George Edmund Street: Unpublished Notes and Reprinted PapersStreet, George Edmund
History
George Edmund Street: Unpublished Notes and Reprinted Papers
Street, George Edmund
Architecture, Gothic; Church architecture -- Europe; Europe -- Description and travel; Street, George Edmund, 1824-1881
But what is most rare and curious is a collection of ancient linen
altar-cloths, which I had great trouble in getting a sight of, and
which I could not draw, as the curator of the museum insisted on
showing them himself, and when I wished to draw them, told me that he
had already himself drawn them: this, as may be imagined, was a very
poor source of comfort to me.
There was a corporal about 2 feet square, and fringed; along the edge
of which was worked an arcade with figures of saints, the dresses
stitched in a regular pattern all over, and the folds left plain:
the date of this was about A.D. 1280. There was another embroidered
corporal which I managed to get a drawing of: this was 2 feet square,
with a large cross in the centre and four smaller crosses in the
corners; the whole worked in a cross-stitch with blue and red on the
white linen. Date, I think, about 1450.
Then there were two linen cloths for the altar: one, 14 ft. long by 3
ft. 10 in. wide, with a great number of figures of prophets surrounded
with branching foliage; from the character of the figures, I date this
at about A.D. 1400. All the outlines of the figures, leaves, etc. were
marked with coloured ink borders on the linen before the work was done:
the hair and points of the dresses here and there were marked with
bright colour, but generally the work was all in white thread,--the
stitches rather long, and arranged in regular patterns and diapers.
Another linen cloth of the same size has the whole history of Reynard
the Fox: a curious subject, it may be thought, for an altar-cloth; but
I may remark that I found the same subject in the bosses of the under
church.
Besides this there was a magnificent linen dalmatic with apparels
beautifully worked and fringed with white, red, white, blue,
alternately. The orphreys had been taken off. The apparels of the
sleeves were a succession of medallions, six to each sleeve, containing
the Twelve Apostles, and the apparel at the bottom of the dalmatic had
in front our Lord and two saints, and at the back S. Mary the Virgin,
SS. Peter and Paul. The work was most beautiful, and, I have no doubt
of the end of the thirteenth century.
I believe there were other things of the same kind, but I fear my
curiosity rather disgusted the curator, who was not very anxious to let
me see very much of these precious and invaluable relics.
The exterior of S. Katharine will be best understood by my sketches.
The most noticeable fact is that some of the tracery in the eastern
part is of stone enclosed within a brick arch, and exceedingly good
in its effect; proving satisfactorily that this is the real way to use
brick and stone together. There is no comparison between these windows
and all the other windows in Lübeck. The rest are all ugly: these quite
beautiful.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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