Page:Textile fabrics; a descriptive catalogue of the collection of church-vestments, dresses, silk stuffs, needle-work and tapestries, forming that section of the Museum (IA textilefabricsde00soutrich).pdf/140

 made sometimes of ogee arches, with their finials shooting forwards outside: thus is diapered the cloak of the Madonna, in Crivelli's Inthronement—No. 724. Much more frequently, however, this oval is put together out of architectural cusps—six or eight—turned inside, and their featherings sprouting out into a trefoil, as in our own Early English style. Such ovals round an artichoke are well shown in each of the four pictures by Melozzo da Forli, on the pede-cloth with which the steps in each of them are covered. Of such a patterned stuff here we select from several such, for the reader, Nos. 1352, p. 70; 1352, p. 70.

Stained and patterned papers for wall-hanging are even yet unknown but in a very few places on the Continent. The employment of them as furniture among ourselves is comparatively very modern, and came to England, it is likely, through our trade with China. Though in Italy the state apartment and the reception rooms of a palace are hung always with rich damasks, and often with fine tapestry, while some old examples of gilt and beautifully-wrought leather trailed all over with coloured flowers and leaves are still to be found, the rooms for domestic use have their whitewashed walls adorned at best with a coloured ornamentation, bestowed upon them by the cheap and ready process of stencilling.

From early times up to the middle of the sixteenth century, our cathedrals and parish churches, our castles, manorial houses, and granges, the dwellings of the wealthy everywhere, used to be ornamented with wall-painting done, not in "fresco," but in "secco;" that is, distemper. Upon high festivals the walls of the churches were overspread with tapestry and needle-work; so, too, those in the halls of the gentry, for some solemn ceremonial.

Our high-born ladies used to spend their leisure hours in working these "hallings," as they were called; and while Bradshaw, a monk of St. Werburgh's monastery at Chester, sings the praises of the patron-saint of his church, he gives us a charming picture of how a large hall was arrayed here in England with needlework, for a solemn feast some time about the latter end of the fifteenth century.

First of all, according to the then wont, when great folks were bidden to a feast:—

All herbes and flowers, fragraunt, fayre and swete Were strawed in halles, and layd under theyr fete. Clothes of gold and arras were hanged in the hall Depaynted with pyctures and hystoryes manyfolde, Well wroughte and craftely.