Needlework As Art Part 17

A mechanic of Nuremberg, in the fourteenth century, invented a machine for the purpose; and this art of drawing wire was introduced into England 200 years later, in 1560.

The pure cut gold was in use in Rome to a late date.[201] St. Cecilia, martyred 230 A.D., was buried with her golden mantle lying at her feet; and in 821, when Pope Pascal opened her grave, he found the evidence of her martyrdom in that splendid garment, showing that it had been soaked in blood.[202]

There were found under the foundations of the new Basilica of St.

Peter's, the bodies of Probus Anicius and his wife, Proba Faltonia, in a wrapping of gold.

Dr. Rock gives us more examples,[203] but we will only add that of the wife of the Emperor Honorius, who in the year 400 A.D. was buried in a golden dress, which in 1544 was removed from her grave, and being melted, weighed 36 lbs.[204]

The Anglo-Saxon tomb opened at Chessell Down, in the Isle of Wight, contained fragments of a garment or wrapping woven with flat gold "plate." These remains are now in the British Museum.

Childeric was buried at Tournai, 485 A.D., and his dress of strips of pure gold was discovered and melted in 1653. But gold _thread_ also was then very generally used in weaving gold tissues.

Claudian describes a Christian lady, Proba, in the fourth century, preparing the consular robes for her two sons on their being raised to the consulate:[205]--

"The joyful mother plies her knowing hands, And works on all the trabea golden bands; Draws the thin strips to all the length of gold, _To make the metal meaner threads enfold_."

Pure gold was woven in the dark ages in England. St. Cuthbert's maniple at Durham is of pure gold thread. John Garland says the ladies wove golden cingulae in the thirteenth century; and Henry I., according to Hoveden, was clothed in a robe of state of woven gold and gems of almost "divine splendour."[206]

A wrapping of beautiful gold brocade covered the coffin of Henry III.

when his tomb was opened in 1871.[207]

The cope of St. Andrew at Aix, in Switzerland, is embroidered in a very simple pattern, with large circles containing St. Andrew's crosses.[208] This is worked in silver wire gilt, and is Byzantine of the twelfth century.

In the writings of the Middle Ages we find constant reference to different golden fabrics. Among them are "samit" or "examitur" (a six-thread silk stuff, preciously inwoven with gold threads);[209] and "ciclatoun,"[210] which was remarkable for the lightness of its texture, and was woven with shining gold threads--but though light, it was stiff enough to carry heavy embroidery. We hear also of "baudekin," "nak," and cloth of pall. "Camoca" is "kincob."

There appears to be a link between embroidery in gold and the jewellers' work which in the Dark and Middle Ages was so often applied to ecclesiastical and royal dress and hangings. This link was beaten gold work, "aurobacutos," "beaten work," or "batony."[211] Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick in the time of Henry VI., went over to France, having a "coat for my lord's body, beat with fine gold (probably heraldic designs). For his ship, a streamer forty yards long and eight broad, with a great bear and griffin, and 400 'pencils' with the 'ragged staff' in silver." This mode lasted some time; for in 1538, Barbara Mason bequeathed to a church a "vestment of green silk beaten with gold." Probably this beaten gold was really very thick gold-leaf laid on the silk or linen ground, as we see still in some Sicilian and Arab tissues. The embroidered banners taken from Charles le Temeraire, at Grandson, are finished with broad borders of gilded inscriptions, such as might be called beaten gold work.[212]

But besides this thick gold-leaf, there was another mode of enriching embroideries. Laminae of gold were cut into shapes, and finished the work by accentuating the design in Eastern embroideries; They are found also in Greek tombs, and in the Middle Ages they varied from the little golden spangle to many other forms--circular rings, stars, crescents, moons, leaves, and solid pendant wedges of gold, all which approached the art of the goldsmith.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 19.

Spangles.]

Enamel was soon added to the enrichment of these golden spangles, plates, or discs, which were enlarged to receive a design.[213] Of this style of embellishment we know none so striking as the saddle in the Museum at Munich, said to have been taken from a Turkish general in the fifteenth century. This is Italian of the finest cinque-cento style: blue velvet, covered with beautiful gold embroidery, and every vacant s.p.a.ce filled with spangles of endless forms, and of precious goldsmiths' and enamellers' work. The Persian stirrups attached to it are of a totally different style of enamelling and jewellery, and speak for themselves, and for the school they came from.[214]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pl. 33.

Window Hanging, by Gentil Bellini, from a Portrait of Mahomet II., property of Sir H. Layard.]

Dr. Rock describes part of a chasuble wrought by Isabella of Spain and her maids of honour, in which the flowing design is worked out in small moulded spangles of gold and silver, set so as to overlap each other and give the effect of scales.

To a late period, gold and silver embroideries, enriched with spangles, have been lavished on the head-dresses and stomachers of the peasantry throughout the north of Europe and Switzerland.[215]

Pearls and gems, either threaded like beads, or in golden settings, are to be studied in the early pictures of the German and French schools; and the Anglo-Saxons excelled in such enrichments.

Sir Henry Layard has a portrait of the fifteenth century, of the Sultan Mahomet II., by Gentil Bellini, from which has been copied the accompanying beautiful embroidered design of a window-hanging.[216]

The grace of the lines, and the delicate taste with which the gems are set in the work, are a lesson in art (pl. 33).

India sent to Europe more art in gold thread than has ever been produced amongst us from our own workshops.[217]

The people of Goa, mostly Arabs, embroidered for the Portuguese those wonderful fabrics, glittering with gold and radiant with colours, which cover the beds and hang the rooms throughout Portugal and Spain.[218] The precious metals (often forming the whole grounding) were employed without stint; the patterns being either embroidered in coloured silks and gold; or on velvets or satins, with gold alone or mixed with silver.

The fine gold threads for embroidery, which have preserved their brilliancy for so many centuries, such as we find worked in Charlemagne's dalmatic, in Aelfled's maniple, and in the mitres of Thomas a Becket, are certainly Oriental. To England they came in the bales of the merchants who brought us our silk, and even our needles, from India. Later we imported and copied the different ways of giving effect to inferior metals, and the Spaniard's gilt parchment thread reached us from their Moorish manufactories.[219]

Designs were sometimes, in the sixteenth century, worked in gold twisted with coloured silks, sometimes only st.i.tched down with them.

The badges of the Order of the Dragon, inst.i.tuted by the Emperor Sigismund, were thus embroidered, and placed on the cloaks of the knights. The work was so perfect that it resembled jewels of enamelled gold. Two ancient ones are in the Museum at Munich.

Gold or silver or base metal wire was, in the later Middle Ages and down to our own times, much employed in the form of what is called "purl," i.e. coiled wire cut into short lengths, threaded on silk, and sewn down. German, Italian, and English embroideries were often enriched with this fabric. Sometimes the wire was twisted with coloured silks before it was coiled. There are beautiful specimens of this work of the days of Queen Elizabeth.

Still, throughout Europe the best works were carried out with the best materials, and these always came from the East. But we sometimes find that the pressure of circ.u.mstances has for a time caused the employment of adulterated metals that have perished; and thus many fine works of art have been spoiled.[220]

The use of bad materials has therefore been as unfortunate for art as that of pure gold, which has tempted so many ignorant persons to burn golden embroideries and tapestries, and melt down the ore they contain. How little of all that human skill and invention have carefully elaborated is now preserved to us! To gold and silver textiles their materials have been often a fatal dower.

It has sometimes puzzled any but the most experienced embroiderers to distinguish between the stuffs woven with the golden threads on the surface, and finely brocaded or patterned in the loom; and those other cloths, embroidered by hand, which have been so manipulated that hardly an atom of the gold can be detected at the back. This is done by a technical mode of treating the surface, which is more easily shown than described. The gold is really drawn into the s.p.a.ces between the threads of the canvas or linen grounding, but never pulled through. For many reasons this is an advantage, and when executed cunningly, as it was in England in the twelfth century, it is rich, beautiful, lasting, and economical. It is a peculiar mark of the "opus Anglicanum," and it is to be seen in the mitre at Munich, where this st.i.tch is employed on a white satin ground;[221] also in the working of the two pluvials at San Giovanni Laterano at Rome, and at the Museum at Bologna, as well as that at Madrid, which are all three English of the thirteenth century, by design as well as by st.i.tches.

I cannot close this chapter without naming the many schools of gold embroidery in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. The King of Bavaria has an establishment for gold work, and this is very finely carried out, highly raised, and richly designed.[222] In Spain there is also a Royal School, where stately works are executed.

It is to be regretted that the modern designs are motiveless, and not so beautiful as the old ones, and it is very difficult to have any ancient piece of work copied exactly. Little modernisms creep in wherever the pattern has to be fitted into a new shape; for the accomplished needlewoman is seldom an artist.

All honour is due to certain manufacturers at Lyons who are working in the spirit of the old masters, and have been seriously considering how best to reproduce the beautiful soft surface of the gold thread of which the secret was lost in the fifteenth century.[223]

The old Chinese flat gold was, about the sixteenth century, superseded by what was manufactured in Spain, and is no longer imported or, perhaps, even made.

6. SILK.

The origin and history of silk is learnedly and elaborately discussed in Yates' "Textrinum Antiquorum." He gives us his authorities, and literal translations for the benefit of the unlearned, who cannot read the original texts. I have availed myself without hesitation of his quotations, and of the carefully considered opinions he has drawn from them.

It has been already said that wool and flax preceded silk in Egyptian, Greek, and Roman manufactures. There is no certain mention of silk in the Books of the Old Testament.[224] Silk is, however, named in the Code of Manu.[225]

No shred of silk has been found in any Egyptian tomb, nor till lately, and with one exception only, in those of the Greeks.

Auberville says, "La soie ne fit son apparition en Europe que 300 ans avant notre ere."[226]

Pamphile, daughter of Plates, of Cos, is said by Aristotle to have there first woven silk (300 B.C.). Probably raw silk was brought to Cos from the interior of Asia, and Pamphile is by some supposed to have "effiled" the solid manufactured silks, and woven them again into gauzy webs. Yates suggests that it is possible that Pamphile obtained coc.o.o.ns and unwound them, as the pa.s.sage in Aristotle may be so interpreted.

The specimen of early silk-weaving which we have above alluded to, was taken out of the "Tomb of the Seven Brothers" at Kertch, in the Crimea, and is of the third century B.C. It consists of several bits of very transparent painted silk. These fragments are an actual and yet a contemporary witness to the truth of the tradition of Pamphile's Coan webs, which are of the same date: possibly they were her handiwork.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pl. 34.

1. Cla.s.sical Silk. Greek. (Semper's "Der Stil," p. 192.) 2.

Cla.s.sical Silk. Roman. (Auberville, pl. 4.)]

Whether Pamphile's silk gauzes were the only fine webs of Cos,[227] is a disputed question. She has the credit of being the first to clothe victorious generals in triumphal garments, and she has been immortalized by her cleverness and industry. Both Aristotle and Pliny a.s.sert that she first invented the Coan webs, and that some of them were of silk is undoubted. The question is, How came it there?

whence and by what route? and what country was its original home and birthplace?

After stating the _pros_ and _cons_ of the question, how and where did silk first make its appearance, Sir G. Birdwood concludes that both the worm and the coc.o.o.n were known to the Greeks and Romans, by report and rare specimens, from the time of Alexander's return from his Indian campaign.[228]

Of course the remains of these fabrics are extremely scarce; and, in fact, only two are at present known to me besides the Kertch specimen.

The first is given in Semper's "Der Stil," and is evidently cla.s.sical Greek or Roman; but the silk material might have been effiled from an Oriental stuff (pl. 34, No. 1). The second must have been originally a Roman pattern, modified by the Persian loom in which it was woven.

This may have been a Roman triumphal robe of the date of Julius Caesar (pl. 34, No. 2).