Note 25 — TEXTILE FABRICS (continued 2)

Brocade (Spanish brocado or brocato) may be generally described as a silk-stuff woven with devices or raised figures in gold and silver thread, or either of these metals separately (Plate viii.). This costly fabric, which may be said to have superseded the earlier kinds of cloth of gold, was greatly in vogue in older Spain, especially throughout the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. It is constantly referred to by her writers (“No siendo nueva la que prohibe las telas de oro, los brocados, y tabies.”—Fernandez Navarrete; Conservacion de Monarquías, p. 231), and denounced by her priests (Fray Luis de León, “Y ha de venir la tela de no sé donde, y el brocado de mas altos, y el ambar que bañe el guante”), or in the pragmatics of her kings (e.g. that of September 2nd, 1494, and of 1611: “Está prohibido todo género de colgaduras, tapicerias sillas, coches, y literas de brocados, telas de oro ó plata…. Asi mismo se prohiben bordaduras en el campo de los doseles y camas; pero no en las cenefas, que podrán llevar alamares, y fluecos de oro, ó plata, ó brocado”).

Brocade was made in Spain at Toledo, Barcelona, Seville, Valencia and elsewhere, but as a rule it could not be compared in quality with that of Genoa or Venice. A cheaper, though showy and attractive modification of brocade was brocatel, in which the silk was mixed with common thread or flax. According to the Dictionary of the Spanish Academy, this commoner fabric was used for hangings for churches, halls, beds, etc., and a document of 1680 tells us that the price of brocatel made at Granada, and containing two colours, was twenty-two reales the yard.