The countries whence silks came to England are numerous; we find early notices of Antioch, Tarsus, Alexandria, Damascus, Byzantium, Cyprus, Trip or Tripoli, and Bagdad, and later of Venice, Genoa, and Lucca. To fix the localities of others would be but guess work. At the beginning of the fourteenth century a silk called “Acca” is occasionally mentioned: and, from the description, it must have been a cloth of gold shot with coloured silk, figured with animals: William de Clinton, earl of Huntingdon, gave to St. Alban’s monastery a whole vestment of cloth of gold shot with sky-blue and called cloth of Acca. It would look as if this stuff took its name from having been brought to us through the port of Acre: and Macri, in his valuable Hierolexicon, says that the name of the ancient Ptolemais in Syria was so written.
What in one age and at a particular place happened to be well made and therefore was eagerly sought for, at a later period and in another place was better wrought and at a lower price. Time, indeed, changed the name of the market, but did not alter in any great degree either the quality of the material or the style of the design wrought upon it. Throughout the kingdom of the Byzantine Greeks the loom had to change its gearing very little. The Saracenic loom, whether in Asia, Africa, or Spain, was always Arabic, though Persia could not forget her old traditions about the “hom” or tree of life, and cheetahs, and birds of71 various sorts. With regard to the whole of Asia, its many peoples from the earliest ages knew how not only to weave cloth of gold but to figure it with birds and beasts. In later times, Marco Polo in the thirteenth century found exactly the same kinds of textile known in the days of Darius still everywhere, from the shores of the Mediterranean to the far east. What he says of Bagdad he repeats in fewer words about many other cities. In finding their way to England these fabrics received, if not in all at least in most instances, the names of the seaports in the Mediterranean where they had been shipped.
For beautifully wrought and figured silk, one of the few terms that still outlive the medi?val period is Damask.
China, no doubt, was the first country to ornament its silken webs with a pattern. India, Persia, and Syria, then Byzantine Greece, followed, but at long intervals between, in China’s footsteps. Stuffs so figured brought with them to the west the name “diaspron” or diaper, bestowed upon them at Constantinople. But about the twelfth century the city of Damascus, even then long celebrated for its looms, so far outstripped all other places for beauty of design that her silken textiles were in demand everywhere; and thus, as often happens, traders fastened the name of Damascen or Damask upon every silken fabric richly wrought and curiously designed, no matter whether it came or not from Damascus. At last, samit, having long been the epithet betokening all that was rich and good in silk, was forgotten, and diaper, from being the very word significant of pattern, became a secondary term descriptive of merely a part in the elaborate design on damask.
Baudekin, that sort of costly cloth of gold spoken of so much during so many years in English literature, took (as was said before) its famous name from Bagdad. Many specimens of baudekin in the South Kensington collection furnish proofs of the ancient weavers’ dexterity in their management of the loom, and especially of the artists’ taste in setting out their intricate and72 beautiful designs. An identification between very many samples there brought together of ancient textiles in silk and the descriptions of similar stuffs given us in those valuable records, our old church inventories, might be carried on if necessary to a very lengthened extent.
Dorneck was the name given to an inferior kind of damask wrought of silk, wool, linen thread and gold, in Flanders. This was manufactured towards the end of the fifteenth century mostly at Tournay; which city in Flemish was often called Dorneck—a word variously spelt as Darnec, Darnak, Darnick, and sometimes even Darness.
The guild of the blessed Virgin at Boston had a care cloth of “silke dornex” and church furniture. The “care cloth” was a sort of canopy held over the bride and bridegroom as they knelt for the nuptial blessing, according to the Salisbury rite, at the marriage mass. At Exeter dorneck was used in chasubles for orphreys. A specimen of dorneck may be seen, no. 7058. It is several times mentioned in the York fabric rolls.
Buckram, so called from Bokkara where it was originally made, in the middle ages was much esteemed for being costly and very fine; and consequently fit for use in church vestments and for secular personal wear. “Panus Tartaricus” or Tartary cloth is often spoken of. John Grandison, bishop of Exeter in 1327, gave to his cathedral flags of white and red buckram; and among the five very rich veils for covering the moveable lectern in that church three were lined with blue “bokeram.” As late as the beginning of the sixteenth century this stuff was held good enough for lining to a black velvet gown for a queen, Elizabeth of York. The coarse thick fabric which now goes by the name is very different from the older production known as “bokeram.”
Burdalisaunder, Bordalisaunder, Bourde de Elisandre, with other varieties in spelling, is a term often to be met with in old wills and church inventories. In the year 1327 Exeter had a chasuble of Bourde de Elisandre of divers colours: and from the73 Yorkshire wills we find that sometimes it was wide enough for half a piece to form the adornment of a high altar.
“Bord” in Arabic means a striped cloth; and we know, both from travellers and the importation of the textile itself, that many tribes in north and eastern Africa weave stuffs for personal wear of a pattern consisting of white and black longitudinal stripes. St. Augustin, living in north Africa near the modern Algiers, speaks of a stuff for clothing called “burda” in the end of the fourth and beginning of the fifth century. It is not impossible that the curtains for the tabernacle as well as the girdles for Aaron and his sons, of fine linen and violet and purple and scarlet twice dyed, were wrought with this very pattern, so that in the “burd Alisaunder” we behold the oldest known design for any textile. This stuff in the middle ages was a silken web in different coloured stripes, and specimens also may be found at South Kensington. Though made in many places round the Mediterranean this silk took its name, at least in England, from Alexandria.
Fustian, of which we still have two forms in velveteen and corduroy, was originally wove at Fustat on the Nile, with a warp of linen thread and a woof of thick cotton, so twilled and cut that it showed on one side a thick but low pile; and the web thus managed took its name of Fustian from that Egyptian city. At what period it was invented we do not rightly know, but we are well aware it must have been brought very early to this co............