Of the several raw materials which from the earliest periods have been employed in weaving, though not in such frequency as silk, one is gold: which, when judiciously brought in, adds not a barbaric but artistical richness. The earliest written notice which we have about the employment of this precious metal in the loom, or of the way in which it was wrought for such a purpose, is in the Pentateuch. Among the sacred vestments made for Aaron was an ephod of gold, violet, and purple, and scarlet twice dyed, and fine twisted linen, with embroidered work; and the workman cut also thin plates of gold and drew them small into strips, that they might be twisted with the woof of the aforesaid colours. Instead of “strip,” the authorised protestant version says “wire;” the Douay translation reads “thread:” but neither can be right, for both of these English words mean a something round or twisted in the shape given to the gold before being wove, whereas the metal must have been worked in quite flat, as we learn from the text.
The use of gold for weaving, both with linen or by itself, existed almost certainly among the Egyptians long before the days of Moses. The psalmist describing the dress of the king’s daughter (that is, Pharaoh’s daughter), not only speaks of her being “in raiment of needlework” but that “her clothing is of wrought gold.” In order to be woven the precious metal was at15 first wrought in a flattened, never in a round or wire shape. To this hour the Chinese and the people of India work the gold into their stuffs after the ancient form. In the same fashion, even now, the Italians weave their lama d’oro, or the more glistening toca: those cloths of gold which to all Asiatic and many European eyes do not glare with too much garishness, but shine with a glow that befits the raiment of personages in high station.
Among the nations of ancient Asia garments made of webs dyed with the costly purple tint, and interwoven with gold, were on all grand occasions worn by kings and princes. So celebrated did the Medes and Persians become in such works of the loom, that cloths of extraordinary beauty got their several names from those peoples, and Medean, Lydian, and Persian textiles were everywhere sought for.
Writing of the wars carried on in Asia and India by Alexander the great almost four centuries before the birth of Christ, Quintus Curtius often speaks about the purple and gold garments worn by the Persians and more eastern Asiatics. Among the many thousands of those who came forth from Damascus to the Greek general, Parmenio, numbers were so clad: “They wore robes splendid with gold and purple.” All over India the same fashion was followed in dress. When an Indian king with his two sons came to Alexander, the three were so arrayed. Princes and the high nobility, all over the east, are called by Quintus Curtius “purpurati.” Not only garments but hangings were made of the same costly fabric. When Alexander wished to give some ambassadors a splendid reception, the golden couches upon which they lay to eat their meat were screened with cloths of gold and purple; and the Indian guests themselves were not less gorgeously clothed in their own national costume, as they came wearing linen (perhaps cotton) garments equally resplendent.
The dress worn by Darius, as he went forth to do battle, is thus described by the same historian: “the waist part of the royal purple tunic was wove in white, and upon his mantle of16 cloth of gold were figured two golden hawks as if pecking at one another with their beaks.”
From the east this love for cloth of gold reached the southern end of Italy, and thence soon got to Rome; where, even under its early kings, garments made of it were worn. Pliny, speaking of this rich textile, says: “gold may be spun or woven like wool, without any wool being mixed with it.” We are told by Verrius that Tarquinius Priscus rode in triumph in a tunic of gold; and Agrippina the wife of the emperor Claudius, when he exhibited the spectacle of a naval combat, sat by him covered with a robe made entirely of gold woven without any other material. About the year 1840 the marquis Campagna dug up near Rome two old graves, in one of which had been buried a Roman lady of high birth, inferred from the circumstance that all about her remains were found portions of such fine gold flat thread, once forming the burial garment with which she had been arrayed for her funeral.
When pope Paschal, A. D. 821, sought for the body of St. Cecily who was martyred in the year 230, the pontiff found the body in the catacombs, whole and dressed in a garment wrought all of gold, with some of her raiment drenched in blood lying at her feet. In making the foundations for the new St. Peter’s at Rome the workmen came upon and looked into the marble sarcophagus in which had been buried Probus Anicius, prefect of the Pretorian, and his wife Proba Faltonia, each of whose bodies was wrapped in a winding-sheet woven of pure gold strips. The wife of the emperor Honorius died sometime about the year 400, and when her grave was opened, in 1544, the golden tissues in which her body had been shrouded were taken out and melted, amounting in weight to thirty-six pounds. The late father Marchi also found among the remains of St. Hyacinthus several fragments of the same kind of golden web.
Childeric, the second king of the Merovingean dynasty, was buried A. D. 482, at Tournai. In the year 1653 his grave was17 discovered, and amid the earth about it so many remains of pure gold strips were turned up that there is every ground for thinking that the Frankish king was wrapped in a mantle of golden stuff for his burial. We have reason to conclude that the strips of pure gold out of which the burial cloak of Childeric was woven were not round but flat, from the fact that in a Merovingean burial ground at Envermeu the distinguished arch?ologist Cochet a few years ago came upon the grave once filled by a lady whose head had been wreathed with a fillet of pure golden web, the tissue of which is thus described: “Ces fils aussi brillants et aussi frais que s’ils sortaient de la main de l’ouvrier, n’étaient ni étirés ni cordés. Ils étaient plats et se composaient tout simplement de petites lanières d’or d’un millimètre de largeur, coupée à même une feuille d’or épaisse de moins d’un dixième de millimètre. La longeur totale de quelques-uns atteignait parfois jusqu’à quinze ou dix-huit centimètres.”
Our own country can furnish an example of this kind of golden textile. On Chessel down, in the isle of Wight, when Mr. Hillier was making some researches in an old Anglo-saxon place of burial, the diggers found pieces of gold strips, thin and quite flat, which are figured in M. l’abbé Cochet’s learned book just mentioned. Of the same rich texture must have been the vestment given to St. Peter’s at Rome in the middle of the ninth century, and described in the Liber Pontificalis as made of the purest gold, and covered with precious stones: “Carolus rex sancto Apostolo obtulit ex purissimo auro et gemmis constructam vestem, etc.”
Such a weaving of pure gold was, here in England, followed certainly as late as the beginning of the tenth century; very likely much later. In the chapter library belonging to Durham cathedral may be seen a stole and maniple, which bear these inscriptions: “?lfflaed fieri precepit. Pio episcopo Fridestano.” Fridestan was consecrated bishop of Winchester A. D. 905. With these webs under his eye, Mr. Raine writes thus: “In the first,18 the ground work of the whole is woven exclusively with thread of gold. I do not mean by thread of gold, the silver-gilt wire frequently used in such matters, but real gold thread, if I may so term it, not round, but flat. This is the character of the whole web, with the exception of the figures, the undulating cloud-shaped pedestal upon which they stand, the inscriptions and the foliage; for all of which, however surprising it may appear, vacant spaces have been left by the loom, and they themselves afterwards inserted with the needle.” Further on, in his description of a girdle, the same writer tells us: “Its breadth is exactly seven-eighths of an inch. It has evidently proceeded from the loom; and its two component parts are a flattish thread of pure gold, and a thread of scarlet silk.” Another very remarkable piece, a fragment (probably) of a stole, was also found lately at Durham in the grave of bishop Pudsey, who was buried about the middle of the twelfth century. This was exhibited at the Society of antiquaries, in the present year, 1875. It is made of rich silk, with a diaper pattern in gold thread.
This love for such glittering attire, not only for sacred use but secular wear, lasted long in England. The golden webs went under different names; at first they were called “ciclatoun,” “siglaton,” or “siklatoun,” as the writer’s fancy led him to spell the Persian word common for them at the time throughout the east.
By the old English ritual plain cloth of gold was allowed, as now, to be used for white when that colour happened to be ordered by the rubric. Thus in the reign of Richard the second, among the vestments at the chapel of St. George, Windsor castle, there was “one good vestment of cloth of gold:” and St. Paul’s, London, had at the end of the thirteenth century two amices embroidered with pure gold.
This splendid web was often wrought so thick and strong that each string, whether it happened to be of hemp or of silk had in the warp six threads, while the weft was of flat gold shreds. Hence such a texture was called “samit,” a word shortened from19 its first and old Byzantine name “exsamit.” The quantity of this costly cloth kept in the wardrobe of Edward the first was so great, that the nobles of that king were allowed to buy it out of the royal stores; for instance, four pieces at thirty shillings each were sold to Robert de Clifford, and another piece at the same price to Thomas de Cammill. Not only Asia minor but the island of Cyprus, the city of Lucca, and Moorish Spain, sent us these rich tissues. With other things left at Haverford castle by Richard the second were twenty-five cloths of gold of divers suits, of which four came from Cyprus, the others from Lucca: “xxv. draps d’or de diverses suytes dount iiii. de Cipres les autres de Lukes.” How Edward the fourth liked cloth of gold for his personal wear may be gathered from his wardrobe accounts, edited by Nicolas; and the lavish use of this stuff ordered by Richard the third for his coronation is recorded in the Antiquarian Repertory.
A “gowne of cloth-of-gold, furred with pawmpilyon, ayenst Corpus Xpi day” was bought for Elizabeth of York, afterwards queen of Henry the seventh, for her to wear as she walked in the procession on that great festival. The affection shown by Henry the eighth and all our nobility, men and women, of the time, for cloth of gold in their garments was unmistakingly set forth in many of the paintings brought together in the very instructive exhibition of national portraits in 1866, in the South Kensington museum. The price of this stuff seems to have been costly; for princess (afterwards queen) Mary, thirteen years before she came to the throne, “payed to Peycocke, of London, for xix yerds iii. q?t of clothe of golde at xxxviij.? the yerde, xxxvijli. xs. vjd.” And for “a yerde and dr q?t of clothe of siluer xls.”
As between common silk and satin there runs a broad difference in appearance, one being dull, the other smooth and glossy, so there is a great distinction to be made among cloths of gold; some are, so to say, dead; others, brilliant and sparkling. When the gold is twisted into its silken filament it takes the deadened20 look; when the flattened, filmy strip of metal is rolled about it so evenly as to bring its edges close to one another, it seems to be one unbroken wire of gold, sparkling and lustrous. This kind during the middle ages went by the term of Cyprus gold; and rich samits woven with it were allied damasks of Cyprus.
As time went on cloths of gold had other names. What the thirteenth century called, first, “ciclatoun,” then “baudekin,” afterward “nak,” was called, two hundred years later, “tissue”: a bright shimmering golden textile. The very thin smooth paper which still goes by the name of tissue-paper was originally made to be put between the folds of this rich stuff to prevent fraying or tarnish, when laid by.
The gorgeous and entire set of vestments presented to the altar at St. Alban’s abbey, by Margaret, duchess of Clarence, A. D. 1429, and made of the cloth of gold commonly called “tyssewys,” must have been as remarkable for the abundance and purity of the gold in its texture, as for the splendour of the precious stones set on it and the exquisite beauty of its embroideries. The large number of vestments made out of gold tissue, and of crimson, light blue, purple, green, and black, once belonging to York cathedral, are all duly registered in the valuable “Fabric rolls” of that church lately published by the Surtees society.
Among the many rich and costly vestments in Lincoln cathedral, some were made of this sparkling golden tissue contra-distinguished in its inventory from the duller cloth of gold, thus: “Four good copes of blew tishew with orphreys of red cloth of gold, wrought with branches and leaves of velvet;” “a chesable with two tunacles of blew tishew having a precious orphrey of cloth of gold.”
Silken textures ornamented with designs in copper gilt thread were manufactured and honestly sold for what they really were: of such inferior quality we find mention in the inventory of vestments at Winchester cathedral, drawn up by order of Henry the21 eighth, where we read of “twenty-eight copys of white bawdkyne, woven with copper gold.” Another imitation of woof of gold was possibly fraudulent. This, originally perhaps Saracenic, was practised by the Spaniards of the south, and was not easily discovered. The very finest skins were sought out for the purpose, as thin as that now rare kind of vellum called “uterine” by collectors of manuscripts. These were heavily gilt and then cut into very narrow strips, to be used instead of the true golden thread.
The gilding of fine silk and canvas in imitation of cloth of gold, like our gilding of wood and other substances, was also sometimes resorted to for splendour’s sake on temporary occasions; such, for instance, as some stately procession or a solemn burial service. Mr. Raine tells us he found in a grave at Durham, among other textiles, “a robe of thinnish silk; the ground colour of the whole is amber; and the ornamental parts were literally covered with leaf gold, of which there remained distinct and very numerous portions.” In the churchyard of Cheam, Surrey, in 1865, the skeleton of a priest was found who had been buried some time during the fourteenth century; around the waist was a flat girdle made of brown silk that had been gilt. In the ‘Romaunt of the rose’ translated by Chaucer, dame Gladnesse is thus described:—
—in an over gilt samite
Clad she was;
and on a piece of German orphrey-web, in the South Kensington collection, no. 1373, and probably made at Cologne in the sixteenth century, the gold is laid by the gilding process.
Silver also, as well as gold, was hammered out into very thin sheets which were cut into narrow long shreds to be woven, unmixed with anything else, into a web for garments. Of this we have a striking illustration in the Acts of the apostles, where St. Luke, speaking of Herod Agrippa, says that he presented himself to the people arrayed in kingly apparel, who, to flatter him,22 shouted that his was the voice not of a man but of a god; and forthwith he was smitten by a loathsome disease which shortly killed him. This royal robe, as Josephus informs us, was a tunic made of silver and wonderful in its texture.
Intimately connected with the raw materials, and how they were wrought in the loom, is the question about the time when wire drawing was found out. At what period and among what people the art of working up pure gold, or gilded silver, into a long, round, hair-like thread—into what may be correctly called “wire”—began, is quite unknown. That with their mechanical ingenuity the ancient Egyptians bethought themselves of some method for the purpose is not unlikely. From Sir Gardiner Wilkinson we learn that at Thebes were found objects which appeared to be made of gold wire. We may fairly presume that the work upon the corslets of king Amasis, already spoken of as done by the needle in gold, required by its minuteness that the metal should be not flat but in the shape of wire. By delicate management perhaps of the fingers, the narrow flat strips might have been pinched or doubled up so that the two edges should meet, and then rubbed between two pieces of hard material a golden wire of the required fineness would be produced. In Etruscan and Greek jewellery wire is often to be found; but in all instances it is so well shaped and so even that it must have been fashioned by some rolling process. The filigree work of the middle ages is often very fine and delicate. Probably the embroidery which we read of in the descriptions of the vestments belonging to our old churches (for instance “An amice embroidered with pure gold”) was worked with gold wire. To go back to Anglo-saxon times in this country, such gold wire would seem to have been then well known and employed, since in Peterborough minster there were two golden altar-cloths: “ii. gegylde teofad sceatas;” and there were at Ely cathedral “two girdles of gold wire” in the reign of William Rufus.
The first use of a wire-drawing machine seems to have been23 about the year 1360, at Nuremberg; and it was not until two hundred years after, in 1560, that the method was brought to England. Two examples of a stuff with pure wire in it may be seen in the South Kensington collection, nos. 8581 and 8228.
The process of twining long narrow strips of gold, or gilt silver, round a line of silk or flax and thus producing gold thread is much earlier than has been supposed; and when Attalus’s name was bestowed upon a new method of interweaving gold with wool or linen, thence called “Attalic,” it was probably because he suggested to the weaver the introduction of the long-known golden thread as a woof into the textiles from his loom. It would seem, from a passage in Claudian, that ladies at an early Christian period used to spin their own gold thread. Writing at the end of the fourth century, the poet thus compliments Proba:
The joyful mother plies her learned hands,
And works all o’er the trabea golden bands,
Draws the thin strips to all their length of gold,
To make the metal meaner threads enfold.
The superior quality of some gold thread was known to the medi?val world under the name of the place where it had been made. Thus we find mention at one time of Cyprus gold thread; “a vestment embroidered with eagles of gold of Cyprus:” later, of Venice gold thread, “for frenge of gold of Venys at vjs. the ounce;” and again, “one cope of unwatered camlet laid with strokes of Venis gold.” What may have been their difference cannot now be pointed out: perhaps the Cyprian thread was esteemed because its somewhat broad shred of flat gold was wound about the hempen twist beneath it so nicely as to have the smooth unbroken look of gold wire; while the manufacture of Venice showed everywhere the twisting of common thread.