Note 18 — TEXTILE FABRICS

Toledo en el Siglo XVI. Miquel y Badía says that in the fifteenth century Toledo, together with Genoa and Venice, manufactured superb velvets, coloured crimson, blue, purple, or yellow, and figured with pineapples or pomegranates (Plate iv.). The latter tree and fruit are commonly related, in Spain, with the city of Granada; but quite apart from this, the pomegranate was formerly regarded as a symbol of fecundity and life. (See Goblet d'Alviella, La Migration des Symboles, p. 184, and also Madame Errera's Catalogue, No. 50.) In these velvets the gold thread is woven with consummate skill, and forms, in the costliest and most elaborate specimens, a groundwork of exceedingly small rings. These fabrics were used as hangings for beds and walls, as well as for the clothing of great lords and ladies. Touching the use of silk for certain articles of dress, an amusing story is told in the MS. account of Valladolid, published by Gayangos in the Revista de España. “One day, Don Pedro de Medicis is reported to have paid a visit to a married lady, to whom he had presented some damask curtains, and he was wearing at the time some taffeta hose which made a creaking as he walked. The lady came out of her room, and, finding him in one of the lower apartments, exclaimed, ‘Why do you come here at such an hour, and with that silk on you which creaks so loudly? Take care my husband does not hear it.’ Whereto the gentleman replied; ‘Good God, madam, is it possible that the two hundred yards of damask which I gave you for that curtain have made no noise at all, but that a mere four yards of simple taffeta about my breeches should put you in such consternation?’”