For beautifully wrought and figured silk, of the few terms that still outlive the mediæval period, one is Damask.
China, no doubt, was the first country to ornament its silken webs with a pattern. India, Persia and Syria, then Byzantine Greece, followed, but at long intervals between, in China's footsteps. Stuffs so figured brought with them to the west the name "diaspron" or diaper, bestowed upon them at Constantinople. But about the twelfth century, so very far did the city of Damascus, even then long celebrated for its looms, outstrip all other places for beauty of design, that her silken textiles were eagerly sought for everywhere, and thus, as often happens, traders fastened the name of Damascen or Damask upon every silken fabric richly wrought and curiously designed, no matter whether it came or not from Damascus. After having been for ages the epithet betokening all that was rich and good in silk, "Samit" had to be forgotten, and Diaper, from being the very word significant of pattern, became a secondary term descriptive of merely a part in the elaborate design on Damask.
Baudekin, that sort of costly cloth of gold spoken of so much during so many years in English literature, took, as we said before, its famous name from Bagdad.
Many are the specimens in this collection furnishing proofs of the ancient weavers' dexterity in their management of the loom, but especially of the artists' taste in setting out so many of their intricate and beautiful designs.
What to some will be happily curious is that we have this very day before our eyes pieces, in all likelihood, from the self-same web which furnished the material, centuries ago, for vestments and ornaments used of old in the cathedrals of England. Let any one turn to p. 122, and, after looking at number 7036, compare that silk with this item in the inventory of St. Paul's, London, A.D. 1225: "Item, Baudekynus rubeus cum Sampsone constringente ora leonum," &c.[1] See also number 8589, and number 8235.
An identification between very many samples, brought together here, of ancient textiles in silk, and the descriptions of such stuffs afforded us in those valuable records—our old church inventories—might be carried on, if necessary, to a very lengthened extent.
Dorneck was the name given to an inferior kind of damask wrought of silk, wool, linen thread and gold, in Flanders. Towards the end of the fifteenth century, mostly at Tournay, which city, in Flemish, was
- ↑ Dugdale's St. Paul's, p. 328.
