Table 1 sample textile patterns and their accompanying stories from HdS
This pattern may refer to the legend of Torpes of Pisa, who was an official in the service of Emperor Nero. During a ceremony in honour of the goddess Diana, Torpes declared that he believed in the one Christian god. Thereupon, EmperorNero, had Torpes tortured and beheaded. The corpse of the martyr and saint was placed in a rotten boat together with a dog and a cockerel, and the boat drifted down the river Arno to the Tyrrhenian Sea. According to Provençal tradition, Torpes’s corpse washed up on the French coast near the place that later becomes St. Tropez, taking its name from St. Torpes. Today, the gondola pattern serves as the logo forthe German Textile Museum in Krefeld (Deutsches Textilmuseum Krefeld). |