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/424

 8336.

Piece of Silk Net-Work, formerly crimson. The design is evidently circular, and consists of a lozenge filled in with two other very much smaller lozenges touching each other lengthwise. Milanese, end of the 16th century.

This curious little piece of frame-work seems to be another specimen of the lace of Milan, concerning which a notice has been given under No. 8331. Some would take it to be crochet, but it looks as if it came from a loom. To our thinking, it was either the heel or the toe part of a silk stocking. Though of a much finer texture, it much resembles, in pattern, the yellow silk pair of stockings belonging now to the Marquis of Salisbury, but once presented by Lord Hunsdon to Queen Elizabeth, and said to be the first ever made in England.

8837.

Piece of Crimson Raised Velvet, with pattern of pomegranates, flowers and scrolls embroidered in gold thread and coloured silks. Genoese, beginning of the 16th century.

This piece affords a very instructive instance of how velvet textiles were not unfrequently treated. The pattern was first wrought in the weaving, and made the fabric what is now known as cut or raised velvet. Then those parts left bare of the silken pile were filled in by hand-embroidery, done in gold, silver, and silks of various colours, as the fancy of the individual might like, and produced a mixed work similar to the one before us. The velvet itself of this specimen is poor in colour and thin in substance, but the gold thread is of the finest, and admirably put together; and those little specks of the crimson silk employed in sewing it on, help, in no small manner, to heighten its brilliancy and effect.