Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/778

754 stantinople and Venice, all in the process of time becom- ing famous centres of these much prized manufactures. Alexander the Great found Indian kings and princes arrayed in robes of gold and purple; and' the Persian monarch Darius, we are told, wore a war mantle of cloth of gold, on which were ﬁgured two golden hawks as if peeking at each other. There is reason, according to Josephus, to believe that the “royal apparel ” worn by Herod on the day of his death (Acts xii. 21) was a tissue of silver. Agrippina, the wife of the emperor Claudius, had a robe woven entirely of gold, and from that period downwards royal personages and high ecclesiastical digni- taries used cloth and tissues of gold and silver for their state and ceremonial robes, as well as for costly hangings and decorations. In England, at different periods, various names were applied to cloths of gold, as ciclatoun, tar- tariuni, naques or nac, baudekin or baldachin, Cyprus damask, aud twssewys or tissue. The thin flimsy paper known as tissue paper, is so called because it originally was plaeed between the folds of gold “tissue” to prevent the contiguous surfaces from fraying each other. At what time the drawing of gold wire for the preparation of these tex— tiles was ﬁrst practised is not accurately known. The art was probably introduced and applied in different localities at widely different dates, but down till medizeval times the method graphically described in the Pentateuch continued to be practised with both gold and silver. Fabrics woven with gold and silver continue to be used on the largest scale to this day in India; and there the preparation of the varieties of wire, and the working of the various forms of lace, brocade, and embroidery, is at once an important and peculiar art. The basis of all modern fabrics of this kind is wire, the “gold wire ” of the manufac- turer being in all cases silver gilt wire, and silver wire being, of course, composed of pure silver. In India the wire is drawn by means of simple draw-plates, with rude and simple appliances, from rounded bars of silver, or gold- plated silver, as the case may be. The wire is ﬂattened into the strip or ribbon-like form it generally assumes by passing it, fourteen or ﬁfteen strands simultaneously, over a fine, smooth, round-topped anvil, and beating it as it passes with a heavy hammer having a slightly convex surface. From wire so ﬂattened there is made in India som'ri, a tissue or cloth of gold, the web or warp being composed entirely of golden strips, and ruperi, a similar tissue of silver. Gold lace is also made on a warp of thick yellow silk with a weft of ﬂat wire, and in the case of ribbons the warp or web is composed of the metal. The flattened wires are twisted around orange (in the case of silver, white) coloured silk thread, so as completely to cover the thread and present the appearance of a continuous wire; and in this form it is chieﬂy employed for weaving into the rich brocades known as kincobs or kinkhabs. Wires flattened, or partially ﬂattened, are also twisted into exceed- ingly ﬁne spirals, and in this form they are the basis of numerous ornamental applications. Such spirals drawn out till they present a waved appearance, and in that state ﬂattened, are much used for rich heavy embroideries termed karchobs. Spangles for embroideries, &c., are made from spirals of comparatively stout wire, by cutting them down ring by ring, laying each C-like ring on an anvil, and by a smart blow with a hammer ﬂattening it out into a thin round disk with a slit extending from the centre to one edge. Fine spirals are also used for general embroidery purposes. The demand for various kinds of l(_)0m—wovcu and embroidered gold and silver work in India. is immense; and the variety of textiles so ornamented is also very great. “Gold and silver,” says Dr Birdwood in his Handbook (0 ﬁle British-Indian ,5'ecu'on, ’aris Jz'a'lu'bitiun, 1878, “are worked into the decoration of all the more costly loom- made garments and Indian piece goods, either on the borders only, or in stripes throughout, or in diapered figures. The gold-bordered loom embroideries are made chieﬂy at Sattara, and the gold or silver striped at Tanjore ; the gold ﬁgured mas/u‘us at Tanjore, T richinopoly, and Hyderabad in the Deccan ; and the highly ornamented gold-figured silks and gold and silver tissues principally at Ahmedabad, Benares, Murshedabad, and Trichinopoly.” Among the Western communities the demand for gold and silver lace and embroideries arises chiefly in connexion with naval and military uniforms, court costumes, public and private liverics, ecclesiastical robes and draperies, theatrical dresses, and the badges and insignia of various orders. T o a limited extent there is a trade in gold wire and lace to India and China. The metallic basis of the various fabrics is wire round and flattened, the wire being of three kinds—1st, gold wire, which is invariably silver gilt wire ; 2d, copper gilt wire, used for common liveries and theatrical purposes ; and 3d, silver wire. These wires are drawn by the ordinary processes, and the ﬂattening, when done, is accomplished by passing the wire between a pair of revolving rollers of ﬁne polished steel. The vari- ous qualities of wire are prepared and used in precisely the same way as in India,—round wire, ﬂat wire, thread made of ﬂat gold wire twisted round orange-coloured silk or cotton, known in the trade as “orris,” fine spirals and spangles, all being in use in the West as in the East. The lace is woven in the same manner as ribbons, and there are very numerous varieties in richness, pattern, and quality. Cloth of gold, and brocades rich in gold and silver, are woven for ecclesiastical vestments and draperies. The proportions of gold and silver in the gold thread for the lace trade varies, but in all cases the proportion of gold is exceedingly small. An ordinary gold lace wire is drawn from a bar containing 90 parts of silver and 7 of copper, coated with 3 parts of gold. On an average each ounce troy of a bar so plated is drawn into 1500 yards of wire 5 and therefore about 10 grains of gold cover a mile of wire. It is estimated that about 250,000 ounces of gold wire are made annually in Great Britain, of which about 20 per cent. is used for the headings of calico, muslin, &e., and the re- mainder is worked up in the gold lace trade.

 

 GOLDAST, (–1635), an historical writer and collector whose works did great service to the study of the older documents of Germany, was born, January 0, (or ), of poor Protestant parents, near lischofzell in Thurgau. IIis university career at Ingoldstadt I and Altdorf was cut short by his poverty; but at length, in, after he had spent Some time at St Gall and Geneva, partly supported by the learned and benevolent jurist Bartholomeus Schobinger, he obtained the post of secre- tary to Henry, duke of Bouillon, and with him he went : to Heidelberg and Frankfort-on-the-Main. But Goldast, though able and laborious, had fallen into an unsettled way of life, and in we ﬁnd him in the service of the Baron IIohensax—then the possessor of that unique manuscript of old German poems which new forms one of the treasures of the National Library at Paris, and which Goldast was the ﬁrst to make partially accessible by the press. Before long he was back in Switzerland, and by 1606 he was again in Frankfort living by his pen, and ﬁnding his efforts to obtain a regular post frustrated by Lipsius and Scioppius, whom he had offended by his out« spokenness. In 1611 he was appointed councillor at the