CHAPTER I.

Transcriber's Note

A carat (^) is used to indicate superscripted characters.

The original text contained an errata list. The corrections have been

made to this text, and the list moved to the end of the book for

reference purposes only.

Other notes may be found at the end of the book.

NEEDLEWORK AS ART

BY

LADY M. ALFORD

[Illustration]

London:

SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, AND RIVINGTON,

CROWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET.

1886.

[_All rights reserved._]

LONDON:

PRINTED BY GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, LIMITED,

ST. JOHN'S SQUARE.

[Illustration: TELEMACHUS PENELOPE]

DEDICATED BY PERMISSION

TO

THE QUEEN.

TO

THE QUEEN.

_Your Majesty's most gracious acceptance of the Dedication of my book

on "Needlework as Art" casts a light upon the subject that shows its

worthiness, and my inability to do it justice. Still, I hope I may

fill a gap in the artistic literature of our day, and I venture to lay

my work at your Majesty's feet with loyal devotion._

MARIAN M. ALFORD.

PREFACE.

In the Preface to the "Handbook of Art Needlework," which I edited for

the Royal School at South Kensington in 1880, I undertook to write a

second part, to be devoted to design, colour, and the common-sense

modes of treating decorative art, as applied especially to embroidered

hangings, furniture, dress, and the smaller objects of luxury.

Circumstances have, since then, obliged me to reconsider this

intention; and I have found it more practicable to cast the

information which I have collected from Eastern and Western sources

into the form of a separate work, which in no way supersedes or

interferes with the technical instruction supposed to be conveyed in a

handbook. I have found so much amusement in learning for myself the

history of the art of embroidery, and in tracing the beginnings and

the interchanges of national schools, that I cannot but hope that I

may excite a similar interest in some of my readers, and so induce

those who are capable, to help and lift it to a higher place than it

has been allowed in these latter days to occupy. If I have given too

important a position to the art of needlework, I would observe that

while I have been writing, decorative embroidery has come to the

front, and is at this moment one of the hobbies of the day; and I

would point out that it contains in itself all the necessary elements

of art; it may exercise the imagination and the fancy; it needs

education in form, colour, and composition, as well as the craft of a

practised hand, to express its language and perfect its beauty.

I confess that when I undertook this task, I did not anticipate the

time I have had to spend in collecting and epitomizing the many

notices to be found in German, French, and English authors, on what

has been considered among us, at least in this century, as merely a

secondary art, and therefore, as such, of little importance. Cursory

notices of needlework are scattered through almost every book on art;

and under the head of textiles it is usual to find embroidery

acknowledged as being worthy of notice, though not to be named in

company with sculpture, architecture, or painting, however beautifully

or thoughtfully its works may be carried out. I have tried to show

that it deserves higher estimation.

My first intention was simply to consider STYLE, good or bad, as it

influences our embroidery of to-day, and to find some rules by which

to guide that of the future in its next phase. But when we search into

the fluctuations of style, and their causes, we find they have an

historical succession, and that we must begin at the beginning and

trace them through the life of mankind.

This led me to attempt a sketch of consecutive styles, their overlap

and variations.

I then found that DESIGN, PATTERNS, STITCHES, MATERIALS, each require

a separate study.

COLOUR, as applied to dyes, claims to be regarded as differing from

pigments on the painter's palette.

HANGINGS, DRESS, and ECCLESIASTICAL EMBROIDERIES each require

different rules, and the study of the best examples of past centuries.

Finally, it seems natural to dwell on our own proficiency in

decorative work. ENGLISH EMBROIDERY has always excelled; and, as we

have again returned to this occupation, it is worth while to recollect

what we have done of old.

In writing chapters on these subjects, I have found it most convenient

to separate the historical and æsthetic questions from the technical

rules, and the instruction which naturally belongs to a handbook, of

which the purpose should be to teach the easiest and most orthodox

manner of executing the simplest, and elaborating the finest works.

Such questions ought not to be overlaid with archæological inquiries,

or with the information which only profits the designer; though of

course it is best that the knowledge of design should be part of the

education of the craft.

Perhaps I may be found to have written a book too shallow for the

learned, too deep for the frivolous, too technical for the general

public, and too diffuse for the specialist of the craft.[1]

I must deprecate these criticisms by saying that I have written it for

the benefit of those who know nothing of the art, and are too much

engaged to seek information here and there; who yet, being women, have

to select and to execute ornamental needlework; or, being artists, are

vexed at the incongruities and want of intention in the decorations in

daily domestic use; I have also sought to help the designer, that he

or she may know something of the history of patterns and stitches.

If my readers should be aware of repetitions, they must forgive them;

remembering that the same idea has to be looked at sometimes from a

different point of view, according to the use to which it is to be

fitted. The same material may be employed for wall-hangings and dress,

and then the principles which have been formulated have to be varied.

I do not shrink from repetitions if they make my meaning clear,

remembering the Duke of Wellington's direction to his private

secretary, "Never mind repetitions; and _dot_ your i's."

Portions of these chapters have been already published in No. 49 of

the _Nineteenth Century_,[2] in 1881; and more was delivered in three

unpublished lectures the same year.

I have acknowledged and noted on each page my authorities for the

facts I have quoted. The illustrations that are not original, have

been copied from other works by permission of authors and publishers.

To all of these I wish to express my obligations and thanks,

especially to Mr. Villiers Stuart, Dr. Anderson, Sir G. Birdwood, and

Sir H. Layard, for their courtesy in allowing me the use of their

plates. To my old and valued friend, Mr. Newton, I wish to express my

gratitude for his unstinted gifts of time and trouble, bestowed in

criticizing and correcting my book, encouraging me to give it to the

public, and making it more worthy of publication.

I have largely quoted Charles Blanc ("Ornament in Dress," English

translation), Von Bock ("Liturgische Gewänder"), Dr. Rock ("The Church

of our Fathers" and "Introduction to Textiles"), Semper ("Der Stil"),

Yates ("Textrinum Antiquorum"), and Yule ("Marco Polo"), besides many

others. But these authorities often differ, and, after weighing their

arguments, I have ventured to select for my use the facts and

theories which accord with my own views. Facts are often so

interdependent and closely linked, that it requires great care to

distinguish where they have been shaped or coloured (however

unintentionally) to fit each other or the writer's preconceived ideas.

Certain it is that facts are but useless heaps till the thread of a

theory is found on which to hang them. This process, like that of

stringing pearls, has to be often repeated, till each occupies its

right place. Only those who have adopted and cherished a theory can

appreciate the pain of cutting the thread, to displace what appeared

to be a pearl, but which, from its false position as to date or place,

or its doubtful origin, has proved only an empty manufactured glass

bead of error.

This has happened to me more than once; and since I read my lectures I

have had to change my opinions in several instances. If, therefore,

any of my readers should observe such changes, I hope they will give

me credit for trying to convey _now_ what appears to me on each

subject a correct impression.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Besides the art, I have sought to give something of

the archæology of needlework. Now the qualifications for

being a teacher on such subjects are rarely to be met

with, all combined. Mr. Newton, in his "Essays on Art

and Archæology," p. 37, says that "the archæologist

should combine with the æsthetic culture of the artist,

and the trained judgment of the historian and the

philologist, that critical acumen, required for

classification and interpretation; nor should that

habitual suspicion which must ever attend the scrutiny

and precede the warranty of evidence, give too sceptical

a bias to his mind." Such authorities have been

interrogated on each part of my subject.

[2] Quoted by permission of the Editor.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

INTRODUCTION. 1

CHAPTER I.--STYLE.

Definition of style--Development of style--Primitive--

Archaic--Egyptian--Babylonian--Phœnician influences

on early Greek style--Decoration of hangings of the

Tabernacle in the wilderness--Aryan ideas--The Code of

Manu--Indian art--Celtic style--Greek art in dress and

embroideries--Homer's descriptions of embroideries--Pallas

Athene--Shield of Achilles--Roman art--Byzantine art--Art

of Central Asia--Its arrival in Europe--Art of China,

Japan, and Java--Christian art--Scandinavian art--The Dark

Ages--Sicilian textile art--Renaissance--Arabesque--

Grotesque--Spanish Plâteresque--Style of Queen Anne and the

Chippendales--Louis XV. style--Classical revival--Young

England's style--Nineteenth century style 14

CHAPTER II.--DESIGN.

Artist and artisan--Prehistoric design--Naturalistic

design--Egyptian immutability--Slow evolution of

design--Greek perfection--Necessity of following rules--M.

Blanc's laws of ornamentation--Laws of composition--

Repetition--Alternation--Symmetry--Progression--Confusion--

Designs for hangings and dress materials--Floral design--Design

for carpets--The conventional--First principles 54

CHAPTER III.--PATTERNS.

Ancestry of patterns--Classification--Their historical

value--Primitive patterns--The wave--Tartan--Prehistoric

African patterns--The naturalistic--Flowers--Shells--Indian

forms of naturalistic patterns--Egyptian--The lotus--

Sunflower--Celtic Zoomorphic patterns--The human figure on

Greek textiles--Animal forms in Oriental patterns--Symbolical

and conventional patterns--The wave patterns--The palm leaf--

The cone--Gothic--Arab--Moresque--The Sacred Hom--Egg and

tongue--The cross--Swastika--Fylfote--Gammadion--The

crenelated pattern--The Ninevite daisy--Emblematic

patterns--Bestiaria--Volucraria--Lapidaria--Byzantine

patterns--Gothic--Renaissance--The cloud pattern--The

fundata--Italian--French patterns--Radiated patterns--The

shell--Patterns by repetition--Balcony pattern--Chinese

wicker-work--Survival of a pattern--Opus

Alexandrinum--Quilting patterns 82

CHAPTER IV.--MATERIALS.

Raw materials--Revelations of the microscope--Hemp--Jute--

Honduras grass--Spartum--Pinna silk--Hair--Leather--

Feathers--Asbestos--Coral--Pearls--Beads--Wool--Classical

notices of wool--Careful improvement of wool by the

ancients--Tanaquil--Homeric woollen carpets--Crimson

textile fragments--Scandinavian woollen garments--Qualities

of wool--English wool--Goats' hair--Flax--Lake cities--

Byssus--Fine linen of Egypt--The Atrebates--Embroidery on

linen--Cotton--Indian origin--Carbasa--Buckram--Cotton

fabrics--Gold--Silver--Gold brocades--Jewish--Indian--

Chinese--Dress of Darius--Attalus--Attalic textiles--

Agrippina's golden garments--St. Cecilia's mantle--Roman

tombs--Gold wire--Anglo-Saxon tomb--Childeric's tomb--Proba's

gold thread--Golden wrappings from tombs of Henry I. and Henry

III.--Gold embroideries and jewellers' work of Middle

Ages--Spangles--Enamels--Purl--Modern schools of gold

embroidery--Silk--Pamphile of Cos--Early specimens of silk

stuffs--Chinese silks--The Seres--Mela--Seneca--M. Terrien

de la Couperie--Empress Si-ling-chi--Princess of

Khotan--Euripides--Lucan--Pliny--Silk in Rome--Ælius

Lampridius--Flavius Vopiscus--Tailor's bill--Justinian's

codex--Imperial monopoly--Paul the Silentiary--Bede--King

John's apparition--Greek and Sicilian manufactories of

silk--Distinctive marks of different periods--Lyons--Spain--

Italy--Flemish towns--Marco Polo--Satin--Welsh poem, "Lady of

the Fountain"--Chaucer--Velvet--Transference of work to new

materials 118

CHAPTER V.--COLOUR.

Harmony and dissonance--Names of tints--Authorities for

theories--Art of colouring--Expression of colouring--

Purple--Red--Crimson--Blue--Yellow--Pliny--Renouf--Chinese

colours--Indian dyes--Persian colours--Dyes of the

Gauls--Romans--Scotch--Scales of colour--MM. Charton and

Chevreul on tones of colour--Gas colours 175

CHAPTER VI.--STITCHES.

Stitches--Part I.: The needle--Gammer Gurton's needle--Art

of needlework--Lists of stitches--Part II.: Plain work--

The seam--Mrs. Floyer--White embroidery--Nuns' work--

Greek--German--Spanish--Italian white work--Semper's

rules for white work--Part III.: Opus Phrygium--Gold

embroideries--Part IV.: Opus pulvinarium--Cushion stitches--

Mosaic stitches--Traditional decorations from Chaldea and

Assyria--German and Italian pattern-books--Part V.: Opus

plumarium--The Plumarii--Feather-work of India--Islands of

the Pacific--African work--Mexican and Peruvian--Cluny

triptych--Mitre of St. Charles Borromeo--Essay by

Denis--Chinese and Japanese feather-stitches--Part VI.:

Opus consutum or cut work--Patchwork--Egyptian and Greek

examples--Irish cut work--Chaucer--Francis I.'s hangings

at Cluny--Lord Beauchamp's curtains--Spanish examples--

Remarks--Art of application--Part VII.: Lace--Opus

filatorium--Mrs. Palliser--M. Blanc--Guipure--Sir Gardiner

Wilkinson--Netted lace--Homer--Solomon's Temple--Bobbin

laces--Yak--Coloured laces--Venetian sumptuary laws--Golden

laces--Point d'Alençon--Mr. A. Cole's lectures--M. Urbani

de Gheltof on Venice laces--Lace stitches--Revival of lace

school at Burano--English laces--Part VIII.: Tapestry--Opus

pectineum--Modes of weaving tapestry--Its great antiquity--

Egyptian looms--Albert Castel on tapestries--Homeric

picture-weaving--Arachne--A paraphrase by Lord Houghton--

Nomenticum--Sidonius Apollinaris--Saracenic weaving--Arras--

Brussels--Italian tapestries from Florence, Milan, and

Mantua--French tapestries--Cluny Museum collection--Gobelins--

Beauvais--English tapestry--Comnenus--Matthew Paris--Early

trade with Arras--Coventry tapestries--Chaucer--Tapestry

"of verd"--Hatfield tapestries--Armada tapestries--Sir F.

Crane--Mortlake manufactory--Francis Cleyne--Raphael

cartoons--Percy tapestry from Lambeth 194

CHAPTER VII.--HANGINGS.

Classical hangings--Babylonian and Persian--Semper's

theory--Sanctuary in the wilderness--St. Peter's at

Rome--Abulfeda--Akbar's tent--Nadir Shah's tent--Tent

of Khan of Persia--Tents of Alexander the Great at

Alexandria--Roman hangings--Funeral pyres--Kosroes'

tent--Semper's rules for hanging decorations--Ancient

carpets--English and French hangings--Rules for designs

of hangings 260

CHAPTER VIII.--FURNITURE.

Penelope's couch--Chaldean furnished house--The bed--Earl

of Leicester's inventories--State apartment of Alessandri

Palace--Indian embroideries for furniture--The sofa and

chair--The footstool--Furniture stitches--The table

cover--The screen--Book covers--Morris on furniture 280

CHAPTER IX.--DRESS.

Art of dress--Ancient splendour--Persian, Greek, and

Roman--Indian--Homeric--Early Christian--Charlemagne's

mantle and robe--Objects of dress--Embroidered garments 294

CHAPTER X.--ECCLESIASTICAL EMBROIDERY.

Christian art--Dark ages--Greek and Roman ecclesiastical

dress--Northern influence--Continuity of ecclesiastical

art--Authorities--Anglo-Saxon orthodox colours--Veils of

the Temple--Hangings in Pagan temples and Christian

churches--Russian use of veils--Art in the early Church--

Rare examples--Destruction by the iconoclasts--Early

embroiderers--Empress Helena--Bertha, mother of

Charlemagne--His dalmatic--Pluvial of St. Silvester--Pluvial

of museum at Bologna--Daroca cope--Cope of Boniface VIII.--

Style of the twelfth century--Mantle of St. Stephen of

Hungary--Kunigunda's work for Henry II.--The Romanesque--

Movement perfecting Gothic art, thirteenth century--Opus

Anglicanum--Syon cope--Embroidery on the stamp--Pictures in

flat stitches--Flemish work--Renaissance--Work of some royal

ladies--French--Spanish--Sicilian and Neapolitan--German

work--Sacred symbolism--Melito's "The Key"--Mystical

colours--Prehistoric cross--Many forms of the cross--The

roës--The chrysoclavus--Modern decoration--Principles and

motives for church embroideries--The altar-cloth--The

reredos--The pulpit and reading-desk--The ancient

Paschal--The banner of St. Cuthbert--The fringe--Lay

heraldry of the Church--South Kensington Museum 303

CHAPTER XI.--ENGLISH EMBROIDERY.

First glimpse of art in England--Dyeing and weaving in

Britain in early times--Cæsar's invasion--Roman

civilization--Anglo-Saxon times and art--Adhelme's

poem--Icelandic Sagas--Saga or story of Thorgunna--English

work in the eighth century--The Benedictines--Durham

embroideries--Aelfled--St. Dunstan--Queen Emma's

work--William of Poitou--The Bayeux tapestry--Abbess of

Markgate--Gifts to Pope Adrian IV.--Robes of Thomas à

Becket at Sens--Innocent III.--English pre-eminence in

needlework from the Conquest to the Reformation--John

Garland on hand-looms--Blode-bendes and lacs d'amour--Opus

Anglicanum--English peculiarities in ecclesiastical

design--Penalties against luxury in dress--Protection the

bane of art--Dunstable pall--Stoneyhurst cope--Destruction

of fine works at the Reformation--Much on the Continent,

much collected in our old Catholic houses--Field of the

Cloth of Gold--Mary Tudor's Spanish stitches--Queen

Elizabeth's embroideries--Institution of Embroiderers'

Company--East India Company--Oriental taste discouraged on

Protectionist grounds--Decay of the art in England--Style

of James I.--Dutch style--Cushion stitches--Miss Linwood--

Miss Moritt--Mrs. Delany--Mrs. Pawsey--Postscript--Revival

of the art of needlework--"Royal School of Art Needlework" 356

APPENDIX

I. Charles T. Newton on Votive Dresses 400

II. The Moritzburg Feather Hangings 401

III. The Story of Arachne, translated by Earl Cowper 402

IV. Charlemagne's Dalmatic, by Lord Lindsay 405

V. Notices of various Mediæval Embroideries by the Hon.

and Rev. W. Ignatius Clifford 407

VI. Syon Cope, Rock's Introduction, "Textile Fabrics" 408

VII. Assyrian Fringes 412

VIII. Hrothgar's House Furniture: Poem of Beowulf 412

IX. Thorgunna, by Sir G. Dasent 413

X. Pedigree of Aelswith 414

XI. Statutes at Large 414

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

CUTS.

Fig.|Page.|

----+-----+

1 | 20 | Egyptian corselet. Wilkinson's "Ancient Egyptians," p.

| | 332.

2 | 25 | Tabernacle of Balawat. Temp. Shalmaneser. British

| | Museum.

3 | 30 | Zoomorphic Celtic pattern.

4 | 32 | Pallas Athene attired in the sacred peplos. Panathenaic

| | vase, British Museum.

5 | 62 | Wave pattern.

6 | 63 | Key pattern.

7 | 63 | Metopes and triglyphs.

8 | 73 | Persian carpet. Egyptian symbolic patterns.

9 | 91 | Gothic sunflower. R. S. A. N.

10 | 98 | Wave.

11 | 104 | Egyptian ally and enemy. Temp. Rameses II. Wilkinson's

| | "Ancient Egyptians," iii. p. 364.

12 | 105 | Assyrian crenelated pattern.

13 | 107 | Gothic type of trees, Bayeux tapestry.

14 | 111 | Radiated pattern.

15 | 111 | Radiated sunflower.

16 | 112 | Shell pattern.

17 | 112 | Balcony pattern.

18 | 115 | Varied adjustments of square and circle.

19 | 146 | Spangles.

20 | 195 | Needles.

21 | 208 | Feather patterns. Egyptian.

22 | 216 | Application. Egyptian. Auberville's "Tissus."

23 | 217 | Embroidered border on mantle. Crimea. "Compte Rendu."

24 | 281 | Babylonian or Chaldean house and furniture.

25 | 311 | Italian fifteenth-century pattern. Celtic type.

26 | 377 | Barbed quatrefoil.

27 | 380 | Holbein pattern. Sampler.

28 | 388 | Arms of Embroiderers' Guild; given by Queen Elizabeth.

29 | 393 | Portion of James II.'s coronation dress; from an old

| | print.

PLATES.

Plate|Page.| Ref.|

-----+-----+-----|

| | | TITLE-PAGE. Penelope at her loom, reproached by her

| | | son Telemachus. From vase found at Chiusi, in

| | | Etruria. "Monum. d. Inst. Arch. Rom." ix. Pl. 42.

1 | 22 | 93 | ASSURBANIPAL (Sardanapalus). Sculptures from Nineveh.

| | | British Museum.

2 | 22 | 93 | Portion of royal Babylonian mantle. From Layard's

| | | "Monuments," Series i. pl. 9.

3 | 29 | | ST. JOHN. From King Alfred's Celtic Book of the

| | | Gospels. Lambeth Palace Library.

4 | 30 | | A PAGE of the Book of St. Cuthbert, or Book of

| | | Lindisfarne.

5 | 33 | | SILVER BOWL from Palestrina. From Clermont Ganneau's

| | | "Journal Asiatique, Syro-Egyptien-Phœnicien."

6 | 40 | 93 | EMPRESS THEODORA. Ravenna Mosaic.

7 | 42 | | ITALIAN EMBROIDERY, fifteenth century. South

| | | Kensington Museum.

8 | 43 | | ITALIAN and SPANISH orphrey, sixteenth century.

9 | 45 | | PLÂTERESQUE DESIGN. Spanish coverlet, green velvet

| | | and gold, sixteenth century. Goa work.

10 | 87 | | WAVE PATTERN. 1, 4, 9, 12, 13. Greek wave pattern.

| | | 2. Key or Mæander Greek wave. 3. Greek broken wave.

| | | 5, 6, 7. Egyptian smooth and rippling wave pattern.

| | | 8. Mediæval wave. 10, 11, 14. Babylonian and

| | | Chaldean. 15. Persian or Greek, from glass bowl,

| | | British Museum. 16. English wave (or cloud). Durham

| | | embroideries, tenth century.

11 | 88 | | SIMPLE PATTERNS. 1. Persian. 2. Lotus border,

| | | Egyptian.

12 | 90 | | LOTUS BORDERS. 1. Indian. 2, 3. Egyptian. 4, 5, Greek.

| | | 6. Indian.

13 | 95 | 102 | INDIAN LOTUS. 1. With Assyrian daisy. 2. Lotus. 3. The

| | | egg and tongue, or Vitruvian scroll from Vignola.

| | | "Regole di Ordine di Architettura."

14 | 91 | | SUNFLOWER PATTERN. R. S. A. N. Nineteenth century.

15 | 92 | | PORTION OF A PAGE of the Book of Kells. Dublin

| | | University Library.

16 | 93 | 114 | DEMETER. Greek fictile vase. British Museum.

17 | 93 | 217 | 1. GREEK EMBROIDERY, 300 B.C. From tomb of the Seven

| | | Brothers, Crimea.

| | | 2. EGYPTIAN painted or embroidered linen. The cone,

| | | bead, daisy, wave. Lotus-under-water patterns are

| | | represented on this fragment.

18 | 93 | | EGYPTIAN Tapestry weaving finished with the needle.

| | | British Museum.

19 | 97 | 114 | EGYPTIAN key patterns. Wilkinson's "Ancient

| | | Egyptians," p. 125.

20 | 99 | 101 | TREES OF LIFE. 1, 2, 3. Assyrian. 4. Sicilian silk.

| | | 5. Mediæval. Birdwood's "Indian Arts."

21 | 101 | | TREES OF LIFE. 1. Sculpture over gate of Mycenæ.

| | | 2. Sicilian silks; Persian type.

22 | 101 | | LOTUS MERGED INTO TREE OF LIFE. 1. Split Chinese

| | | Lotus. 2. Split Persian Lotus, from a frieze by

| | | Benozzo Gozzoli. Ricardi Palace, Florence. 3. Petal

| | | of flower. Greek glass bowl from tomb in Southern

| | | Italy.

23 | 101 | | TREES OF LIFE. Sicilian silks. Auberville. 1, 2, 3,

| | | 4, 5, 10. Persian type. 6, 7, 8, 9, 11. Indian type.

24 | 101 | | TREE OF LIFE transformed into vine. Modern pattern of

| | | work from the Principalities.

25 | 103 | | TYPICAL CROSSES. 1. Swastika fire-stick cross. 2.

| | | From Greek vase, British Museum, 765 B.C. 3.

| | | Sectarial mark of Sakti race. India. 4. Sectarial

| | | mark of Buddhists and Jainis. 5. On early Rhodian

| | | pottery. 6. Egyptian prehistoric cross. 7. Tau

| | | cross. 8. Mark of land, Egyptian and Ninevite.

| | | 9. Mark of land, Egyptian and Ninevite. 10. Clavus,

| | | "nail" or "button," or sun-cross. 11, 12, 13.

| | | Scandinavian sun and moon crosses. 14, 15, 16.

| | | Celtic. 17. Chrysoclavus. 18, 19. Stauracin

| | | patterns. 20. Norwegian. 21. Runic. 22. Cross in

| | | Temple of the Sun, Palenque. 23. Scotch Celtic

| | | cross. 24. Cross at Iona. 25, 26. Runic and

| | | Scandinavian crosses. 27. Cross diapered on

| | | Charlemagne's dalmatic. 28. From mantle of Henry

| | | II., Emperor of Germany.

26 | 103 | | PREHISTORIC CROSSES. 1. Greek. Pallas, with plaited

| | | tunic worked with Swastika. 2. Greek. Ajax playing

| | | at dice with Achilles. Cloak embroidered with

| | | Swastika and other prehistoric patterns. Fictile

| | | vase, Vatican Museum.

27 | 105 | | ASSYRIAN CARPET carved in stone, British Museum.

28 | 107 | | GOTHIC. 1. Dress patterns from old MS. 2, 3. Old

| | | English tiles.

29 | 109 | | CLOUD PATTERNS. 1, 2, 3, 7. Japanese. 5, 8, 9.

| | | Mediæval. 4. Chinese. 6. Badge of Richard II.

30 | 109 | | INDO-CHINESE COVERLET. Hatfield. Supposed to have

| | | belonged to Oliver Cromwell.

31 | 109 | | FUNDATA PATTERNS. 1. On Phœnician silver bowl.

| | | ("L'Imagerie Phénicienne.") 2, 3. From tomb at

| | | Essiout, Egypt. Wilkinson's "Ancient Egyptians,"

| | | ii. p. 125. 1600 B.C.

32 | 124 | | PART OF BORDER of silk, gold, and pearls. Worked by

| | | Blanche, wife of Charles IV. of Bohemia. Bock's

| | | "Lit. Gew." ii. p. 246.

33 | 147 | | EMBROIDERED WINDOW HANGING from portrait of Mahomet

| | | II., by Gentil Bellini; belonging to Sir Henry

| | | Layard.

34 | 153 | 110 | CLASSICAL SILKS. 1. Greek. 2. Roman.

35 | 163 | | DURHAM RELICS. Persian type of silk weaving.

36 | 164 | | DURHAM RELICS. Norman and Persian types mixed.

37 | 164 | | DURHAM RELICS. Græco-Egyptian type.

38 | 164 | | EGYPTIAN BOAT with embroidered and fringed sails,

| | | and floating scarves. Wilkinson's "Ancient

| | | Egyptians," iii. p. 211.

39 | 200 | | WHITE EMBROIDERY from sculptured tomb of a knight,

| | | fifteenth century. Ara Cœli, Rome.

40 | 201 | | PROCESSIONAL CLOAK, Spanish work, temp. Henry VIII.,

| | | belonging to Lord Arundel of Wardour.

41 | 204 | | OPUS PULVINARIUM. Counted stitches. 1. Italian. 2.

| | | Scandinavian. 3. Ancient Egyptian. Turin Museum.

42 | 206 | | ITALIAN MOSAIC STITCH work, sixteenth century.

| | | Alford House.

43 | 214 | | JAPANESE OPUS PLUMARIUM. White silk.

44 | 216 | 25 | OPUS CONSUTUM. Funeral tent of an Egyptian queen.

45 | 219 | 123 | OPUS CONSUTUM. "Inlaid" and "onlaid." Italian,

| | | seventeenth century.

46 | 235 | | EGYPTIAN GOBELINS finished with the needle.

47 | 236 | | RHEIMS CATHEDRAL TAPESTRY. The Virgin weaving and

| | | embroidering on frame a "basse-lisse."

48 | 243 | | TENT OF CHARLES THE BOLD, taken at Grandson, now in

| | | museum at Berne. The badge is that of the Golden

| | | Fleece.

49 | 252 | | ENGLISH TAPESTRY belonging to Lord Salisbury, at

| | | Hatfield House, temp. Henry VIII.

50 | 294 | | ITALIAN KNIGHT of fifteenth century armed for

| | | conquest. Gentile da Fabriano. Academia, Florence.

51 | 309 | | ST. MARK. Anglo-Saxon Book of the Gospels. York

| | | Minster Library.

52 | 312 | | CLASSICAL PATTERN adapted into Christian art.

53 | 318 | | CHARLEMAGNE'S DALMATIC. Vatican Treasury.

54 | 318 | | CHARLEMAGNE'S DALMATIC. Vatican Treasury.

55 | 318 | | PORTION OF CHARLEMAGNE'S DALMATIC. Half-size.

56 | 319 | | ST. SILVESTER'S PLUVIAL. Treasury of St. John

| | | Lateran, Rome. Opus Anglicanum, thirteenth

| | | century.

57 | 319 | | PORTION OF ST. SILVESTER'S PLUVIAL, showing its

| | | condition.

58 | 319 | | BOLOGNA COPE. Museo del Municipio. Opus Anglicanum.

59 | 319 | | DAROCA COPE. Archæological Museum at Madrid. Opus

| | | Anglicanum.

60 | 319 | | BONIFACE VIII.'S COPE from Anagni, his native place;

| | | now in Vatican Treasury; twelfth century.

61 | 319 | | ALTAR FRONTAL at Anagni, Italy. Italian work,

| | | fourteenth century.

62 | 320 | | WORCESTER RELICS of the tenth century. 1. From tomb

| | | of Walter de Cantilupe. 2. From Aix, in Switzerland.

| | | Same type.

63 | 320 | | 1. MITRE OF THOMAS À BECKET. 2. The cross with twelve

| | | leaves, "for the healing of the nations." Coronation

| | | vestments at Rheims.

64 | 321 | | ANGLO-SAXON WORK, purple and gold, from tomb of

| | | William de Blois, Worcester. He died Bishop in 1236.

65 | 321 | | A PORTION OF ST. STEPHEN OF HUNGARY'S MANTLE, worked

| | | by his Queen Gisela. From Bock's "Kleinodien."

66 | 322 | | PORTION OF MANTLE OF HENRY II., worked by his Empress

| | | Kunigunda. From Bock's "Kleinodien."

67 | 325 | | THE SYON COPE. South Kensington Museum.

68 | 329 | | ITALIAN EMBROIDERIES designed by Pollaiolo; worked by

| | | Paolo da Verona. Sixteenth century.

69 | 330 | | SPANISH ALTAR FRONTAL. THE ARMS OF CASTILE embroidered

| | | in gold with pearls. Ashridge. Plâteresque style,

| | | seventeenth century.

70 | 337 | 113 | CONSULAR IVORIES. Two diptychs. 1. Zurich,

| | | Wasser-Kirche. Inscribed to Consul Areobindus,

| | | A.D. 434. 2. At Halberstadt. No date. From Bock's

| | | "Lit. Gew."

71 | 363 | | AELFLED'S ORPHREY, signed by her. Durham Cathedral

| | | Library.

72 | 363 | | ST. GREGORY AND ST. JOHN (PROPHET), from Aelfled's

| | | orphrey. Durham. English work, tenth century.

73 | 365 | | ST. DUNSTAN in adoration, drawn by himself. Bodleian

| | | Library, Oxford. Tenth century.

74 | 369 | | SMALL PARSEMÉ PATTERNS from Strutt's "Royal and

| | | Ecclesiastical Antiquities of the English from

| | | 1100 to 1530."

75 | 369 | | ENGLISH PATTERNS of embroidery. 1. Panel of a screen

| | | in Hornby Church, Yorkshire. 2. Dress on a painted

| | | window in St. Michael's Church, York. 3. Woven

| | | material of the Towneley Copes.

76 | 375 | | OPUS ANGLICANUM, twelfth century. British Museum.

77 | 376 | | TYPICAL ENGLISH ORNAMENTS for ecclesiastical

| | | embroideries, twelfth century.

78 | 377 | | DUNSTABLE PALL. Temp. Henry VII.

79 | 378 | | VINTNERS' COMPANY PALL. Henry VII.

80 | 378 | | HENRY VII.'S COPE, from Stoneyhurst; designed by

| | | Torrigiano, the sculptor of his tomb.

81 | 382 | | SPANISH WORK. Temp. Henry VIII.

82 | 383 | | ENGLISH "SPANISH WORK." Temp. Henry VIII.

83 | 389 | | CUSHION COVER, Hatfield House. Temp. Elizabeth.

84 | 390 | | ORIENTAL "TREE AND BEAST" PATTERN. Cockayne-Hatley.

| | | Temp. James I.

85 | 391 | | ENGLISH CREWEL WORK. Indian design. Temp. James I.

NEEDLEWORK AS ART.

INTRODUCTION.

The book of the Science of Art has yet to be written. Art has been

called the Flower of Life, and also the Consoler;--adorning the

existence of the strong and bright,--sheltering and comforting the sad

and solitary ones of the earth. But, rather, it resembles a

wide-spreading tree, covered with varied blossoms--bearing many

fruits.

To point out the history and the possibilities in the future of each

branch that shades, refreshes, and gives wholesome fruit to the world,

would be a task worthy of a master-hand and a pen of gold. But less

ambitious labourers in the field of investigation which is only as yet

partly cultivated, may each assist, by carefully collecting a little

heap of ascertained facts; and it is, indeed, the duty of each as he

passes to add his pebble to the slowly accumulating cairn of recorded

human knowledge.

Some one has said, "Build your house of little bricks of facts, and

you will soon find it inhabited by a body of truth; and that truth

will ally itself with other houses of facts, and in time a

well-ordered, cosmical city will arise."

My pebble is not yet polished. It is neither a diamond nor a ruby, but

I think there are a few streaks of golden light in it, which I may

venture to add to the daily accumulating treasure in the house of

human artistic knowledge.

My object in writing this volume is to fill up an empty space in the

English library of art.

The great exponents of poetic thought--verse, sculpture, painting, and

architecture--have long since been well interpreted and appreciated.

Men and women have written much and well on these large subjects, and

we may hope for more ere long. The secondary or smaller arts have been

hitherto neglected by us,--either treated merely as crafts, to which

artistic education may give help, or as the natural or inferior

outcome of the primal arts, having no claim to the possession of

special laws and history. And yet, when Moses wrote and Homer sang,

needlework was no new thing. It was already consecrated by legendary

and traditionary custom to the highest uses. The gods themselves were

honoured by its service, and it preceded written history in recording

heroic deeds and national triumphs.

It may be said that ivory carving is sculpture, and illuminated

manuscripts and coloured glass windows are painting. But for metal

work, whether in iron or gold, a place must be kept apart; and the

same privileges are due to embroidery and to metallurgy. All arts must

of necessity have their own laws and rules, which ensure their beauty

of execution and their special forms of design; these two last, from

the nature of their materials, and the modes of working them, must be

studied independently of any connection with painting, architecture,

or sculpture.

Yet, if the unity of nature is an accepted fact,[3] then the

acceptance of the unity of art must follow. Art must be considered as

the selection of natural phenomena by individual minds capable of

assimilating and reproducing them in certain forms and with certain

materials adapted to the national taste, needs, and power of

appreciation. If man cannot originate materials, he can invent

combinations;--and this is Art.

If proportion, colour, and sound alike depend on certain mathematical

measurements, and on rhythmical vibrations, there must be a real and

tangible relation between these elements, though applied to obtain

different results. In music, as in all art, harmony is, or ought to

be, a first consideration. We have seen by experiment how a note of

our scale can by touch form geometrical figures with sand on a sheet

of glass,--here form obeys the force of harmony. But what is harmony?

By analogy we may argue from the art of music. We who believe that we

have acquired the knowledge of music as a science, beyond all

preceding knowledge of the subject, have in Europe been able to enjoy

only our own musical scales; whereas throughout the East, those

accepted by the human ear are very various, and appear to depart from

what to our senses is harmony. Those Oriental musics have either been

adapted to the Oriental ear, or the ear has been adapted to appreciate

the forms and laws of harmony with which it came in contact.

The same questions occur to us while examining into the different

forms of decorative art; and we are constantly reminded that the laws

which should govern them, are perhaps, infinitely larger and wider

than we with our limited human capacities and experience, have

hitherto been able to appreciate.

"Ars longa--vita brevis" has been so often said, that from a proverb

it has become a truism; but it must continue to be the refrain of

those who write upon art. The subject is so long, and its

ramifications are so intricate, that it is difficult to include them

all under one category.

My furthest aim here is to trace back the art of needlework to its

beginning, without turning my eyes to the right or the left, though I

cannot help feeling myself drawn aside almost irresistibly by casual

glimpses of architecture, sculpture, and painting, which here and

there touch very nearly the history of needlework.

Except where they visibly influence each other, I avoid dealing with

the greater arts, leaving them to the study of the learned in each

special branch.

All art, however, throws reflected lights, and gleaning in the track

of those authors who have preceded us, we often pick up valuable hints

which we accept, and make use of them gladly.

Some writers have thought it incumbent on them to give a local

habitation and an abiding place to needlework, and they have regarded

it as a branch of painting. But I cannot endorse this classification.

According to Semper, indeed, it is the mother-art of sculpture and

painting, instead of being the offspring of either or both, as others

have maintained.[4] They have, indeed, such distinct functions that

each may justly boast its own original sources. Painting is the art of

colour; sculpture is that of form; embroidery is the art of clothing

forms. They are all so ancient, that in seeking to ascertain their

beginnings and dates. It is difficult to fix the precedence of one

over another. We may compare, distinguish, and yet again change our

opinions as fresh facts come under our observation.

The art of needlework reached its climax long ago, and is now very

old. History and faded rags are the only witnesses to its fabulous

glories, in Classical, Oriental, and early Mediæval days. It would

appear that nothing new remains to be invented. Copies of past styles,

and selections from the scraps we retain and value as models, are all

that we can boast of now.

Dr. Rock truly says that few persons of the present day have the

faintest idea of the labour, the money, the time, often bestowed of

old upon embroideries which had been designed as well as wrought by

the hands of men and women, each in their own craft the best and

ablest of their day.

Time is too short, our life too densely crowded, to allow leisure for

the extravagance of what is, after all, only a luxury of art--no

longer a civilizer, as of old, but just an efflorescence of our

culture.

Embroidery is now essentially "decoration," and nothing more. It is

intended to appeal to the sense of beauty of the eye, rather than to

the imagination. The designer for needlework should be an artist, but

he need not be a poet. You may omit this art altogether, and you need

be none the less sumptuously clothed and lodged. Yet it is worthy of

careful study as historical evidence, and that in the present and

future, as in the past, it may be an _art_, and not merely a _craft_.

For the great web of history is composed of many threads of divers

colours, and the warp and the woof are often exchanged, yet so

connected and knotted together that the continuity is never broken. On

this web, Time has drawn the picture of the past--sometimes faintly,

sometimes with indelible tints and pronounced forms. By poetry; by

architecture and its decorations; by dress, which represents and

distinguishes nationalities; by customs, such as the different forms

of burial; or even by such details as painting the eyes; also by the

tradition and outcome of the laws of the tribes that flowed

consecutively over Europe from the East; by the institutions which

remained immutably fixed on their native soil, such as those of the

Code of Manu, and those of Babylon, inscribed on bricks or clay; or by

the words, their form and lettering, in which these are handed down to

us;--out of all these the history of man is being reconstructed.

How valuable is every witness to the ancient records, which were

fading into myths in the memories of men. How joyfully is each little

fact hailed as a landmark, in the general fog of doubt!

Now embroidery may boast that it is a source of landmarks for all

time.

Without presuming to fix a date for its first beginning, that which I

wish to impress on the mind of the reader is the long continuity of

the art of needlework.

The sense of antiquity induces reverence, and I claim for the needle

an older and more illustrious age than can be accorded to the brush.

While the great pendulum of Time has swung art in sculpture, painting,

and architecture, from its cradle as in Mycenæ, to its throne in

Athens in the days of Pericles, and then back again to the basest

poverty of decaying Rome--needle work, continually refreshed from

Eastern inspiration, never has fallen so low, though it had never

aspired as high as its greater sister arts.

The stuffs and fabrics of various materials of the Egyptians, Chinese,

Assyrians, and Chaldeans are named in the earliest records of the

human race. How much these decorations depended on weaving, and how

much on embroidery with the needle, may in each case be disputed. The

products of the Babylonian looms are alluded to in the Book of Joshua.

Their beauty tempted Achan to rescue them when Jericho fell;[5] and

Ezekiel speaks of the embroideries of Canneh, Haran, and Eden, as well

as of their cloths of purple and blue, and their chests of garments of

divers colours[6].

All these fabrics are named as merchandise, and were carried to the

sea-coast, and thence over the ancient world, by the Phœnicians,

the great shipowners and dealers of the East.

Indian needlework and design is 4000 years old; and the long

perspective of Egyptian art, while leading us still further back into

unlimited periods, shows it changing so slowly, that we feel as if it

had been all but stationary from the beginning.

The Chinese claim 5000 years as the life of their history; but if, as

is now suggested, their civilization is Accadian or Proto-Babylonian,

their wonderful artistic and scientific knowledge may have been

fragments of the great dispersal, secreted and preserved behind the

wonderful wall[7] of stone, silence, and law, where it has lain

fossilized ever since. One cannot but wonder at the perfection of the

textile manufactures of the Chinese, their marvellous embroideries,

and the peculiar modes of construction and design throughout their

arts, which have shown but few moments of change in growth--scarcely a

sign of evolution. And we may fairly surmise that this Accadian

culture (if such it be) is reflected from antediluvian tradition.

The archæology of Oriental art is most interesting. We contemplate

with awe the vast splendours of the consecutive civilizations of the

East; the ancient richness and fertility of the whole of the Asiatic

continent; the genius for empire and for commerce; the creative power

which seemed to pour itself forth, unchecked by wars and conquests;

the great dynasties which rose and fell, leaving behind them gigantic

works, and the records of fabulous luxury in the empires of China,

Assyria, India, and Persia, of which the remains have been of late

years excavated, deciphered, and confronted with the historical texts

which we have inherited, and had only partly believed. And studying

these new aspects of history, we are saddened, thinking that the

sunrise comes to us from shining over desert sands or the mounds of

empty cities, where the lion and the jackal "reassert their primeval

possession," or where the European and the Tartar, from the West and

from the East, dispute their rights to suzerainty. We are dazzled and

confused when we look back to those great days when the over-peopled

kingdoms sent forth whole tribes, eastward to the confines of Asia,

southward over India, and westward over Europe; and we bow reverently

before the mighty Power that led the Jews, by a promise and a hope,

across the seething nationalities, through the long passage of time

from Abraham to Solomon; and which is again giving into the hands of

those Oriental-looking men, so much power in shaping the destiny of

mankind through their great riches.

Moses commanded the Hebrew people to lend and never to borrow. They

have obeyed his precept, except in art; to that they have lent or

given nothing. There is no national Jewish art. For music only do they

show artistic genius, and that is European and not Oriental. As

illustrating their lack of intuitive decorative art, one need only

refer to the architecture of the first, second, and third Temple

buildings, which apparently reflected Babylonian and Semitic

influences on an early Chaldean type. The embroideries mentioned by

different writers, from Moses to Josephus, appear to have had always a

Babylonian, or later a Persian inspiration.

This absence of artistic genius is very remarkable in a people that

had its origin in the Eastern centre from whence all art has radiated.

The reason that so little survives of ancient embroidery is evident.

Woollen stuffs and threads decay quickly--the moth and rust do corrupt

them--and the very few ancient bits that remain, have been preserved

by the embalming process, which has kept the contents of tombs from

becoming dust.

As to more modern embroideries, we ought to be thankful that the art

has had its fashions; otherwise, the world would be overwhelmed with

shabby rags. Human nature has a tendency to dislike the

"old-fashioned"--i.e. the fashion of the last generation. That which

our mothers worked or wore, is an object for affectionate sentiment,

and the best specimens alone are preserved. That which belonged to our

grandfathers and grandmothers has receded into the rococo; and a few

more generations take us back to the antique, of which so little

survives, from wear and tear, carelessness and theft, that we put away

and preserve it as being curious and precious. We may hope that the

general law of the survival of the fittest has guarded what is most

remarkable.

Certain works have been consecrated by the hands that executed them,

or by that of the donor, or by the purpose for which they were

bestowed, and are mostly preserved in churches or national museums. Of

these there are vestments and altar decorations worked by royal and

noble ladies; and coronation garments given by Queens and Empresses,

such as Queen Gisela's and the Empress Kunigunda's at Prague and

Bamberg, and Charlemagne's dalmatic at the Vatican, described in the

chapter on ecclesiastical embroideries. Sculptured effigies help us as

to embroidered patterns; for our forefathers often actually copied in

bronze or stone the patterns of the garments in which the body was

buried, or at any rate, those the man had worn in his life. Of these,

King John's monument at Worcester, and the surcoat of the Black Prince

at Canterbury, are remarkable examples.[8]

The succeeding chapters will contain sketches of the history of the

different stitches, and of the best examples of stitch and style

remaining to us; and I shall try to extract from both the best

suggestions for guidance in design and handicraft.

Embroidery from its nature is essentially the woman's art.[9] It needs

a sedentary life, industry and patience. It does not require a room to

itself, and the worker may leave it at any moment between two stitches

when called to other duties. Nunneries produced the finest work of the

dark and middle ages; and their teaching inaugurated the workrooms in

the palaces and castles, where young girls, whether royal, noble, or

gentle, were trained in embroidery as an accomplishment and a

household duty.

The history of domestic embroidery ought to be looked upon as that of

an important factor in the humanizing effect of æsthetic culture.

The woman of the house has always been strong to fulfil her part in

this civilizing influence with the implement which custom has awarded

to her. Every man in the ancient East began his life under the tent or

in the palace adorned by the hands of his mother and her maidens, and

his home was made beautiful by his wife and his sisters and their

slaves. There, as in mediæval homes, lessons of morality and religion,

and the love and fame of noble deeds, were taught by the painting of

the needle to the minds of the young men, who would have scorned more

direct teaching; and the children felt the influence, as the women

wove what the bards sang.

Alas! we have but few specimens of embroideries of which we know the

history, earlier than the tenth and eleventh centuries.[10] Yet from

the days of the books of the Old Testament and the song of the siege

of Troy, down to the present time, the woman of the house has adorned

not only herself and her dear lord, but she has hung the walls, the

seats, the bed, and the tables with her beautiful creations.

Homer's women were all artists with the needle. Venus seeking Helen,--

"Like fair Laodice in form and face,

The loveliest nymph of Priam's royal race,

Here in the palace at her loom she found:

The golden web her own sad story crown'd.

The Trojan wars she weaved (herself the prize),

And the dire triumph of her fatal eyes."[11]

This must have been intended for hangings.

Hecuba's wardrobe is thus described:--

"The Phrygian queen to her rich wardrobe went,

Where treasured odours breathed a costly scent;

There lay the vestures of no vulgar art,

Sidonian maids embroider'd every part.

Here, as the queen revolved with careful eyes

The various textures and the various dyes

She chose a web that shone superior far,

And glow'd refulgent as the morning star."[12]

The women of the Middle Ages were great at the loom and frame. From

the Kleine Heldenbuch of the thirteenth century, Rock quotes these

lines:--

"Who taught me to embroider in a frame with silk,

And to sketch and design the wild and tame

Beasts of the forest and field?

Also to picture on plain surfaces;

Round about to place golden borders--

narrow and a broad one--

With stags and hinds, lifelike."

Gudrun, like the women of Homer, embroidered history--that of the

ancestors of Siegfried.

But in the Middle Ages the embroiderers were ambitious artists. The

deeds of Roland and the siege of Troy, all romantic and classical

lore, provided subjects for the needle.

Shakespeare gives a pretty picture of the graceful weaver and

embroiderer:--

* * * "Would ever with Marina be:--

Be't when she weaves the sleided silk,

With fingers long, small, white as milk;

Or when she would with sharp neeld wound

The cambric, which she makes more sound

By hurting it....

Deep clerks she dumbs; and with her neeld composes

Nature's own shape, of bud, bird, branch, or berry,

That even her art sisters the natural roses."[13]

Before closing this Introduction, I will take the opportunity to

protest against the abuse of the phrase "High Art." It is generally

appropriated by that which is the lowest and most feeble.

An old design for a chair or table, by no means remarkable originally,

but cheaply copied, and covered with a quaint and dismal cretonne or

poorly worked pattern, of which the design is neither new nor

artistic, is introduced by the upholsterer as belonging to "High Art

furniture." The epithet has succeeded to what was once "fashionable"

and "elegant." To get rid of carpets, and put down rugs, to hang up

rows of plates instead of family portraits--this also is "high art."

Likewise gowns lumped upon the shoulders, with all the folds drawn

across, instead of hanging draperies. The term is never used when we

speak of the great arts--painting, sculpture, and architecture. It is,

in fact, only the slang of the cabinet-maker, the upholsterer, and

milliner.

All true Art is very high indeed and apparent; and needs not to be

introduced with a puff. It sits enthroned between Poetry and History.

Even those who are ignorant of its laws feel its influence, and the

soothing grace which it sheds, falling like the rain, equally upon the

just and the unjust. Man's nature always responds to the truly high

and beautiful; only the most degraded are deprived of this source of

happiness. And there are but few women, till debased by cruelty,

misery, or drink, that do not try in some humble way (but especially

with their needle) to adorn their own persons, their children, and

their homes; and if their art is not high, it yet has the power to

elevate them.[14] While the most ambitious women try a higher flight,

into the regions of poetry, literature, painting, and even sculpture

(why has no woman ever been an architect?), millions have enjoyed the

art of the needle for thousands of years, and it will continue to be a

solace and a delight as long as the world lasts, for, like all art, it

gives the ever new joy of creation.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] See Duke of Argyll's "Unity of Nature."

[4] Walls, pillars, and roofs were certainly hung with

textile ornament before they were carved or painted.

This is Semper's theory, and though Woltmann and

Woermann ("History of Painting," Eng. Trans., Sidney

Colvin, p. 38) hardly accept this view, they do not

gainsay it. The women who wove hangings for the grove,

or more literally, "coverings for the houses" of the

grove, were probably the priestesses of Astarte, and

wove and worked the hangings of various colours. 2 Kings

xxii.; Ezek. xvi. 16-18.

"It is probable that the earliest kind of pictures were

either woven or embroidered upon figured stuffs of

various colours; and that in these decorations the

Greeks in the first instance imitated the Semitic races,

who had practised them from time immemorial." See

Woltmann and Woermann's "History of Painting" (Eng.

Trans.), p. 38.

[5] Joshua vii.

[6] Ezek. xxvii. 23.

[7] The wall of China, which, both figuratively and

literally, enclosed its civilization, and fenced off

that of the outer world, for thousands of years.

[8] When the tomb of King John was opened, the body was

found wrapped in the same dress as that sculptured on

his effigy. The surcoat of the Black Prince, of

embroidered velvet, still hangs above his monument, on

which it is exactly reproduced.

[9] Yet men, too, have wielded the embroidering needle.

[10] These remnants are not, like the straws in amber,

only precious because they are curious; they are most

suggestive as works of art.

[11] Pope's Homer, Iliad, book iii.

[12] Ibid. book vi.

[13] Shakespeare, "Pericles, Prince of Tyre," act iv.

20; v. 5.

[14] Surely it is a humanizing and Christian principle

which in Italy permits artistic work to be done in the

prisons where criminals are confined for life. Sisters

of Mercy teach lace-making to the wretched women who,

having committed great crimes, may never be seen again.

The produce of the work helps to pay the expense of the

prison, and at the same time a very small percentage is

given to the prisoners to send to their friends, or to

spend on little comforts, thus encouraging the poor

human creatures to exercise their best powers. We

believe this is sometimes allowed also in England and

France.

CHAPTER I.

STYLE.

In venturing to approach so great a subject as the history of style, I

would beg my readers to believe how well I am aware that on each point

much more has been already carefully treated by previous writers, than

will fall within the limits of a chapter that is intended only to

throw light on textile art, and especially on embroidery.

I suppose it is the same in all subjects of human speculation which

are worthy of serious study; and therefore I ought not to have been

surprised to find how much has already been written on needlework and

embroidery, and how unconsciously I, at least, have passed by and

ignored these notices, till it struck me that I ought to know

something of the history and principles of the art which with others,

I was striving to revive and improve.

Then new and old facts crowded round me, and became significant and

interesting. I longed to know something of the first worker and the

first needle; and behold the needle has been found!--among the débris

of the life of the Neolithic cave-man, made of bone and very neatly

fashioned.

Alas! the workwoman and her work are gone to dust; but _there_ is the

needle!--proof positive that the craft existed before the last glacial

period in Britain.[15] How long ago this was, we may conjecture, but

can never finally ascertain. Then I find embroidery named by the

earliest historians, by every poet of antiquity, and by the first

travellers in the East; and it has been the subject of laws and

enactments from the date of the Code of Manu in India, to the present

century. One becomes eager to systematize all this information, and to

share with the workers and thinkers of the craft, the pleasure found

in its study.

Perhaps what is here collected may appear somewhat bald and

disjointed; but antiquity, both human and historical, is apt to be

bald; and its dislocation and disjointed condition are owing to the

frequent cataclysms, physical, political, and social, which needlework

has survived, bringing down to us the same stitches which served the

same purposes for decoration under the Code of Manu, and adorned the

Sanctuary in the wilderness; and those stitches probably were not new

then.

I propose to give a slight sketch of the origin of the styles[16] that

have followed each other, noting the national influences that have

displaced or altered them, and the overlap of style caused by outside

events.

First, I would define what "STYLE" means.

Style is the mark impressed on art by a national period, short or

long. It fades, it wanes, and then some historical element enters on

the scene, which carries with it new materials, needs, and tastes

(either imported or springing up under the new conditions). The style

of the day in art and literature alters so perceptibly, that all who

have had any artistic training are at once aware of the difference.

Of late years, the science of history has been greatly assisted by the

science of language. When the mute language of art shall have been

patiently deciphered, the historian will be furnished with new powers

in his researches after truth.

The first "ineffaceable" is a _word_; the second a _pattern_. This is

proved by the history of needlework.

As the world grows old, its youth becomes more interesting. Alas! the

childhood of mankind is so distant, and it was so long before it

learned its letters, that but few facts have come down to us, on which

we may firmly build our theories; yet we must acknowledge the great

stride that has been made in the last few years, in the scientific

mode of extracting history from the ruins and tombs, and even the

dust-heaps, of the past. Whole epochs, which fifty years ago were as

blank as the then maps of Central Africa, are being now gradually

covered with landmarks.

Layard, Rawlinson, C. T. Newton, Botta, Rassam, Schliemann, Birch, G.

Smith, and a crowd of archæologists, and even unscientific explorers,

are collecting the materials from which the history of mankind is

being reconstructed.

From them I have sought information about the art of embroidery, and I

find that Semper gives it a high pre-eminence as to its antiquity,

making it the foundation and starting-point of all art. He clothes not

only man, but architecture, with the products of the loom and the

needle; and derives from them in succession, painting, bas-relief, and

sculpture.[17]

* * * * *

Style has to be considered in two different aspects, from two

different standpoints. First, historically and archæologically,

distinguishing and dating the forms which follow upon each other; and

tracing them back in the order of their natural sequence; so as to

guide us to the root, nay, to the seed[18] of each and all art.

The subsidiary art of embroidery, in its highest form the handmaid of

architecture, is full of suggestion, and may assist us greatly in the

search which culminates in the text of "In the beginning."

The other point of view from which style should be considered is the

æsthetic. This enables us to criticize the works of different periods;

extracting, as far as we may, rules for the beautiful and the

commendable, and seeking to find the "why?" also observing the

operation of the law by which decay follows too soon after the best

and highest efforts of genius, thought, and invention in art.

My present object is the history of consecutive styles, in so far as

they concern needlework.

Alas! nothing endures. This law is acknowledged by Goethe, when he

makes Jove answer Venus, who bewailed that all that is beautiful must

die,--that he had only bestowed beauty on the evanescent.

It seems as if the moment the best is attained, men, ceasing to

struggle for the better, fall back at once hopelessly and become mere

imitators. They no longer follow a type, but copy a model, and then

copy the copy. Imitation is a precipice, a swift descent through

poverty of thought into the chaos of mannerism, in the place of style.

The imitative tendency, as existing in all human minds, cannot be

ignored or despised. In individuals it accompanies enthusiasm for the

beautiful, and the graceful charm of sympathy. It maintains continuity

between specimen and specimen, between artist and artist, between

century and century; and it is this which enables an adept to say with

certainty of consecutive styles, "This is Spanish work of the

sixteenth century; that is Flemish or German work of the seventeenth

century."

The theory of development and of the survival of the fittest has been

worked so hard, that it sometimes breaks down under the task imposed

upon it. It would need to include Death in its procedure. In our

creed, Death, means the moment of entrance into a higher existence;

but in art it means extinction, leaving behind neither a history nor

an artisan--only, perhaps, an infinitely small tradition, like the

grain of corn preserved in the wrappings of a mummy, from which at

first accident, and then care and culture, may evoke a future life.

The various ways in which art has appeared at the beginning cannot

here be discussed; nor how the Chinese and Hindu may have leapt into a

perfection which has stood still for thousands of years, protected

alike from expansion as from destruction, by the swaddling bands of

codified custom; while Greek art rose like the sun, shone over the

civilized world, and set--never again to see another epoch of glory.

These subjects must be left for the study of the anthropological

philosopher, who is working for the assistance and guidance of the

future historian of art.

Style in needlework has passed through many phases since the

aboriginal, prehistoric woman, with the bone needle, drew together the

edges of the skins of the animals she had prepared for food.

For absolute necessity, in forming the garments and covering the tent,

needlework need go no further than the seam. This, however, in the

woven or plaited material, must fray where it is shaped, and become

fringed at the edges. Every long seam is a suggestion, and every

shaped edge a snare.

The fringe lends itself to the tassel, and the shaped seam suggests a

pattern; up-stitches are needed for binding the web, and before she is

aware of it, the worker finds herself adorning, _embroidering_; and

the craft enters the outskirts of the region of art.

The humble early efforts at decoration, called by the French

"primitif," are the first we know and class, and are found in all

savage attempts at ornament. This style consists mainly of straight

lines, zigzags, wavy lines, dots, and little discs.[19]

Gold discs of many sizes, and worked with a variety of patterns, are

found equally in the tomb of the warrior at Mycenæ, and in Ashantee,

accompanied in both cases with gold masks covering the faces of the

dead. The discs or buttons remind us of those found in Etruscan tombs,

though the execution of these last is more advanced. They appear to be

the origin of the "clavus" or nail-headed pattern woven into silks in

the Palace of the Cæsars. The last recorded survival of this pattern

is in woven materials for ecclesiastical purposes in the Middle Ages.

Of very early needlework we only find here and there a fragment,

illustrated occasionally by passing allusions in poetry and history.

The ornamental art of Hissarlik[20] is so primitive that we cannot

feel that it has any resemblance to that described as Trojan by Homer,

who probably adorned his song with the art he had known elsewhere.[21]

We know not what the actual heroes of the Iliad and Odyssey wore; but

we do know that what Homer describes, he must have seen. Was Homer,

therefore, the contemporary of the siege of Troy?--or does he not

rather speak of the customs and costumes of his own time, and apply

them to the traditions of the heroic ages of Greece? Whatever be the

date of Homer himself, we can, with the help of contemporary

survivals, reconstruct the house and the hall, and even furnish them,

and clothe the women and the princes, the beggars and the herdsmen.

From the remains of Egyptian, Babylonian, and Assyrian art we can

perceive their differences and their affinities. It is from textile

fragments, found mostly in tombs, that we obtain dates, and can

suggest them for other specimens.

The funeral tent of Shishak's mother-in-law, at Boulac, is most

valuable as showing what was the textile art of that early period.[22]

[Illustration: Fig. 1.

Egyptian corselet. (Wilkinson's "Ancient Egyptians.")]

The corselet which, according to Herodotus, was given by Amasis, King

of Egypt, to the Temple of Minerva at Lindos, in Rhodes, was possibly

worked in this style; for Babylonian embroidery was greatly prized in

Egypt, and imitated.

The second corselet given by Amasis to the Lacædemonians was worked in

gold and colours, with animals and other decorations. This was of the

seventh century B.C.[23]

Amongst the arms painted on the wall of the tomb of Rameses, at Thebes

(in Egypt), is a corselet, apparently of rich stuff,[24] embroidered

with lions and other devices. (Fig. 1.)

The Phœnicians imbibed and reproduced the styles they met with in

their voyages. The bowls found in Cyprus described and engraved in the

September number of the "Magazine of Art" (1883), are most interesting

illustrations of the meeting of two national styles, the Assyrian and

the Egyptian.[25]

Homer's "Shield of Achilles"[26] must, in general design, have

resembled these bowls (see Pl. 5). They also recall the description by

Josephus of the Temple veils at Jerusalem, which were Babylonian.[27]

Phœnicia, which was the carrier of all art, dropped specimens here

and there, for many hundred years, along the borders of the

Mediterranean and the coasts of Spain. We fancy we can trace her

ocean-path by the western shores of Africa, and even to America;

otherwise, how could it happen that a mummy-wrapping in Peru should so

nearly resemble some of those wrappings found at Saccarah,[28] in

Egypt, woven in precisely the same tapestry fashion?

Among the puzzling phenomena due probably to Phœnician commerce, is

the complete suite of the sacerdotal ornaments of a High Priest, found

in his tomb,[29] now in the Vatican Museum. This reminds us of other

specimens of archaic art from distant sources, that our attention is

forcibly arrested, and we wonder whence they came, and whether they

were collected from alien civilizations by the Phœnicians before

they dispersed them.[30]

Certain Egyptian sculptures of deformed and repulsive

divinities--idols of the baser sort--are most interesting and puzzling

by their affinity in style to the Indo-Dravidian and the art of

Mexico, while they are entirely unlike that of Egypt. If Atlantis and

its arts never existed, it may be suggested that it was the eastern

coast of America that was spoken of under that name by the Egyptian

priest with whom Herodotus conversed.

The Babylonian and Ninevite embroideries, carefully executed on their

bas-reliefs, have a masculine look, which suggests the design of an

artist and the work of slaves. There is no following out of graceful

fancies; one set of selected forms (each probably with a symbolical

intention) following another. The effect, as seen on the sculptures in

the British Museum, is royally gorgeous; and one feels that creatures

inferior to monarchs or satraps could never have aspired to such

splendours. Probably the embroidery on their corselets was executed in

gold wire, treated as thread, and taken through the material; and the

same system was carried out in adorning the trappings of the horses

and the chariots. The solid masses of embroidery may have been

afterwards subjected to the action of the hammer, which would account

for their appearing like jeweller's work in the bas-reliefs (Pl. 1 and

2).

[Illustration: Pl. 1.

Assurbanipal fighting lions.

British Museum.]

[Illustration: Pl. 2.

Portion of a Babylonian Royal Mantle. Layard's "Monuments," series

i., pl. 9.]

The style of the Babylonian embroideries appears to have been

naturalistic though conventionalized. We may judge of their styles for

different purposes by the reliefs in the British Museum. From their

veils and curtains at a later date, when they had crossed their

art with that of India, we may imagine the mystical design of the

Temple curtain as described by Josephus; in fact, as much as possible

embracing all things on the earth and above it, excepting the images

of the heavenly bodies.[31]

Small carpets from Persia of the Middle Ages, as well as those woven

and embroidered even to the present day, are echoes of the ancient

Babylonian style, and most interesting as historical records of the

traditions of human taste. Our artistic interests are stirred when we

read in Ezekiel lists of the fabrics and materials of which Tyre had

become the central depôt, and we enjoy tracing them to the various

looms, named in verse and history, where they were adorned with

embroidery, and then either became articles of commerce, or were

stored away to be kept religiously as heirlooms, or presented as gifts

to the temples or to honoured guests.

Mr. G. Smith, after saying that the Babylonian is without doubt the

oldest of civilizations, continues thus:--"To us the history of

Babylonia has an interest beyond that of Egypt, on account of its more

intimate connection with our own civilization.[32] Babylon was the

centre from which it spread into Assyria, thence to Asia Minor and

Phœnicia, then to Greece and Rome, and so to all Europe. The Jews

brought the traditions of the creation and of early religion from Ur

of the Chaldees,[33] and thus preserved they became the heritage of

all mankind; while the science and civilization of that wonderful

people (the Babylonians) became the basis of modern research and

advancement."[34]

The hangings of the Tabernacle are so carefully described in the book

of Exodus, that we can see in fancy the linen curtains, blue or white,

embroidered in scarlet, purple, blue, and gold; the cherubim in the

woven material; the fringes enriched with flowers, buds, fruit, and

golden bells: and we can appreciate how little of Egyptian art and

style the children of Israel brought back from their long captivity,

and how soon they reverted to their ancient Chaldean proclivities,

after returning to their wandering life of the tent.

On the bronze gates from the mound of Balawat, near Nimroud, set up by

Shalmaneser to celebrate his conquest of Tyre and Sidon,[35] we find a

portable tabernacle, evidently meant to accompany the army on a march.

It is not much larger than a four-post bed, with transverse poles for

drawing the curtains, all fringed with bells and fruit. This is an

illustration of the motive for the Tabernacle of the forty years'

wandering in the desert. (Fig. 2.)

[Illustration: Fig. 2.

Tabernacle on gates of Balawat, time of Shalmaneser II. (British

Museum).]

Egyptian textile art is, perhaps, that of which we have the most early

specimens. These are to be seen at Boulac, at Vienna, Turin, and the

British Museum.[36] The Hieroglyphic, the Archaic, and the

Græco-Egyptian are all unmistakably the consecutive outcome of the

national original style, which had totally disappeared in the

beginning of our era. Few of the embroideries are more than two

thousand five hundred years old. But the great piece of patchwork in

leather, "the funeral tent of an Egyptian queen," as it covered the

remains of a contemporary of Solomon,[37] absolutely exhibits the

proficiency of the designer and the needlework of the eleventh century

B.C. (Pl. 44.)

The connection between Indian and Egyptian early art appears to have

existed only in their use of the lotus as an emblem and a constant

decoration; but their manner of employing it was characteristically

different. (Pl. 12 and 13.)

The Phœnicians carried with them the seeds of the Egyptian style

over the ancient world; but these seeds only took root and flourished

on the soil of Greece. The imitations of Egyptian style reappeared in

Rome, and again in France "under the two Empires." In both cases they

were only imitations, and neither had any permanent influence on the

art of their day.

I shall have to allude very often to our Eastern sources of artistic

culture.

Our own Aryan ancestors were so impregnated with beautiful ideas, that

we must believe that we inherit from them all our graceful

appreciation of naturalistic ornament. But even Aryan art met with

reverses on its Eastern soil, from which it constantly rose again and

renewed itself.

The Mongols crushed for a time the element of beauty in India. They

introduced a barbarous and hideous style which has its only

counterpart in that of Central America. It was the produce of a

religion, superstitious, cruel, and devilish.

The Aryan art of India, which was elegant and spiritual, was revived

by the kindred influence of Persia, and by the Renaissance in Europe.

Italian and other artists were employed in India, and "the spirit of

aerial grace, and the delicate sense of beauty in natural forms,

blossomed afresh and flourished for 300 years. Birds, flowers, fruit,

butterflies, became once more the legitimate ornament of every

material."[38]

I continue to quote from Sir G. Birdwood's "Arts of India." "The Code

of Manu, from 900 to 300 B.C., has secured to the village system of

India a permanent class of hereditary artistic workmen and artisans,

who have through these 2500 years, at least, been trained to the same

manipulations, and who therefore translate any foreign work which is

placed before them to copy, into something characteristically

Indian."[39] Indian art has borrowed freely from all sources without

losing its own individuality. It has been said, "There is nothing

newer in it than of the sixteenth century; and even then nothing was

original, especially in the minor arts." But this is owing to the

Hindu being equally endowed with assimilative and receptive

capacity,[40] so that in the hands of the Indian craftsman everything

assumes the distinctive expression of ancient Indian art.

In India everything is hand-wrought; but as the spirit of its

decorative art "is that of a crystallized tradition, its type has

remained almost unaltered since the Aryan genius culminated in the

Ramâyana and Mahabhârata--and yet each artisan in India is a true

artist."[41] In art, unfortunately, "the letter killeth;" and true

artists as they are, the ancient traditions bind and cramp them,

while the ancient materials, the dyes, and the absolute command of

time are failing: so that the beauty of Indian embroideries and other

decorations is gradually reducing itself to mannerism, which is more

dangerous to art than even had been the vicissitudes of war; for when

peaceful days returned, and the waves of conquest had subsided, the

ancient arts were found again deeply embedded in the traditions of the

people. They gradually returned to their old ways, which are so

indelible in the Hindu mind, that they will perhaps survive even the

fashions of to-day.[42]

From Yates' account it would appear that Europe had been fertilized

with taste in art and manufactures from the East by three different

routes.

The Egyptian civilization, with all its Eastern antecedents and

traditions, came to us by the Mediterranean and the Adriatic; the

Phœnicians being the merchants who brought it through those

channels. The Etruscans, who were the pedlars of Europe, travelled

north, conveying golden ornaments and coral, and bringing back jet and

amber. Their commercial track is to be traced by the contents of tombs

on their path.[43]

[Illustration: Pl. 3.

St. John. From King Alfred's Celtic Book of the Gospels. Lambeth

Palace Library.]

Secondly, there was also a Slavonian route from Eastern Asia, which

conveyed Oriental art to the north of Europe. Celtic art, which

certainly has something of the Indo-Chinese style, came to us probably

by this route. Another branch of the Celtic family was settled on the

north-eastern shores of the Adriatic. Celtic ideas and forms in art

probably crossed Europe from this point,[44] and came to us meeting a

cognate influence,[45] arriving from the north.[46] (Pl. 3.)

Thirdly, Oriental taste and textiles came from the Byzantine Empire in

the early days of Christianity, spreading to Sicily, Italy, Spain, and

finally to France, Germany, and Britain.

Runic art, whether Scandinavian or our own purer Celtic, is so

remarkable for its independence of all other European national and

traditional design, that I cannot omit a brief notice of it, though we

have no ascertained relics of any of its embroideries.[47] It appears

to have received, in addition to its own universal stamp--evidently

derived from one original source--certain influences impressed on it

like a seal by each country through which it flowed.[48] Wherever the

Runes are carved in stone, or worked on bronze, gold, silver, ivory,

or wood, or painted in their splendid illuminations (pl. 4), the

involved serpent, which was the sign of their faith, appears,

sometimes covered with Runic inscriptions; and this inscribed serpent,

later, is twined round or heaped at the foot of the peculiar

Scandinavian-shaped cross, the type of conversion. The serpent was

sometimes altered into the partial semblance of a four-footed animal,

the body and tail being lengthened and twined, and sometimes split, to

give a new turn to the pattern. (Fig. 3.) All these zoomorphic

patterns, as well as the human figures seen in the Book of Kells, the

missal at Lambeth, and the Lindisfarne Book (which is, however, more

English in its style), are yet of an Indo-Chinese type; the

wicker-work motives often replacing the involved serpent design.

[Illustration: Fig. 3.

Celtic Zoomorphic pattern.]

The Paganism of our own Celtic art, when it appears, is an

interpolation between our first and second Christian conversions, and

was brought to us in the incursions of the Vikings over Scotland and

into England.

[Illustration: Page from the Lindisfarne MSS. British Museum]

[Illustration: Pl. 5.

Silver bowl from Palestrina. Ganneau. "Journal Asiatique, Coupe de

Palestrina." 1880.]

Our knowledge of their advanced and most singular art comes out

of their tombs, in which the warrior was laid with all his arms and

his horse and his precious possessions, splendidly clothed according

to his degree--in the belief that he would need them again in a future

world.

This northern tradition was so long-lived, that Frederick Casimir, a

knight of the Teutonic Order, was buried with his sword and his horse

at Treves, in 1781.[49]

Greek embroideries we can perfectly appreciate, by studying Hope's

"Costumes of the Ancients," and the works of Millingen and others;

also the fictile vases in the British Museum and elsewhere. On these

are depicted the Hellenic gods, the wars, and the home life of the

Greeks. The worked or woven patterns on their draperies are infinitely

varied, and range over many centuries of design, and they are almost

always beautiful. It is melancholy to have to confess that in this, as

in all their art, the Greek taste is inimitable; yet we may profit by

the lessons it teaches us. These are: variety without redundancy;

grace without affectation; simplicity without poverty; the

appropriate, the harmonious, and the serene, rather than that which is

astonishing, painful, or awe-inspiring. These principles were carried

into the smallest arts, and we can trace them in the shaping of a cup

or the decoration of a mantle, as in the frieze of the Parthenon.

Homer makes constant mention of the women's work. Penelope's web is

oftenest quoted. This was a shroud for her Father-in-law. Ulysses

brought home a large collection of fine embroidered garments,

contributed by his fair hostesses during his travels.

Pallas Athene patronized the craft of the embroiderers; and the sacred

peplos which robed her statue, and was renewed every year, was

embroidered by noble maidens, under the superintendence of a

priestess of her temple. It represented the battles of the gods and

the giants (fig. 4), till the portraits of living men were profanely

introduced into the design. The new peplos was carried to the temple,

floating like a flag, in procession through the city.

The goddess to whom the Greeks gave the protection of this art was

wise as well as accomplished, and knew that it was good for women

reverently to approach art by painting with their needles. She always

was seen in embroidered garments, and worked as well as wove them

herself. She appeared to Ulysses in the steading of Eumœus, the

swineherd, as a "woman tall and fair, and skilful in splendid

handiwork."[50]

[Illustration: Fig. 4.

Pallas Athene attired in the sacred peplos.

(Panathenaic Vase, British Museum.)]

Homer never tires of praising the women's work, and the chests of

splendid garments laid up in the treasure-houses.[51] Helen gave of

her work to Telemachus: "Helen, the fair lady, stood by the coffer

wherein were her robes of curious needlework which she herself had

wrought. Then Helen, the fair lady, lifted it out, the widest and most

beautifully embroidered of all--and it shone like a star; and this she

sent as a gift to his future wife."[52]

Semper's theory is, that the one chief import of Oriental style being

embroideries, therefore the hangings and dresses arriving from Asia

gave the poetic Greek the motives for his art, his civilization, his

legends, and his gods.[53] This may or may not be; there is no doubt

that they influenced them.[54]

Böttiger accordingly believes that Homer's descriptions of beautiful

dress and furnishings are derived from, or at least influenced by,

what he had learnt of the Babylonian and Chaldean embroideries. This

is very probable, and would account for his poetical design on the

shield of Achilles, in which his own inspiration dictated the

possibilities of the then practised arts of Asia, of which the fame

and occasional glimpses were already drifting westward. (Plate 5.)

The description of the shield of Achilles is as follows: Hephaistos,

"the lame god," "threw bronze that weareth not, into the fire; and

tin, and precious gold and silver." "He fashioned the shield great and

strong, with five folds (or circles) in the shield itself." "Then

wrought he the earth and the sea, and the unwearying sun, and the moon

waxing to its full, and the signs, every one wherewith the heavens are

crowned." "Also he fashioned therein two cities of mortal men; and

here were marriage feasts, and brides led home by the blaze of

torches--young men whirling in the dance, and the women standing each

at her door marvelling." Then a street fight, and the elders sitting

in judgment. The other city was being besieged; and there is a

wonderful description of the battle fought on the river banks, and

"Strife, Tumult, and Death" personified, and mingling in the fight.

Then he set in the shield the labours of the husbandman. This is so

exquisitely beautiful that with difficulty I refrain from quoting it

all. "He wrought thereon a herd of kine with upright horns, and the

kine were fashioned of gold and tin," "and herdsmen of gold were

following after them." "Also did the glorious lame god devise a

dancing-place like unto that which once, in wide Knosos, Daidalos

wrought for Ariadne of the lovely tresses. There were youths dancing

and maidens of costly wooing, their hands upon their waists." "And now

would they run round with deft feet exceedingly lightly"--"and now

would they run in lines to meet each other." "And a great company

stood round the lovely dance in joy; and among them a divine minstrel

was making music on his lyre; and through the midst of them, as he

began his strain, two tumblers whirled. Also he set therein the great

might of the River of Ocean, around the utmost rim of the

cunningly-fashioned shield."[55]

There is, indeed, every proof that Greek art was the joint product of

the Egyptian and Assyrian civilizations. Their amalgamation gave birth

to the archaic style, struggling to express the strength and the

beauty of man--half heroic, half divine. Gradually, all the

surrounding decorations of life assumed as a governing principle and

motive, the worth of noble beauty.

The Greeks were the first artists. They broke away from the ancient

trammels of customary forms, and replaced law with liberty of thought,

and tradition with poetry.

They destroyed no old ideas, but they selected, appropriated, and

evoked beauty from every source. From the great days of Athens we may

date the moment when materials became entirely subservient to art, and

the minds of individual men were stamped on their works and dated

them. Phases indeed followed each other, showing the links of

tradition which still bound men's minds together to a certain extent,

and formed the general style of the day. Yet there was in art from

that time--life, sometimes death,--but then a resurrection.

It appears from classical writers that about 300 B.C. Greek art had

thrown itself into many new forms. Painting, for example, had tried

all themes excepting landscapes. We are told that within the space of

150 years the art had passed through every technical stage; from the

tinted profile system of Polygnotus to the proper pictorial system of

natural scenes, composed with natural backgrounds; and Peiraiïkos is

named as an artist of genre--a painter of barbers and cobblers,

booths, asses, eatables, and such-like realistic subjects.[56]

I suppose there is no doubt that all the Romans knew or felt of art

was borrowed directly or indirectly from Greece,[57] first through

Phœnician and perhaps Etruscan sources, and finally by conquest.

Everything we have of their art shows their imitation of Grecian

models. Their embroideries would certainly have shown the same

impress.

Greece--herself crushed and demoralized--even as late as the Eastern

Empire gave to Rome the fashion of the Byzantine taste, which she at

once adopted, and it was called the Romanesque. This style, which was

partly Arab, still prevails in Eastern Europe, having clung to the

Greek Church. In her best days, Roman poetry, architecture, and

decorative arts were Greek of Greece, imitating its highest types, but

never creating.

It is surely allowable to quote here one of Virgil's Homeric echoes,

which touches upon our especial subject,--

"Mournful at heart at that supreme farewell,

Andromache brings robes of border'd gold;

A Phrygian cloak, too, for Ascanius.

And yielding not the palm in courtesy,

Loads him with woven treasures, and thus speaks:

'Take these gifts, too, to serve as monuments

Of my hand-labour, boy; so may they bear

Their witness to Andromache's long love,

The wife of Hector:--take them, these last gifts

Thy kindred can bestow; in this sad world

Sole image left of my Astyanax!'"[58]

It is sad to mark how not only the refinements of taste, but even the

guiding principles of art, were gradually lost in the humiliation of a

conquered people, the dulness and discouragement which followed on the

expatriation or destruction of their accumulated treasures, and the

deterioration of the Greek artist and artisan, carried prisoners to

Rome, and settled there because it was the seat of luxury and empire.

As the captive Jews hung their harps on the willow-trees by the waters

of Babylon, and refused to sing, so Greek genius succumbed, weighed

down by Roman chains. It sickened and died in exile.

Late Roman art reminds us of the art of Etruria in its archaic days,

except that the freshness and promise are wanting, and that the one

was in its first, the other its second childhood.

Before entering on the subject of Christian art, I must again refer,

however briefly, to the Eastern origin of all art. It is evident that

this had always flowed in streams of many types from that high

watershed of Central Asia, where our human race is said to have been

created, and whence all wisdom and knowledge have emanated. In the

image of the Creator, man issued from thence, endowed with the gift of

the creative power. Wave after wave of fresh and apparently differing

nationalities followed each other; partially submerging those that had

gone before, and spreading till it had reached the furthest shores of

the Northern seas and the Atlantic, and encircled the Mediterranean.

They all followed the same course from east to west. The Greek

civilization was indeed so dazzling and strong, that it lighted the

world all around; and India, Persia, and Assyria felt its influence

reflected back on its old Asian cradle.

But from the same high watershed[59] flowed other tribal types towards

China, Java, and Japan, that had no affinity with any western

civilization; and while the Assyrian, Persian, Indian, and Mongolian

styles mixed and overlapped so near their sources, that it is

sometimes hardly possible to reason out and classify their

resemblances and their differences, the tribes flowing Eastward turned

aside and went their own way, and have remained till now perfectly

distinct.[60]

In spite of their matchless dexterity in the manipulation of their

materials, the infinite variety of their stitches, and exquisite

finish in execution, carrying out to the utmost point the intended

effect, yet Chinese and Japanese textile art differs in its inner

principles from all our accepted canons of taste; so that their want

of harmony, and sometimes their absurdity, is a puzzle of which we

cannot find the key. This I have already alluded to (p. 3).

I purposely avoid the questions suggested by Chinese art. The immense

antiquity it claims cannot be allowed without hesitation. M. Terrien

de la Couperie, however, believes that he has found the actual point

of departure of Chinese civilization, and he considers it to be an

early offshoot from Babylon.[61] He supports his theory on linguistic

grounds, and we must anxiously wait to see if it is corroborated by

further researches into the earliest records of the archaic Chinese

literature. But immobility in art is a Chinese characteristic, and no

national cataclysms seem to have disturbed it. The oldest specimens

known are very like the most modern. Yet an adept, learned in Chinese

art, can detect the signs which mark its different epochs.

In this they differ from the Japanese, who, added to their inherited

exquisite appreciation of natural beauty, have a power of assimilation

that might lead in time to their possessing a school of art which,

being really original, might become the style of the future. The

civilization of Japan is not older than the fifth century A.D., and

was probably then imported from Corea. Some of the earliest specimens

we know of their art are embroidered religious pictures by the son of

a Mikado Sholokutaiski, who was in the seventh century the great

apostle of Buddhism in Japan; and the next earliest works are by the

first nun, Honi, in the eighth century. We have European work as old,

and it is most interesting to compare the differences of their styles

and stitches.

We must now return to the beginning of our era, when we find Greek

taste, such as it was, still influencing and colouring art in Italy,

and throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa, wherever Roman colonies were

founded, till the eighth century. It died hard; but by that time the

barbarians had poured from the east and north in successive waves, and

conquered and suppressed the classical civilization.

Nothing is so puzzling in textile art as the mixture of styles during

the first 1000 years A.D. The Græco-Roman, the Byzantine, and the

Egyptian, crossed by the Arabian, Persian, and Indian styles, were

reproduced in the Sicilian looms. Certain stock patterns, such as the

reclining hares or fawns, as we find them on the Shishak pall, or that

of the Tree of Life, approached by worshipping men or animals,

originating in Assyrian art, are employed as borders, and fill up

vacant spaces. The information collected from the tombs in the Crimea

immediately preceding our era, is supplemented by the variety in style

and materials from the Fayoum, now placed by Herr Graf'schen in the

Museum at Vienna.

Christian art, which began in Byzantium, gradually grew, and formed

itself into the Gothic,[62] which in time overcame the general chaos

of style.

Eastern art continued to flow westward, modifying and suggesting.

When the Phœnicians and Carthaginians had laid down their ancient

commercial sceptre, it was taken up by the Greeks, and later by the

Venetians and Genoese, always trading with Asiatic goods. Then the

arts of the Scandinavians[63] and of the Celts (who were the weavers),

though barbaric, still retained and spread certain Oriental

traditions. Luxury was born in Babylon, and Persia became its nurse,

whence all its glories and refinements spread over the world. But if

luxury was Babylonian, art was Greek. Alas! the love of luxury

survived in Rome the taste for art.

[Illustration: Pl. 6.

The Empress Theodora. Mosaic at Ravenna. Church of San. Vitale.]

At Ravenna we learn much of the early Christian period from the

mosaics in the churches. The Empress Theodora and her ladies appear to

be clothed in Indian shawl stuffs. (Plate 6.) These, of course, had

drifted into Rome, as they had long done into the Greek islands, by

the Red Sea or by land through Tyre. Ezekiel (590 B.C.) mentions the

Indian trade through Aden. Theodora's dress has a deep border of gold,

embroidered with classical warriors pursuing each other with

swords.[64] Works enriched with precious stones and pearls now appear

for the first time in European art, and testify to its Oriental

impress.

The Byzantine Christian style was essentially the art of mosaic. Its

patterns for architecture or dress, easily square themselves into

little compartments, suggesting the stitches of "counted" embroideries

("opus pulvinarium").

In the beginning of the fourth century, when Greek influence was still

languishing, we may date the commencement of ecclesiastical art. It

was a new birth, and had to struggle through an infancy of nearly 800

years, ignoring, or unconscious of all rules of drawing, colouring,

and design. Outlines filled in with flat surfaces of colours

represented again the art of painting, which had returned to archaic

types, and in no way differed from the essential properties of the art

of "acu pingere" or needlework, which was in the same phase--being,

fortunately for it, that to which it was best suited.

Therefore fine works of art were then executed by the needle, of which

a very few survive, either in description or copied into more lasting

materials; and showing that, with the minor arts of mosaic and

illumination, it was in a state of higher perfection than the greater

arts, which till the twelfth century were all but in abeyance.

In discussing textile art, I am obliged to pass over a part of the

dark ages, and to approach the period when it must be studied chiefly

in Sicily, which became the half-way house on the high road to the

East, and later the resting-place of the Crusaders to and from the

Holy Land.

Sicily, which had succeeded to Constantinople as being the great

manufacturing mart during the Middle Ages, was in the hands of the

Moors, the origin and source of all European Gothic textile art. Yet

even at Palermo and Messina this art was long controlled by the

traditions of Greece, ancient and modern, while fertilized by Persian

and Indian forms and traditional symbolisms.

The next European phase was the Gothic.[65] This was Arab and Moresque

steeped in northern ideas; and finding its congenial soil, it grew

into the most splendid, thoughtful, and finished style, far

transcending anything that it had borrowed from eastern or southern

sources.

All its traditions were carried out in the smaller decorative

arts--mosaics, ivories, and metal works; and, last and not least,

beautiful embroideries, to adorn the altars and the dresses of

monarchs and nobles. (Plate 7.)

When taste was imperfect or declined, then the decorations were all

rude, and the embroideries shared in the general rudeness or poverty;

but as these crafts rose again, adding to themselves grace and beauty

by study and experience, then needlework in England, Germany, France,

Italy, and Spain grew and flourished.[66]

[Illustration: Italian embroidery XV. Century

Kensington Museum]

[Illustration: Italian orphreys XVI. Century

South Kensington Museum]

[Illustration: Orphreys French and Spanish

XVI. Century]

Then came the Reformation, which, in Germany and England especially,

gave a blow to the arts which had reserved their best efforts for the

Church; and the change of style effected by the Renaissance was not

suited to the solemnity of ecclesiastical decoration.

The styles of the fifteenth and sixteenth century embroideries are

better adapted for secular purposes; though their extreme beauty as

architectural ornament in Italy, reconciles one to their want of

religious character, on the principle that it was allowable to

dedicate to the Church all that in its day was brightest and best.

(Plate 8.)

We possess much domestic embroidery of the Renaissance which is

exceedingly beautiful--Italian, Spanish, and German. English

needlework had lost its prestige from the time of the Reformation.[67]

The best efforts of the German schools of embroidery preceded the

Reformation, while those of Belgium never lost their excellence,[68]

and still hold their high position among the workers of golden

orphreys. In Italy they always retained much of the classical element.

Probably the ancient frescoes which served as models were originally

painted by Greek artists and their Roman imitators. This style

flourished for a hundred years. The French adopted and modified it.

The decorative style of that period is sometimes called the Arabesque,

and sometimes the Grotesque. The fashion was really copied from the

excavated palaces and tombs of the best Roman era. Raphael admired,

and caused his pupils to imitate and copy them; and they influenced

all decorative art for a considerable period. As long as beautiful

forms of flowers, fruit, birds, and animals were adhered to, the

Arabesque was a charming decoration, gay and brilliant; but when the

beautiful was set aside, and the ugly ideas were reproduced, the style

became the Grotesque, which word only means the grotto, cave, or tomb

style, and is as undescriptive to us as the word Arabesque, which has

nothing to do with the Arabs or their arts.

It would appear that if the beautiful only is permissible in

decorative art, and that if without beauty there is no reason that it

should exist at all, then the Grotesque should not be allowed, except

as a scherzo of the pencil; to be relegated, like all other

caricatures, to the portfolio.

A grotesque is something startling, laughable, perhaps ridiculous. A

woman with the head of a goose and a flowery tail may be a symbolical,

but it never can be an agreeable object. When the idea conveyed is a

great one, then it is excusable. The Ninevite bull, with a human head

and five legs, is a grotesque, but it is also a symbol of majesty and

might. A Satyr is a grotesque, but he has been so long recorded and

accepted that he has ceased to surprise us; and the Greeks spent so

much genius in making him a graceful creature, that he has become

picturesque, if not beautiful.

Arabesques and Grotesques have now so long prevailed in decoration,

that we have ceased to criticize them on principle, and accept them

gratefully, in proportion to the gay fancy and reticent genius of the

designer. Most Arabesques are, in fact, only graceful nonsense.

[Illustration: Pl. 9.

Spanish Coverlet, from Goa. Velvet and gold, Plâteresque style,

seventeenth century.]

Vitruvius (writing first century B.C.) says, that "in his time, on the

covering of the walls were painted rather monstrosities than images

of known things. Thus, instead of columns you will see reeds with

crisp foliage, and candlesticks supporting temples; and on the top of

these there are rods and twisted ornaments, and in the volutes

senseless little figures sitting there; likewise flowers with figures

growing out of their calyxes. Here a human head, there an

animal's."[69] Evidently Vitruvius did not approve of grotesques, and

his contemporary criticism is most valuable and amusing.

In the Louis Quatorze period, a species of vegetable grotesque was the

fashion, from which we suffer even now, and it deserves censure.

Leaves and flowers of different plants were made to grow from the same

stem, as only artificial flowers could do. The Greeks introduced into

their decorations sprays and wreaths of bay, olive, oak, ivy, and

vine, with their fruits; which are exquisitely composed and carefully

studied from nature. It is true that they sometimes invented flowers

of different shapes, following each other on the same stem, and

untrammelled by any natural laws. These classical freaks of fancy are

so graceful that their want of truth does not shock us, but they are

more safely copied than imitated.

The Renaissance was particularly marked in Spain and Portugal by the

embroideries which the latter drew from their Indian possessions in

Goa, whilst we in England were sedulously thrusting from our shores

any beautiful Indian textiles that we imagined could injure our own

home manufactures. It was, consequently, the worst phase of needlework

with us, while Spanish and Portuguese embroideries of the sixteenth

and seventeenth centuries are especially fine, their designs being

European, and their needlework Oriental. Their Renaissance, which went

by the name of the Plâteresque, is a style apart. (Pl. 9.) The reason

of its name is that it seems to have been originally intended for, and

is best suited to, the shapes and decorations of gold and silver

plate. It is extremely rich and ornate; not so appropriate to

architecture as to the smaller arts, and wanting, perhaps, the

simplicity which gives dignity. The style called Louis Quatorze

following on the Renaissance in Germany, England, Spain, Italy, and

France, assumed in each of these countries distinguishing

characteristics, into which we have not time to enter now. In this

style France took the lead and appropriated it, and rightly named it

after the magnificent monarch who fostered it. This was a splendid

era; and its furniture and wall decorations, dress, plate, and books

shine in all the fertile richness and grace of French artistic

ingenuity.[70] The new style asserted itself everywhere, and

remodelled every art; but the long reign of Louis Quatorze gave the

fashion time to wane and change. Under Louis XV. the defects increased

and the beauties diminished. The fine heavy borders were broken up

into fragmentary forms; all flow and strength were eliminated; and

what remained of the Louis Quatorze style became, under its next

phase, only remarkable for the sparkling prettiness which is inherent

in all French art.

In Italy this very ornate style was distinguished as the

"Sette-cento," and was a chastened imitation or appropriation of the

Spanish Plâteresque and the French Louis Quatorze. In Germany it was a

decided heavy copy of both, of which there are splendid examples in

the adornment of the German palaces, royal and episcopal. In England

the Continental taste was faintly reflected during the reign of Queen

Anne and the first Georges; but except in the characteristic

upholstery of the Chippendales, and one or two palaces, such as

Blenheim and Castle Howard, we did not produce much that was original

in the style of that day.

Under Louis XV., Boucher and Watteau, in France, produced designs that

were well suited to tapestries and embroideries. All the heathen gods,

with Cupids, garlands, floating ribbons, crowns, and cyphers were

everywhere carved, gilded, and worked. It was the visible tide of the

frivolity in which poor Marie Antoinette was drowned; though before

the Revolution she had somewhat simplified the forms of decoration,

and straight lines instead of curves, and delicacy rather than

splendour, had superseded, at least at court, the extravagant richness

of palatial furniture.

This was followed by the Revolution; and then came the attempt at

classical severity (so contrary to the French nature) which the

Republic affected.[71] Dress was adorned with embroidered spots and

Etruscan borders, and the ladies wore diadems, and tried to be as like

as possible to the Greek women painted in fictile art. Napoleon

attempted a dress which was supposed to be Roman at his coronation.

Trophies were woven and embroidered, and the "honeysuckle," "key," and

"egg and anchor" patterns were everywhere. With the fall of the Empire

the classical taste collapsed, and the Egyptian, Greek, and Roman

furniture were handed over to hotels and lodging-houses. In most of

the palaces on the Continent an apartment is still to be seen,

furnished in this style. It was the necessary tribute of flattery to

the great conqueror, who in that character inhabited so many of them

for a short time. But there was no sign of the style being taken up

enthusiastically anywhere out of France.

After the fall of the Empire, all pretence of style was in abeyance,

and it was then gradually replaced by a general craving for the

"antique," the "rococo," and finally the "baroc," as the outcome of

that part of a gentleman's education called the "grand tour." Every

one bought up old furniture; Italy and Spain were ransacked; and

foreign works of all ages were added to the hereditary house

furnishings. Every wealthy home became a museum. Now the numerous

exhibitions of the last few years, bringing together the works of all

Europe and other continents, have enabled us to continue to collect

and compare and furnish, without any reference to a particular style.

Meantime "Young England" had become æsthetic. Bohemianism was the

fashion, and the studio had to be furnished as a picturesque

lounge:--ragged tapestries for backgrounds; antique chairs and bits of

colour as cushions and draperies; shiny earthenware pots to hold a

flower and to catch a high light. All these bridged the space between

the new æstheticism and the old family museums; and from their

combination arose the style called by courtesy the "Queen Anne"--a

style which can be brought within the reach of the most moderate

fortunes. In humble mansions you will be aware of the grouping of the

old pieces of furniture, culminating perhaps in "my grandmother's

cabinet," and her portrait by Hogarth; or "my great-grandfather's

sword and pistols, which he carried at Culloden;" and his father's

clock, a relic perhaps of the Scotch Dutch.

The English style of to-day is really a conglomerate of the preceding

two hundred years, and it is formed from the débris of our family

life. It belongs mostly to the period of the pigtail; but it

stretches back, and includes all that followed the Protectorate, and

is therefore coeval with the wig. The name of "Queen Anne" would

really do as well as any other, only that the style of her reign,

which was heavy Louis Quatorze, is looked upon with suspicion, and

never admitted for imitation. The "Nineteenth Century" would be a

better name, for it has formed itself only within the last thirty

years, in the very heart of the century, and is, in fact, a fortunate

result of preceding conditions. It owes its existence, as I have said,

partly to the archæological tendencies of the day.

The maimed tables and chairs, which had painfully ascended from saloon

to bedroom, nursery, and attic, till they reposed in the garret (the

Bedlam of crazy furniture), now have descended in all the prestige of

antiquarian and family interest. Their history is recorded; the old

embroideries are restored, named, and honoured. What is not beautiful,

is credited with being "quaint"--the "quaint" is more easily imitated

than the beautiful; and we have elected this for the characteristic of

our new decorations. To be quaint, is really to be funny without

intending it, and its claim to prettiness is its _naïveté_, which is

sometimes touching as well as amusing: this was the special

characteristic of the revival in the Middle Ages. To imitate

quaintness must be a mistake in art; as in life it is absurd to

imitate innocence.

The nineteenth century "Queen Anne" has its merits.[72] It combines

simplicity, roominess and comfort, colour, light and shade. Soft

colouring to harmonize the new furniture with the tender tints of the

faded quaintnesses just restored to society; care in grouping even the

commonest objects, so as to give pleasure to the eye; a revived taste

for embroidered instead of woven materials, giving scope to the

talents of the women of the house;--all these are so much gained in

every-day domestic decoration. The poorest and most trivial

arrangements are striving to attain to a something artistic and

agreeable. This is still confined to the educated classes; but as good

and bad alike have to begin on the surface, and gradually filter

through to the dregs of society, we may hope that the women who wore

the last chignon and the last crinoline may yet solace their sordid

lives in flowing or tight woollen garments, adorned with their own

needlework; and that the dark-stained floor of the cottage or humble

lodging will set off the shining brass kettle, and the flower in a

brown or blue pot, consciously selected with a view to the

picturesque, and enjoyed accordingly.

From what we know, it would seem that a vital change in a national

style is never produced by the inspiration of one individual genius or

great original inventor. It invariably evolves itself slowly, by the

patient, persistent efforts of generations, polishing and touching up

the same motive, and at last reaching human perfection.

The annihilation of a style is oftenest caused by war passing over the

land, or revolution breaking up the fountains of social life, and

swamping the art and the artist.

But another cause of such an extinction--perhaps the saddest--is that

having reached perfection as far as it may, it deteriorates, sickens,

corrupts, and finally is thrown aside--superseded, hidden, and

overlapped by a newer fashion; and the worst and latest effort

discredits in the eyes of men, the splendid successes that preceded

its fall. Though the next succeeding phase may be less worthy to live

than the last, yet, carrying with it the freshness of a new spring, it

is acceptable for the time being.

The moral I should draw from this is, that you cannot force style; you

may prune, direct, and polish it, but you must accept that of your

day, and only in accordance with that taste can your work be useful.

Not accepting it idly or wearily, but cheerfully, on principle,

seeking to raise it; refusing by word or deed to truckle to the false,

the base, or the lawless in your art, or to act against the

acknowledged canons of good taste. Not for a moment should ambition be

checked, but it should always be accompanied by the grace of modesty.

To the young decorator or artist who feels the glow of original design

prompting him to reject old lines, and follow his own new and perhaps

crude ideas, a few words of warning, and encouragement also, may be of

use.

In art, as in poetry, we may recognize the Psalmist's experience: "My

heart burned within me, and at the last I spake with my tongue."

In small as in great things, crude ideas should not be brought to the

front. No one should give his thoughts to the world till his heart has

_burned_ within him, and he has been _forced_ to express himself.

Another wise saying, "Read yourself full, and then write yourself

empty," also applies to art. Knowledge must first be accumulated

before you can originate.

Wait till your experience and your thoughts insist on expression;

then subject the expressed idea to cultivated criticism, and profit by

the opinion you would respect if another's work, and not your own,

were under discussion.

It is true that taste is surprisingly various. Some will dislike your

design, because its style is a reflection of the Gothic; another may

be objected to as being frivolously Oriental-looking and brilliant,

whereas the critic likes only the sober and the dull. Few are

sufficiently educated to appreciate style: and we cannot rule our own

by anybody's opinion; but we can generalize and find something that

shall be agreeable to all--something approaching to a golden mean. The

artist for decoration should be sensitively alive to any suggestion

from the style of that which he is to adorn, remembering the

antecedent motives of its form, its history, and its date. He should

try to make his new work harmonize with the old; but of one thing he

may be certain--unless he absolutely copies an old design, his own

will carry the visible and unmistakable stamp of his day.

Even while suggesting copies this difficulty arises--how can a perfect

facsimile be obtained? No reproduction is ever really exact, unless

cast off by the hundred, stamped or printed by a machine.

It has been said that the translator of a poem adds to, or takes from

the original, that which he has or has not of the same poetical power;

and in art the copy requires the same qualities to guide the hand that

transmits the original motive to another material. An artist usually

carries out his own ideas from the first sketch blocked out on the

canvas, or scribbled on the bit of waste paper, to the last finishing

touch. It is, as far as it can be in human art, the visible transcript

of his own thought. In needlework this can hardly ever be. The

designer, whether he be St. Dunstan, Pollaiolo, Torrigiano, or Walter

Crane, only executes a drawing which leaves his hands for good, and is

translated into embroidery by the patient needlewoman who simply fills

in an outline, ignorant of art, unappreciative of its subtleties, and

incapable of giving life and expression, even when she is aware that

they are indicated in the original design. This is almost always the

case; but there are exceptions. Charlemagne's dalmatic, for instance,

shows signs of having been either the work of the artist himself, or

else carried out under his immediate supervision.

FOOTNOTES:

[15] Boyd Dawkins' "Early Man in Britain," p. 285. See

also chapter on stitches (_post_), p. 195.

[16] Some of these styles survive; some are still

perceptible as traditions or echoes; some have totally

disappeared in our modern art, such as the Primitive or

the Egyptian.

[17] See Semper, "Der Stil."

[18] The history of Gaul begins in the 7th, and that of

Britain in the 1st century B.C., while the civilization

of Egypt dates back to more than 4000 B.C.; therefore

the historical overlap is very great. It is probable

that a large portion of Europe was in its neolithic age,

while the scribes were composing their records of war

and commerce in the great cities on the Nile, and that

the neolithic civilization lingered in remote regions

while the voice of Pericles was heard in Athens, and the

name of Hannibal was a terror in Italy.--See Boyd

Dawkins' "Early Man in Britain," p. 481.

[19] See chapter on patterns.

[20] In the Troad.

[21] Some of the Egyptian arts we know are pre-Homeric

(if Homer really sang 800 B.C.), and Asiatic art was

then in its highest development.

[22] See chapter on stitches, cut work (_post_). This

funeral tent is a monumental work, inasmuch as the

inscription inwrought on it gives us the name and title

of her in whose honour it was made, and whose remains it

covered. See Villiers Stewart's "Funeral Tent of an

Egyptian Queen."

[23] Herodotus, book ii. c. 182; book iii. c. 47

(Rawlinson's Trans.). See Rock's Introduction, p. xiv.

[24] Homer mentions "Sidonian stuffs and Phœnician

skill" (Iliad, v. 170); also "Sidonian Embroidery."

Ibid. vi. 287-295.

[25] The Assyrian designs are such as are now still

worked at Benares, and being full of animals, they are

called Shikurgah, or "happy hunting-grounds." See Sir G.

Birdwood's "Industrial Arts of India," p. 236. See also

Plate 4.

[26] See Perrot and Chipiez (pp. 737-757); also Clermont

Ganneau's Histoire de l'Art, "L'Imagerie Phénicienne,"

Plate 1, pt. 1. Coupe de Palestrina. He says that

certain scenes from the "Shield of Achilles" are

literally to be found on Phœnician vases that have

come down to us--vases of which Homer himself must have

seen some of analogous design.

[27] Homer speaks of Sidonian embroideries, "Iliad,"

vi., 287-295.

[28] See Egyptian fragments in the British Museum, and

the specimens of Peruvian textiles; and Reiss and

Stübel's "Necropolis of Ancon in Peru."

[29] At Cervetri, Dennis' "Etruria," ed. 1878, i. p.

268.

[30] The restless activity of the Phœnicians has

often helped to confuse our æsthetic knowledge, and has

caused the waste of much speculation in ascertaining how

certain objects of luxury, belonging to distant

civilizations, can possibly have arrived at the places

where we find them.

[31] "The Beautiful Gate of the Temple was covered all

over with gold. It had also golden vines above it, from

which hung clusters of grapes as tall as a man's

height.... It had golden doors of 55 cubits altitude,

and 16 in breadth: but before these doors there was a

veil of equal largeness with the doors. It was a

Babylonian curtain of blue, fine linen, and scarlet and

purple; of an admixture that was truly wonderful. Nor

was the mixture without its mystical interpretation; but

was a kind of image of the universe. For by the scarlet

was to be enigmatically signified fire; by the fine

flax, the earth; by the blue, the air, and by the

purple, the sea;--two of them having their colours for

the foundation of this resemblance; but the fine flax

and the purple have their own origin for this

foundation, the earth producing the one, and the sea the

other. This curtain had also embroidered upon it all

that was mystical in the heavens excepting the twelve

signs of the zodiac, representing living creatures."

Josephus (Trans. by Whiston), p. 895.

[32] See also M. E. Harkness and Stuart Poole, "Assyrian

Life and History," p. 66.

[33] The visions of Ezekiel and St. John remind us of

the composite figures and animals in Ninevite

sculptures, and the prophetic poetry helps us to

interpret their symbolism.

[34] G. Smith's "Ancient History of the Monuments,"

Babylonia, p. 33. Edited by Sayce.

[35] In the British Museum. See "Bronze Ornaments of

Palace Gates, Balawat," pl. E 5.

[36] See Auberville's "Ornement des Tissus," pl. 1.

[37] The Egyptian queen in question was mother-in-law to

Shishak, whose daughter married Solomon. After his

son-in-law's death, Shishak plundered the "King's

House," and carried to Egypt the golden shields or

panels (1 Kings xiv. 26). The golden vessels went to

Babylon later, and the golden candlesticks to Rome.

[38] Sir G. Birdwood repeatedly points out that the

Vedic was the art that worshipped and served nature. The

Puranic is the ideal and distorted. The Moguls, about

700 B.C., introduced their ugly Dravidian art. Through

the Sassanian art of Persia, that of India was

influenced. Possibly the very forms which in India are

copied from Assyrian temples and palaces, may have

travelled first to Assyria upon Indian stuffs and

jewellery (Sir G. Birdwood's "Industrial Arts of India,"

i. p. 236).

[39] Ibid., p. 130 (ed. 1884).

[40] Nearchus (Strabo, XV. i. 67) says that the people

of India had such a genius for imitation that they

counterfeited sponges, which they saw used by the

Macedonians, and produced perfect imitations of the real

object. See Sir G. Birdwood's "Industrial Arts of

India," ii. p. 133 (ed. 1884).

[41] Ibid., ii. p. 131 (ed. 1884).

[42] See Sir G. Birdwood, p. 129 (ed. 1884). If

Fergusson is right in suggesting that the art of Central

America was planted there in the third or fourth century

of our era, it would, perhaps, appear to have taken

refuge in America when it was driven out of India by the

Sassanians, and was really Dravidian. He gives to the

Turanian races all the mound buildings, as well as the

fylfot or mystic cross, and he looks in Central India

for the discovery of some remains that will give us the

secret of the origin of the Indo-Aryan style. He thinks

the Archaic Dravidian is allied with the Chinese. See

Fergusson's "Architecture."

[43] Etruscan and Indian golden ornaments, including the

"Bolla" and the "Trichinopoly" chains and coral, are to

be found throughout Scandinavia and in Ireland. See

"Atlas de l'Archéologie du Nord," par la Société Royale

des Antiquaires du Nord. Copenhagen, 1857.

[44] Arrian tells us of the Celts, "a people near the

Great Ionian Bay," who sent an embassy to Alexander

before the battle of the Granicus--"a people strong and

of a haughty spirit." Alexander asked them if they

feared anything. They answered that they feared the "sky

might fall upon their heads." He dismissed them,

observing that the Celts were an arrogant nation

(Arrian, i. 4, 10).

[45] According to Yates, the merchandise of Eastern Asia

passed through Slavonia to the north of Europe in the

Middle Ages, without the intervention of Greece or

Italy. This may account for certain terms of

nomenclature which evidently came with goods transported

straight to the north. Yates' "Textrinum Antiquorum,"

vol. i. p. 225-246.

[46] These northern ideas, spreading over Germany,

England, and France, flourished especially on German

soil; and Oriental-patterned embroideries for hangings

and dress were worked in every stitch, on every

material, as may be seen in the museums and printed

catalogues of Vienna, Berlin, Munich, &c.

[47] Except, perhaps, the Serpent and Tree cope in

Bock's Kleinodien.

[48] The different Celtic nationalities are always

recognizable. There was found in a grave-mound at Hof,

in Norway, a brooch, showing at a glance that it was

Christian and Celtic, though taken from the grave of a

pagan Viking. Another at Berdal, in Norway, was at once

recognized by M. Lorange as being undoubtedly Irish.

There are many other instances of evident Celtic

Christian art found on the west coast of Norway under

similar conditions--probably spoil from the British

Islands, which were subject to the descents of the pagan

Vikings for centuries after the time of St. Columba's

preaching of Christianity in Scotland. For information

on the subject, see G. Stephen's "Monuments of Runic

Art," and F. Anderson's "Pagan Art in Scotland."

[49] "Scotland in Pagan Times," by J. Anderson, pp. 3-7.

[50] On a vase in the British Museum, Minerva appears

with her ægis on her breast, and clothed in a petticoat

and upper tunic worked in sprays, and a border of

kneeling lions. On another Panathenaic vase she has a

gown bordered with fighting men, evidently the sacred

peplos. (Fig. 4.)

[51] See the account of the veil of Herè in the Iliad,

and that of the mantle of Ulysses in the Odyssey.

[52] See Butcher and Lang's Odyssey.

[53] "Der Stil."

[54] The Greeks collected into one focus all that they

found of beauty in art from many distant

sources--Egyptian, Indian, Assyrian--and thus fired

their inborn genius, which thenceforth radiated its

splendour over the whole civilized world.

[55] Homer's Iliad, xviii. 480-617 (Butcher and Lang).

[56] See "Woltmann and Woermann." Trans. Sidney Colvin,

p. 64.

[57] Except, perhaps, the keystone arch.

[58] Virg. Æneid iii. Trans. G.L.G.

[59] The Indian Cush.

[60] Except in the art of the Celts, whose Indo-Chinese

style shows evidence of Mongolian importation, and later

we find traces of a similar influence: for instance,

"Yarkand rugs are semi-Chinese, semi-Tartar, resembling

also the works of India and Persia. It is easy to

distinguish from what source each comes, as one

perceives the influence of the neighbouring native art"

("On Japan," by Dresser, p. 322).

[61] See a paper by M. Terrien de la Couperie in the

Journal of the Society of Arts, 1881.

[62] "Rome had to be overthrown that the new religion

and the new civilization might be established.

Christianity did its work in winning to it those

Teutonic conquerors, but how vast was the cost to the

world, occasioned by the necessity of casting into the

boiling cauldron of barbarous warfare, that noble

civilization and the treasures which Rome had gathered

in the spoil of a conquered universe! Had any old Roman,

or Christian father been gifted with Jeremiah's

prescience, he might have seen the fire blazing amidst

the forests of Germany, and the cauldron settling down

with its mouth turned towards the south, and would have

uttered his lamentation in plaintive tones, such as

Jeremiah's, and in the same melancholy key" ("Holy

Bible," with Commentary by Canon Cook, Introduction to

Jeremiah, vol. i. p. 319).

[63] Scandinavian art became strongly tinctured with

that of Byzantium. The Varangian Guards were, probably,

answerable for this, by their intercourse between Greece

and their native land, which lasted so many centuries.

There have come down to us, as witnesses of this

intercourse, many coins and much jewellery, in which all

that is Oriental in its style has been leavened by its

passage through Byzantine and Romanesque channels.

Gibbon, writing of this period, says: "The habits of

pilgrimage and piracy had approximated the countries of

the earth" (see Gibbon's "Decline and Fall," chap. lv.).

Greek embroidered patterns and Greek forms of dress

still linger in Iceland. There was lately brought to

England a bride's dress, which might have belonged to

the Greek wife of a Varangian guardsman. It is

embroidered with a border in gold of the classical

honeysuckle pattern; and the bridal wreath of gilt metal

flowers might, from its style, be supposed to have been

taken from a Greek tomb.

[64] Evidently an imitation of the peplos of Minerva

(see fig. 4, p. 32).

[65] The descent from the Persian of Arab or Moorish

art, as we generally call it when speaking of its

Spanish development, is to be accounted for by the

presence of a considerable colony of Persians in Spain

in the time of the Moors, as attested by numerous

documents still in existence. See Col. Murdoch Smith's

"Preface to Persian Art," Series of Art Handbooks of the

Kensington Museum.

[66] Ronsard, poet, politician, and diplomatist,

compares the Queen of Navarre to Pallas Athene:--

"Elle adonnait son courage

A mainte bel ouvrage

Dessus la toile, et encor

A joindre la soie et l'or.

Vous d'un pareil exercise

Mariez par artifice

Dessus la toile en mainte traits

L'or et la soie en pourtraict."

[67] Mary de Medici brought back with her from Italy

Federigo Vinciolo as her designer for embroideries.

[68] See "Art Needlework," by E. Maxse, and "Manuel de

la Broderie," by Madame E. F. Celnart.

[69] From the Italian translation by Signor Minghetti.

[70] Gaston, Duke of Orleans (died 1660), kept hothouses

on purpose to supply models for floral textile designs.

Le Brun often drew the embroideries for the hangings in

rooms he had himself designed and decorated.

[71] We have all seen the dining-room wine-coolers

modelled in imitation of Roman tombs; and there is a

drawing-room in a splendid mansion still furnished with

cinerary urns covering the walls, while curule chairs

most uncomfortably furnish the seats.

[72] In his designs for papers and textiles, Mr. Morris'

poetical and artistic feeling--his admiration and

sensitiveness for all that is beautiful and graceful (as

well as quaint)--his respect for precedent, added to his

own fanciful originality,--have given a colour and seal

to the whole decorative art of England of to-day. It is

a step towards a new school. The sobriety and tenderness

of his colouring gives a sense of harmony, and

reconciles us to his repetitions of large vegetable

forms, which remind us sometimes of a kitchen-garden in

a tornado. For domestic decoration we should, as far as

possible, adhere to reposing forms and colours. Our

flowers should lie in their allotted spaces, quiet and

undisturbed by elemental struggles, which have no

business in our windowed and glass-protected rooms.