stes. In Auberville's book we find,
under the dates of many centuries, the most remarkable fragments now
known. On portrait-tombs and in some very ancient pictures are figured
beautiful silks woven in gold, which are recognizable at once by their
Arab-Sicilian style. Of this type, the remarkable fragment of the
dress of Richard II., in the Kensington Museum, dates itself, by
carrying the cognizances of his grandfather and his mother, and the
portrait of his dog Math.[264]

The last period of the Sicilian silks is especially marked by the
inscriptions being mostly nonsense, and only woven in as ornament,
with the forms of Arab lettering.[265]

Sir G. Birdwood says that whether the Saracens found the manufacture
of silk already established in India or not, they certainly influenced
the decorative designs. He adds that kincobs are now woven at
Ahmedabad and Benares, identical in design with the old Sicilian
brocades; while the Saracenic Sicilian silks abound in patterns which
prove their origin in Assyrian, Sassanian, or Indian art.

We know that the Saracens introduced colonies of Persian, and probably
Indian workmen into Spain, after the beginning of the ninth century,
to assist them in their architecture and textile manufactures, and in
return the Mogul emperors of Delhi invited many Italian and French
designers into India.

The Taj and other buildings in Rajpootana are decorated with exquisite
mosaics coeval with those of Austin of Bordeaux. Their styles of art
in textiles, and in other materials, have acted and reacted upon each
other; and nothing throws more light on the affinities and the
development of the modern decorative arts of Europe than the history
of the introduction, under Justinian, of the silk manufactures from
the East into the West.[266]

From Palermo, all the stages of the manufacture of silk spread
themselves over Italy and into Spain. According to Nicolo Tegrini, the
flourishing silk-weavers of Lucca having been ejected from the city in
the early part of the fourteenth century, carried their art elsewhere,
and even to Germany, France, and Britain.[267]

Italian weavers went to Lyons in 1450, and so started the silk
industry that it has steadily increased till now. It gives employment
to about 31,000 looms and 240,000 workpeople of both sexes.

The Moors, when they overflowed into Iberia, carried with them all
their Orientalisms, traditions, manufactures, and designs; thus
disobeying their p