Arts and crafts in the Middle Ages

The worker in metals is usually called a smith, whether he be coppersmith or goldsmith. The term is Saxon in origin, and is derived from the expression "he that smiteth." Metal...

We are told that the word "jewel" has come by degrees from Latin, through French, to its present form; it commenced as a "gaudium" (joy), and progressed through "jouel" and "joy...

"Oh, thou discreetest of readers," says Benvenuto Cellini, "marvel not that I have given so much time to writing about all this," and we feel like making the same apology for de...

The "perils that environ men that meddle with cold iron" are many; but those who attempt to control hot iron are also to be respected, when they achieve an artistic result with...

A study of textiles is often subdivided into tapestry, carpet-weaving, mechanical weaving of fabrics of a lighter weight, and embroidery. These headings are useful to observe in...

The materials used as groundwork for mediæval embroideries were rich in themselves. Samit was the favourite--shimmering, and woven originally of solid flat gold wire. Ciclatoun...

Sculpture is not properly speaking the "plastic art," as is often understood. The real meaning of sculpture is work which is cut into form, whereas plastic art is work that is m...

A progressive history of English sculpture in stone could be compiled by going from church to church, and studying the tympana, over the doors, in Romanesque and Norman styles,...

If the Germans were somewhat less original than the French, English, and Italians in their stone carving, they made up for this deficiency by a very remarkable skill in wood car...

There are three kinds of inlay, one where the pattern is incised, and a plastic filling pressed in, and allowed to harden, on the principle of a niello; another, where both the...

One cannot enter a book shop or a library to-day without realizing how many thousands of books are in constant circulation. There was an age when books were laboriously but most...