- siastical textile which, from the very general use to which it has been
applied, we have named "orphrey web." Since by far the greater part of this collection, as it now exists, had been made in Germany, beginning with Cologne, it is, as might be expected, well supplied with specimens of a sort of stuff, if not peculiar, at least abounding in that country. Those same liturgical ornaments which Venice and Florence wove with such artistic taste for Italian church use, Cologne succeeded in doing for Germany. Her productions, however, are every way far below in beauty Italy's like works. The Italian orphrey-webs are generally done in gold or yellow silk, upon a crimson ground of silk. Florence's are often distinguished from those of Venice by the introduction of white for the faces; Cologne's vary from both by introducing blue, while the material is almost always very poor, and the weaving coarse.
The earliest specimen here of this Cologne orphrey-web is No. 8279, p. 174; but it is far surpassed by many others, such as are, for instance, to be found at pp. 61, 62, 63, 64, 69, 80, 82, 116, 117, 118, 119, 174, 175, 252, 253. Among these some have noticeable peculiarities; No. 1329, p. 61, a good specimen, has the persons of the saints so woven that the heads, hands, and emblems are wrought with the needle; the same, too, in Nos. 7023, p. 118, and 8667, p. 252; in No. 1373, though the golden ground looks very fresh and brilliant, the gilding process, as on wood, has been employed. Here in England this orphrey web was in church use and called "rebayn de Colayn."[1]
The piece of German napery at No. 8317, p. 190, of the beginning of the fifteenth century will be to those curious about household linen, an acceptable specimen.
If by hazard while reading some old inventory of church vestments the reader should stumble upon some entry mentioning a chasuble made of cloth of Cologne, let him understand it to mean not a certain broad textile woven there, but merely a vestment composed of several pieces of this kind of web sewed together, just as was the frontal made out of pieces of woven Venice orphreys at No. 8976, p. 271.
The countries whence silks came to us are numerous; with
confidence, however, we may say, that till the middle of the fifteenth
century, when we began to weave some of them for ourselves, the whole
geography of silken textiles lay within the basin of the Mediterranean to
the west, and the continent of Asia to the east.
Though mention is often made of tissues coming from various places, those cities are always to be found upon the map we have just marked
- ↑ Testamenta Eborac, iii. 13.
