Saracenic scroll in light blue, light green, and crimson (now faded). Moresco-Spanish, 14th century. 1 foot 1-3/4 inches by 5-3/4 inches.
This unmistakeable specimen of a Saracenic loom would seem to
have been wrought somewhere in the south of Spain, may be at
Granada, Seville, or Cordova.
As a sample of its kind it is valuable, showing, as it does, that the same feelings which manifested themselves upon Moorish ornamentation for architecture were displayed in the patterns of textiles among that people. The fraud, so to say, of gilt shreds of parchment for threads covered with gold is exemplified here; and hence we may gather that the Spaniards of the mediæval period learned this trick from their Saracenic teachers in the arts of the loom. As in No. 8590, &c, so here, the gold ground is wrought, not in thread twined with gold foil, but with gilt vellum cut into very narrow filaments, and worked into the warp so as to lie quite flat.
8640.
Piece of Silk Damask; ground, light blue; pattern, a circle elaborately filled in with a wreath of leaves edged with a hoop of fleur-de-lis, and enclosed in an oblong garland made up of boughs and flowers, in a slightly deeper tone of the same blue. Italian, early 15th century. 1 foot by 8-1/2 inches.
So very like in design to No. 8637, that we may presume it to have
been wrought at Lucca.
8641.
Part of an Orphrey; ground, once crimson, but now faded to a light brown colour; pattern, quatrefoils, with angles between the leaves, embroidered with male saints in various colours upon a golden ground. Each quatrefoil is separated by a knot of three interlacings, and the sides filled in with a pair of popinjays, gold and green, and two boughs of the
