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none that I thynke depe inoughe for a great chamber, but' forlodgynges.”*
There was another sort of hangings, which was also commonlycalled tapestry; but which was in reality nothing more than paintedcloth, used in bed-chambers and inferior apartments. It may, indeed,be doubted whether, considerable as the supply was,—(and the im-portations alone were considerable; as, by Andrews, it appears, that soearly as 1513, three or four thousand pieces of cloth of gold, cloth ofsilver, damask, velvet, &c. were usually brought in one ship),—a sufficientquantity of the genuine material could at all times have been obtained.
Archdeacon Nares defines “ painted cloth as a species of hangings forrooms, very frequently mentioned in old authors, and generally supposedand explained to mean tapestry; but which was really cloth or canvasspainted in oil, with various devices and mottos. Tapestry being bothmore costly and less durable, was much less used, except in splendidapartments.”
“ Mayster Thomas More, in hys youth, devysed in hys father’s housein London a goodly hangyng of fyne paynted clothe, with nynepageauntes, and verses over every of those pageauntes.”
The devices employed in this mode of decoration, and in “ waterwork,” as we have before shewn, by Falstaff ’s advice to his HostessQuickly, were similar to those which were used in the better sorts oftapestry; but the mottoes, being addressed to less elevated orders ofsociety, were in a more familiar style. Dr. Bulleyne, in a work entitled“ A Dialogue both pleasant and pitifull, &c. 1564,” says, “ This is acomelie parlour,—and faire cloths, with pleasant borders aboute the
* Lodge’s Illustrations.
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