Fig. 262. Silk Damask; Eleventh Century; Early Saracenic (L. P).

Fig. 263. Silk Fabric of Iconium; Arabian; Thirteenth Century. (Lyons Museum).

Fig. 265. Apostolic Tree of Life, with the Cross Emblem.

Fig. 266. Silk Damask; Sicilian; with Imitated Arabic Characters. (R).

Fig. 267. Silk Damask; Sicilian; Fifteenth Century. (L. P).

From the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, and even later, Lucca in Tuscany, Genoa, Florence, and Venice were celebrated for the manufacture of silken brocades and velvets, which have been used for the dresses of priests, kings, and noblemen, as well as for hangings.

The dress patterns of those days were all of a very large size of diaper, such as are now only used for hangings and furniture coverings. The Venetian and Spanish pictures of the period contain many illustrations of these patterns on the dresses of the figures and hangings of the chambers.

In France the silk weaving industry was first established at Lyons about the middle of the sixteenth century. The designs of the first efforts of the French weavers were very similar if not copies of the prevailing Italian school, but soon after became more floral in character, and more and more realistic renderings of flowers and foliage, until about the eighteenth century, when they partook of the same character as the pottery and furniture decoration, which has been already described. During the Medi*˜val and Renaissance periods France, like England, imported silks and velvets from Italy and the East, and their linen and drapery from Flankers and Germany.

Bruges in Flanders was especially famous during the sixteenth century for its silks and velvets, and YprÅ s was even more so for its fine linens and damasks.

Very little silk was manufactured in England prior to 1629, when about this date a company of silkmen was formed in London. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 had the effect of firmly establishing the manufacture of silk in England by the colony of French refugees who settled at Spitalfields, St. Giles's, and Soho in London, and at Canterbury, Norwich, and Coventry. The trade soon afterwards spread to Manchester, Macclesfield, and Paisley in Scotland, and the first silk mill for spinning and throwing was erected at Derby by John Lombe in the year 1717, which was worked by water power.

The Designs For The Patterns Of English Silks

The Designs For The Patterns Of English Silks have always been more or less imitations of the prevalent French styles, and, in fact, England depended largely until late years on the efforts of French designers for nearly all of its textile patterns. This is not the case, however, to-day, for very few foreigners are now employed as designers by English manufacturers.

The chief seat of the velvet manufacture in Germany at the present day is Crefeld; Switzerland produces great quantities of silk, which is made chiefly at Zurich and the villages on the banks of the Lake of Zurich, at BÆ'sle, and other places.

China, the birthplace of silk, and younger Japan are still famed for their delicate fabrics in this material, from whence the raw products are imported extensively into Europe. In America the silk industry has made great headway of late years, the principal seat of the manufacture is the town of Paterson in New Jersey.

England has always held its own in the manufacture of woollen goods of good material, mostly of plain cloth, but sometimes inwrought or woven with designs of figures, animals, and foliage patterns. At Bath, Norwich, Worcester, and in the abbeys and great religious houses during the Middle Ages the monks employed a good deal of their time at the loom, and considerable quantities of their work were exported to the Continent during the fourteenth century. The town of Worsted in Norfolk has given the name - worsted - to a cloth made there from a new preparation of the woollen yarn, which consisted of a special twisting of the threads so as to make the yarn of a harder texture. This cloth has been used for church vestments, hangings, and bed coverings.

Cotton

Cotton, the woolly product of the cotton-tree, and the cloth made from it, has been known in India and the East from the earliest times.

Pliny mentions cotton under the name of a fabric called oxylina, made from the cotton that grew about the branches of the xylon or gossypium tree, or shrub, which grew in India, Upper Egypt, and Arabia.

The Romans imported cotton fabrics from India, and the priests of ancient Egypt used it for their dresses.

The Cotton Plant

The Cotton Plant was cultivated by the Moors in Spain about the beginning of the tenth century, and they were the first people in Europe to make cotton fabrics. They are also credited with the invention of fustian-making (Spanish, fustes)y a cotton material woven and afterwards cut precisely like velveit; it is generally thought that as fustian preceded the manufacture of velvet, the making of the latter may have been suggested to the Italians by the Spanish fustian.

In the year 1585, after the sacking of Antwerp, some Flemish weavers settled at Manchester - now the great seat of cotton manufacture in England - and commenced the new industry of cotton spinning and weaving. Before this date Manchester and its neighbourhood were noted for the weaving of linen. The linen yarn was imported from Ireland, woven at Manchester, and the cloth sent back for distribution and sale in Ireland and other parts of the kingdom.

The power of production in cotton goods was enormously increased by the inventions of Arkwright with his water-frame spinning machine, Hargreaves, who in 1770 invented the spinning-jenny, and by Compton, who improved on the latter by his invention of the mule-jenny in 1779.

In 1785 Dr. Cartwright invented an automatic loom, which others improved on, when finally Horrocks, of Stockport, in 1803 brought to a successful issue his invention of the power-loom now in general use.

Cotton Printing And Dyeing

Cotton Printing And Dyeing in colours have been successfully practised in India, Asia Minor, the Levant, and in the East generally from the earliest times. The patterns found in the commoner prints and chintzes of to-day have still reminiscences of Indian and Persian ornament.

Most of the English designs in cotton prints of the more important classes have a strong tendency to floral patterns of a naturalistic type, the outcome of the imitation of French silk patterns that were common in the early part of this century.

Calico Block-Printing

Calico Block-Printing was introduced into England about the middle of the eighteenth century by Robert Peel - the grandfather of the first baronet - who cut his own blocks. Printing by means of cylinders was invented in 1785. Previous to the invention of calico printing "painted cloths" of linen and other fabrics were used as hangings and in the general furnishing of English apartments.

Fig. 268. Silk Damask; Florentine; Fifteenth Century.

Fig. 269. Diaper in Velvet Brocade; Italian; Sixteenth Century.

Fig. 270. Velvet Brocade; Italian; Sixteenth Century.