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Not currently on display at the V&A

Woven Silk

1300-1350 (designed and made)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

Silks with this kind of pattern could be made in different qualities. The statutes of silk weaving guilds laid down the composition and structure of fabrics, and they could vary according to where they were made. The materials, technique and pattern sometimes determined the name of the fabric. This modest silk conforms to a type called camacas in the statutes for the city of Lucca in 1376. Some camacas were made of silk alone, others had small details brocaded in metal thread. It is possible that yet others were made with much more gold thread, just like those depicted in paintings by the Italian artist Bernardo Daddi (active 1312; d. 1348) in works such as the Anunciation from the Virgin and Child Enthroned with Six Saints in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

Camacas silks from Lucca, woven with vine patterns were exported. They are recorded in the English royal wardrobe accounts in the 1320s, and in 14th-century inventories from Italy and France. In 1369, Pisa cathedral had an altar frontal of 'red and green Lucchese camacas worked with vines and grapes'.


Object details

Category
Object type
Materials and techniques
Woven silk
Brief description
Woven silk, with scrolling vines and birds, tabby-tabby weave, Lucca, 1300-1350
Physical description
Fragment of lampas silk woven with scrolling vines and birds, tabby-tabby weave, mounted on card, with watercolour reconstruction by Blanche F. Hunter, 1892.
Dimensions
  • Length: 39cm
  • Width: 18.7cm
Measured in study frame
Style
Object history
Acquired from the Bock collection.
Production
Lisa Monnas made attribution
Subjects depicted
Summary
Silks with this kind of pattern could be made in different qualities. The statutes of silk weaving guilds laid down the composition and structure of fabrics, and they could vary according to where they were made. The materials, technique and pattern sometimes determined the name of the fabric. This modest silk conforms to a type called camacas in the statutes for the city of Lucca in 1376. Some camacas were made of silk alone, others had small details brocaded in metal thread. It is possible that yet others were made with much more gold thread, just like those depicted in paintings by the Italian artist Bernardo Daddi (active 1312; d. 1348) in works such as the Anunciation from the Virgin and Child Enthroned with Six Saints in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

Camacas silks from Lucca, woven with vine patterns were exported. They are recorded in the English royal wardrobe accounts in the 1320s, and in 14th-century inventories from Italy and France. In 1369, Pisa cathedral had an altar frontal of 'red and green Lucchese camacas worked with vines and grapes'.
Bibliographic reference
Monnas, Lisa, Merchants, Princes and Painters. Silk Fabrics in Italian and Northern Paintings 1300-1550, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008, pp.83-4.
Collection
Accession number
1297-1864

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Record createdMarch 2, 2007
Record URL
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