On the under side is a figure of St. Paul, with long beard, holding a
silver sword in his right hand. He wears a blue under-garment, with red
and orange upper robe, all edged with silver twist. The feet of both
figures are bare. The rest of the design is the same on both sides. The
skies are worked in large stitches of blue and yellow silk and silver
threads, graduating from dark to light; above these are canopies of
silver thread, couched, and vandyked at the edge. Enclosing the figures
are arches with columns, in high relief in silver cords and threads. The
inner edge of the arch is curiously marked by a line of brown silk
worked over a strip of vellum in the manner used for hand-worked
head-bands, and the outer edge has 'crockets' of silver guimp. The
columns rest upon 'rams-horn' curves, heavily worked in relief with
silver threads, the insides of the curves worked in brown silk over
vellum like the inner edge of the arch.
_Metal Threads used on Embroidered Books._
Guimp and gold threads are largely used, as has already been noticed,
in embroidered books from early times, but on the next specimen of a
canvas-bound book I have chosen for description, dated 1642, a kind of
metal thread occurs which is very curious. It is used at an earlier date
on satin books, and it is also found more commonly upon them; but as I
have put the canvas books first for the purpose of description, and the
'thread' occurs in one of them, this is the best place to put its
description. This thread I call 'Purl,' and a thread with this name is
mentioned in several places as having been used in England in the
seventeenth century; but there is no description of it, so that this
thread may not be the 'purl' mentioned by the seventeenth-century
writers, but if it is not, I do not know what purl is, neither do I know
any other special name for the thread. In order that there may be no
doubt as to what I mean by purl, I will shortly describe the thread as I
know it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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