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/209

 1256.

Fragments of Narrow Orphrey Web; ground, crimson; design, in gold ramified scrolls, with beasts and birds. English or French, 13th century, 10-1/2 inches by 3 inches.

This very handsome piece is another specimen of the small loom worked by young women, as before noticed; and may have served either for sacred or secular use. The band is parted into spaces by a thin chevron, and each division so made is filled in with tiny but gracefully-twined boughs, among which some times we have a pair of birds, at others a pair of collared dogs; at top another arrangement took place, but no more of it remains than the body of a lion.

1257.

Silk and Thread Tissue; ground, stripes of red, green, and yellow; design, rows of circles, large and small, with a conventional flower between, the large circles red, the small ones merely outlined in white. Greek, 13th century. 8-1/4 inches by 6 inches.

Even when new it must have been flimsy, and could have served but for a lining. Of exactly the same design, but done in other and fewer colours, a specimen now at Paris is figured in the "Mélanges d'Archéologie," tome iii. plate 15.

1258.

Silk and Cotton Damask; ground, yellow; design, a net-work with six-sided meshes, each filled in with flowers and foliage in deep dull purple. Italian, late 13th century. 14 inches by 10 inches.

The well-turned and graceful foliation to be seen in architectural scroll-work, on monuments raised at the period, enters largely into the design; and for its pattern, though poor for the quantity of its silk, this specimen is very good.