The old English “opus consutum” or cut-work, called in French “appliqué,” is a term of rather wide meaning, as it takes in several sorts of decorative accompaniments to needlework. When anything—flower, fruit, or figure—is wrought by itself upon a separate piece of silk or canvas and afterwards sewed on to the vestment for church use, or article for domestic purpose, it comes to be known as cut-work. This kind of work was employed for dresses and vestments; but we find it most commonly on bed-curtains, hangings for rooms and halls, and other items in household furniture.
Of cut-work in embroidery those pieces of splendid Rhenish needlework with the blazonment of Cleves, sewed upon a ground of crimson silk, nos. 1194–5, at South Kensington, and the chasuble of crimson double-pile velvet, no. 78, are good examples. In the last, the niches in which the saints stand are loom-wrought, but those personages themselves are exquisitely worked on separate pieces of fine canvas and afterwards let into the unwoven spaces left open for them. A Florentine piece of cut-work, no. 5788, is alike remarkable for its great beauty and the skill shown in bringing together both weaving and embroidery. Much of the architectural accessories is loom-wrought, while the extremities of the evangelists are all done by the needle; but the head, neck, and long beard are worked by themselves upon very fine linen, and afterwards put together in such a way that the full white beard overlaps the tunic.
89 Other methods gave a quicker help in this cut-work. For the sake of expedition all the figures were sometimes at once shaped out of woven silk, satin, velvet, linen, or woollen cloth as wanted, and sewed upon the grounding of the article: the features of the face and the contours of the body were then wrought by the needle in very narrow lines done in brown silk thread. At times, even this much of embroidery was set aside for the painting brush, and instances are to be found in which the spaces left uncovered by the loom for the heads and extremities of the human figures are filled in with the brush. Sometimes, again, the cut-work done in these ways is framed, as it were, with an edging, either in plain or gilt leather, hempen, or silken cord, like the leadings of a stained glass window. Perhaps in no collection open anywhere to public view can a piece of cut-work be found so full of teaching about the process of this easy way of execution as no. 1370 at South Kensington: and we earnestly recommend the attention of our readers to that example.
For the invention of cut-work, or “di commesso” as Vasari calls it, that writer tells us we are indebted to one of his Florentine countrymen: “It was by Sandro Botticelli that the method of preparing banners and standards in what is called cut-work was invented; and this he did that the colours might not sink through, showing the tint of the cloth on each side. The baldachino of Orsanmichele is by this master, and is so treated, etc.” But Vasari is not correct: the piece just spoken of, no. 1370, was made half a century before Botticelli was born.
There are other accessories in medi?val embroidery which ought not to be overlooked.
In some few instances, gold and silver gilt star-like flowers are to be found sewed upon the silks or amid the embroidery from Venice and other provinces in Italy, and from southern Germany. Some fragments of silk damask, no. 8612, are curious examples of Italian taste. These at one time have been thickly strewed with90 trefoils cut out of gilt metal but very thin, and not sewed but glued on to the silk: many of the leaves have fallen off, and those remaining turned black. Precious stones also, coral, and seed pearls were sewed upon textiles; and, not uncommonly, small coloured beads and bugles of glass. Belonging to St. Paul’s, in 1295, among many other amices there was one having glass stones upon it, both large and small.
Another form of glass fastened by heat to gold and copper, enamel, was extensively employed as an adornment upon textiles. The gorgeous “chesable of red cloth of gold with orphreys before and behind set with pearls, blue, white, and red, with plates of gold enamelled, wanting fifteen plates, etc.,” described in Dugdale’s Monasticon, and given by John of Gaunt’s duchess to Lincoln cathedral, shows how this rich ornamentation was applied to garments, especially for church use, in very large quantities.
In England the old custom was to sew a great deal of goldsmith’s work, for enrichment, upon articles meant for personal wear. When our first Edward’s grave in Westminster abbey was opened in 1774 there was seen upon the body, besides other silken robes, a stole-like band of rich white tissue about the neck and crossed upon the breast: it was studded with gilt quatrefoils in filigree work and embroidered with pearls. From the knees downwards the body was wrapped in a pall of cloth of gold. Henry the third gave a frontal to the high altar in Westminster abbey upon which, besides carbuncles in golden settings and several large pieces of enamel, were as many as 866 smaller ones: perhaps the “esmaux de plique” of the French.
In the Norman-French silken stuffs thus ornamented were said to be “batuz,” that is, bea............