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/522



love-knots, a regal crown. By the sides of this device are several small panes, exhibiting fanciful patterns of flowers, &c: but in most of them the true-love-knot as well as the strawberry plant, in one combination or another, are the principal elements; and in one of the squares or panes the ornamentation evidently affects the shape of the capital letter S; upon the other side, with an orle of knots of different kinds, is figured a mermaid on the sea, with a comb in one hand, and on one side of this pane is shown a high-born dame, whose fan, seemingly of feathers, is very conspicuous. Underneath the mermaid are shown, upon a field vert, a man with a staff, amid four rabbits, each with a strawberry-leaf in its mouth, and at each far corner a stag. As on the other side, so here the larger squares are surrounded by smaller ones displaying in their design true-love-knots, strawberries, acorns, roses, white and red, and in one pane the combination, in a sort of net-*work, of the true-love-knot with the letter S, is very striking. In Scotland several noble families, whether they spell their name Fraser or Frazer, use, as a canting charge in their blazon, the frasier or strawberry, leafed, flowered, and fructed proper; the buck, too, comes in upon or about their armorial shields. And this may have been worked by a member of that family.

9047A.

Silk Damask; ground, white; pattern, wreaths of flowers and fruits, in net-work, each mesh filled in with two peacocks beneath a large bunch of red centaurea, or corn-flowers. Sicilian, late 15th century. 2 feet 3-1/2 inches by 1 foot 8 inches.

The garlands of the meshes, made out of boughs of oak bearing red and blue acorns, have, at foot, two eagles red and blue; at top, two green parrots beneath a bunch of pomegranates, the fruit of which is red and cracked, showing its blue seed ready to fall out. The corn-flower is spread forth like a fan. This stuff shows the mark of Spanish rule over the two Sicilies.