43141 IMGR39 (2)

GILDING AND TECHNIQUES OF DECORATION that rime the principal centrę of prinhng, wbence it spread to Holland, France and perhaps England, although it is doubtful whether it was evcr employed in Sptin. Dc Bondaroy, howcvcr, dcscribed a method that dispensed with the countet-mould which appears to have bccn brittle and troublesome. In this method fine sand iprcad over a ihcet offabiic placed on the uppermott sidc ofthe damped leather providcd a yielding cuthion. This perhaps explains the elear imprint of canvas obsemd on the flesh sidc of ccrtain seventcenth-ccntury paneli.

Thb Spanish Contribction

What kind of men were chicfly responsible for the gradual developmcnt of leather hangings, from the simplcst type - the ociginal guadameei - right up to the highly tophitti-catcd, artistically decadent, partly-mcchaniscd product, gildcd, moulded and painted, that represented the finał phase of‘Spanish' leather? As we have scen, the basie materiał was of a kind whosc origins by far back in antiquity. Knowłedge of the alum proccss in its simplcst form may wclł have reached the Ibcrian peninsub bcfocc Roman limes when it musi havc bcen known there. But it seems probabb that Arab tradert introduced into Spain the particular kind of soft, alumcd goatskin for which Ghad&mcs was famed. It is reasonablc to supposc that this took place in the ci dinary way of rade before the MoAm invasion; bot that afier that event, following the osoal panem of cołonizatum, mupnnng Moorish    set np their simplc leather-drcssing estabłishments in

▼arious centra, sciting with Cordoba, employing local bbonr, graduałly cvołvmg the moce dccoramr typcs »nd probably remaining dccreaungly in control of the nade unul they finalły dnappeared. But as earły as 800 there Ind bccn prodoccd, in Cdcdoba, a soft and beaurifol leather which had ałready cdipscd the łong-establiihed r epuanon of the Notth Afiican prodoct and aducved wider and grezra famc: credit most sureły be

aceocdcdm the Spaniaidsfef a sjgmfiranccontributionofsouic bindro this rank.

Ił imm bkcły dat the subscquenc processes of appłying mml fod. che painang and then imprinting of desant and the hand-stamping were all adopted for hangings in Spain; also the "»hn«ng with mml plates, although the uk of tanned in place of tawtd leather, which madę possibk boch this and the pzeccding handmmptng. was probably initiaicd in Fbnden.' The finał phase, employing wooden moulds for emboes-ing, was ponibly also a Flemish invention. The bet that up to the sńoecnth century thcie decoratm leathen were predominandy moraqoe in charaog links them wńh the par-ticular phase of Saraecnic archńecmre and dccoraiśon that aroec in Spain and maket ń

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