and likely done at Cologne, in the sixteenth century, the gold is put by the gilding process.
In the year 1295, St. Paul's, London, had: "Casula de panno inaurato super serico," a chasuble of gilded silk;[1] and it was lined with red cloth made at Ailesham,[2] or Elesham Priory in Lincolnshire. It had, too, another chasuble, and altar frontals of gilded canvas: "casula de panno inaurato in canabo, lineata carda Indici coloris cum panno consimili de Venetiis ad pendendum ante altare."[3] Venice seems to have been the place where these gilded silks and canvases, like the leather and pretty paper of a later epoch, were wrought. As gold, so too
Silver,
was hammered out into very thin sheets, which were cut into narrow long shreds to be woven, unmixed with anything else, into a web for garments fitting for the wear of kings. Of this we have a striking illustration in the "Acts," where St. Luke, speaking of Herod Agrippa, tells us that he presented himself arrayed in kingly apparel, to the people, who to flatter him, shouted that his was the voice, not of a man, but of a god; and forthwith he was smitten by that loathsome disease—eaten up by worms—which shortly killed him.[4] This royal robe, as Josephus informs us, was a tunic all made of silver and wonderful in its texture. Appearing in this dress at break of day in the theatre, the silver, lit up by the rays of the early morning's sun, gleamed so brightly as to startle the beholders in such a manner that some among them, by way of glozing, shouted out that the king before them was a god.[5]
Intimately connected with the raw materials, and how they were wrought in the loom, is the question about the time when
Wire-Drawing
was found out. At what period, and among what people the art of working up pure gold, or gilded silver, into a long, round, hair-like thread—into what may be correctly called "wire"—began, is quite unknown. That with their mechanical ingenuity the ancient Egyptians bethought themselves of some method for the purpose, is not unlikely. From Sir Gardiner Wilkinson, we learn that at Thebes there was found the appearance of gold wire.[6] Of those remarkable pieces of Egyptian handicraft the corslets sent by King Amasis—one to Lindus, the second to Lacædemon—of which we have already spoken (p. xiv.), we may fairly pre-*
