Textile Fabrics: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Collection of Church-vestments, Dresses, Silk Stuffs, Needlework and Tapestries, Forming that Section of the Museum

Like every other specific collection of art labour among the several such brought together within these splendid halls of the South Kensington Museum, this extensive one made from woven stuffs, tapestry, and needlework, is meant to have, like them, its own peculiar useful purposes. Here, at a glance, may be read the history of the loom of various times and in many lands. Here may be seen a proof of the onward march of trade and its consequent civilizing influences. Here we take a peep at the private female life in ages gone by, and learn how women, high-born and lowly, spent or rather ennobled many a day of life in needlework, not merely graceful but artistic. Here, in fine, in strict accordance with the intended industrial purposes of this public institution, artizans, designers, and workers in all kinds of embroidery, may gather many an useful lesson for their respective crafts, in the rare as well as beautiful samples set out before them.

The materials out of which the articles in this collection were woven, are severally wool, hemp, flax, cotton, silk, gold, and silver. The silken textures are in general wholly so; in many instances they are wrought up along with either cotton, or with flax; hence, in ancient documents, the distinction of “holosericum,” all silk, and “subsericum,” not all silk, or the warp—that is, the longitudinal threads—of cotton or flax, and the woof—that is the cross-threads of silk. Very seldom is the gold or the gilt silver woven into these textiles found upon them in a solid wire-drawn form, but almost always, after being flattened very thin, the precious metal was wound about a very small twist of cotton, or of flax, and thus became what we call gold thread. As a substitute for this, the Moors of Granada, and after them the Spaniards of that kingdom, employed strips of gilded parchment, as we shall have to notice.