Needlework As Art Part 19

"Then might be seen Corinthians and Thebans of both s.e.xes, employed in weaving velvet stoles interwoven with gold, and serving like the Eretrians of old among the Persians."[256]

Hugh Falcandus[257] has left a description of the Royal manufactory at Palermo, and the Hotel de Tiraz which absorbed all the smaller Saracenic factories already started. The Hotel de Tiraz had four great workshops, in which were separately carried on the weaving of plain tissues, velvets, examits and satins, and flowered stuffs (damasks), and lastly, gold brocades and embroideries. It was from the last that proceeded the real works of art, and the embroideries with pearls and precious stones.[258] The highest efforts of the loom were apparently finished with the needle,[259] as in the figured textiles of Egypt.

The continuity of Sicilian textile designs from the sixth to the sixteenth centuries (a thousand years) is very remarkable. Owing to its originally strongly stamped Oriental character, great knowledge of the arts of weaving, spinning, and dyeing silk is required to enable any one to a.s.sign an exact date to materials which only remodelled their style three times.

Dr. Rock's rules for deciphering these three dates may, however, be easily learned, as they are broad and simple. In his comprehensive "Introduction to the Textiles in the Kensington Museum" (p. lxvii) he says that the three defined periods of silk-weaving in Sicily are: First, from the time of Justinian to the Hohenstaufen (from the sixth to the twelfth century); secondly, from the accession of Frederick I.

(Barbarossa), 1152, to Charles IV., 1347 (twelfth to fourteenth centuries); the third period is of one century only, from 1347 to 1456.

The first period especially shows African animals, such as the giraffe and the different kinds of antelopes, mixed with Arabian mottoes; and the patterns are generally woven with gold. This is merely gilt parchment, the silk being mingled with cotton.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pl. 35.

Peac.o.c.k Pattern. Silk Wrapping on the body of St. Cuthbert. Durham.]

The second period, beginning in the twelfth century, shows the arrival of Count Roger's Persian and Greek workmen, captives from Thebes, Corinth, and Athens. The fresh designs show fragments of Greek taste, such as masks and foliage, and give one a slight foretaste of the Renaissance.[260]

These semi-cla.s.sical echoes are contemporary in the Sicilian looms with such Norman motives as a crowned sovereign riding with a hawk upon his wrist.

This description singularly applies to the relics removed from the tomb of St. Cuthbert, at Durham, in 1827; among which are fragments of three wrappings, or garments of silk, so suggestive of the artistic traditions of many nationalities, and the long descent of patterns, recognizable after the lapse of centuries, that a description of them, accompanied by ill.u.s.trations, can hardly fail to be interesting. They are all now reduced by time to a rich golden brown, though there are indications that blue, green, and red have been woven into their fabric, and there are also on one of them traces of gilding. The first (plate 35) shows Oriental conventional peac.o.c.ks, double-headed and collared, framed within circles which slightly intersect each other, thus giving the opportunity for varying the original motive by breaking up the rolling arabesqued pattern, and uniting the stems and flowers contained in the border. The s.p.a.ces between the circles are filled in with gryphons in pairs, of the Babylonian stamp, thick limbed with strongly-marked muscles. There is a border or guimp, Persian in character, in which are small crosses surmounting repet.i.tions of the crenelated pattern found in a.s.syrian ornament.

The second piece of silk contains a large rosace. Scattered about it are repet.i.tions of the Persian leaf or tree of life, and the border consists of kneeling hares or fawns between a Persian arabesque and a corded line. The mixture of Egyptian and a.s.syrian styles is remarkable throughout, till we come to the centre of the rosace, where we find a most incongruous man in armour on horseback with a hawk on his wrist, giving the Norman stamp of the reigning house and influence in Sicily.

The central subject is exactly repeated on an embroidered twelfth century chasuble in the treasury of the Cathedral of Bamberg, only that a royal crown and robes are worn by the horseman (pl. 36).[261]

The third specimen is the most noteworthy (plate 37). There is nothing of a.s.syrian here, but it reminds one of Egyptian and Greek art, and at once suggests Count Roger's Greek slaves at the Sicilian looms, but the design is probably of a much earlier date, and the subject is puzzling. A piece of drapery resembling an Egyptian sail with its fringes[262] (pl. 38) is looped up on each side to the head of a thyrsus, and above it hangs a large cl.u.s.ter of fruits. The lower part of the drapery rests upon water, and is somewhat like a boat, with ducks swimming towards it, and fish disporting themselves in the rippling waves. Between the circles the ducks are repeated, facing a shield enriched with rows of the crenelated pattern surmounted by a vine.

These fragments have belonged each to a very large and freely woven silk shawl or mantle. The circles are about two feet across. There is a different arrangement of the threads in each web, giving different fine diapers, and the last described has a raised pattern which might have been intended to represent water.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pl. 36.

NORMAN AND PERSIAN TYPE.

A Silk Wrapping on the body of St. Cuthbert. Durham.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pl. 37.

GRaeCO-EGYPTIAN STYLE.

A Silk Wrapping on the body of St. Cuthbert. Durham.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pl. 38.

Boat with coloured sail, from the tomb of Rameses III. at Thebes.

(Wilkinson's "Ancient Egyptians," iii. p. 211.) Explanatory of the design on St. Cuthbert's silk shroud, pl. 37.]

It is most likely that in the twelfth century, or even a little later, the body of St. Cuthbert was wrapped in these shawls, and so left when at the Reformation, his shrine was destroyed, and the coffer containing his remains buried in the same place, and piously concealed till our own day. I shall describe the beautiful embroideries in which the body had been clothed in the tenth century when I come to the subject of English work.

The third period of silk-weaving art is unmistakably Sicilian. At the end of the thirteenth century and beginning of the fourteenth, Palermo struck out her own line. The Greek cross appears in various forms. The designs are of a wonderful richness and capricious ingenuity. They show alike Asiatic, African, and European animals, and every kind of mythological creature--griffins, dragons, dogs, and harts, with large wings; swans, pheasants, and eagles, single or double-headed, often pecking at the sun's rays; beautifully drawn foliage and flowers, and heraldic emblems and coats-of-arms. One peculiarity of the third period is the frequent use of green patterns on "murrey"-coloured grounds.

All this splendour of design was commonly lavished on poor material.

The silks continued to be mixed with cotton, and the gold, or rather the gilding, was so base that it has almost always become black on the foundation strips of parchment or paper.[263]

The heraldic silks are mostly of the time of the Crusades, when the distinguished pilgrims and warriors, especially the English, made Sicily their half-way house to the Holy Land, and brought from thence fabrics woven to suit their tastes. In Auberville's book we find, under the dates of many centuries, the most remarkable fragments now known. On portrait-tombs and in some very ancient pictures are figured beautiful silks woven in gold, which are recognizable at once by their Arab-Sicilian style. Of this type, the remarkable fragment of the dress of Richard II., in the Kensington Museum, dates itself, by carrying the cognizances of his grandfather and his mother, and the portrait of his dog Math.[264]

The last period of the Sicilian silks is especially marked by the inscriptions being mostly nonsense, and only woven in as ornament, with the forms of Arab lettering.[265]

Sir G. Birdwood says that whether the Saracens found the manufacture of silk already established in India or not, they certainly influenced the decorative designs. He adds that kincobs are now woven at Ahmedabad and Benares, identical in design with the old Sicilian brocades; while the Saracenic Sicilian silks abound in patterns which prove their origin in a.s.syrian, Sa.s.sanian, or Indian art.

We know that the Saracens introduced colonies of Persian, and probably Indian workmen into Spain, after the beginning of the ninth century, to a.s.sist them in their architecture and textile manufactures, and in return the Mogul emperors of Delhi invited many Italian and French designers into India.

The Taj and other buildings in Rajpootana are decorated with exquisite mosaics coeval with those of Austin of Bordeaux. Their styles of art in textiles, and in other materials, have acted and reacted upon each other; and nothing throws more light on the affinities and the development of the modern decorative arts of Europe than the history of the introduction, under Justinian, of the silk manufactures from the East into the West.[266]

From Palermo, all the stages of the manufacture of silk spread themselves over Italy and into Spain. According to Nicolo Tegrini, the flourishing silk-weavers of Lucca having been ejected from the city in the early part of the fourteenth century, carried their art elsewhere, and even to Germany, France, and Britain.[267]

Italian weavers went to Lyons in 1450, and so started the silk industry that it has steadily increased till now. It gives employment to about 31,000 looms and 240,000 workpeople of both s.e.xes.

The Moors, when they overflowed into Iberia, carried with them all their Orientalisms, traditions, manufactures, and designs; thus disobeying their prophet, who forbade the use of silk except to women.

Senhor F. de Riano tells us that from the ninth to the eleventh centuries, Spain was producing fine silk tissues. The Moorish Cordovese writer, Ash-Shakandi, who lived in the beginning of the thirteenth century, says, "Malaga is famous for its manufactures of silks of all colours and patterns, some of which are so rich that a suit made of them will cost many thousands. Such are the brocades with beautiful designs and the names of the Caliphs, Ameers, and other wealthy people woven into them."[268]

The same author, speaking of the manufactures of silk at Almeria, says that thence came the brightest colours; and Al-Makhari adds a list of precious silk tissues, naming the "Tiraz," the "Iscalaton," and the robes called each by its own special name.[269] Ash-Shakandi also mentions the looms of Murcia, and its carpets.[270]

When the Moors were driven from Spain, the silk works of Malaga and Almeria were ruined. But those of Valencia became famous, and flourish to this day. Talavera della Reina also produces fine ecclesiastical fabrics, and at Toledo the ancient traditions are preserved, and they still weave sixteenth-century designs.

In Italy, Genoa, Florence, and Milan followed the Sicilian silk manufactures, and each has left specimens of the craft, of which Rock has pointed out the marked individualities.

The rich stuffs with inscriptions inwoven in gold, in the Middle Ages, were called "literatis."

The designs of Lucca at first imitated the Moorish Sicilian type; and introduced as their speciality, white figures, such as angels in white garments, and exchanged the Oriental intricate patterns for a bolder and simpler style.

Venice, of course, also showed at first the Oriental impress; but she soon struck out a line of her own; and her especial invention was shown in weaving, from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, square pieces of silken tissue, representing sacred subjects.

Florentine tissues, especially their velvet and gold brocades, were particularly splendid, and can be recognized by the loops of gold thread drawn to the surface and left there. Of these early Florentine gold brocades we have still beautiful examples in the palls of our City companies and in ancient ecclesiastical vestments. The loops of gold have been the custom since the thirteenth century, and still prevail in certain traditional fabrics, for instance, in the banners woven annually for the prizes at the horse races in Florence. The Corsini family, who have for many generations and for hundreds of years competed in these races, had, in their princely palace at Rome, a room entirely hung with the silk of these gorgeous banners.

In Hungary, Queen Gisela, in the eleventh century, established looms for weaving silk; and many convents throughout Europe and in England wove silken tissues for the service of the Church, till the great manufactures absorbed these partially private enterprises.[271]

Individual exertion produced copies, or motives that are taken from Eastern, Southern, or Northern inspirations; but it is only in large national schools of arts or crafts that an absolutely recognizable style becomes apparent. For example, the early French silks from monastic establishments are not remarkable for either style or texture till the sixteenth century, when they came to the front as a national manufacture, and have held the highest place in silk-weaving ever since.

The Flemish towns of Ypres, Ghent, and Mechlin were known for their silken webs in the thirteenth century, and at that time innumerable small schools of the craft seem to have covered Europe. They are constantly named in the lists of fine furnishings in Germany. In England, France, and Germany, as well as in the Low Countries, each convent had, besides its silk-weaving looms, its workshops for embroideries on silk, woollens, and linens, borrowing from the Byzantine Empire, Sicily, and Spain, their designs and patterns.

About this time (the thirteenth century), Marco Polo resided and travelled in Asia. He visited the princ.i.p.al cities of Syria, Persia, Khotan, and Cathay, and from him we have information of the different Asiatic textiles, generally bearing the name of the city where they were woven. He names, for instance, the mediaeval "baudas" and "baudakin" (with endless modifications in the spelling), from Baghdad.

This afterwards gave the word baldachino to the awning or canopy over the altar, which it retained even when textiles had given place to marbles and mosaics.[272]

Satin is only found named in catalogues about the fourteenth century.

But the dalmatic of Charlemagne, at Rome, is embroidered on a stout blue satin, and has never been transferred; and at Constantinople, Baldwin II., at his coronation in 1204, was shod and clothed in vermilion satin embroidered with jewels; while all the Venetian and French barons present were clad in satin.[273] Semper and Bock believe that it had been a Chinese material long before it reached Europe.

Satin was often called "blattin," in connection with the colour of the cochineal insect (blatta), whose dye was invariably used for satin. We cannot tell, however, which was certainly named from the other.[274]

In the poem of "The Lady of the Fountain," translated by Lady Charlotte Guest from the Welsh ballads of the thirteenth century, silk and satin are often named. At the opening of the poem, King Arthur is described seated on a throne of rushes, covered with a flame-coloured satin cloth, and with a red satin cushion under his elbow.

Fiery red was the orthodox colour for satin. In old German poems we find it described as "pfellat," always as being fiery. One kind of pfellat was called salamander.[275] Bruges satins were the most esteemed in the Middle Ages. Chaucer speaks of "satin riche and newe."[276]

Satin and velvet are the contrasting silken materials. In satin the threads are laid along so that the shining surface ripples with every ray of sunshine, and the shadows are melted into half-lights by the reflections from every fold. It makes a dazzling garment, splendid in its radiant sheen; whereas in velvet, where each thread is placed upright and shorn smoothly, all light is absorbed and there are no reflections, and the whole effects are solemn, rich, and deep.[277]

Some of the oldest velvets resemble plush in the length of their pile, and have not the dignity of velvet.

Semper, from the different derivations that have been suggested, selects the connection of the word "velvet" (German, _Felbert_) with "welf," the skin or fur of an animal.[278]