their date is uncertain, they suffice to show that the manufacture was Egyptian; and the many dresses painted on the monuments of the eighteenth dynasty show that the most varied patterns were used by the Egyptians more than 3000 years ago, as they were at a later period by the Babylonians, who became noted for their needlework.”[298] Other specimens of Egyptian embroidery were on those corslets sent to Grecian temples by Amasis, about which we have before spoken (p. xiv.)

That the Israelites embroidered their garments, especially those worn in public worship, is clear from several passages in the Book of Exodus. The words “embroidery” and “embroidered” that come there so frequently in our English versions are not to be understood always to mean needlework, but on occasions the tasteful weaving in stripes of the gold, violet, and purple, and scarlet twice dyed, and fine twisted linen; the pomegranates at the bottom of Aaron’s tunic between the golden bells, and wrought of four of these stuffs, were, it is likely, made out of such coloured shreds, and of that kind which is now called cut-work.

Picking up from Greek and Latin writers only, as was his wont, those scraps of which his Natural History is made, Pliny tells us, even in Homer, mention is made of embroidered cloths, which originated such as by the Romans are called “triumphal.” To do this with the needle was found out by the Phrygians, hence such garments took the name Phrygionic: “Pictas vestes jam apud Homerum fuisse unde triumphales natæ. Acu facere id, Phryges invenerunt ideoque Phrygioniæ appellatæ sunt.”[299] He might have added that the only word the Romans had to mean an embroiderer was “Phrygio,” which arose from the same cause. Many passages in Virgil show that from Western Asia the Romans learned their knowledge of embroidery, and borrowed the employment of it on their garments of State; besides, “those art-wrought vests of splendid purple tint:”—“arte laboratæ vestes ostroque superbo,”[300] brought forth for the feast by the Sidonian Dido, the Phrygian Andromache bestows upon Ascanius, as a token of her own handicraft, garments shot with gold and pictured, as well as a Phrygian cloak, along with other woven stuffs—

and Æneas veils his head for prayer with the embroidered hem of his raiment—

Et capita ante aras Phrygio velamur amictu.[302]

In Latin while an embroiderer was called a Phrygian, “Phrygio,” needlework was denominated “Phrygium,” or Phrygian stuff; hence, when, as often happened, the design was wrought in solid gold wire or golden thread, the embroidery so worked got named “auriphrygium.” From this term comes our own old English word “orphrey.” Though deformed after so many guises by the witless writers of many an inventory of church goods, or by the sorry cleric who in a moment of needful haste had been called upon to draw up a will; other men, however small their learning, always spelled the word “orphrey,” in English, and “auriphrygium,” in Latin. In the Exeter inventory, given by Oliver, “cum orphrey de panno aureo, &c. cum orphrais, &c.”[303] are found; and the cope bequeathed by Henry Lord de Scrope, A.D. 1415, had its “orphreis” “embraudata nobiliter cum imaginibus,” &c.[304] The many beautiful orphreys on the Lincoln vestments are fully described in the “Monasticon Anglicanum:”[305] no one could be more earnest in commanding the use on vestments of the auriphrygium, or embroidered “orphrey” than St. Charles Borromeo.[306]

While Phrygia in general, Babylon in particular became celebrated for the beauty of its embroideries: “colores diversos picturæ intexere Babylon maxime celebravit et nomen imposuit;”[307] and those who have seen the sculptures in the British Museum brought from Nineveh, and described and figured by Layard, must have witnessed how lavishly the Assyrians must have adorned their dress with that sort of needlework for which one of their greatest cities was so famous.

Up to the first century of our era, the reputation which Babylon had won for her textiles and needlework still lived. Josephus, himself a Jew, who had often been to worship at Jerusalem, tells us that the veils of its Temple given by Herod were Babylonian, and of the outer one that writer says:—“there was a veil of equal largeness with the door. It was a Babylonian curtain, embroidered with blue and fine linen, and scarlet and purple, and of a texture that was wonderful.”[308]

What the Jews did for the Temple we may be sure was done by Christians for the Church. The faithful, however, went even further, and wore garments figured all over with passages from Holy Writ wrought in embroidery. From a stirring sermon preached by St. Asterius, bishop of Amasia in Pontus, in the fourth century, we learn this. Taking for his text, “a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen,” this father of the Church, while upbraiding the world for its follies in dress, lets us know that some people went about arrayed like painted walls, with beasts and flowers all over them; while others, pretending a more serious tone of thought, dressed in clothes figured with a sketch of all the doings and wonders of our Lord. “Strive,” thunders forth St. Asterius, “to follow in your lives the teachings of the Gospel, rather than have the miracles of our Redeemer embroidered upon your outward dress.”[309]

To have had so many subjects shown upon one garment, it is clear that each must have been done very small, and all wrought in outline; a style which is being brought back, with great effect, into ecclesiastical use.

Of the embroidery done by Christian ladies abroad during the Lower Roman Empire, we have already spoken, p. xxxv. Coming to our own land, and its mediæval times, we find how at the beginning of that period our Anglo-Saxon sisters knew so well to handle their needle. The many proofs of this we have brought forward in another place.[310]

The discriminating accuracy with which our old writers sought to follow while noting down the several kinds of textile gifts bestowed upon a church is as instructive as praiseworthy. Ingulph did not think it enough to say that abbot Egelric had given many hangings to the Church of Croyland, the great number of which were silken, but he must tell us, too, that some were ornamented with birds wrought in gold, and sewed on—in fact, of cut-work—other some with those birds woven into the stuff, other some quite plain:—“Dedit etiam multa pallia suspendenda in parietibus ad altaria sanctorum in festis, quorum plurima de serico erant, aureis volucribus quædam insita, quædam intexta, quædam plana.”[311]

So also the care often taken by the writers of inventories, like him who wrote out the Exeter one, to mention how some of the vestments had nothing about them but true needlework, or, as they at times express it, “operata per totum opere acuali,” may be witnessed in that useful work, “The Lives of the Bishops of Exeter,” by Oliver.[312]

By the latter end of the thirteenth century embroidery, as well as its imitation, got for its several styles and various sorts of ornamentation mixed up with it a distinguishing and technical nomenclature; and the earliest document in which we meet with this set of terms is the inventory drawn up, A.D. 1295, of the vestments belonging to our London St. Paul’s Cathedral: herein, the “opus plumarium,”[313] the “opus pectineum,” [314] the “opus pulvinarium,”[315] cut-work, “consutum de serico,”[316] “de serico consuto,”[317] may be severally found in Dugdale’s “History of St. Paul’s.”

The “opus plumarium” was the then usual general term for what is now commonly called embroidery; and hence, in some old inventories, we meet with such notices as this:—“capæ opere plumario factæ id est, brudatæ.”

This term was given to embroidery needlework because the stitches were laid down never across but longwise, and so put together that they seemed to overlap one another like the feathers in the plumage of a bird. Not inaptly then was this style called “feather-stitch” work, in contradistinction to that done in cross and tent stitch, or the “cushion-style,” as we shall, a little further on, have occasion to notice next.

Among the many specimens here done in feather-stitch, in all ages, we would especially instance No. 84, p. 3.

The “opus pulvinarium,” or “cushion style,” was that sort of embroidery like the present so-called Berlin-work. As now, so then it was done in the same stitchery, with pretty much the same materials, and put if not always, at least often, to the same purpose of being used for cushions, upon which to sit or to kneel in church, or uphold the mass-book at the altar; hence its name of “cushion-style.” In working it, silken thread is known to have been often used. Among other specimens, and in silk, the rare and beautiful liturgical cushion of a date corresponding to the London inventory, is to be seen here, No. 1324, p. 59. Being so well adapted for working heraldry, from an early period till now, this stitch has been mostly used for the purpose; and the emblazoned orphreys, like the narrow hem on the Syon cope, are wrought in it.

The oldest, the most elaborate, the best known sample in the world, and what to us is more interesting still from being in reality not French but English needlework, is the so-called, but misnamed, Bayeux tapestry, a shred of which is in this collection, No. 675, p. 6. Of all this more anon, § IV.

The “opus pectineum” was a kind of woven-work imitative of embroidery, and used as such, in truth, about which we have a description in the Dictionary of the Londoner, John Garland, who thus speaks of the process: “Textrices ducunt pectines cum trama quæ trahitur a spola et pano,” &c.[318] From this use of a comb-like instrument—“pecten”—in the manufacture the work itself received the distinctive appellation of “pectineum,” or comb-wrought. Before John Garland forsook England for France, to teach a school there, he must have often seen, while at home, his countrywomen sitting down to such an occupation; and the “amictus de dono dominæ Kathærinæ de Lovell de opere pectineo,”[319] may perhaps have been the doing of that same lady’s own hands.

Of such work as this “opus pectineum,” or comb-drawn, wrought by English women here at home, we have several specimens in this collection, pp. 24, 33, 38, &c.

Foreign ones are plentifully represented in the many samples of such webs from Germany, especially from Cologne, pp. 61, 62, 63, &c.

Likely is it that Helisend, the bold young lady from the south of England, and one of the waiting maids to the English Maud, queen of David, king of Scotland, circa A.D. 1150, got, from her cunning in such work, the reputation of being so skilful in weaving and church-embroidery:—“operis texturæ scientia purpuraria nobilis extiterat, et aurifrixoria artificiosæ compositionis peroptima super omnes Angliæ mulieres tunc temporis principaliter enituerat.”[320]

Our mediæval countrywomen were so quick at the needle that they could make their embroidery look as if it had been done in the loom—really woven. Not long ago, a shred of crimson cendal, figured in gold and silver thread with a knight on horseback, armed as of the latter time of Edward I., was shown us. At the moment we took the mounted warrior to have been, not hand-worked, but woven, so flat, so even was every thread. Looking at it however through a glass and turning it about, we found it to have been unmistakably embroidered by the finger in such a way that the stitches for laying down upon the surface, and not drawing through the gold threads and thus saving expense, were carried right into the canvas lining at the back of this thin silk. After this same manner was really done, to our thinking, all the design, both before and behind upon that fine English-wrought chasuble, No. 673, p. 5.

At the latter end of the thirteenth century our women struck out for themselves a new way of embroidery. Without leaving aside the old and usual “opus plumarium,” or feather-stitch, they mixed it with a new style, both of needlework and mechanism. So beautiful and telling was the novel method deemed abroad, that it won for itself from admiring Christendom the complimentary appellation of “opus Anglicum,” or English work. In what its peculiarity consisted has long been a question and a puzzle among foreign archæological writers; and a living one of eminence, the Canon Voisin, vicar general to the bishop of Tournai, while noticing a cope of English work given to that church, says:—“Il serait curieux de savoir quelle broderie ou quel tissu on designait sous le nom de opus Anglicum.”[321]

But the reader may ask what is

The Opus Anglicum, or English Work,

about which one heard so much of old?

Happily, we have before us in the present collection, as well as elsewhere in this country, the means of helping our continental friends with an answer to their question.

Looking well into that very fine and invaluable piece of English needlework, the Syon cope, No. 9182, p. 275, we find that for the human face, all over it, the first stitches were begun in the centre of the cheek, and worked in circular, not straight lines, into which, however, after the further side had been made, they fell, and were so carried on through the rest of the fleshes; in some instances, too, even all through the figure, draperies and all. But this was done in a sort of chain stitch, and a newly practised mechanical appliance was brought into use. After the whole figure had thus been wrought with this kind of chain stitch in circles and straight lines, then with a little thin iron rod ending in a small bulb or smooth knob slightly heated, were pressed down those middle spots in the faces that had been worked in circular lines; as well, too, as that deep wide dimple in the throat, especially of an aged person. By the hollows thus lastingly sunk, a play of light and shadow is brought out, that, at a short distance, lends to the portion so treated a look of being done in low relief. Chain stitch, then, worked in circular lines, and relief given to parts by hollows sunk into the faces, and other portions of the persons, constitute the elements of the “opus Anglicum,” or embroidery after the English manner. How the chain-stitch was worked into circles for the faces, and straight lines for the rest of the figures, is well shown by a wood-cut, after a portion of the Steeple Aston embroideries, given in the Archæological Journal, t. iv. p. 285.

Though, indeed, not merely the faces and the extremities, but the dress too of the persons figured, were sometimes wrought in chain-stitch, and afterwards treated as we have just described, the more general practice was to work the draperies in our so-called feather-stitch, which used to be also employed for the grounding, but diapered after a pretty, though simple, zig-zag design, as we find in the Syon cope.

Apart from its stitching in circles, and those hollows, there are elements in the design for sacred art-work almost peculiar to mediæval England. Upon the rood loft in old Westminster Abbey, stood hard by the cross two six-winged seraphim, each with his feet upon a wheel; so, too, in the Syon cope, as well as in English needlework on chasubles and copes, wrought even late in the fifteenth century. When, therefore, such angel-figures are found on embroideries, still to be seen in foreign hands, a presumption exists that the work is of English production.

How highly English embroideries were at one period appreciated by foreigners may be gathered from the especial notice taken of them abroad; and spoken of in continental documents. Matilda, the first Norman William’s queen, stooped to the meanness of filching from the affrighted Anglo-Saxon monks of Abingdon their richest church vestments, and would not be put off with inferior ones.[322] Other instances we have given. [323] In his will, dated A.D. 1360, Cardinal Talairand, bishop of Albano, speaks of the English embroideries on a costly set of white vestments.[324] Ghini, by birth a Florentine, but, in the year 1343, bishop of Tournai, bequeathed to that cathedral an old English cope, as well as a beautiful corporal of English work—“cappam veterem cum imaginibus et frixio operis Anglicani. Item unum corporale de opere Anglicano pulchrum,” &c.[325] Among the copes reserved for prelates’ use in the chapel of Charles, Duke of Bourgogne, brother-in-law to our John Duke of Bedford, there was one of English work, very elaborately fraught with many figures, as appears from this description of it: “une chappe de brodeure d’or, façon d’Engleterre, à plusieurs histoires de N.D. et anges et autres ymages, estans en laceures escriptes, garnie d’un orfroir d’icelle façon fait à apostres, desquelles les manteulx sont tous couvers de perles, et leur diadesmes pourphiler de perles, estans en manière de tabernacles, faits de deux arbres, dont les tiges sont toutes couvertes de perles et à la dite chappe y a une bille des dites armes, garnie de perles comme la dessus dicte.”[326]

Besides textiles, leather was at one time the material upon which our embroiderers exercised the needle; and the Exeter inventory, drawn up A.D. 1277, mentions, for its bier, a large pillow covered with leather figured with flowers: “magnum cervical co-opertum coreo cum floribus.”[327]

While so coveted abroad, our English embroidery was highly prized and well paid for here at home. Henry III. had a chasuble embroidered by Mabilia of Bury St. Edmund’s;[328] and Edward II. paid a hundred marks—a good round sum in those days—to Rose, the wife of John de Bureford, a citizen and mercer of London, for a choir-cope of her embroidering, and which was to be sent to Rome for the Pope as an offering from the queen.[329]

Though English embroidery fell on a sudden from its high estate, it never died. All along through those years, wasted with the wars of the Roses, the work of the English needle was very poor, very coarse, and, so to say, ragged; as, for instance, the chasuble here, No. 4045, p. 88. Nothing whatsoever of the celebrated chain-stitch with dimpled faces in the figures can be found about it. Every part was done in the feather-stitch, slovenly put down, with some few exceptions, among which may be enumerated the three rich English copes with pointed hoods running, like one here, p. 207, through the orphreys, still to be seen in the Chapter Library at Durham, and other vestments of the period in private hands. During the early part of the seventeenth century our embroiderers again struck out for themselves a new style, which consisted in throwing up their figures a good height above the grounding. Of this raised work there is a fine specimen in the fourth of those Durham copes. It is said to have been wrought for and given by Charles I. to that cathedral. This red silk vestment is well sprinkled with bodiless cherubic heads crowned with rays and borne up by wings; while upon the hood is shown David, who is holding in one hand Goliath’s severed head; and the whole is done in highly raised embroidery. Belonging to a few of our aristocracy are bibles of the large folio size, covered in rich white silk or satin, and embroidered with the royal arms done in bold raised-work. Each of such volumes is said to have been a gift from that prince to a forefather of the man who now owns it; and a very fine one we lately saw at Ham House.

This style of raised embroidery remained in use for many years; and even yet to be found are certain quaint old looking-glasses, the broad frames of which are overlaid with this kind of raised embroidery, sometimes setting forth, as in the specimen No. 892, p. 319, of the Brooke collection here, the story of Ahasuerus and Esther, or a passage in some courtship carried on after the manners of Arcadia.[330]

Occasionally on work of an earlier period, some element or another of this raised style may be found; for instance, in that fine Rhenish embroidery, Nos. 1194-5, p. 21, the bushiness of hair on all the angels’ heads, is striking, but this is done with little locks of auburn coloured silk.

But a very few people, at the present moment, have the faintest idea about the labour, the money, the length of time often bestowed of old upon embroideries which had been sketched as well as wrought by the hands of men, each in his own craft the ablest and most cunning of that day. In behalf of this our own land, we may gather evidences strewed all over the present Introduction: as a proof of the self-same doings elsewhere, may be set forth a remarkable passage given, in his life of Antonio Pollaiuolo, by Vasari, where he says: “For San Giovanni in Florence there were made certain very rich vestments after the design of this master, namely, two dalmatics, a chasuble, and a cope, all of gold-wove velvet with pile upon pile—di broccato riccio sopra riccio—each woven of one entire piece and without seam, the bordering and ornaments being stories from the life of St. John, embroidered with the most subtile mastery of that art by Paolo da Verona, a man most eminent of his calling, and of incomparable ingenuity: the figures are no less ably executed with the needle than they would have been if Antonio had painted them with the pencil; and for this we are largely indebted to the one master for his design, as well as to the other for his patience in embroidering it. This work took twenty-six years for its completion, being wholly in close stitch—questi ricami fatti con punto serrato—which, to say nothing of its durability, makes the work appear as if it were a real picture limned with the pencil; but the excellent method of which is now all but lost, the custom being in these days to make the stitches much wider—il punteggiare piu largo—whereby the work is rendered less durable and much less pleasing to the eye.”[331] These vestments may yet be seen framed and glazed in presses around the sacristy of San Giovanni.[332] Antonio died A.D. 1498. The magnificent cope once belonging to Westminster Abbey, and now at Stonyhurst and exhibited here, A.D. 1862, is of one seamless piece of gorgeous gold tissue figured with bold wide-spreading foliage in crimson velvet, pile upon pile, and dotted with small gold spots; it came, it is likely, from the same loom that threw off these San Giovanni vestments, at Florence.”

Our Old English Opus Consutum, or Cut Work,

in French, “appliqué,” is a term of rather wide meaning, as it takes in several sorts of decorative accompaniments to needlework.

When anything—flower, fruit, or figure—is wrought by itself upon a separate piece of silk or canvas, and afterwards sewed on to the vestment for church use, or article for domestic purpose, it comes to be known as “cut-work.” Though often mixed with embroidery, and oftener still employed by itself upon liturgical garments; oftenest of all, it is to be found in bed-curtains, hangings for rooms and halls, hence called “hallings,” and other items in household furniture.

Of cut-work in embroidery, those pieces of splendid Rhenish needlework with the blazonment of Cleves, all sewed upon a ground of crimson silk, as we see, Nos. 1194-5, p. 21. The chasuble of crimson double-pile velvet, No. 78, p. 1, affords another good example. The niches in which the saints stand are loom-wrought, but those personages themselves are exquisitely done on separate pieces of fine canvass, and afterwards let into the unwoven spaces left open for them.

A Florentine piece of cut-work, No. 5788, p. 111, is alike remarkable for its great beauty, and the skill shown in bringing together so nicely, weaving and embroidery. Much of the architectural accessories is loom-wrought, while the extremities of the evangelists are all done by the needle; but the head, neck, and long beard are worked by themselves upon very fine linen, and afterwards put together after such a way that the full white beard overlaps the tunic. Another and a larger example, from Florence, of the same sort, is furnished us at No. 78, p. 1. Quite noteworthy too is the old and valuable vestment, No. 673, p. 5, in this regard, for parts of the web in the back orphrey were left open, in the looms for the heads, and extremities of the figures there, to be done afterwards in needlework. Such a method of weaving was practised in parts of Germany, and the web from the looms of Cologne, No. 1329, p. 61, exhibits an example.

Other methods were bade to come and yield a quicker help in this cut-work. To be more expeditious, all the figures were at once shaped out of woven silk, satin, velvet, linen, or woollen cloth as wanted, and sewed upon the grounding of the article. Upon the personages thus fashioned in silk, satin, or linen, the features of the face and the contours of the body were wrought by the needle in very narrow lines done in brown silk thread. At times, even thus much of embroidery was set aside for the painting brush, and instances are to be found in which the spaces left uncovered by the loom for the heads and extremities of the human figures, are filled in by lines from the brush.

Often, too, the cut-work done in these ways is framed, as it were, with an edging, either in plain or gilt leather, hempen, or silken cord, exactly like the leadings of a stained glass window.

Belonging to ourselves is an old English chasuble, the broad cross, at the back of which is figured with “The Resurrection of the Body.” The dead are arising from their graves, and each is wrought in satin, upon which the features on the face, and the lineaments of the rest of the body, are shown by thin lines worked with the needle in dark brown silk; and the edge, where each figure is sewed on the grounding, is covered with a narrow black silk cord, after much the same fashion as the lectern-veil here, No. 7468, p. 141, of silk and gold cut work. Instances there are wherein, instead of needlework, painting was resorted to; No. 8315, p. 189, shows us a fine art-work in its way, upon which we see the folds of the white linen garment worn by our Lord, marked by brown lines put in with the brush, while the head and extremities, and the ground strewed with flowers, are wrought with the needle. No. 8687, p. 258, gives us a figure where the whole of the person, the fleshes and clothing, are done in woven silk cut out, shaded and featured in colours by the brush with some little needlework here and there upon the garments. In that old specimen, No. 8713, p. 270, such parts of the design as were meant to be white are left uncovered upon the linen, and the shading is indicated by brown lines.

Perhaps in no collection open anywhere to public view could be found a piece of cut-work so full of teaching about the process, and its easy way of execution, as the one here, No. 1370, p. 76; to it we earnestly recommend the attention of such of our readers as may wish to learn all about this method.

For the invention of cut-work or “di commesso,” as Vasari calls it, that writer tells us we are indebted to one of his Florentine countrymen: “It was by Sandro Botticelli that the method of preparing banners and standards in what is called cut-work, was invented; and this he did that the colours might not sink through, showing the tint of the cloth on each side. The baldachino of Orsanmichele is by this master, and is so treated,” &c., and this work serves to show how much more effectually that mode of proceeding preserves the cloth than do those mordants, which, corroding the surface, allow but a short life to the work; but as the mordants cost less, they are more frequently used in our day than the first-mentioned method.[333]

However accurate such a statement may be regarding Italy in general, and Tuscany in particular, it is, nevertheless, utterly untrue as applicable to the rest of the world. In this collection may be seen a valuable piece of this same cut-work—or as Vasari would call it “di commesso”—by French hands, fraught with a story out of our English Romance, and done towards the end of the fourteenth century, No. 1370, p. 76. Now, as Botticelli was born A.D. 1457, and died A.D. 1515, he came into being almost a whole century too late to have originated such a process of ornamental needlework, which was well known and practised in these parts so many years before the birth of that Florentine painter.

There are some accessories, in mediæval embroidery, which ought not to be overlooked here.

In some few instances,

Gold, and Silver gilt,

in very many more, wrought after the smith’s cunning into little star-like flowers—broader, bigger, and more craftily fashioned than our modern spangles—are to be found sewed upon the silks or amid the embroidery in the specimens before us, particularly those from Venice and its main-land provinces in Italy, and from Southern Germany. At No. 8274, pp. 168-9, we have a part of an orphrey embroidered on parchment, and having along with its coral, gold beads, and seed pearls, small bosses and ornaments in gilded silver stars; it is Venetian, and of the second half of the twelfth century. No. 8307, pp. 185-6 is a linen amice, the silken apparel of which has sewed to it large spangle-like plates in gilded silver struck with a variety of patterns, showing how the goldsmith’s hand had been sought by the Germans of the fifteenth century to give beauty to this silken stuff. The fine piece of ruby-tinted Genoa velvet, which was once the apparel for the lower hem of an alb, is sprinkled somewhat thickly with six-rayed stars of gold and silver; but those made of the latter metal have turned almost black: here we have a sample of Lombard taste in this matter, of the ending of the fifteenth century. Silver-gilt spangles wrought to figure six-petalled flowers on a fine example of gold tissue, under No. 8588, pp. 222-3, present us with a German craftsman’s work, in the fourteenth century. No. 8612, p. 233, is not without its value in reference to Italian taste. All over, this curious now fragmental piece of silk damask, has at one time been thickly strewed with trefoils cut out of gilt metal, but very thin, and not sewed but glued on to the silk: many of these leaves have fallen off, and those remaining turned black.

From among these examples a few will show the reader how the goldsmith had been tasked to work upon them as jeweller also, and gem the liturgical garments to which these shreds belong, with real or imitated precious stones. In the orphrey upon the back of that very rich fine crimson velvet chasuble, No. 1375, pp. 81-2, the crossed nimb about our Lord’s head is gemmed with stones set in silver gilt; and the sockets still left on the piece of crimson velvet, No. 8334, p. 199, unmistakably speak for themselves.

Besides precious stones, coral, and seed-pearls,

Glass,

coloured and wrought into small beads and bugles, is another of those hard materials, the presence of which we find in this collection. As now, so far back during the mediæval period, the Venetians, at the island of Murano, wrought small glass beads and bugles of all colours, as well as pastes—smalti—in every tint for mosaics, and imitations of jewels. This art, which they had learned from the Greeks, they followed with signal success; and likely is it that from Venice came the several specimens of glass—blue, like lapis lazuli—which we still see on that beautiful frontal in Westminster Abbey,[334]—the work of our countryman Peter de Ispagna,[335] the member of an old Essex family. At No. 8276, pp. 168-9, is a piece of an orphrey for a chasuble, plentifully embroidered with glass beads and bugles, which shows how much such a style of ornament was used towards the latter end of the twelfth century, at least in Lower Germany, and some of the Italian provinces. Belonging to St. Paul’s, London, A.D. 1295, among many other amices, there was one having glass stones upon it; “amictus ... ornatus lapidibus vitreis magnis et parvis per totum in capsis argenteis deauratis, &c.”[336]

Enamel.

Another form of glass fastened by heat to gold and copper—enamel, the invention neither of Egypt, Greece, nor Italy, but of our own old Britons,[337] was extensively employed as an adornment upon textiles. Besides the examples we have given,[338] that gorgeous “chesable of red cloth of gold with orphreys before and behind set with pearls, blue, white and red, with plates of gold enamelled, wanting fifteen plates, &c.”[339] bestowed by John of Gaunt’s duchess of Lancaster, upon Lincoln Cathedral, is another instance to show how such a kind of rich ornamentation was sewed to garments, especially for church use, in such large quantities.

Here, in England, the old custom was to sew a great deal of goldsmith’s work, for enrichment, upon articles meant for personal wear, as well as on ritual garments. When our first Edward’s grave, in Westminster Abbey, was opened, A.D. 1774, on the body of the king, besides other silken robes, was seen, a stole-like band of rich white tissue put about the neck, and crossed upon his breast: it was studded with gilt quatrefoils in filigree work and embroidered with pearls. From the knees downwards the body was wrapped in a pall of cloth of gold. Concerning attire for liturgical use, the fact may be verified in those instances we have elsewhere given.[340] When Henry III., in the latter end of his reign, bestowed a frontal on the high altar in Westminster Abbey, besides carbuncles in golden settings, as we have just read, p. xxxvi, we may have observed that along with several larger pieces of enamel, there were as many as 866 smaller ones—the “esmaux de plique” of the French—all fastened on this liturgical embroidery.

A good instance of the appliance of figured solid gold or silver, upon church vestments, is the following one of a cope beaten all over with lions in silver, given by a well-wisher to Glastonbury Abbey:—“dederat unam capam rubeam cum leonibus laminis argenteis capæ infixis, &c.”[341]

In the Norman-French, for so long a period in use at our Court, silken stuffs thus ornamented were said to be “batuz,” or as we now say beaten with hammered-up gold. Among the liturgical furniture provided by Richard II. for the chapel in the castle of Haverford, were “ii rydell batuz”—two altar-curtains beaten (no doubt with ornaments in gilt silver.)[342]

For the secular employment of this same sort of decoration, we have several curious examples. Our ladies’ dresses for grand occasions were so adorned, as we may see in the verses following:—

A.D. 1215 our King John sent an order to Reginald de Cornhull and William Cook to have made for him, besides five tunics, five banners with his arms upon them, well beaten in gold: “quinque banerias de armis nostris bene auro bacuatas” (sic).[344] The c for t must be a misprint in the last word.

An amice at St. Paul’s had on it the figures of two bishops and a king hammered up out of gilt silver: “amictus ornatus cum duobus magnis episcopis et uno rege stantibus argenteis deauratis.”[345]

From the original bill for fitting out one of the ships in which Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, during the reign of Henry VI., went over to France, where he had been appointed to a high command, we gather hints which throw light upon this as well as several matters belonging to this Introduction. Among other items for the above-named equipage are these:—“Four hundred pencils (long narrow strips, may be of silk, used as flags), beat with the Raggedstaff in silver; the other pavys (one of two shields, likely of wood, and fastened outside the ship at its bows), painted with black, and a Raggedstaff beat with silver occupying all the field; one coat (perhaps of silk, but no doubt blazoned with the Beauchamp’s arms,) for my Lord’s body, beat with fine gold; two coats (like the foregoing) for heralds, beat with demi gold; a great streamer for a ship of forty yeards in length and eight yeards in breadth, with a great Bear and Griffin holding a Raggedstaff poudred full of Raggedstaffs; three penons (small flags) of satten; sixteen standards of worsted entailed with the Bear and a chain.”[346] The quatrefoils on the robe of our First Edward, the silver lions on the Glastonbury cope, the beasts and birds on the lady’s gown, the Bear, and Griffin, and Raggedstaff belonging to the Beauchamp’s blazoning, and all such like enrichments—mostly heraldic—put upon silken stuffs, were cut out of very thin plates of gold or silver, so as to hang upon them lightly, and were hammered up to show in low relief the fashion of the flower and the lineaments of the beast or bird meant to be represented.

In fact, such a style of ornamentation done in gold or silver, stitched on silken stuffs made up into liturgical garments, knights’ coats of arms, ladies’ dresses, heralds’ tabards, or flags and penoncels, was far more common once than is now thought. It had struck out for itself a technical expression. In speaking of it men would either write or say, “silk beaten with gold or silver,” as the case might be—a meaning, by the way, for the word “beat,” quite overlooked by our lexicographers; yet, making her will as late as the year 1538, Barbara Mason bequeathed to a church “a vestment of grene sylke betyn with goold.”[347]

The badge on the arm of the livery coat once commonly worn, and yet rowed for by the Thames watermen, as well as the armorials figured, before and behind, upon the fine old picturesque frocks of our buffetiers—the yeomen of the Royal guard, called in London “beefeaters,”—help to keep up the tradition of such a style of ornament in dress.

Spangles, when they happened to be used, were not like such as are now employed, but fashioned after another and artistic shape, and put on in a different manner. Before me lies a shred from the chasuble belonging to the set of vestments wrought, it is said, by Isabella of Spain and her maids of honour, and worn the first time high mass was sung in Granada, after it had been taken by the Spaniards from the Moors. Upon this shred are flowers, well thrown up in relief, done in spangles on a crimson velvet ground. These spangles—some in gold, some in silver—are, though small, in several sizes; all are voided—that is, hollow in the middle—with the circumference not flat, but convex, and are sewed on like tiles one overlapping the other, and thus produce a rich and pleasing effect. Our present spangles, in the flat shape, are quite modern.

Sadly overlooked, or but scantily employed on modern embroideries, is the process of

Diapering,

after so many graceful and ever-varying forms to be found almost always upon mediæval works of the needle.

The garments worn by high personages in the embroidery, and meant to imitate a golden textile, were done in gold passing sometimes by itself, sometimes with coloured silk thread laid down alternately aside it, so as to lend a tinge of green, crimson, pink, or blue, to the imagined tissue of the robe, as if it were made of a golden stuff shot with the adopted tint.

For putting on this gold passing, it was of course required to sew it down. Now, from this very needful and mechanical requirement, those mediæval needlewomen sought and got an admirable as well as ingenious element of ornamentation, and so truthful too. Of this our ladies at this day, seem, from their work, to have a very narrow, short idea. Taking thin (usually red) silk, and while fastening the golden or silver passing, they dotted it all over in small stitches set exactly after a way that showed the one same pattern. So teeming were their brains in this matter that hardly the same design in diapering is twice to be found upon the same embroidered picture. With no other appliance they were thus enabled to lend to their draperies the appearance of having been, not wrought by the needle, but actually cut out of a piece of textile, and for which they have been sometimes mistaken.

Of the many samples here of this kind of diapering we select one or two—Nos. 1194-5, p. 21, which is so very fine, and of itself quite enough for showing what we wish to point out, and to warrant our praises of the method; No. 8837, p. 200, is another worth attention.

Thread Embroidery,

after several of its modes, is represented here; and though the specimens are not many, some of them are splendid.

By our English women, hundreds of years gone by, among other applications of the needle, one was to darn upon linen netting or work thereon with other kinds of stitchery, religious subjects for Church-use; or flowers and animals for household furniture.

In this country such a sort of embroidering was called net-work—filatorium—as we learn from the Exeter Inventory, where we read that its cathedral possessed, A.D. 1327, three pieces of it, for use at the altar—one in particular for throwing over the desk: “tria filatoria linea, unde unum pro desco.”[348] From their liturgical use, as we have noticed, p. 212, they were more generally named lectern-veils, and as such are spoken of, in the same Devonshire document: “i lectionale de panno lineo operato de opere acuali, &c.”[349] Of those narrow, light, and moveable lecterns over which these linen embroideries were cast, Exeter had three—two of wood, another which folded up (see p. 212 here,) of iron: “i descus volubilis de ferro, pro Evangelio supra legendo; ii alia lectrina lignea.”[350]

Almost every one of these thread embroideries were wrought during the fourteenth century, and several of them for the service of the sanctuary, either as reredos, frontal, or lectern-veil; and while those described at pp. 19, 20, 31, 53, 60, 71, 99, 120, 242-3, 249, 261-7, deserve consideration, a more complete and an especial notice is due to those two very fine ones under Nos. 8358, p. 210, and 8618, p. 235. As early as A.D. 1295, St. Paul’s had a cushion covered with knotted thread: “pulvinar opertum de albo filo nodato.”[351]

Quilting,

too, must not be forgotten here; and a short look at Nos. 727, p. 14, and 786, p. 16, will be sufficient to make us understand how, in hands guided by taste, a work of real, though humble art, may be brought out and shewn upon any article, from a lady’s skirt to a gentleman’s daily skull-cap, by such a use of the needle.

Crochet, knitting done with linen thread, and in the convents throughout Flanders, as well as the thick kinds of lace wrought there upon the cushion with bobbins, came, under the name of nun’s lace, to be everywhere much employed, from the sixteenth century and upwards, for bordering altar-cloths, albs, and every sort of towel required in the celebration of the liturgy. No. 1358, p. 72, is a good example.