Medieval textiles in the bock collection at the Whitworth Art Gallery

The Whitworth Art Gallery has a number of important collections of textiles that were assembled during the second half of the nineteenth century. The Robinson collection, which formed the foundation of the textile department, is the best known of these. However, it includes only a very few late medieval textiles: an embroidered English cross orphrey and part of a pillar orphrey dating to the late fifteenth century, and a rare tapestry-woven altar frontal from the Cologne region dated c. 1470.2 Since 1960, the Bock collection, which was acquired by Manchester City Council in 1883 and 1884, has also been housed in the Gallery. The purpose of this paper is to explain how this distinguished collection came to Manchester, and to identify some of the medieval textiles in it as a tribute to Donald King, whose scholarship in this field was preeminent.