Novel 10) speaks of a quilt (coltre) of the whitest buckram of
Cyprus, and Uzzano enters buckram quilts (coltre di Bucherame) in a list
of Linajuoli, or linen-draperies. Both his handbook and Pegolotti's
state repeatedly that buckrams were sold by the piece or the half-score
pieces - never by measure. In one of Michel's quotations (from Baudouin de
Sebourc) we have:
"Gaufer li fist premiers armer d'un auqueton
Qui fu de bougherant et plaine de bon coton."
Mr. Hewitt would appear to take the view that Buckram meant a quilted
material; for, quoting from a roll of purchases made for the Court of
Edward I., an entry for Ten Buckrams to make sleeves of, he remarks, "The
sleeves appear to have been of pourpointerie," i.e. quilting. (Ancient
Armour, I. 240.)
This signification would embrace a large number of passages in which the
term is used, though certainly not all. It would account for the mode or
sale by the piece, and frequent use of the expression a buckram, for its
habitual application to coltre or counterpanes, its use in the
auqueton of Baudouin, and in the jackets of Falstaff's "men in buckram,"
as well as its employment in the frocks of the Mongols and Tibetans. The
winter chapkan, or long tunic, of Upper India, a form of dress which, I
believe, correctly represents that of the Mongol hosts, and is probably
derived from them, is almost universally of quilted cotton.[1] This
signification would also facilitate the transfer of meaning to the
substance now called buckram, for that is used as a kind of quilting.
