Textile Fabrics: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Collection of Church-vestments, Dresses, Silk Stuffs, Needlework and Tapestries, forming that Section of the MuseumRock, Daniel
History
Textile Fabrics: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Collection of Church-vestments, Dresses, Silk Stuffs, Needlework and Tapestries, forming that Section of the Museum
Rock, Daniel
Art objects -- England -- London -- Catalogs; Textile fabrics
answer, shows the fiery stump of his tongue in his gaping mouth. But
the dragon will not give himself up and be led away captive. Now,
however, comes the grand fight. In a forest, with a bird perched on
high upon one of the trees, the knight, dismounted from his horse,
cuts off the head of the dragon, which, to the last, is careful to
show his much shortened yet still fiery tongue to his victor. Now have
we the last passage but one in the story. Upon his bended knee the
triumphant knight is presenting the open-mouthed, tongueless, cut-off
dragon’s head to the king and queen, both throned and royally arrayed,
the princess, their daughter, standing by her mother’s side. The young
maiden, no doubt, is the victor’s prize; but now--and it is the last
chapter--the knight and lady, dressed in the weeds of daily life and
walking forth upon the flowery turf, seem happy with one another as
man and wife. The two panes at this part, and serving as a border,
seem out of place, and neither has a connection with the other; in the
first, just outside a castle wall, rides a crowned king followed by
a horseman, evidently of low degree; and a column separates him from
a large bed, lying upon which we observe the upper part of a female
figure, the head resting upon a rich cushion; next to this, but put in
anglewise to fill up the space, we have a crowned lady and a girdled
knight, sitting beneath a tree, each with a little dog beside them.
The costume of both men and women in this curious piece of cut-work
is that of the end of the 14th century. The parti-coloured dress of
the men, their long pointed shoes, and the broad girdles, worn so low
upon their hips by the king and knight, as well as the bascinet and
helmet of the latter, with the horses’ trappings, all speak of that
period; nor should we forget the sort of peaked head-dress, as well as
the way in which the front hair of the ladies is thrown up into thick
short curls. All the human figures, all the beasts, as well as the
architecture, are outlined in thin leather or parchment once gilt, but
now turned quite black. With the same leather, too, were studded the
belts of the king and knight, and the spangles and golden enrichments
of the ladies’ dress were of the same material. Saving here and there
a few stitches of silk, everything else was of worsted, and that none
of the finest texture. With such small means a good art-work was
produced, as we see before us. The way in which each figure over the
whole of this curious piece of cut-work is outlined by the leather
edging strongly reminds us of the leadings in stained glass; in fact,
both the one and the other are wrought after the same manner, and the
principal difference between the window and the woollen hanging is
the employment of an opaque instead of a transparent material. If the
personages are dressed sometimes in blue, at others in crimson, it
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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