Arts and crafts in the Middle Ages : $b a description of mediaeval workmanship in several of the departments of applied art, together with some account of special artisans in the early RenaissanceAddison, Julia de Wolf
History
Arts and crafts in the Middle Ages : $b a description of mediaeval workmanship in several of the departments of applied art, together with some account of special artisans in the early Renaissance
Addison, Julia de Wolf
Arts and crafts movement; Decoration and ornament, Medieval; Decorative arts -- History; Illumination of books and manuscripts
Costumes for tournaments were also lavish in their splendour. In
1467 Benedetto Salutati ordered made for such a pageant all the
trappings for two horses, worked in two hundred pounds of silver
by Pollajuolo; thirty pounds of pearls were also used to trim the
garments of the sergeants. No wonder Savonarola was enthusiastic
in his denunciation of such extravagance.
Henry VIII. had "a pair of hose of purple silk and Venice gold,
woven like a caul." For one of his favoured lady friends, also,
there is an item, of a certain sum paid, for one pound of gold
for embroidering a nightgown.
The unrivalled excellence of English woollen cloths was made manifest
at an early period. There was a fabric produced at Norwich of such
superiority that a law was passed prohibiting monks from wearing it,
the reason being that it was considered "smart enough for military
men!" This was in 1422. The name of Worsted was given to a certain
wool because it was made at Worsted, a town in Norfolk; later the
"worsted thread" was sold for needleworkers.
Ladies made their own gold thread in the Middle Ages by winding
a fine flat gold wire, scarcely of more body than a foil, around
a silk thread.
Patches were embroidered into place upon such clothes or vestments
as were torn: those who did this work were as well recognized as
the original designers, and were called "healers" of clothes!
Embroidered bed hangings were very much in order in mediaeval times
in England. In the eleventh century there lived a woman who had
emigrated from the Hebrides, and who had the reputation for witchcraft,
chiefly based upon the unusually exquisite needlework on her bed
curtains! The name of this reputed sorceress was Thergunna. Bequests
in important wills indicate the sumptuous styles which were usual
among people of position. The Fair Maid of Kent left to her son her
"new bed curtains of red velvet, embroidered with ostrich feathers
of silver, and heads of leopards of gold," while in 1380 the Earl
of March bequeathed his "large bed of black satin embroidered with
white lions and gold roses, and the escutcheons of the arms of
Mortimer and Ulster." This outfit must have resembled a Parisian
"first class" funeral! The widow of Henry II. slept in a sort of
mourning couch of black velvet, which must have made her feel as if
she too were laid out for her own burial!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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