Needlework As Art Part 46

The word "orphrey" (English for auriphrigium or Phrygian gold embroidery) is first found in Domesday Book, where "Alvide the maiden"

receives from G.o.dric the Sheriff, for her life, half a hide of land, "If she might teach his daughters to make orphreys."[580]

In the end of the eleventh century, Christina, Abbess of Markgate, worked a pair of sandals and three mitres of surpa.s.sing beauty, sent through the Abbot of St. Alban's to Pope Adrian IV., who doubtless valued them the more because they came from his native England.[581]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pl. 74.

English Patterns, chiefly from Strutt's "Royal and Ecclesiastical Antiquities of England."

1. 1066. 2. 1092. 3. 1100. 4. 1171. 5. 1171. 6. 1189. 7. 1189. 8.

1361. 9, 10. 1377. 11. 1399. 12. 1422. 13. 1426. 14. 1440. 15.

1445. 16. 1416. 17. 1445. 18. 1477. 19. 1530. 20. 1272.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pl. 75.

1. Panel of a Screen in Hornby Church. Painted fifteenth century.

2. Dress pattern from painted gla.s.s. St. Michael's Church, York.

Fourteenth century.

3. A portion of the material of the Towneley Copes. Fifteenth century.]

Of the twelfth century (1170) we have the robes and mitres of Thomas a Becket at Sens; and another mitre of the period, white and gold, is in the museum at Munich, with his martyrdom embroidered on one side, and that of St. Stephen on the other. The gold needlework is so perfect that it resembles weaving. It is recorded that a splendid dress was embroidered in London for Elinor of Aquitaine, which cost 80, equal to 1400 of the value of to-day.[582]

Rock ("Church of our Fathers," t. ii. p. 279) truly says that it is shown by plentiful records and written doc.u.ments, from the days of St.

Osmond to the time of Henry VIII., that the materials employed in English ecclesiastical embroideries were the best that could be found in our own country or in far-off lands, and the art bestowed on them was the best we could learn and give. Various fabrics came from Byzantine or Saracenic looms, which are described as damasked, rayed, marbled, &c. The few surviving specimens fully justify the admiration bestowed on them throughout Christendom.

Matthew Paris, in the reign of Henry III., says that Innocent III.

(1246), seeing certain copes and infulae with desirable orphreys, was informed they were English work. He exclaimed, "Surely England is a garden of delight! In sooth this is a well inexhaustible! And where there is so much abundance, from thence much may be extracted!"[583]

From the Conquest to the Reformation the catalogues of Church vestments which are to be found in the libraries of York, Lincoln, and Peterborough, show the luxury of ecclesiastical decoration. In Lincoln alone there were upwards of 600 vestments wrought with divers kinds of needlework, jewellery, and gold, upon "Indian baudichyn," samite, tartarin, velvet, and silk. Even in reading the dry descriptions of a common inventory, we are amazed by the lists of "orphreys of goodly needlework," copes embroidered with armorial bearings, and knights jousting, lions fighting, and amices "barred with amethysts and pearls, &c. &c." The few I have named will give an idea of the acc.u.mulation of riches in the churches, and the gorgeousness of English embroideries.[584]

I have collected from Strutt's "Ill.u.s.trations"[585] and other sources a number of patterns for domestic hangings, copied from MSS. of contemporary dates, covering about 400 years, from the time of Harold to Edward IV. The hangings may have been more effective than appears at first sight, if the materials were rich and enlivened with gold. I give two textile designs which in their style are peculiarly English (plates 74, 75).

Now we enter on the age of romance and chivalry, when all domestic decorations began to a.s.sume greater refinement. Carpets from the East covered the rushes strewn on the floors, and splendid tents were brought home by crusading knights; and the decorative arts of northern Europe were once more permeated with Oriental taste and design.

We know that in the so-called "days of chivalry," i.e. from the Conquest till the beginning of Henry VIII.'s reign, needlework was the occupation of the women left in their castles, while the men were away fighting for the cross, for the king, for their liberties, or for booty.

This period included the Crusades, the Wars of the Roses, wars with France, and rebellions at home; and yet there was a taste for art, luxury, and show spreading everywhere.[586]

The women were expected to provide, with their looms and their needles, the heraldic surcoats, the scarves and banners, and the mantles for state occasions.[587] They also worked the hangings for the hall and chapel, and adorned the altars and the priests'

vestments. Alas! time, taste, and the moth have shared in the destruction of these gauds. The taste for the "baroc" is a new acquisition; no one cared for what was old, merely because it was old.

The rich replaced their hangings and their clothes when they became shabby; the poor let them go to pieces, and probably burned the old stuff and the embroideries for the sake of the gold thread, which was of intrinsic value. But both in prose and poetry we read descriptions of beautiful works in the loom, or on the frame, executed by fair ladies for the gallant knights whose lives and prowess these poems have preserved to us. I will give one quotation from that of Emare, in Ritson's collection: "Her mantle was wroughte by a faire Paynim, the Amarayle's daughter." This occupied her seven long years. In each corner is depicted a pair of lovers, "Sir Tristram and Iseult--Sir Amadis and Ydoine, &c., &c. These pictures were adorned with precious stones." The figures were portrayed--

"With stones bright and pure, With carbuncle and sapphire, Kalsedonys and onyx clere, Sette in golde newe; Diamondes and rubies, And other stones of mychel pryse."

The lady who owns this mantle is herself great in "workes of broderie."

From the Conquest to the Wars of the Roses, England may claim to have gradually acquired a higher place in art. Our architecture, sculpture, ma.n.u.scripts, and paintings were not surpa.s.sed on the Continent: witness Queen Eleanor's crosses, and her tomb in Westminster Abbey; and the portrait of Richard II., surrounded by saints and angels, at Wilton House,[588] a picture which, preceding Fra Beato Angelico's works by at least a quarter of a century, yet suggests his style, refined drawing, and tender colouring. All who saw the frescoes found in the Chapel at Eton College when it was restored, will remember their extreme beauty, and regret that they were effaced, instead of being preserved and restored. They were a lesson in what English art was in the end of the thirteenth, during the fourteenth, and into the beginning of the fifteenth centuries.

During the Wars of the Roses, when a duke of the blood-royal is said to have begged his bread in the streets of the rich Flemish towns, ladies of rank, more fortunate, were able to earn theirs by the work of their needle.[589]

The monuments of the eleventh and twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, are our best authorities for the embroideries then worn.

The surcoat of the Black Prince in Canterbury Cathedral is a noteworthy example. The sculptured effigy on the tomb over which it is suspended is absolutely clothed in the same surcoat, with the same accidents of embroidery, as if it had been modelled from it.

In Worcester, when the archaeologists opened King John's tomb in 1797, they found him in the same dress and att.i.tude as that portrayed on the rec.u.mbent statue.[590] Dress was then extravagantly expensive, and embroidered dresses were worn with borders richly set with precious stones and pearls.

The Librate Roll of Henry III. gives us a list of embroiderers' names: Alain de Basinge, Adam de Bakeryne, John de Colonia, &c.; and in the wardrobe accompts of Richard II., William Sanstoune and Robert de Ashmede are called the "Broudatores Domini Regis." These may have been the artists to whom the orders were delivered, for in the Librate Roll of Henry III. we find Adam de Baskeryne receiving 6_s._ 8_d._ for a "cloth of silk, and fringe, purchased by our commands to embroider a certain chasuble which Mabilia of St. Edmunds made for us." There were certainly then purveyors and masters of the craft. Stephen Vigner, in the fourteenth century, is so warmly commended by the Duke of Berri and Auvergne to Edward III., that Richard II. appointed him his chief embroiderer, and Henry IV. pensioned him for his skilful services.

John Garland, in the beginning of the thirteenth century, is a good authority for the use by our women of small hand-looms. In these they wove, in flax or silk (often mixed with gold), the "cingulae" or "blode-bendes" so often mentioned, supposed to be gifts between friends for binding the arm, when blood-letting was so much in fashion that the operation was allowed to a.s.sume a certain air of coquetry.

But the idea suggests itself that this was oftener the gift of the fair weaver to her favoured lover, to fold round his arm as a scarf in battle or tourney, to be ready in case it was needed for binding up a wound, and had possibly served as a snood to bind her own fair hair.

There is an account of a specimen of this kind of weaving by M.

Leopold Delisle.[591] He describes the attachment of a seal to a grant from Richard Cur de Lion to Richard Hommet and Gille his wife, preserved in the archives of the Abbey of Aunai, in the department of Calvados. He considers it to be either French or English, and says it was a "lac d'amour," or "tie of love," cut up to serve its present purpose. It is woven with an inscription in white on a ground of green, backed with pale blue, and the material is silk. The woven legend is thus translated from the old French--"Let him perish who would part us."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Opus Anglicanum, XIII. Century British Museum]

The term "opus Anglicanum" is first recorded in the thirteenth century, and is supposed simply to mean "English work." But there is also good authority for its having been applied, on the Continent especially, to a particular style of st.i.tchery, of which the Syon cope in the Kensington Museum is the best preserved great example known.

Its peculiarity consists in its fine split-st.i.tch being moulded so as to give the effect of a bas-relief; and this appears to have been generally reserved for the medallions representing sacred subjects, and especially employed in modelling the faces and the nude parts of the figures delineated. The effect of this work has often been destroyed, as time has frayed and discoloured the parts that are raised, exhibiting the canvas ground, reversing the high lights, and causing dark spots in their stead. This reversal of the intended effect is an additional practical argument for the flatness of embroidery.[592]

From the Librate Roll of Henry III. one can form an estimate of the value of the "opus Anglicanum" in its day.[593] In 1241 the king gave Peter de Agua Blanca a mitre so worked, costing 82. This would be, according to the present value, 230.

The finest specimens of this English work are to be found on the Continent, or have been returned from it.[594] They had either been gifts to popes or bishops before the Reformation, or they had been sold at that time of general persecution and pillage. Among the most remarkable are the pluvial (called) of St. Silvester at Rome, the Daroca pluvial at Madrid, the great pluvial at Bologna, and the Syon cope, of which I have already spoken. The general idea and prevailing design of these three great works are so singular, and yet so alike, that they must have issued from the same workshop, and that was certainly English.

In the Daroca cope the cherubim, with their feet on wheels, which are peculiar to English design, and the angels (in the vacant s.p.a.ces between the framed subjects from the life of our Lord) have their wings carefully done in chain split-st.i.tch representing peac.o.c.ks'

feathers, of which the silken eyes are st.i.tched in circles, and then raised with an iron by pressure, so as to catch a light and throw a shadow. The ground is entirely English gold-laid work. This cope, so markedly national in design and st.i.tches, probably drifted to the Continent at the time of the Reformation.[595]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pl. 77.

Characteristic English Pa.r.s.eme Patterns for Ecclesiastical Embroideries.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pl. 78.

Dunstable Pall. Property of the Vicar of Dunstable _ex officio_.]

A wonderfully preserved specimen of the "opus Anglicanum," of which a photogravure is here given, was lately presented by Mr. Franks to the Mediaeval Department of the British Museum (plate 76). In this may be seen most of the characteristics of this work in the thirteenth century; such as the angels with peac.o.c.k feather wings, moulded by hot irons; the features of all the figures similarly manipulated; the beautiful gold groundwork, which in this instance is covered with double-headed eagles; and lastly, the fashion of the beard on the face of our Lord and of all the men delineated--the upper lip and round the mouth being invariably shaven; whereas, in Continental work, the beard is allowed to grow into the moustache, closely surrounding the mouth. There are other peculiarities belonging to English design--such as the angels rising between the shrine-work on the pillars out of a flame or cloud pattern, and the pillars very often formed of twined stems bearing vine-leaves or else oak-leaves and acorns. The compartments which frame the groups, when they are not placed in niches, are usually variations of the intersected circle and square.

Plate 77 shows the cherubim which from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries are found on English ecclesiastical embroideries--also the vase of lilies (emblematic of the Virgin), and the Gothic flowers which are so commonly _pa.r.s.eme_ over our mediaeval altar frontals and vestments.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 26.]

It appears that in the reign of Edward III. the people ingeniously evaded the penalties against the excess of luxury in dress, by wearing something that looked as gay, but was less expensive than the forbidden materials; and which did not come under the letter of the law. They invented a spurious kind of embroidery which was, perhaps, partly painted (such examples are recorded). In the 2nd Henry VI.

(1422) it was enacted that all such work should be forfeited to the king. The accusation was that "divers persons belonging to the craft of Brouderie make divers works of Brouderie of insufficient stuffe and unduly wroughte with gold and silver of Cyprus, and gold of Lucca, and Spanish laton (or tin); and that they sell these at the fairs of Stereberg, Oxford, and Salisbury, to the great deceit of our Sovereign Lord and all his people." In those days any dishonest work or material was illegal and punishable.[596]

This was, in fact, a protectionist measure in favour of the chartered embroiderers, and gave them a slight taste of the advantages of protection. For a time it was doubtless useful in keeping up the standard of national work. Then followed further measures for the benefit of the established monopolies. First, a statute in 1453 (Henry VI.), forbidding the importation of foreign embroideries for five years. This is re-enacted under Edward IV., Richard III., and Henry VII.; and was partially repealed in the 3rd and 5th George III. While we are on this subject, we may remark that in 1707, the importation of embroidery was forbidden to the East India Company, and we closed our ports to all manufactured Indian goods. The only artistic trade _now_ protected is that of the silversmith; no plate from foreign workshops being permitted to enter England--not even do we allow Indian plate to come in, except under certain conditions. This may be the reason that our own plate is so very bad in design and execution, for want of compet.i.tion and example.

Protection is always more or less fatal to art. The Wars of the Roses had injured our own best schools, and we needed refined imported ideas to raise our standard once again. Perhaps, since embroidery had become a regular industry, our markets were overstocked by home productions which were outrivalled by the works from the Continent, and it was distress that caused the plea for protection.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pl. 79.

Pall of the Vintners' Company (sixteenth century).]

It is fair to say that some of the English works of that time, of which we have specimens, are as good as possible. In the Dunstable pall, for instance, the figures of which are perfectly drawn and beautifully executed, the style is excellent and pure English (plate 78). The pall itself is of Florentine crimson velvet and gold brocade, with the little loops of gold drawn through the velvet, showing the loom from whence it came. The white satin border carries the embroidery. It is a more perfect specimen of the later fourteenth century work than the famous pall of the Fishmongers' Company, which shows the impress of the Flemish taste, which was at its perfection in the fifteenth. The style reminds us of that of the fine tapestries from the St. Mary's Hall, Coventry, of which the subject is King Henry VI. and Cardinal Beaufort praying. The Vintners' Company's pall is also very fine (plate 79).

[Ill.u.s.tration: Henry VII.'s Cope from Stoneyhurst]

Of the time of Henry VII. we have the celebrated cope of Stoneyhurst, woven in Florence, of a gold tissue, the design raised in crimson velvet. It is without seam, and the composition which covers the whole surface is the crown of England lying on the portcullis; and the Tudor rose fills up the s.p.a.ce with a magnificent scroll. The design is evidently English, as well as the embroidery, which is, however, much restored[597] (plate 80).

This is one of the "whole suite of vestments and copes of cloth of gold tissue wrought with our badges of red roses and portcullises, the which we of late caused to be made at Florence in Italy ... which our king, Henry VII., in his will bequeathed to G.o.d and St. Peter, and to the Abbot and Prior of our Monastery at Westminster,"[598] which were designed for him by Torrigiano.