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/182



chasuble was in its first old fulness, the design on both parts came out in all its minuteness; now, it is so broken as not to be discernible at first. In front the orphrey is very narrow, and of a sort of open lace-*work in green and gold; on the back the orphrey is very broad, 1 foot 1-1/2 inches, and figured with the Crucifixion, the Blessed Virgin Mary standing on our Lord's right hand, St. John the Evangelist on His left; below, the Blessed Virgin Mary crowned as a queen and seated on a royal throne, with our Lord as a child sitting on her lap; lower still, St. Peter with two keys—one silver, the other gold—in his left hand, and a book in the right; and St. Paul holding a drawn sword in his right, and a book in his left; and, last of all, the stoning of St. Stephen. All the subjects are large, and within quatrefoils; as much of the body of our Lord as is uncovered on the Cross, and the heads, hands, and feet in the other figures, as well as those parts of the draperies not gold, are wrought by needle, while the golden garments of the personages are woven in the loom.

This very interesting chasuble has a history belonging to it, given in "The Gentleman's Magazine," t. lvi. pp. 298, 473, 584, by which we are taught to believe that it has always been in England; belonging once to it were a stole and maniple, upon which latter appliance were four armorial shields, which would lead to the idea that it had been expressly made for the chapel of Margaret de Clare, Countess of Cornwall, who is known to have been alive 1294. That time quite tallies with the style of the stuff of which this chasuble is made; and though now so worn and cut away, it is one of the most curious in this or any other country, and particularly valuable to an English collection.

675.

Piece of the Bayeux Tapestry; ground, white linen; design, two narrow bands in green edged with crimson (now much faded) with a very thin undulating scroll in faded crimson, and green between them. English, 11th century. 3-1/4 inches by 2-1/2 inches.

Though done in worsted, and such a tiny fragment of that great but debated historical work, it is so far a valuable specimen as it shows the sort of material as well as style and form of stitch in which the whole was wrought. In the "Vetusta Monimenta," published by the Society