Volume 3 — TEXTILE FABRICS (continued 2)

“In order to strip them of their covering of silk, they are thrown into hot water, after which the women workers pick up, and with surprising quickness, the threads of several of them, join them, and deal them out, thus joined, on wheels constructed for this object. On the design of the wheels depends the degree of thoroughness with which the silk is spun; but those which are employed in Spain are generally the most imperfect, as I shall presently explain.

“I have already said that the slip of silk should be drawn from at least four cocoons, and even then it only serves for making slender fabrics, such as taffeta or ribbon. We were shown, indeed, a skein which was assured to contain no more than two cocoons; but so slight a slip is of no use at all. Most of them are made from seven or eight cocoons, and two of the former are joined in order to form a thread sufficient to be placed upon the loom.

“My readers are sure to know that all woven fabrics consist of two distinct parts, the woof and the warp. The woof is that which is passed by the shuttle from one side of the loom to the other, and which is enchased between the two surfaces formed by the warp. As the woof is subjected to more wear and tear than the warp, it should be stouter. For this reason each of the two ends of which it is composed is twisted separately before the two are twisted together, while for the warp the latter of these processes is sufficient. The result of this difference is that, when looked at beneath the microscope, the thread of the woof has an uneven look, as though it were a small cable, while that of the warp looks flat and smooth, and is therefore adapted to reflect the light, receiving the shiny look which makes a silk-stuff so attractive.

“But the beauty of these fabrics depends, above all else, upon the way in which the silk is divided as it is drawn from the cocoon. This first stage of the spinning is performed in one or other of three ways, according to the kind of wheel which is employed for it. The method which the Spaniards have adopted from an early period has the following drawback; that the small threads of six, seven, and eight cocoons which are stripped at the same time, go to form a single thread, and are deposited upon a small spindle without the thread rubbing against another one, which friction serves to lay the little hairs which bristle up, so that the slip of silk thus formed retains a hairy nap and is easily frayed. In the Piedmontese method, on the other hand, each slip is joined to another, and is not drawn apart until it has been twisted round it four or five times.

“The third method, known as that of Vaucanson, is more expensive than the one last mentioned. In the wheel invented by Vaucanson, the two silk-slips are reunited after the first twisting, in order to be twisted once again. This operation is called the ‘double croissade.’

“If these threads, thus placed on bobbins, are intended for the woof, they are enchased perpendicularly in a machine consisting of several compartments, in which they are twisted separately. Thence they are transferred to another machine, in which they are twisted all together; after which they are ready for the loom. Those which are destined for the web are not twisted (as I have explained above) until the moment when they are united. Both at Valencia and at Talavera de la Reina these machines, so precious to the weaver's craft, and which economise manual toil, are not unknown.[20]

“At the latter of these towns I had already seen a single toothed-wheel, which set in motion up to a thousand of these tiny bobbins on which are wound the twisted slips of silk. The wheels I saw at Valencia were smaller, because in this city there is not, as there is at Talavera, a royal factory self-contained within a single building. At Valencia each manufacturer, in order to carry out these various processes, requires to deal with workmen and machines distributed through several quarters of the town, and chooses from among them such as he best prefers.

“Nothing can be simpler than the working of these silk-twisting machines, when once the toothed-wheel has set them going. The perpendicular movement of all these little bobbins is looked after by women, and even children.[21]

“If they should happen to clog, a touch of the finger disengages them. If one of the slips should break, the harm is mended in a trice: the practised fingers of the machinist pick up the broken ends with marvellous despatch, tie them together by an imperceptible knot, and the bobbin which was thus delayed loses no time in overtaking its neighbours.

“The slips of silk, before being twisted two by two, are put through another process which I ought to mention. When they are still in skeins they are spread upon a large tub in which is a quantity of viscous substances heated to boiling point, the gases from which tend to make them adhere to one another. This is termed passer à la brève.

“Thence they are removed to the machine for twisting them. The silk, on issuing from this machine, is called organzine; and it is only when it is in this state that it can be exported from Piedmont, where the twisting process was better executed than elsewhere, until the time when it was rendered yet more perfect by Vaucanson.[22] This clever mechanic has combined all possible advantages relating to the business of the silk-weaver. His system, and no other, is practised in the Lyons factories; but these wheels à double croissade are only available for silk produced in France; since that which is exported from abroad and which is principally used in these factories, requires to be reduced to organzine before it can again be taken out of the country.

“In this respect Spain possesses a sensible advantage over other manufacturing nations; since she raises a greater quantity of silk than she is able to consume, and could easily put it through the most advanced and perfect processes; in spite of which she has clung for ages to her faulty method. The present government has attacked this method by the only means efficient to bring about a change; that is, the slow but certain influence of persuasion. In 1781 the Count of Floridablanca contracted with a French merchant settled in Madrid, that he should supply a hundred tours of the Vaucanson pattern for spinning silk, first to the Murcian factories (of which province the Count was a native), next to the Valencian, and subsequently to any others that might wish for them; and with this object he granted to the merchant in question the privilege of exporting, free of duty, six hundred thousand pounds of silk in six years. Nevertheless, it is possible that this measure may yet remain fruitless for many years owing to the apathy of the Spanish manufacturers, who were loth to use a finer, closer quality of silk, because it must be woven with greater care owing to its containing three ends instead of two, the work being greater on this account without a corresponding increase in the gain. It has also been found necessary to employ Frenchmen in the earliest trials made in Spain of this new method.

“The success of the Spaniards should not be counted on, if we are to judge of it by a factory, which was founded some years since at La Milanesa, a league's distance from Valencia, by an intelligent man named La Payessa.[23]

“He introduced the method of Vaucanson, but when I went to see his factory he had not seen his way to recover the money which this improvement had cost him. He employed barely two hundred persons for the most important work; nothing more was done than to spin the silk, divide it, and convert it into organzine. Thus treated, it cost from fifty to sixty reales more per pound than that which is prepared according to the Spanish method, so that its success was but small.

“I shall not describe in detail either the method of dyeing the silk, or that of weaving it. The first of these operations is readily imagined; the second is hard to understand, and still more so to explain, unless one is assisted by engravings. I will merely observe that all silk is dyed in skeins, just before it enters the loom. If it be required occasionally to dye it after it is woven, this is only when the silk is spotted, or when the dyeing of the skeins has proved a failure. At the time of my visit to Valencia, there were a hundred and seventeen master-dyers in that city, but not all of them were working.

“The stuffs in which the factories of Valencia are most successful are principally of the smooth sort; they also make there handsome damask brochés with large flowers for wall-hangings; but generally all that is undertaken is by order of the Court, Madrid, and the provinces. The Valencians follow as closely as possible the rapidity with which the French designs are changed, and those who profess to invent new ones are but copying the French ones in a greater or less degree. Notwithstanding, the Valencian Fine-Arts Academy is taking serious steps to form designers, and a school has been founded which has already developed able pupils—amongst others, a young man called Ferrers, who had died a short while before our arrival at the city, and some of whose designs of flowers we had occasion to admire.

“But the process in which the Valencians particularly excel is that of watering stuffs, which M. Foz has rendered absolutely perfect. He gave us a clear account of this process, which consists in passing a cylinder over the stuff to be watered, this cylinder being pressed upon by a heavy mass moved to and fro by a mule which draws a lever round and round. The stuff is folded in the manner of a closed jalousie, and these folds require to be often varied so as to distribute the undulations evenly. M. Foz admitted that the shape and the arrangement of these undulations are more or less a matter of chance, but he proved to us that it is possible to influence them to some extent by moistening the stuff in a certain manner and direction, and this is the particular secret which he alone possesses in the whole of Spain. The excellence of this method is demonstrated by the beauty of the watered silk which issues from these presses. M. Foz himself set us to judge of this by asking us to compare the blue ribbon of the Order of Charles the Third, watered by himself, with those of the Order of the Holy Spirit. The comparison, I must admit, was far from advantageous to these last.”

The subsequent vicissitudes of the Valencian silk trade are indicated by Laborde, who wrote, some few years later than the conscientious and observant author of the Nouveau Voyage en Espagne:—

“The mulberry-trees are of great importance; the fields of Valencia are covered with them, particularly in the environs of that town, in the dale of Elda, in the county of Carlet, in almost all the places situated on the sea coast, etc. There are white mulberry-trees, which are lopped every two years.

“The leaves of these trees serve as nourishment to silkworms, which are raised almost everywhere in the kingdom of Valencia. Algemesi, Alcira, Carcagente, Castillo of San Felipe, the county of Carlet, Undasuar, Gandia, Denia, Orihuela, and all the villages near the sea are places which produce the greatest quantity.

“The silk made from them is the finest in Spain. It would be equal to the best and finest silks of Europe, if the Valencians, in spite of the vivacity of their imagination, did not obstinately persist in their old routine in the skeining; for in the skein they put an undetermined number of threads. The government has hired a man who has the most experience in this kind of work; but in vain does he endeavour to instruct them, since the manufacturers continue their bad custom just the same. The quantity of silk wound annually is, on an average, about 1,500,000 pounds of twelve Valencian ounces (1,312,500 pounds of sixteen ounces avoirdupois). It is commonly sold raw for fifty reals of vellon a Valencian pound, which gives a total of 75,000,000 reals of vellon (£731,250)….

“Silk is twisted in different places in the kingdom of Valencia, for which purpose machines and mills are established at Gandia, San Felipe, Carcagente, Orihuela, and Valencia. The most important establishment of this kind is at La Milanesa, near the last mentioned town. Nevertheless, these machines are not able to furnish as much as the manufactures of the country require. Part of the silk is sent to Priego and Toledo in Andalusia, whence it is returned into the kingdom of Valencia to be worked….

“A great many impediments are thrown in the way of the exportation of silk, which is only allowed for six months after the harvest. If in that period the national manufacturers want it, they are at liberty to take it from the merchants who have bought it, on reimbursing them the purchase-money together with six per cent. interest. The consequence is that the merchants, uncertain whether they will be allowed to export the silk which they have purchased, no longer take any foreign commissions for it, and so this branch of exportation has fallen. Besides this, a duty has been laid upon the silk sent out of the kingdom, of nine reals of vellon and one quartillo (1s. 11¼d. sterling) on every pound of twelve Valencian ounces, which is almost a fifth of its value. This is another obstacle to the exportation of it. A very small quantity, twisted and dyed, is sent into Portugal.

“Generally 1,500,000 pounds of silk are made annually, of which 1,100,000 are consumed in the province, and 400,000 pounds are exported to Talavera de la Reina, Requeña, Toledo, Granada, Seville, Priego, and Cataluña. From this results a product of 20,000,000 reals (£208,333, 6s.).”

Of the city of Valencia, Laborde wrote:—

“The manufactories of silk are the most considerable. They employ nearly 25,000 persons, and make taffetas, serges, silks, satins, plain damasks, striped, printed, of one colour and of mixed colours, full velvets, flowered velvets, plain and of various colours. The plain stuffs are those in which they succeed best. There are also fine damasks made and worked with large flowers.”

According to the same writer, the manufacture at Valencia of silk stockings, galloons, silk ribbon, handkerchiefs, and sashes revived to such an extent, that in the year 1799 the looms for producing these articles were 423 more than they had been in 1769. “There are 3618 silk looms, which work about 800,000 pounds of silk annually; the handkerchiefs, sashes, and other little articles of lace consume 100,000 pounds.”

VIII THE DAUGHTERS OF PHILIP THE SECOND (By Sanchez Coello. Prado Gallery)

Equally as instructive is Laborde's account of Barcelona.[24] After remarking that the decay in her manufactures lasted from the end of the sixteenth century till the middle of the eighteenth, he continues:—“They are at present in a very flourishing state, and are more numerous and varied than ever…. There are 524 looms of silk stuffs, and 2700 of ribbons and silk galloon. The silk works consist of taffetas, twilled and common silks, satins, and velvets of every kind and colour. These are mixed with gold and silver. Gold cloths and brocades are also made there.[25] The manufactures are not carried on by companies, but dispersed among the workmen themselves, by which perhaps the qualities may in some degree be injured. It is remarked that the stuffs would be better if they were closer, for their texture is commonly loose; they are also different in the gloss, which is seldom fine, and is never equal to that in the manufactures of France. Another fault in all these stuffs is the imperfect preparation of the silk, which leaves it nearly always shaggy: the cause of this is the silk being spun or twisted in an uneven manner. The same unpleasant effect is observed in the silk stockings. They cannot be fine, their stitches being uneven, and often large and shaggy. They do not last long, and are as dear as the French stockings after the duty on their entrance into Spain has been paid.

“At Barcelona, laces, blonds, net-work, and tapes employ about twelve thousand persons. Galloons, laces, and gold and silver fringes, are likewise made here; but these are of no great importance. Silk, gold, and silver embroideries are very common, and the embroiderers are so numerous that they are to be found in every street.

“Silk Stuffs.—These are manufactured at Manresa, Cardona, and Mataró, which has forty-eight looms; but principally at Barcelona, where there are five hundred and twenty-four. There they make velvets, satins, damasks, silks, taffetas, and gold and silver stuffs. The town of Barcelona alone uses annually 300,000 pounds of raw silk.

“Taffetas, Handkerchiefs, and silk sashes.—They make a great quantity of these at Barcelona, where there are a good many little manufactories of this kind. There are a hundred and fifty looms at Reus, and six hundred at Manresa. At the last place sixty thousand dozen handkerchiefs are made, which take about seventy thousand pounds of raw silk.

“Silk twisters.—There are some of these in several towns, and a great many in Barcelona. There are eighteen frames at Mataró, which twist, one year with another, one hundred and twenty-four quintals of silk; and thirty-seven at Tarragona, which twist eleven thousand quintals.”

Elsewhere in the course of his exhaustive tomes, Laborde sums up the general revival of the Spanish silk-trade in the following terms:—

“Silk stockings are woven at Málaga, Zaragoza, Valencia, and at various other places in the kingdom of Valencia; at Valdemoro, and at Talavera de la Reina in New Castile; also in different parts of Cataluña, more especially at Mataró, Arenys del Mar, and Barcelona. The most extensive manufacture is carried on at the latter city, where the number of frames amounts to nine hundred. In the city of Mataró are fifty-two, in Valencia one hundred and fifty, and nearly as many in Talavera. The stockings made in Spain are of a loose texture; owing to the improper method in which silk-throwsting is conducted, they are badly dressed and worse glossed. The Spanish people themselves prefer French stockings, and most of those manufactured in the country are exported to America.

“Ribbons hold a distinguished place among the manufactured articles of Spain. Some few are woven at Jaen, Granada, and Cordova; but more at Talavera. Cadiz has but twenty ribbon-looms, Manresa five hundred, Mataró eighty, Vich twenty-two, Requeña two hundred, Valencia four hundred, Murcia twelve hundred, and Barcelona nearly three thousand. These looms are not in factories, but individually dispersed. The Spanish ribbons are in general thin and flimsy, have little lustre, and their colours are neither brilliant nor permanent. Ribbons are made of floss-silk at Toledo, where there are about twelve looms, and at Manresa, where there is a greater number.[26]

IX A CHARRA OR PEASANT WOMAN (Salamanca, A.D. 1777)

“Silk taffetas, serges, and other articles, such as common and figured satins, damasks, and plain and flowered velvets, are made at Jaen, Granada, Murcia, Valencia, and the adjacent villages; at Málaga, Zaragoza, Toledo, Requeña, Talavera de la Reina, Mataró, Manresa, Cardona, and Barcelona. The silk-trade of Jaen and Granada is at present in a very languishing state; the manufacture of Murcia is dwindled to a few individual looms. At Toledo are fifty looms, fifty at Mataró, forty at Málaga, six hundred at Requeña, four hundred at Talavera, which consume annually two hundred thousand pounds of silk; five hundred at Barcelona, which annually manufacture, in conjunction with those of Cardona and Manresa, about three thousand pounds weight of silk; and in the city of Valencia are three thousand, whose annual demand of silk is eight hundred thousand pounds, while twenty-two thousand persons are employed in the trade. In Zaragoza are sixty looms, which consume fifty thousand pounds of silk; but taffetas only are manufactured there. The cities of Toledo and Talavera de la Reina are the only places where the looms are collected together in factories: in all other places they are separated, and are found individually at the houses of the respective weavers.

“A great portion of the silks manufactured in Spain are stout and excellent, but they are destitute of the brilliancy observable in French silks. The damasks made at Valencia are extremely beautiful, and in that city they excel in the art of mixing silk and mohair, and produce mohair stuffs which appear to be superior to those of France and England.

“Quantities of silk handkerchiefs and bands are manufactured at Reus, Manresa, and Barcelona. Reus had five hundred looms, Manresa six hundred, and annually made sixty thousand dozen handkerchiefs; Barcelona, a much larger quantity.

“At Barcelona is a very considerable manufacture of white, coloured, plain, and figured gauzes.

“The art of silk-throwsting tends greatly to improve the silk manufactures in Spain. Machines invented in other countries have been adopted here, and in many places profitable changes and corrections have taken place in the trade. Silk is principally thrown at Priego, Toledo in Andalusia, at Murcia in the kingdom of the same name, at Cervera near Talavera de la Reina in New Castile, at Valencia, at Milanesa near that city, at Gandia, San Felipe, and Carcagente in the kingdom of Valencia. The silk-throwsters, who work at their own houses, and are paid in the great, that is, according to the quantity of work they perform, are very numerous in Murcia; but they perform the business there in a very slovenly way. In the city of Murcia a factory is established, where silk is thrown in an excellent manner by means of an ingenious machine, which has been already described. The establishment at La Milanesa is a very important one, and well administered. At Cervera are a dozen silk-mills, each having four large dividers, and six machines for doubling and twisting, by which seven thousand and seventy-two threads are divided, doubled, and twisted at the same time.”

Footnotes:

CLOTHS AND WOOLLENS

Although the history of Spanish cloths and woollens is not of great importance, I think it well to briefly sketch their history. Sails and other fabrics of the coarsest kind are said to have been made, almost in prehistoric times, at Sætabi (the modern Játiva) and at Saguntum (Murviedro). From the thirteenth century cloths of good quality were made at Barcelona, Lerida, San Daniel, Bañolas, Valls, and other towns of Cataluña. A privilege of Alfonso the Learned, dated May 18th, 1283, contains the following technical disposition relative to the cloth-looms of the city of Soria: “Que la trenza cuando sea ordida que haya 88 varas, que pese una aranzada é 5 libras de estambre; é cualquier que la fallare menor, que peche 5 sueldos. Que todos los tejedores é tejedoras de la dicha cibdad é de su tierra, que pongan en las telas de lino 42 linnuelos é en las de estopazo 32 linnuelos; é en las de marga é de sayal 32 linnuelos.”

Segovia was another ancient centre of this manufacture, which Larruga considers to have been transferred hither upon the extinction of the factories of Cameros, Burgos, and Palencia. However this may be, the fuero of Sepúlveda, signed by Alfonso the Sixth, tells us that clothworks existed here as early as the eleventh century. Towards the end of the fourteenth, when Catherine of Lancaster was married to the Infante Don Enrique, the English princess brought over, as part of her dowry, a flock of merino sheep. These are believed to have pastured near Segovia—a city where Catherine made her home for many years. In any case, Segovian cloths improved considerably from about this time, and by the reigns of Charles the Fifth and Philip the Second, when thirty-four thousand persons were employed in the manufacture and twenty-five thousand pieces of cloth were produced annually, were thought (especially the baizes and the serges) to be unsurpassed in Europe.[27] Sovereigns, including Charles the Second and Charles the Fifth of Spain, and Henry the Eighth of England, were among the patrons of these fabrics, while as late as the year 1700 the Franciscan friars engaged in redeeming captives from the Turks, reported that “at Constantinople, whither they had carried Segovian cloths as presents to the principal rulers of that country, those cloths were spoken of in terms of high approval.”

Early in the seventeenth century, and owing to a series of causes such as impertinent or improvident legislation, heavy taxes, and the importation of foreign cloths, the trade showed symptoms of decay.[28] Bertaut de Rouen wrote in 1659, referring to the Spanish character at this time: “Bien souvent le pain leur manque, comme j'ay veu dans Almagro, petite ville située dans le meilleur pays d'Andalousie, et dans Segovie, qui est une des grandes villes d'Espagne, et où il y avoit autrefois des plus riches marchands à cause des draps et des chapeaux que l'on y faisoit, qui a esté longtemps le sejour des Roys de Castille, et qui n'est qu'environ à douze ou quatorze lieuës de Madrid, où il n'y avoit point de pain dans toute la ville le jour que j'y arrivay, et il n'y en eut qu'à quatre heures après midy, que l'on le distribua par ordre du Corregidor, aussi bien qu'à Almagro.”

The rise, decay, and subsequent revival of the Spanish cloth industries, and particularly the Segovian, are well described by Laborde, Bourgoing, and Townsend. According to the first of these authorities, “at so early a period as 1629 the merchants (of Segovia) complained that there was every year a reduction in the fabrication of cloth, to the amount of five thousand five hundred pieces; and that there resulted from this deficiency an annual loss of 2,424,818 ducats and 2 reals, or about £274,000 sterling. In the eighteenth century it appeared, from the observations of the Economical Society, that the fabrication of stuffs and cloths employed but one hundred and twenty looms, in which only four thousand three hundred and eighteen quintals of washed wool were consumed.

“About forty years ago these manufactures began to revive, the looms were multiplied, and the consumption of wool considerably augmented. A single individual, Don Lorenzo Ortiz, has for some years accelerated their progress. In 1790 there was an addition of sixty-three looms, which employed eight or nine hundred quintals of wool, and afforded occupation to two thousand four hundred manufacturers.”

The same author wrote that early in the nineteenth century, “the woollen manufactures of New Castile are the most numerous and important. Cloths are made at Toledo, Chinchon, Brihuega, Guadalajara; serges, stuffs, and flannels at Toledo and Cuenca. The cloths of Brihuega are of an excellent quality, but those of Guadalajara are still superior to them; in particular, the cloth of Vigonia. There are twenty-eight looms at Toledo, forty at Guasmenia, a hundred at Brihuega, and six hundred and fifty-six at Guadalajara.”

Bourgoing wrote, a dozen years or so before the close of the eighteenth century: “Spanish wool is eagerly demanded by manufacturing peoples of the rest of Europe. Nevertheless, it is not turned to so much advantage as it might be. French, Dutch, and English come to Spain to purchase the wools of Segovia and León at the ports of Bilbao and Santander.[29] Not even so much as the commission on their sale is left in power of the Spaniards, for the foreigners buy up the wool straight from the shepherd, and wash it on their own account. Out of one million of arrobas[30] of fine wool which Spain produces annually, she exports more than half in washed wool, and a lesser quantity, by far, of unwashed. It has been estimated that the export duties on this wool and which it has not been hitherto thought prudent to curtail, produce a sum of close upon five millions for the King of Spain. Here, therefore, is another reason for not suppressing the ‘abusive measure’ of which the patriotic Spaniards complain so loudly; since it is far from easy to do away with so appreciable a source of revenue unless one has at hand a swift and sure alternative measure by which it may be substituted. All the same, government is endeavouring to derive a greater fiscal profit from the exportation of these wools, and at the same time to bring about a greater use of them in the Peninsula. For a long time past, all kinds of common woollen fabrics, such as clothing for the soldiery and lower classes, have been made in Spain. The exportation of these fabrics is prohibited. As for the finer wools, these also are employed in several places, but more than anywhere else at Guadalajara, where I visited the factories towards the end of the year 1783. I was surprised to remark that in several respects the manufacture had reached a great pitch of perfection. I say I was surprised, because I had heard, times without number, that the Spaniards were completely ignorant of these processes, and did not know how to card, or spin, or weave, or dye, or full, or calender; that their stuffs grew loose and wore badly; that the price was exorbitant, etc. How many prejudices of this nature was I able to throw aside after fair and deliberate examination of the stuffs in question! I will only quote a single point to prove that the censures which are aimed at the Spaniards respecting the quality of their cloths are not applicable to them all, and that they are well upon the road to being entirely undeserving of them. I was shown at Guadalajara a piece of scarlet cloth, which, both for its excellent quality and for its skilful dyeing, seemed to me to be quite comparable with the best cloths of Julienne. These latter cost at their place of manufacture as much as thirty-nine livres the ell. At Guadalajara, I noted from the tariff established in the factory, that the price of the finest scarlet cloth was only from thirty-one to thirty-two livres the ell. Comparing these and other figures on the tariff, I came to the conclusion that there was about the same difference in price between Spanish cloths and French cloths, in favour of the former. What seems more singular still is that the factories which work at the King's expense are generally administered in a thriftless fashion, and that the factory of Guadalajara was being greatly mismanaged at the time in question. However, subsequently to my visit, changes for the better have been introduced, which will improve the quality of, as well as cheapen, its products, though, even when I saw it, this factory was one of the most perfect to be seen anywhere. Within a space by no means large, it contained all the machines and apparatus required for clothmaking, except the thin, polished pasteboards which are placed between the folds of a piece of cloth as it is passed through the press. These were still brought from England; but everything else was prepared upon the spot, even to the large scissors used in the shearing. There were eighty looms for the finest cloths, whose proper name is cloths of San Fernando, from the town where they were first produced; a hundred for cloths of the second quality; and five hundred and six for making serges, in which, in course of time, hopes are entertained of excelling those of England.[31] All these looms were contained in two buildings, and kept employed three thousand eight hundred and twenty-five persons, all of them paid by the King,[32] without counting some forty thousand more dispersed all over the Castilian and Manchegan tableland, engaged in spinning the wool which is made up into stuffs at Guadalajara. It would be difficult, I am sure, to find a factory better organized. Even the town in which it is, presents a striking contrast with others of that neighbourhood. I did not see one single mendicant or idler among all its fifteen or sixteen thousand inhabitants. Such are the good results of its manufactures, and, above all, those of cloth, including many small and detailed processes which women, children, aged people, or even the sick are able to perform. Here, where Nature seemed to have condemned these ailing folk to a tedious and useless existence, art, as it were, steps in and finds employment and relief for them. Nevertheless, it must be owned that the Spaniards (as they themselves admit) are still a little behindhand in the method of dyeing and fulling their cloths, though when a people possess (as they) the raw materials needed, both for making and for dyeing, a few men skilled in these processes are all that is wanted to perfect several branches of this industry; especially when, as is the case in Spain, government spares no effort to achieve this end. Guadalajara is further the only place in Spain which produces the celebrated Vicuña cloth; an admirable fabric for which the rest of the world has cause to envy Spanish America.[33] As the use of this cloth has not as yet become general, it is not continually manufactured, nor is it easy to obtain a few ells of it without ordering them several months in advance. This stuff is also manufactured for the King of Spain, who makes presents of it to various other monarchs. In the year 1782, after concluding a treaty with the Porte, he sent twenty pieces of it to the Sultan of Turkey. They gave great satisfaction. It has been imagined from this circumstance that Spain would not be loth to supply the Turkish market with her cloths; and other of the manufacturing nations have felt some measure of alarm, perhaps unnecessarily. The Spanish government has too much sense to enter upon such a competition with other peoples as long as Spain does not supply the whole of the two and twenty million citizens who live beneath her rule. The same government, too, is well aware how remote is this degree of prosperity. The clothworks of Guadalajara have a kind of branch factory at Brihuega, four leagues distant. At Brihuega there are a hundred looms, all used for making fabrics of the finest quality.

“Segovia, famous at all periods for the excellence of her wool, was formerly not less so for the number and perfection of her clothworks. Now, every patriotic Spaniard must lament to see how she has fallen. In the year 1785 the number of her looms did not exceed two hundred and fifty. The most important factory was that of Ortiz, founded in 1779 under the title of Real Fábrica: the King possessed an interest in it. In 1785 Ortiz was still employing three thousand workers in and about Segovia, and manufactured every quality of cloth in sixty-three looms, from the pieces which contained the two thousand threads prescribed by the Ordenanzas, to those which should contain four thousand. His energy was only hampered by the indolent character of the Segovians. The privileges wherewith the government has sought to stimulate his first experiments in this craft are not at all injurious to the other manufacturers. They all concur to sell their goods, and at a reasonable price. In September of 1785, the most expensive cloths cost only ninety reals the vara; that is to say, about thirty-one livres and ten sols the ell.”

X PRIEST'S ROBE; SPANISH (Embroidered in Gold on Green Velvet. About A.D. 1500)

Townsend wrote, precisely at the same time as Bourgoing: “Segovia was once famous for its cloth, made on the King's account; but other nations have since become rivals in this branch, and the manufacture in this city has been gradually declining. When the King gave it up to a private company, he left about three thousand pounds in trade; but now he is no longer a partner in the business.[34] In the year 1612 were made here twenty-five thousand five hundred pieces of cloth, which consumed forty-four thousand six hundred and twenty-five quintals of wool, and employed thirty-four thousand one hundred and eighty-nine persons; but at present they make only about four thousand pieces. The principal imperfections of this cloth are, that the thread is not even, and that much grease remains in it when it is delivered to the dyer; in consequence of which the colour is apt to fail. Yet, independently of imperfections, so many are the disadvantages under which the manufacture labours, that foreigners can afford to pay three pounds for the arroba of fine wool, for which the Spaniard gives no more than twenty shillings, and after all his charges can command the market even in the ports of Spain.

“In the year 1525, the city contained five thousand families, but now they do not surpass two thousand—a scanty population this for twenty-five parishes; yet, besides the twenty-five churches, together with the cathedral, they have one and twenty convents. When the canal is finished, and the communication opened to the Bay of Biscay at Santander, the trade and manufactures of Segovia may revive; but, previous to that event, there can be nothing to inspire them with hope.”

Swinburne had written of the same city ten years earlier (1776): “The inhabitants do not appear much the richer for their cloth manufactory. Indeed, it is not in a very flourishing condition; but what cloth they make is very fine.”

XI PRIEST'S ROBE; SPANISH (Embroidered in Gold on Green Velvet. About A.D. 1500)

The Ordinances of Granada (a.d. 1532), from which we learn that cloth was also manufactured at that capital, contain the usual dispositions relative to the stamping of this product by the city officers. The stamps were in a box which was kept in a corner of the cathedral and closed by two keys, guarded severally by a councillor and an inspector of the trade, or veedor. On every day except a public festival, between the hours of ten and eleven of the morning, and three and four of the afternoon, it was the duty of these two authorities to proceed to the Alcaicería, and ascertain if any cloth required stamping. If so, the stamps were fetched forthwith from the cathedral, the cloth was marked, and the stamps were solemnly restored to their chest beneath the double key.

Among the woven fabrics other than those of silk, and which are specified in the Ordinances of Granada relative to the tundidores or shearers, are cloths of Florence, Flanders, London, Valencia, Zaragoza, Onteniente, Segovia, and Perpignan; velarte (a fine cloth manufactured at Granada), red burel (kersey) of Baeza, black kersey of Villanueva and La Mancha, ruan (Roan linen), fustians, friezes, and cordellate (grogram) of Granada, Valencia, Toledo, Segovia, and Cuenca. According to Capmany, cloths of the commoner kind, and which were popular about this time, were the granas treintenas and black cloths of Valencia, the white or yellow veintiseiseno cloths of Toledo, the white cloths of Ciudad Real, the green palmillas of Cuenca, and green dieciochenos of Segovia, the contrayes of Cazalla, and the pardillos of Aragon. Spanish cloth was also manufactured at Vergara, Cordova, Jaen, Murcia, Palencia, Tavira de Durango, and Medina del Campo.

XII EMBROIDERED CHASUBLE (Palencia Cathedral)

Laborde says: “In the archives of the Crowns of Aragon and Castile there is a notice of the duties paid from the thirteenth to the end of the seventeenth century for foreign cloths sold in Spain, and for other articles of consumption coming from abroad. The principal cloths came from Bruges, Montpellier, and London; the velvets from Malines, Courtrai, Ypres, and Florence. This trade became so injurious to Spain, that Ferdinand and Isabella thought themselves bound to limit it entirely to the stuffs required for ornaments of the church, which of itself was a considerable quantity. Their prohibition is the subject of the rescript of September 2nd, 1494, for the provinces of the Crown of Castile. Even so far back as the Ordinances of Barcelona in 1271, mention is made of the taxes levied on the cloths of Flanders, Arras, Lannoy, Paris, Saint Denis, Chalons, Beziers, and Reims.”[35]

XIII EMBROIDERED MANGA OR CASE OF PROCESSIONAL CROSS (Early 16th Century; Toledo Cathedral)

In 1809 the same author remarked: “The kingdom of Valencia produces little wool, yet there are five manufactories of woollens and coarse and fine cloths: they are at Morella, Enguera, Bocairente, Onteniente, and Alcoy. The small woollen stuffs are principally made at Enguera; nothing but the coarsest cloths are made at Morella, Bocairente, and Onteniente. The manufactory at Alcoy is the most considerable: the cloths, though finer, are generally of an inferior quality. The woof of them is thick, with little nap upon it. The finest are scarcely superior to the beautiful cloths of Carcassonne.”

Footnotes:

EMBROIDERY

The art of embroidering, and especially of embroidering with the aid of gold and silver thread, was communicated to the Spaniards by the Spanish Moors, who doubtless had derived it from the East. By about the thirteenth century, the needle of the Spanish embroiderer had become, in the picturesque phrase of one of his compatriots, “a veritable painter's brush, describing facile outlines on luxurious fabrics, and filling in the spaces, sometimes with brilliant hues, or sometimes with harmonious, softly-graduated tones which imitate the entire colour-scheme of Nature.” Nevertheless, it was not until the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries that this art attained, in the Peninsula, its topmost summit of perfection.

It is not at all surprising that embroidery should have made great progress among a people so devoted to the outward and spectacular forms of worship as the Spaniards; nor have the chasubles, copes, and other vestments of the Spanish prelacy and priesthood ever been surpassed for costly splendour[36] (Plates x., xi., xii.). But generally where the Spanish embroiderer excelled was in the mere manipulation of the needle. In fertility of design he was far outdistanced by the Germans and Italians, and was even to a large extent their imitator; for Spanish embroidery, as occurred with Spanish painting, was influenced, almost to an overwhelming degree, firstly by northern art, and subsequently by the art of the Renaissance.

XIV EMBROIDERED ALTAR-FRONT

These tendencies or characteristics will be found in nearly all the masterpieces of Spanish embroidery that have been preserved until to-day, of which perhaps the most remarkable specimens are the manga or case of the great processional cross presented by Cardinal Cisneros to Toledo cathedral, and the “Tanto Monta” embroidered tapestry belonging to the same temple. The manga grande, known as that of the Corpus (Plate xiii.), is in the Gothic style, with reminiscences of German art, and consists of the following four scenes arranged in panels thirty-seven inches high, and hung successively about the handle of the cross:—

(1) The Ascension of the Virgin Mary, who is supported by six angels.

(2) The Adoration of the Magi.

(3) San Ildefonso in the act of cutting off a piece of the veil of Santa Leocadia, patron of Toledo.

(4) The Martyrdom of San Eugenio, another patron of the city of Toledo.

The ground of this elaborate “sleeve” is a fabric of rich silk, on which the embroidery is worked in gold and silver thread and coloured silks, principally blue and red, combined in delicate, harmonious tones. The figures are outlined with fine gold cord, which forms a kind of frame or fencing to confine the stretches of smooth silk. The careful copying of architectural detail is stated by Serrano Fatigati to be strongly characteristic of Spanish industrial art in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and even sixteenth centuries. The same writer considers that this “sleeve” was executed towards the year 1514, when embroiderers of great renown, such as Alonso Hernández, Juan de Talavera, Martin Ruiz, Hernando de la Rica, Pedro de Burgos, and Marcos de Covarrubias were engaged on similar work in the venerable city of the Tagus. Two out of the four panels, says Serrano Fatigati, may possibly be from the hand of Covarrubias, who was a famous craftsman of his time, and held the post of master-embroiderer in Toledo cathedral. In any case, the four panels are evidently not all by the same artist, nor do they appear to have been executed at precisely the same period.

XV EMBROIDERED ALTAR-FRONT, WITH THE ARMS OF CARDINAL MENDOZA (15th Century. Toledo Cathedral)

The gorgeous embroidered tapestry which also belongs to this cathedral (where it serves as a hanging or colgadura for the altar on the day of Corpus Christi), and which is known as the “Tanto Monta” tapiz, is stated by some authorities to have been the dosel or bed canopy of Ferdinand and Isabella, and to have been purchased, in the year 1517, for 900,000 maravedis by Alonso Fernández de Tendilla, steward of those sovereigns. Riaño gives the following account of the same object:—

“As a fine specimen of embroidery on a large scale, must be mentioned the dosel or canopy called the tent of Ferdinand and Isabella, which was used in the reception of the English envoys, Thomas Salvaige and Richard Nanfan, who were sent in 1488 to Spain to arrange the marriage of Prince Henry with the Infanta Doña Catalina.” The ambassadors describe it in the following manner: “After the tilting was over, the kings returned to the palace, and took the ambassadors with them, and entered a large room; and there they sat under a rich cloth of state of rich crimson velvet, richly embroidered with the arms of Castile and Aragon, and covered with the device of the King which is a … (blank in original),[37] and his motto, written at length, which is ‘Tanto Monta.’” (“Memorials of King Henry the Seventh,” Gairdner, London, 1858, p. 348).

Riaño also describes the mantle of the Virgen del Sagrario at Toledo. “It is completely covered with pearls and jewels forming a most effective ornamentation. This embroidery was made in the beginning of the seventeenth century, during the lifetime of Cardinal Sandoval, who presented it to the church.” Señor Parro, in his exhaustive work Toledo en la Mano (Vol. I., p. 574), gives the following account of it: “It is made of twelve yards of silver lama, or cloth of silver, which is entirely covered with gold and precious stones. In the centre there is a jewel of amethysts and diamonds. Eight other jewels appear on each side, of enamelled gold, emeralds, and large rubies. A variety of other jewels are placed at intervals round the mantle, and at the lower part are the arms of Cardinal Sandoval enamelled on gold and studded with sapphires and rubies. The centre of this mantle is covered with flowers and pomegranates embroidered in seed-pearls of different sizes. Round the borders are rows of large pearls. Besides the gems which are employed in this superb work of art, no less than two hundred and fifty-seven ounces of pearls of different sizes were used, three hundred ounces of gold thread, a hundred and sixty ounces of small pieces of enamelled gold, and eight ounces of emeralds.”

XVI EMBROIDERED ALTAR-FRONT (Palencia Cathedral)

As in other countries, embroidery in Spain was executed in the bygone time, both by paid embroiderers, and as a domestic occupation by the ladies of the aristocracy. The work of the professional embroiderer consisted principally of paraments or altar-fronts (Plates xiv., xv., xvi., xviixvii.), and ecclesiastical vestments. Among the former of this class of objects, nothing is finer than the frontal of the Chapel of Saint George in the Audiencia of Barcelona. It is believed to have been wrought by Antonio Sadurni, a Catalan embroiderer who flourished in the middle of the fifteenth century. The scene represented is the combat between Saint George (patron of Cataluña) and the dragon. The saint has rescued a damsel from the monster's claws, and her parents are looking on from a mirador of their palace. This central episode is surrounded with borders and arabesques of extraordinary richness.

Riaño gives a list, compiled from Cean, Martinez, Suarez de Figueroa, and other authors, of forty-seven Spanish embroiderers of the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. More recently, Ramírez de Arellano has discovered, among the municipal archives of Cordova, the names of sixteen others, who resided at that city towards, or early in, the seventeenth century. The craftsmen in question were Diego de Aguilar, Juan Bautista, Bernardo Carrillo, Luis Carrillo de Quijana, Andrés Fernández de Montemayor, Hernán Gómez del Río, Diego Fabián de Herrera, Diego del Hierro, Diego López de Herrera, Diego López de Valenzuela, Antonio de Morales, Gonzalo de Ocaña, Mateo Sanguino, Manuel Torralbo, Cristóbal de Valenzuela, and Martin de la Vega.

Documents in the same archive contain additional particulars respecting two or three of these artificers. Thus, on February 10th, 1607, Hernán Gómez del Río engaged himself to embroider for the convent of the Trinity at Cordova, “a bordering for a chasuble and four faldones for dalmatics, with their collars and sabastros and bocas mangas. The said bocas mangas to be four in number, and the collars two; also the collaretes which may be necessary for the two dalmatics, and which I am to embroider in silk and gold upon white satin. The collaretes also to be embroidered by me in silk and gold to match a bordering of white satin for a cloak in possession of the said convent.” Further, the convent was to supply the artist with the quantity of white satin required, and pay him two hundred and ten ducats, secured by certain of the convent's revenues, for the gold, the silk, and the workmanship.

XVII EMBROIDERED ALTAR-FRONTS (Palencia Cathedral)

Manuel Torralbo contracted to embroider a velvet altar-front and its corresponding fronteleras for the parish church of Luque, at a price of three hundred reales; and Cristóbal de Valenzuela (on September 25th, 1604) to embroider two frontals for the altar of the church of Obejo. One of them was to be of purple velvet worked in gold, and the other of “black velvet, with borders and caidas embroidered in yellow satin and white satin, with skulls and bones embroidered in gold.”[38]

Turning our attention to the embroidery which was executed, principally as a recreation, by highborn Spanish ladies of some centuries ago, the romance of El Compte Arnau, quoted by Miquel y Badía and written in Catalan and Provençal, contains the following lines:—

“¿ Ahout teniu las vostras fillas—muller leal?

¿ Ahout teniu las vostras fillas—viudeta igual?

A la cambra son que brodan—Compte l'Arnau

A la cambra son que brodan—seda y estam.”

Isabella the Catholic presented to the Chapel Royal of the cathedral of Granada an ecclesiastical robe embroidered by her own hands for the festival of Corpus Christi. The material was black satin brocade, with a fringe of white silk, and the letters IHS in white damask.[39]

XVIII WIFE OF WELL-TO-DO MERCHANT (Palma, Balearic Islands. About A.D. 1810)

The same usage continued in the seventeenth century. Countess d'Aulnoy says: “Young ladies of great beauty and of noble blood engage themselves to wait on ladies of the aristocracy, and spend most of their time embroidering the collars and sleeves of shirts in gold, silver, and coloured silk, although, if they be suffered to follow their liking, they work but little, and gossip a great deal.” The same writer refers repeatedly to the sumptuous embroideries in use among the upper classes of the Spaniards of that time. Thus, the bed-pillows of the Princess of Monteleón were embroidered with gold. The sleeves of the coat of Charles the Second were of white silk, very large, opening towards the wrist, and embroidered with blue silk and jet, the rest of his costume being embroidered in white and blue silk. In the palace of the same monarch, the daïs of the throne-room was covered with “a wondrous carpet, and the throne and its canopy were embroidered with pearls, diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and other precious stones.” The cloaks of the chevaliers who belonged to the Military Orders of Santiago, Calatrava, and Alcántara were embroidered with gold. The gentlemen of Madrid covered their horses with silver gauze, and trappings embroidered with gold and pearls.[40] The same gentlemen wore coats whose sleeves were of coloured satin, embroidered with silk and jet, and even their lackeys, when they attended their masters in a procession, wore uniforms of cloth embroidered with gold and silver. Unmarried girls and brides wore gold-embroidered bodices. The chairs in which the ladies of Madrid paid visits were made of cloth embroidered in gold and silver, stretched upon the wooden frame. In the train of the Duchess of Terranova went six litters covered with embroidered velvet. “In the parish church of San Sebastián,” wrote Countess d'Aulnoy, “I have seen a hand-chair made by order of the queen-mother, for carrying the Sacrament to sick persons in bad weather. It is lined with crimson velvet embroidered in gold and covered with hide studded with gilt nails: it has large window-glasses, and a kind of small belfry full of golden bells.”

With the succession of a French line of sovereigns to the throne of Spain, a taste for French embroideries passed into the Peninsula, and these, in course of time, were imitated by the Spanish craftsmen.[41] “We find,” says Riaño, “that Madrid was the principal centre of this industry, and that French designs were universally copied, as was the case in the whole of Europe. The splendid curtains and embroidered hangings for apartments which exist at the royal palaces of Madrid, the Escorial, and Aranjuez, are admirable specimens.”

I may mention here the embroidery, often of a rich and highly ornate character, which is, or used to be, applied to the regional costumes of Spain. Plate ix. is reproduced from a rare print in my possession, showing the gala dress, as it existed in the year 1777, of the charra of Salamanca, with full, white sleeves ornamented in black embroidery with animals and other devices. A similar costume is still worn in that neighbourhood. Plate xviii., also copied from a print in my collection, dating from about the year 1810, shows the costume worn by the women of the well-to-do middle class of the island of Majorca. “Le jupon ou guardapies,” says the manuscript description prefixed to this series of plates, “en mousseline, complete le costume de cette insulaire: il est orné au bas de riches broderies, mais assez court pour laisser voir un joli petit pied chaussé d'un bas de coton ou de soie et d'un élégant soulier de satin.”

Footnotes:

TAPESTRY

There is a dim tradition, derived from or supported by a Latin poet (“Tunc operosa suis Hispana tapetia villis”) that carpets or tapestries of some kind were made in the Spanish Peninsula in the time of the Romans. Undoubtedly this craft was practised by the Spanish-Moors, particularly in the regions of Valencia, Alicante, Cuenca, and Granada. This statement is confirmed by two laconic notices which occur in the Description of Africa and Spain of Edrisi, a Mohammedan geographer of the twelfth century. Of the town of Chinchilla, in Alicante province, he wrote,—“woollen carpets are made here, such as could not be manufactured anywhere else, owing to the qualities of the air and water”; and of Cuenca, “excellent woollen carpets are manufactured at this town.”

“En Espagne,” says Müntz, “l'industrie textile ne tarda pas à prendre également le plus brilliant essor, grâce à la conquête maure. Les étoffes d'Almeria acquirent rapidement une réputation européenne; il est vrai que c'étaient des brocarts, des damas, et autres tissus analogues, non des tapisseries: l'influence qu'elles furent appelées à exercer au dehors se borna donc au domaine de l'ornementation.”

XIX THE “GENESIS TAPESTRY” (12th Century; Gerona Cathedral)

Of a similar composition to the foregoing fabrics specified by Müntz—that is to say, not genuine tapestries, although requiring for several reasons to be classed with these—is the celebrated “Genesis” (Plate xix.) of the cathedral of Gerona. This primitive yet complicated work of art, dating from the twelfth century, is embroidered in crewels upon linen, and represents the creation of the world. Its dimensions are about four yards high by four and a half yards wide; but the bordering has been torn away in places. The design is thus described by Riaño:—“In the centre is a geometrical figure formed by two concentric circles. In the lesser circle is a figure of Christ holding an open book, on which appear the words Sanctus Deus, and on each side Rex fortis, surrounded by the inscription, Dixit quoque Deus, Fiat lux, Et facta est lux. In the larger circle are the words, In principio creavit Deus coelum et terram, mare et omnia quæ in eis sunt, et vidit Deus cuncta quæ egerat et erant valde bona.

“The space between the two circles is divided by radiating lines into eight portions, in which are represented the Mystic Dove, the angels of light and darkness: the division of land from water, the creation of sun, moon, and stars, of birds, fishes, and beasts, and of Adam and Eve. In the angles outside the larger circle are the four winds, and the whole is surrounded by a border, imperfect in parts, containing representations of the months, and apparently of certain scriptural incidents, too much defaced to be clearly made out.”

The royal palaces of Spain and many of her noble houses have possessed, from about the fifteenth century, splendid collections of the costliest tapestries, consisting principally of paños de Ras, or “Arras cloths” (as they were called among the Spaniards, and especially in Aragon). Until a later period all, or very nearly all, these objects were imported from the Flemish workshops.[42] At the palace of a nobleman in Madrid, Bertaut de Rouen observed “les plus belles tapisseries du monde.” The same author tells us that in the seventeenth century, when he visited Spain and wrote his entertaining Journal, it was customary for the walls of the royal palace to be hung with tapestry in winter, these hangings being removed for greater coolness in the summer months. In reading descriptions of Spanish life referring to the same period, one is struck by the craze which prevailed among the Spaniards for displaying tapestries and other gay-coloured fabrics in all kinds of places and on every possible occasion. Thus, Bertaut de Rouen relates that when he saw a play performed in the Alcázar, “le long de ces deux costez de la salle estoient seulement deux grands bancs couverts de tapis de Perse”; that the boxes at the bull-fights, both at Madrid and in the country, were “tapissées de brocatelle de soye”; and that the lower part of the dome in one of the chapels of Seville cathedral was decorated with the same material. At the haunted castle of Quebaro, on the road from Galareta to Vitoria, Countess d'Aulnoy saw upon the walls of a large chamber, some tapestries representing the amours of Don Pedro the Cruel and of Doña María de Padilla. “This lady was depicted seated, like a queen, among various other ladies, while the king crowned her with a chaplet of flowers. Elsewhere Doña María was reposing in a forest, as the king offered her a falcon. I also saw her dressed as a warrior while the king, in armour, offered her a sword. This set me thinking whether she had ever accompanied Don Pedro in one of his campaigns. All the figures in these tapestries were badly drawn, but Don Fernando assured me that all well-executed likenesses of Doña María de Padilla represented her to be a woman of rare charm, the loveliest of her century.”

Pinheiro da Veiga says that at Valladolid in 1605, a banquet was celebrated in “a large gallery, completely covered with the richest silk brocade, as were most of the other apartments.” He also says that cloths of similar richness were employed as street-awnings. “Upon the ninth was the Corpus procession, at which the king was to assist; and a proclamation was issued that none should promenade on horseback or in coaches. I found nothing remarkable in this procession, unless it were the hangings and the awnings to keep off the sun, which were of the richest damask and brocade.” Of the same fiesta Countess d'Aulnoy wrote in 1679: “The streets through which the procession has to pass are adorned with the finest tapestries in all the world, since in addition to those belonging to the Crown, many of the greatest beauty are displayed by private persons. The celosías of all the balconies are replaced by elaborate canopies and hangings, and the whole roadway is covered with an awning to ward off the sun, and which, for the sake of greater freshness, is moistened with a little water.” Nearly identical with this account is that of Alexander de Laborde, who wrote, a century and a quarter later than the Countess; “On Corpus Christi day there is a grand procession composed of the regular and secular clergy of Madrid, followed by the king, his ministers, and court, each bearing in his hand a wax taper. Magnificent awnings of tapestry are raised in the streets through which the procession is to pass; the balconies are decorated with splendid hangings; the seats are covered with cushions, and occasionally surmounted with a daïs; in some of the streets the face of day is darkened by canopies which stretch from one side to the other. Altars are placed at regular intervals; the balconies are thronged with ladies superbly dressed, who sprinkle scented water, or scatter fragrant flowers on the passing multitudes.”

Pinheiro da Veiga also describes a set of remarkable tapestries, evidently Flemish, which he saw in the Chapter-room of the Convent of Cármen Calzado at Valladolid. “It was hung with the richest tapestry, silk, and paintings that had belonged to the Duke of Lerma. I greatly admired some cloths of green velvet, worked all over with the Bucolics of Virgil, in tarjas embroidered in silk and gold, as though they were sebastos[43] of ecclesiastical vestments, but these were old, of great value, and extraordinary merit. Finer still were certain cloths of recent workmanship, such as I had never seen equalled, of a white material painted in tempera, with the borders, dresses, and faces of the personages on them wrought in twisted gold. I never saw anything so brilliant or so novel. The cloths were eight in number, with four embroidered guardapuertas. The persons figured upon them wore belts of real pearls, rings set with diamonds and rubies on their fingers, and gold chains and medals studded with precious stones, just as living people wear them.”

The fashion of collecting foreign tapestries seems to have reached its height at the Spanish capital in the first half of the seventeenth century. “Nowadays,” wrote Fernandez de Navarrete, in his Conservacion de Monarquías, published in 1626, “gentlemen are not contented with hangings which a few years ago were considered good enough to adorn a prince's palace. The Spanish taffetas and guadamecíes, so highly esteemed in other provinces, are held of no account in this one (Madrid). The sargas and arãbeles wherewith the moderation of the Spanish people was satisfied in former days, must now be turned into injurious telas rizas of Florence and Milan, and into costliest Brussels tapestry.”

XX TAPIZ OF CRIMSON VELVET WORKED IN GOLD TISSUE (16th Century. Monastery of Las Huelgas, Burgos)

It is perhaps allowable to include among the oldest makers of Spanish tapestry the names of Gonzalo de Mesa and Diego Roman, who, in the year 1331, were paid respectively one thousand maravedis and eighteen hundred maravedis, for decorating the tents of King Sancho the Fourth. There also exists the following entry, dating from the same period; “To Boançibre, master of the tents; XXX maravedis for his food, for fifteen days.”[44]

Far clearer than these laconic excerpts is a document preserved in the library of the Academy of History at Madrid, in the form of a memorial presented to Philip the Second by a Spanish tapestry-maker of Salamanca, named Pedro Gutierrez,[45] and setting forth, in pessimistic language, the unhappy condition of this craft in the Peninsula. Pedro relates of himself that in twenty-four days he made for the Cardinal-archduke no less than a hundred and twenty reposteros; and that in order to exhibit his cleverness as a tapestry-weaver, he set up a loom in the royal palace (being officially the tapicero to the Crown), and worked for forty days where all might criticise the product of his toil. Gutierrez also states that the township of Madrid had provided him with six hundred ducats to enable him to establish there a tapestry-factory for the space of ten years, together with six hundred and fifty ducats from the Cortes for supporting his apprentices, and a thousand ducats from the king to defray the cost of certain voyages he had made to Lisbon, Monzón, and Barcelona, and of removing his residence from Salamanca to the capital of Spain. He complains, however, that the house he dwells in at Madrid is not large enough to contain his loom, and replies to the objections of such persons as opposed his opening the tapestry-works at all (on the ground that this craft was practised better and more cheaply in Flanders), by asserting that Spanish makers of reposteros were now accustomed to receive a daily wage of no more than three reales and “a miserable meal.” This, he urges, should render Spanish tapestries at least as inexpensive to produce as those of Flanders; although, upon the other hand, he admits that the colouring of the former is likely to prove inferior to the Flemish cloths in purity and durability. “Common tapestry,” he says, “seldom keeps its colour upward of a couple of years, so that, if such were used in open sunlight on the backs of beasts of burden, or to cover carts, exposed to sun, wind, dust, and mire, or else for cleaning shoes upon, as now is practised with the reposteros, their imperfections would become apparent all the sooner.”

Mention of these typically Spanish objects known as reposteros,[46] induces me to quote an interesting notice relating to the visit of Philip the Second to Cordova, in the year 1570. The train of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, who journeyed to this city in order to receive his sovereign, consisted of a hundred and three mules covered with “new reposteros of wool, and of six mules covered with reposteros of purple velvet, embroidered with silver and gold, and bearing the duke's arms.”

If, as seems most likely, the woollen reposteros above referred to were of woven work containing a device, this passage would demonstrate that the manufacture of the cloths in question was sometimes the province of the tapestry-maker and sometimes that of the embroiderer. Ramírez de Arellano, from whose instructive studies on the craftsmen of older Spain I quote the foregoing extract, says that the making of reposteros constitutes a branch of craftsmanship distinct from embroidery of the common class, and that the men who produced them deserve to be included among artists of real merit. He gives the names of two, Hernán Gonzalez and Juan Ramos, who worked at Cordova in the middle of the sixteenth century. A document relating to the former of these men tells us that in those days the price of a repostero de estambre measuring sixteen palms square, with a coat-of-arms worked in the centre, and a decorative border, was ninety reales.

XXI THE SPINNERS (By Velazquez. Prado Gallery)

Riaño says: “I do not find any information of a later date which suggests the existence of the manufacture of tapestries in Spain during the Middle Ages.” Davillier, however, affirms that in the year 1411 two master-makers of tapestry were living at the court of the King of Navarre, and that other craftsmen, holding the same title, were established at Barcelona in 1391 and 1433. This notice is accepted by Müntz: “A la fin du XIV^e et au commencement du XV^e siècle, les Espagnols tentèrent de fonder dans leur patrie quelques ateliers de haute lisse. A Barcelone, en 1391 et en 1433, plusieurs tapissiers (maestros de tapices) firent partie du grand Conseil. Mais ces tentaves ne semblent pas avoir eu de résultats durables. Il était plus commode de recourir aux manufactures flamandes, si merveilleusement organisées. Peut-être même ce système était-il plus économique. Ne voyons-nous pas aujourd'hui jusqu'à l'extrême Orient tirer, pour raison d'économie, des fabriques de Manchester et de Birmingham les tissus courants dont il a besoin?”

The history of tapestry-making at Madrid may be said to date from the establishment in this town of a small factory by Pedro Gutierrez, whose petition to Philip the Second I have already quoted, and who received protection both from that monarch and from the queen, Doña Ana. In 1625 Gutierrez was succeeded by Antonio Ceron, who formally styled himself “tapicero de nuevo, sucesor de Pedro Gutierrez” (“maker of new tapestries, successor to Pedro Gutierrez”), and petitioned the king for the grant of a meal a day, “in recompense of having taught his trade to eight lads, and of having mounted eight looms in (the factory of) Santa Isabel.” This factory of Santa Isabel was so called from the street in which it lay, and part of it is represented in the celebrated painting by Velazquez called Las Hilanderas (“The Spinners,” not, as it is translated in Riaño's handbook, “The Weavers.” Plate xxi.).

This factory was unsuccessful, and declined by degrees until it ceased completely, in spite of the efforts made to revive it in 1694 by a Belgian named Metler, and in 1707 by a Salamanquino, Nicholas Hernández.

XXII TAPESTRY MADE AT BRUSSELS FROM GRANADA SILK (16th Century. Spanish Crown Collection)

A new tapestry-factory—that of Santa Barbara—was founded shortly afterwards in a building known as the Casa del Abreviador. The first director, engaged in 1720 by order of Philip the Fifth, was Jacob Van der Goten, a native of Antwerp,[47] who died in 1724, and was succeeded at the factory by his sons, Francisco, Jacobo, Cornelius, and Adrian. These craftsmen worked with basse lisse looms till 1729, in which year a haute lisse loom was mounted by a Frenchman, Antoine Lenger.

In 1730, when the court removed to Seville, a tapestry-factory was established at this city also. The director was Jacob Van der Goten the younger, assisted by the painter Procaccini. At the end of three years this factory closed its doors, and Van der Goten and Procaccini, returning to Madrid, established themselves at the old factory of Santa Isabel, from which, in 1744, they again removed to the factory of Santa Barbara.[48]

In 1774, when, with the exception of Cornelius, who was considered the most skilful of them all, the family of the Van der Gotens had died out, the direction of the Santa Barbara factory was entrusted to several Spanish artists, named Manuel Sanchez, Antonio Moreno, Tomás del Castillo, and Domingo Galan. Sanchez, who acted as general superintendent of the works, died in 1786, and was succeeded in this office by his nephew, Livinio Stuck, whose son resumed the directorship in 1815, after the factory had been paralysed by the invasion of the Peninsula, and destroyed by the French in 1808. Since then it has never ceased working, and descendants of the Stucks continue to superintend it at the present day.

XXIII A PROMENADE IN ANDALUSIA (Cartoon for Tapestry. By Goya)

The collection of tapestry belonging to the Crown of Spain is probably the finest in the world. As far back as the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the walls of the royal palace were hung with decorative textile cloths or paños de Ras, and among the officers in the household of their son, the youthful Prince Don Juan, we find included a keeper of the tapestry and reposteros. But it was not until the reigns of Charles the Fifth and Philip the Second that the royal collection was enriched with numerous sets of celebrated tapestries produced in Italy and Flanders—countries which were then subjected to the yoke of Spain. Frequent additions were also made throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, both from abroad and subsequently (when the Brussels industry declined) from the Spanish factories of Santa Isabel and Santa Barbara.

As early as the year 1600 a Spaniard wrote enthusiastically of “the rich and cunning tapestries belonging to His Majesty, to whom it would be easier to win a kingdom than to get them made anew.”[49] At the present day it is impossible to estimate with any certainty the number of these tapestries, the greater part of which are locked away. Only on certain festivals, such as the days of Corpus Christi and the Candelaria (Purification), a few are unfolded and displayed in the upper galleries of the palace at Madrid. Their total number is believed to be not far short of one thousand pieces;[50] but Señor Tormo calculates that were they no more than five hundred, they would, if placed end to end, cover more than two miles of ground.

Among the sets which form this wonderful collection, distributed between the palaces of Madrid, the Prado, and the Escorial, none is of greater merit or magnificence than the series of twelve cloths depicting the Conquest of Tunis (Plate xxii.), designed for Charles the Fifth by his Court painter, Jan Vermay or Vermeyen, of Beverwyck, near Haarlem, and executed by William Pannemaker, of Brussels. It was agreed by Pannemaker in 1549 that the materials employed upon this tapestry should consist of the finest wool, Granada silk, and, for the woof, the choicest Lyons fillet—the very best that money could procure. The Emperor himself was to provide the gold and silver thread. Accordingly, Pannemaker was supplied with five hundred and fifty-nine pounds and one ounce of silk, dyed and spun in the city of Granada, where one of Charles' agents resided for two years seven months and twenty-five days, for the purpose of superintending its preparation. The cost of this silk, exclusive of the agent's expenses, amounted to 6,637 florins. Nineteen colours were employed in the dyeing, each colour consisting of from three to seven shades, and a hundred and sixty pounds of the finest silk were consumed in trying to obtain a special shade of blue.

After receiving these materials, Pannemaker kept seven workmen constantly engaged upon each paño of this tapestry, or eighty-four workmen in all. As soon as any one of the pieces was concluded, he submitted it to experts who pointed out such details as they recommended for correction. The entire work required a little more than five years, and was therefore terminated in 1554. The price paid for it was twelve florins per ell, and the number of these was 1246, representing a total cost of 14,952 florins, while Pannemaker, subject to the Emperor's being satisfied with the work, was further promised a yearly pension of a hundred florins.[51]

Equally remarkable are the spirited design and the flawless execution of this series of elaborate cloths, recalling, in their swarms of armed figures and the lofty point of view, which reduces the sky to a mere strip, the vivacious war and camp pictures of Snyders. The titles of the subjects, forming, as it were, a pictured epitome of the expedition led by Charles in person against the Barbary pirates, are as follows: (1) A map of the Spanish coast; (2) The review of the troops at Barcelona; (3) The landing of the forces; (4) A skirmish; (5) The camp; (6) Foraging; (7) The capture of La Goleta; (8) The battle of Los Pozos, Tunis; (9) A sortie of the besieged; (10) The sack of Tunis; (11) The victors returning to the harbour; (12) The forces embarking.

According to Müntz, this tapestry has been copied at least on two occasions; once in the eighteenth century by Josse de Vos, of Brussels, and also, in the same century, in Spain, partly at Seville, and partly at the factories of Santa Isabel and Santa Barbara.

XXIV TAPESTRY. ARRAS WORK, FROM ITALIAN CARTOONS (First half of 15th Century. Zamora Cathedral)

Other most valuable and beautiful tapestries belonging to the Spanish Crown are the series titled The History of the Virgin, believed to be from cartoons by Van Eyk, The Passion, from cartoons attributed to Van der Weyden, the History of David and History of Saint John the Baptist, the Mass of Saint Gregory, and the Founding of Rome. All of these series date from the fifteenth century and early in the sixteenth. Belonging to a later period are the reproductions of rustic scenes and hunting subjects by Teniers and others, executed in Spain between 1721 and 1724, the Scenes from Don Quixote, made at Santa Barbara from Procaccini's cartoons, and the eminently national series produced at the same factory from designs by Francisco Goya y Lucientes. This latter group amounts to several dozen pieces, including the well-known Blind Man's Buff, A Promenade in Andalusia (Plate xxiii.), The Crockery-seller, The Grape-Gatherers (Frontispiece), and other spirited and charming scenes of popular Spanish life—“tout cela,” as Lefort describes it, “spirituel, vif, pittoresque, très mouvementé, bien groupé, s'élevant sur des fonds champêtres ou baignant gaiement en pleine lumière.”

Other tapestry collections of great merit belong to the cathedrals of Burgos, Zamora (where they line the walls of the Sacristy; Plate xxiv.), Zaragoza, Toledo, Tarragona, and Santiago. The first of these temples possesses the following sets, which are displayed to decorate the cloisters on the feast of Corpus Christi:—

(1) The History of Cleopatra and Mark Antony.

(2) The History of David.

(3) The Creation.

(4) An Historical Subject.

(5) The Theological and Cardinal Virtues.

(6) A series of five Gothic tapestries, which represent some mystery or allegory, and seem to be of Flemish manufacture. One other paño, of a similar character, accompanies them.

XXV FLEMISH TAPESTRY (Late 15th Century. Collection of the late Count of Valencia de Don Juan)

All but the last of the above sets are marked with two B's separated by a shield, denoting Brussels workmanship. The Theological and Cardinal Virtues were presented to the cathedral about the end of the sixteenth century. They are evidently executed from Italian cartoons, and the haute-lisse craftsman who made them, in or towards the year 1571, was named Francis Greubels.[52]

The tapestries which belong to the cathedral of Zaragoza number some sixty or seventy pieces, including a series (fifteenth century) representing The Life of Saint John the Baptist, from designs by Lucas of Holland. Good tapestries were also the property of Valencia cathedral, but have been dispersed and sold in recent years. The convent of the Descalzas Reales at Madrid possesses a set from designs by Rubens. Ten pieces of this series formerly belonged to the Count-Duke of Olivares, who sent them to his town of Loeches; four passing subsequently to the Duke of Westminster's collection. The small though valuable collection formed by the late Count of Valencia de Don Juan (Plate xxv.), passed at this nobleman's death to his daughter, Señora de Osma, who has presented part of it to the Archæological Museum at Madrid. Another collector resident in Spain, Mons. Mersmann, of Granada, possesses a series of fine Brussels cloths representing scenes from Don Quixote, by Van den Hecke.

Footnotes:

LACE

Although the Spaniards have enjoyed, and still enjoy, a widespread fame for lace-making, their written records of this craft are unsubstantial. Originally, perhaps, they borrowed it from the Arabs or Venetians. Certainly, the earliest Spanish lace was such as is made with a needle, that is, point, not pillow lace. In this form, à la aguja, and in the sixteenth century, the Spaniards possibly conveyed the secrets of its manufacture to the Netherlands, receiving from the natives of this country, in exchange, the art of making lace by means of bobbins, including the characteristic “Flemish net,” or red flandés.

Towards the sixteenth century the parts of Spain where lace was manufactured in the largest quantity were some of the Manchegan towns and villages, the coast of Finisterre, and nearly the whole of Cataluña. In La Mancha lace was made, and still is so, at Manzanares, Granatula, Almagro, and other places. That of Almagro (the celebrated punto de Almagro, resembling the lace of Cataluña), is mentioned by nearly all the older travellers. In Don Quixote, Teresa writes to Sancho Panza that their daughter Sanchita was engaged in making bobbin-lace at a daily wage of eight sueldos.

XXVI THE MARCHIONESS OF LA SOLANA (By Goya)

In 1877, at the Exhibition of Sumptuary Arts which was held in Barcelona, a magnificent lace toca was shown, which was affirmed by its possessor, Señor Parcerisa, to be the work of a Spaniard of the later part of the fifteenth century, and to have belonged to Isabella the Catholic. The cathedral of the same city owns three thread-lace albs of sixteenth century workmanship, and the South Kensington Museum other pieces of Spanish lace of a comparatively early date, probably made by nuns and subtracted from the convents during the stormy scenes of 1835.

Dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, we have a number of notices, though scrappy and inexplicit as a rule, relating to Spanish lace. One of the more complete and interesting is quoted by Riaño from the Microcosmia y Gobierno Universal del Hombre Cristiano (Barcelona, 1592) of Father Marcos Antonio de Campos. “I will not be silent,” wrote this austere padre, “and fail to mention the time lost these last years in the manufacture of cadenetas, a work of thread combined with gold and silver; this extravagance and excess reached such a point that 100 and 1000 ducats were spent in this work, in which, besides destroying the eyesight, wasting away the lives, and rendering consumptive the women who worked it, and preventing them from spending their time with more advantage to their souls, a few ounces of thread and years of time were wasted with so unsatisfactory a result. I ask myself, after this fancy shall have passed away, will the lady or gentleman find that the chemises that cost them 50 ducats, or the basquiña (petticoat) that cost them 300, are worth half their price, which certainly is the case with other objects in which the material itself is worth more?”

XXVII A SPANISH MAJA (A.D. 1777)

Several of the other notices relating to the lace-makers' craft are from the pen of Countess d'Aulnoy. Of the Countess of Lemos this writer says: “Her hair was white, but she carefully concealed it beneath a black blonde”; and of another Spanish lady, Doña Leonor de Toledo, that she wore “a green velvet skirt trimmed with Spanish blonde.” In the apartments of the young Princess of Monteleón the countess saw “a bed of green and gold damask, decorated with silver brocade and Spanish blonde. The sheets were fringed with English point-lace, extremely broad and handsome.” The countess also says that the petticoats of the Spanish ladies were of English point-lace,[53] and that these ladies, when they visited each other, wore on their heads “a toca of the richest English black point-lace, half a yard broad, forming points like the antique laces, beautiful to look at, and very dear. This head-dress suits them rarely.”

According to Balsa de la Vega, whose interesting articles on Spanish lace (published in the newspaper El Liberal) are worth perusal by all who are interested in this craft, about the middle of the seventeenth century the custom originated in Spain of making lace in broader pieces, dividing the pattern into a number of strips or fajas which were subsequently sewn together. In Belgium, on the contrary, the design was cut out, following the contour of the floral or other decoration.

In former ages gold and silver lace was made in France, and also at Genoa. I think it possible that Genoese merchants, many of whom are known to have settled in Granada and other Spanish cities, may first have introduced this branch of lace-making among the Spaniards. The sumptuary laws of Aragon, Castile, León, and Navarre would seem to show that lace of these materials, known as punto or redecilla de oro (or plata) was manufactured by the Spanish Jews between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. During the seventeenth century and part of the eighteenth, the quantity produced in the Peninsula was very large. In his Fenix de Cataluña, a work which was published at Barcelona in 1683, Feliu de la Peña says that Spanish randa or réseuil, of gold and silver, silk, thread, and aloe fibre, was better made in Spain than in the Netherlands. The journal of Bertaut de Rouen contains the following notice of this silver lace: “Le Roy y envoya le Lieutenant du Maistre des Postes, avec huit postillons, couverts de clinquant, et quarante chevaux de poste, dont il y en avoit huit avec des selles et des brides du Roy où il y avoit de la dentelle d'argent, que Monsieur le Mareschal fit distribuer à environ autant de gens que nous estions, sur une liste qu'il avoit envoyée quelques jours auparavant.”

XXVIII MAJA (By Goya)

It is impossible to mention Spanish lace without recalling that most graceful article of headwear, the mantilla, the use of which is gradually dying out. At present we understand by this word a black or white head-covering of lace alone (the white being more conspicuous and dressy), but about a hundred years ago the mantilla was made of a variety of fabrics. Also, it was worn in an easier and more negligé manner than nowadays, retaining a closer likeness to the velo or manto with which the Spanish women of the seventeenth century were able, at their pleasure, to completely mask their faces (Plates xxvi. and xxvii.). Indeed, as late as the early part of the nineteenth century the mantilla was sometimes thrown over the face (Plates xxviii. and xxix.). The same usage is referred to by Townsend, who describes the mantilla as “serving the double purpose of a cloak and veil.”[54] To-day it is worn, not hanging loose and open, but a good deal bunched up at the bosom. The hair, too, is dressed to an unusual height, with a tall comb, and over this the delicate lace covering should droop a little to one side. A flower or two (roses or carnations by preference) may be worn at one side of the head, and where the mantilla is caught up at the breast.

The manuscript account of Spanish costumes early in the nineteenth century, and which is prefixed to my copy of Pigal's coloured lithographs, contains some excellent descriptions of the older Spanish mantilla. We learn, for instance, that at Palma the women of the well-to-do middle class wore a mantilla of black taffeta, trimmed with blonde (Plate xviii.).[55] In La Mancha, and among the peasants, it was of white muslin; at Cordova, in cold weather, “en flanelle ou en bayette fine: elle est garnie de rubans à l'extrémité desquels il y a deux gros noeuds: en été elle est en mousseline.” The small mantilla or “mantellina” of the wife of the smuggler of Tarifa was “en flanelle blanche, ou noire, ou rose, brodée d'un ruban: elle en fait três souvent un usage différent des autres femmes espagnoles, car au lieu de la mettre sur la tête attachée avec des épingles, elle s'en sert de schal: quelque fois elle la met en baudrier laissant flotter derrière elle les deux extrémités qui sont ornées d'un noeud en ruban.” The servant-girl of Madrid wore a white mantilla in summer, and a black one in winter. The same author describes in greater detail the mantillas of the fine ladies. “La mantille et la basquigne,” he says, “voila de quoi se compose principalement le costume du beau sexe en Espagne. Ce costume, quoique national, est susceptible de recevoir aussi bien que tout autre les divers degrés de luxe que les femmes d'une riche classe et celles du plus haut rang peuvent apporter dans leur parure: la classe la moins aisée porte la mantille en laine noire ou blanche et la basquigne en serge ou autre étoffe de laine noire. Pendant le jour, lorsque les dames espagnoles se présentent en public, c'est toujours avec la mantille et la basquigne, mais le soir si elles vont au spectacle ou ailleurs, elles sortent três souvent habillées à la française.”

XXIX A LADY OF SORIA (About A.D. 1810)

Elsewhere he says: “Nous avons déjà dit qu'un simple ruban, un peigne, ou une fleur, est la coiffure adoptée par les dames espagnoles, pour faire usage de la mantille: celle-ci est dans l'hiver quelquefois en serge de soie, taffetas, etc., noir, garnie en outre de blondes, ou d'un large ruban de velours noir en échiquier (cinta de terciopelo à tablero), mais ce ruban est toujours noir. Il y eut un temps où la mode, qui ne fut pas de longue durée, prescrivait que les bouts de la mantille se terminassent en trois pointes ornées chacune d'une houppe (borla) noire, ou d'un lacet de ruban noir. Jamais les mantilles ne sont doublées.”

The same author remarks of the lady of Madrid; “La mantille de tulle brodé ne se porte que dans la belle saison … elle ne dépasse jamais la ceinture”[56]; and of the lady of Granada: “si la mantille est blanche, elle est en tulle parsemé de petits bouquets et garnie de larges et riches dentelles. Si elle est noire, comme cela arrive plus ordinairement, elle est alors en blonde: il y a de ces mantilles qui coutent cinq cent, mille, et jusqu'à deux mille francs.”

XXX HANDKERCHIEF OF CATALAN LACE (Presented to Queen Victoria of Spain, on her marriage)

A good deal of lace, principally of the less elaborate and cheaper kinds, was formerly manufactured in the kingdom of Valencia. Cabanillas wrote in 1797 that at Novelda, a small town of this region, more than two thousand women and children worked at making laces, which were hawked about the country by others of the townspeople. Swinburne remarks upon the same industry, and Ricord tells us in his pamphlet (1791) that cotton lace was made in six factories at Torrente, Alicante, and Orihuela.[57] The total product of these factories for the said year was 1,636,100 yards, which sold at from nine to twelve reales the yard. Laborde wrote some years later, in the first volume of his book, that lace, and gold and silver fringes were then made at Valencia, and in the fourth volume; “Gold and silver laced stuffs, and velvets of all colours brocaded and flowered with the same metals, are made at Toledo, Barcelona, Valencia, and Talavera de la Reina; and the manufacture at the last-named city annually consumes four thousand marks of silver, and seventy marks of gold.

“At Barcelona, Talavera de la Reina, and Valencia are also manufactured gold and silver edgings, lace, and fringes, though not in a sufficient quantity to answer the demands of Spain; and the gold is very badly prepared, having too red a cast.”

Lace-making was an ancient and important industry of every part of Cataluña. Lace articles for ladies' headwear are known to have been made throughout this region at least as far back as the fifteenth century, and Capmany reminds us that by a cedula dated from the Cortes of Monzón, December 16th, 1538, the Emperor Charles the Fifth confirmed the Ordinances of the guild, established long before, of the tejedores de velos of Barcelona. Technical provisions are embodied in this code, concerning various articles of lace employed as headwear, such as alfardillas, quiñales, and espumilla, all of which were largely exported to America.

The attention of foreigners who travelled in Cataluña towards the eighteenth century was constantly attracted by the lace-makers. Swinburne mentions “Martorell, a large town, where much black lace is manufactured,” and “Espalungera (Esparraguera?), a long village, full of cloth and lace manufacturers,” and wrote of Sarriá and its surroundings, close to Barcelona: “The women in the little hamlets were busy with their bobbins making black lace, some of which, of the coarser kind, is spun out of the leaf of the aloe. It is curious, but of little use, for it grows mucilaginous with washing.”

XXXI CURTAIN OF SPANISH LACE (Point and Pillow Work. Modern)

“Martorell,” wrote Townsend in 1786, “is one long, narrow street, in which poverty, industry, and filth, although seldom seen together, have agreed to take up their abode. The inhabitants make lace, and even the little children of three and four years old are engaged in this employment.” Laborde wrote that at the beginning of the eighteenth century seventeen manufactories of blondes were established at Mataró, and adds of Barcelona province generally at that time: “Laces and blondes constitute the employment of women and children. The work is principally done at Pineda, Malgrat, San Celoni, Tosa, Canet, Arenys, Callela, San-Pol, Mataró, Esparraguera, Martorell, and Barcelona…. The laces are almost all shipped for the New World.”

The most observant and most entertaining of all these tourists was Arthur Young, who wrote, in 1787, of the towns upon the coast of Cataluña: “The appearance of industry is as great as it can be: great numbers of fishing-boats and nets, with rows of good white houses on the sea-side; and while the men are active in their fisheries, the women are equally busy making lace.” Of Mataró he says: “It appears exceedingly industrious; some stocking-frames; lace-makers at every door…. I am sorry to add that here also the industry of catching lice in each other's heads is well understood.

“Pass Arrengs (Arenys), a large town … making thread lace universal here. They have thread from France; women earn ten to sixteen sous at it. Great industry, and in consequence a flourishing appearance. Canet, another large town, employed also in ship-building, fishing, and making lace…. Pass Malgrat, which is not so well built as the other towns, but much lace made in it…. Reach Figueras, whose inhabitants seem industrious and active. They make lace, cordage, and mats, and have many potteries of a common sort.”[58]

Lace-making prevails to-day all through this region of north-eastern Spain, particularly in the strip or zone of it including the valley of the Llobregat as far as Martorell, and which extends from Palamós to Barcelona. The towns which produce the greatest quantities of lace are Arenys de Mar, Malgrat, San Pol, Canet, and Arenys de Munt. In the last of these places an important Regional Exhibition of Lace was held in July of last year, the number of exhibitors amounting to one hundred and twenty-five. Due to the increasing production of underlinen and woven fabrics generally, or to other causes, lace-making has declined at Blanes, Pineda, Calella, and one or two other places. At San Celoni, Vallgorguina, San Vicente, San Andrés de Llevaneras, Argentona, Caldeta, and San Acisclo de Vilalta, lace is made by women who combine this work with dirtier and rougher labour in the field. Most of the lace made in these towns is therefore black.

XXXII POINT LACE FAN, OF MUDEJAR DESIGN (Modern)

In the spring of last year, an elaborate lace pocket-handkerchief (Plate xxx.), designed by Señor Riquer, and executed in a traditional style of Cataluña, denominated locally the ret Catalá, was made in the old-established lace-factory of the widow of Mariano Castells in the town of Arenys de Mar, and offered by the Agricultural Institute of San Isidro as a wedding-present to Princess Ena of Battenberg. Two encajeras worked at this handkerchief under the personal direction of the widow Castells, and the time employed by them in making it was two months.