Textiles and Embroideries

Great Britain.

For many centuries Great Britain was pro vided with the silks it needed from abroad. Henry VII., when he desired to give some vestments to Westminster Abbey, had specially woven for him at .Florence at great cost some mag nificent fabrics of red velvet and cloth of gold with a pattern of roses and portcullises. One of these vestments is still preserved at Stoneyhurst college (Plate VIII., fig. 3).

In the 16th century much silk was worn in England, but very little was woven, and Italy was still the chief source of supply. In the following century, in a speech from the throne James I. urged mulberry-planting for rearing the silkworm. It was tried, and foreign weavers were brought in. Silk culture did not pros per, on account of the late spring, but weaving went on, and there were already large numbers employed when the revocation of the edict of Nantes brought in many thousands more refugees con nected with the silk industry. Voltaire, who spent some years in England a generation later, speaks of an entire suburb of Lon don (i.e., Spitalfields) peopled with French manufacturers of silk. Others settled in Soho, Long Acre or Seven Dials. Weaving in dustries also grew up at Canterbury, Norwich, Sandwich and other provincial towns. It was claimed that the Canterbury stuffs equalled any foreign silk.

During the 18th century the brocades of Spitalfields followed pretty closely the work of Lyons, and it is not always possible to distinguish between the two. Although gold and silver thread were made in the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate, metal threads were not so freely used by the Spitalfields weavers, and patterns tended to be a little simpler. The industry has now left Spitalfields, and subsequent work in East Anglia, though shrunken in output, still maintains the same high standard of craftsmanship and materials.

Persia and Turkey.

When Persia emerged again from alien rule early in the i6th century under the Safidian dynasty, a new era for the arts was inaugurated. The Shahs had their own estab lishments of craftsmen with a director-general, and overseers for the separate crafts. Some followed the movements of the court, others were settled on the royal estates and in convenient centres. The best materials were supplied, and there was no stint of labour or expense. Under such conditions, some of the most remarkable stuffs ever woven were done in Persia. The most sumptuous

velvets, with human figures, birds and trees, often on a gold ground, were made (Plate XIV., fig. 2). Brocades represented historical scenes, figures, landscapes, animals, birds and flowers. The floral patterns of Persian stuffs are unsurpassed anywhere in the world. During the i8th century and subsequently, foreign intercourse has led in some degree to the adaptation of European patterns.

What is geographically classified as "Turkish" art is not the indigenous art of the once nomad Turkish tribes who ultimately overran Asia Minor and south-eastern Europe and there estab lished a heterogeneous empire. It is the art of the conquered races under Turkish rule. Nevertheless there does gradually emerge, in those lands a unified art, largely under Persian influence, but not altogether unaffected by the relations of the Ottoman Porte with Italy (particularly with Venice) in the 16th and subse quent centuries. A brocade in the Lyons Museum, with a pattern of pairs of lions within roundels, in gold thread on a red silk ground, has an Arabic inscription giving the name of Kai Kuba' d, the Seljuk Turk, sultan of Iconium (Konieh) in Asia Minor in the early years of the 14th century.

This important stuff shows some affinities with Byzantine art. In the i6th century velvet brocades recalling the contemporary lobed or "Gothic" patterns of Italy but with a strong oriental bias, were woven in Turkey both for home use and for export.

Embroidery.

Like all other crafts, embroidery had its origin in the daily needs of humanity. The problem how to join two edges of a fabric together must have arisen very early, and even a seam, as so many oriental embroideries show, may be treated decora tively. Once the needle was invented, whether a sharp fish-bone, a thorn, a pointed stick, or a metal wire, the natural instinct to pass the limits of mere utility and to indulge in decoration would make itself felt. A good deal of what has been said above about woven patterns is applicable to embroideries. A few embroideries, mostly in wool, though gold thread occurs as well, were among the stuffs found in Greek graves in the Crimea (see above). One in particular, of the 4th century B.C., shows an Amazon on horse back. In later Roman times embroidery was practised very much in the same way as it is today, as examples from Egypt show.