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, beaten with hammered-up gold. the treasury calendars, edited by palgrave, tell us that richard the second gave to the chapel in the castle of haverford “ii rydell batuz;” two altar-curtains beaten (probably with ornaments in gilt silver; like an amice so described which belonged to st. paul’s).91 for the secular employment of this same sort of decoration we have several curious examples. ladies’ dresses were so adorned, as we may see in these verses:
a coronell on hur hedd sett,
hur clothys wyth bestes and byrdes wer bete,
all abowte for pryde.
ancient banner of the city of strasburg: see next page.
king john in 1215 sent an order (extant in the close rolls) to reginald de cornhull and william cook to have made for him,92 besides five tunics, five banners with his arms upon them, well beaten in gold: “bene auro batuatas.” a very remarkable example attributed to the fourteenth century “the banner of strasbourg” was preserved there until very lately, when it was unhappily destroyed in the bombardment of that city in 1870.
dugdale (in his baronage) gives the original bill for fitting out one of the ships in which beauchamp earl of warwick, during the reign of henry the sixth, went over to france. among other items are these: “four hundred pencils (long narrow strips of silk, used as flags) beat with the raggedstaff in silver; the other pavys (one of two shields probably of wood, and fastened outside the ship at its bows) painted with black, and a raggedstaff beat with silver occupying all the field; one coat for my lord’s body, beat with fine gold; two coats for heralds, beat with demi gold; a great streamer for a ship of forty yeards in length and eight yeards in breadth, with a great bear and griffin holding a raggedstaff poudred full of raggedstaffs; three penons (small flags) of satten; sixteen standards of worsted entailed with the bear and a chain.” the quatrefoils on the robe of edward the first, the silver lions on the glastonbury cope, the beasts and birds on the lady’s gown, the bear and griffin and raggedstaff belonging to the beauchamp’s blazoning, and all similar enrichments put upon silken stuffs, were cut out of very thin plates of gold or silver, so as to hang upon them lightly, and were hammered up to show in low relief the fashion of the flower and the lineaments of the beast or bird meant to be represented. such a style of ornamentation in gold or silver, stitched on silken stuffs, was far more common once than is now thought. it had also a technical description: in speaking of it people would either write or say, “silk beaten with gold or silver;” as, for example, barbara mason used the term when in 1538 she bequeathed to a church “a vestment of grene sylke betyn with goold.”
spangles, when they happened to be used, were not like those93 now employed but fashioned after another and artistic shape, and put on in a different manner. a fragment still exists from the chasuble belonging to the set of vestments wrought, it is said, by isabella of spain and her maids of honour; and used the first time high mass was sung in granada, after it had been taken by the spaniards from the moors. upon this are flowers, well thrown up in relief, done in spangles on a crimson velvet ground. the spangles—some in gold, some in silver—are, though small, of several sizes; all are voided; that is, hollow in the middle; with the circumference not flat but convex, and are sewed on like tiles, one overlapping the other, producing a rich and pleasing effect. our present spangles, in the flat shape, are quite modern.
another kind of embroidery for garments was in gold, worked sometimes by itself, sometimes with coloured silk thread laid down alternately beside it; so as to lend a tinge of green, crimson, pink, or blue to the imagined tissue of the robe, as if it were made of a golden stuff shot with another tint.
this gold “passing” was sewn on. the workwomen taking thin silk, while fastening the passing, dotted it all over in small stitches set exactly in a way that showed the same pattern. with no other appliance they were thus enabled to lend to their draperies the appearance of having been not wrought by the needle but actually cut out of a piece of textile; for which they have been sometimes mistaken.
anciently, also, in england another mode of embroidering articles, either for church use or for household furniture, was by darning or working the subject upon linen netting. this was called net-work, filatorium, as we learn from the exeter inventory, where we read that its cathedral possessed in 1327 three pieces of it for use at the altar: one in particular for throwing over the desk. these thread embroideries were chiefly wrought during the fourteenth century; but as early as 1295 st. paul’s had a cushion of the kind.
94
embroidered hangings of a bed; from a ms. of the fifteenth century, in the british museum.
crochet, knitting done with linen thread, and the thick kinds of lace wrought (chiefly in flanders) upon the cushion with bobbins, were much employed under the name of nun’s lace from the sixteenth century and upwards, for bordering altar-cloths, albs, and every sort of towel required for church purposes.
