It would be unavailing to seek for the origin of this art in Great Britain; it is one as ancient as any now existing, and must have been imported from the East. Still it is not out of our power to shew from contemporaneous sources, that whilst it was practised at a very early period in this country, the specimens which found their way to foreign lands were most highly prized for their beauty. Embroidery is comparatively a modern term, (Brit. Brout, Brout, acupingere, and Brwyd instrumentum aeu pingendi; Lat. Barb. Brustus, Brusdus, Aurobrastus, Brodatus, Bacuatus; Pr. Broderie;) the art in question is better known in medieval writers under the title of aurifrasium, or anrifrigium, the opus Phrygium; Fr. frange d'or, or work of gold, and hence the different names of Orfrais, Orfrays, or Orfreys, words indicating in their general signification, borders, guardings, facings, or any parts of a material in which gold tambour was used. It is not the opus plumatum of the Romans, for that was feather tapestry, resembling the dresses worn by the natives of Central America. There is clearly a distinction to be made in the various applications of the word plumatæ. When Lucan so fervidly describes the extraordinary change introduced by the Imperial Cleopatra into the habits and domestic economy of the Roman citizens, his use of the words pars auro plumata nitet, implies couches embroidered with gold, in the same way as Appian speaks of the togæ pictæ; but the Glossaries, which are our best authority, render the title plumarius a feather dyer, and the opus plumarii or opus plumatum, certainly, even as Seneca (Epis. 90.) speaks of it, denotes a work in which feathers form the chief ornament.
English embroidery has consistently enough been called the opus Anglicanum, from being a manufacture extensively and skilfully pursued in our own country. These Orfrais are continually mentioned by medieval writers, but as will be gathered from the ensuing extracts, their appropriation was various. In the Roman de Rose, for instance, the word is found in connection with the head:—
Et un chapeau d'Orfrays eut neuf.
Le plus beau fut de dix-neuf,
Jamais nul jour où je n'avoye
Chapeau si bien ouvré de soye.
And again, as Chaucer speaks of them:—
Richesse a robe of purple on had,
