We must now speak of embroidery. The art of working with the needle
flowers, fruits, human and animal forms, or any fanciful design, upon
webs woven of silk, linen, cotton, wool, hemp, besides other kinds of
stuff, is of the highest antiquity.
Those patterns, after so many fashions, which we see figured upon the
garments worn by men and women on Egyptian and Assyrian monuments, but
especially on the burned-clay vases made and painted by the Greeks in
their earliest as well as in later times, or which we read about in the
writings of that people, were not wrought in the loom, but worked by
the needle.
The old Egyptian loom--and that of the Jews must have been like
it--was, as we know from paintings, of the simplest shape, and seems to
have been able to do little more diversified in design than straight
lines in different colours; and at best nothing higher in execution
than checker-work: beyond this, all was put in by hand with the
needle. In Paris, at the Louvre, are several pieces of early Egyptian
webs coloured, drawings of which have been published by Sir Gardner
Wilkinson in his work ‘The Egyptians in the time of the Pharaohs.’
There are two pieces wrought up and down with needlework; the second
piece of blue is figured all over in white embroidery with a pattern
of netting, the meshes of which shut in irregular cubic shapes, and
in the lines of the reticulation the mystic “fylfot” is seen. Sir
J. G. Wilkinson says of them: “They are mostly cotton, and, though
their date is uncertain, they suffice to show that the manufacture
was Egyptian; and the many dresses painted on the monuments of the
eighteenth dynasty show that the most varied patterns were used by the
Egyptians more than 3000 years ago, as they were at a later period by
the Babylonians, who became noted for their needlework.”
It is clear from the book of Exodus that the Israelites from very early
times, having learnt the art in Egypt, embroidered their garments;
although the word “embroidery” which occurs so frequently in every
English version probably sometimes means merely weaving in stripes, and
not work with the needle. The embroidering also of the sails of vessels
was not uncommon in the east; boats used in sacred festivals on the
Nile were so decorated; and the prophet Ezekiel says to the people of
Tyre, “Fine linen with broidered work from Egypt, was that which thou
spreadest forth to be thy sail.” The reader will here also remember
Shakspeare’s description of the barge of Cleopatra;
The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne
Burned on the water:
Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that
The winds were love-sick with them; she did lie
In her pavilion, cloth of gold, of tissue, etc.
Pliny says that the Phrygians invented embroidery, and that garments
so ornamented were called Phrygionic. Of such a fashion were “the
art-wrought vests of splendid purple tint” brought forth by Dido, and
the cloak given by Andromache to Ascanius. Hence, an embroiderer was
called in Latin “Phrygio,” and needlework “Phrygium” or “Phrygian”
work. When the design, as often happened, was wrought in solid
gold wire or golden thread, the embroidery so worked was named
“auriphrygium.” From this term comes the old English word “orphrey.”
While Phrygia in general, Babylon in particular (as Pliny also tells
us) became celebrated for the beauty of its embroideries. All who have
seen the sculptures in the British museum brought from Nineveh, and
described and figured by Layard, must have remarked how lavishly the
Assyrians adorned their robes with the needlework for which one of
their greatest cities was so famous. Up to the first century of our era
the reputation which Babylon had won for her textiles and needlework
still lived. We know from Josephus, who had often been to worship at
Jerusalem, that the veils of the Temple were Babylonian; and of the
outer one that writer says: “there was a veil of equal largeness with
the door. It was a Babylonian curtain, embroidered with blue and fine
linen, and scarlet and purple, and of a texture that was wonderful.”
What the Jews did for the Temple we may be sure was done by Christians
for the Church. The faithful, however, went even further, and wore
garments figured all over with sacred subjects in embroidery. We learn
this from a stirring sermon preached by St. Asterius, bishop of Amasia
in Pontus, in the fourth century. Taking for his text “a certain rich
man who was clothed in purple and fine linen” he upbraids the world for
its follies in dress, and complains that some people went about arrayed
like painted walls, with beasts and flowers all over them; while
others, pretending a more serious tone of thought, dressed in clothes
depicting the doings and wonders of our Lord. “Strive,” St. Asterius
exhorts them, “to follow in your lives the teachings of the Gospel,
rather than have the miracles of our Redeemer embroidered upon your
outward dress.” To have had so many subjects shown upon one garment
it is clear that each must have been done very small, and wrought in
outline; a style which is being brought back, with great effect, into
modern ecclesiastical use.
The discriminating accuracy with which our old writers noted the
several kinds of textile gifts bestowed upon a church is as instructive
as praiseworthy. Ingulph did not think it enough to say that abbot
Egelric had given many hangings to the church at Croyland, the great
number of which were silken, but he explains also that some were
ornamented with birds wrought in gold and sewed on; in fact, of
cut-work; others with those birds woven into the stuff; others quite
plain. We find the same care taken in old inventories.
By the latter end of the thirteenth century embroidery obtained for
its several styles and various sorts of ornamentation a distinguishing
and technical nomenclature. One of the earliest documents in which
we meet with this set of terms is the inventory drawn up, in 1295,
of the vestments belonging to St. Paul’s cathedral, printed by
Dugdale: herein, the “opus plumarium,” the “opus pectineum,” the
“opus pulvinarium,” “consutum de serico,” “de serico consuto,” may be
severally found.
“Opus plumarium” was the then usual term for what is now commonly
called embroidery; and was given to needlework of this kind because
the stitches were laid down longwise and not across: that is, so put
together that they seemed to overlap one another like the feathers in
the plumage of a bird. This style was aptly called “feather-stitch”
work, in contradistinction to that done in cross and tent stitch, or
the “cushion-style.”
The “opus pulvinarium,” or “cushion-style,” was like the modern
so-called Berlin work. As now, so then it was done in the same
stitching with pretty much the same materials and generally, if not
always, put to the same purpose; for cushions, to sit or to kneel
upon in church or to uphold the mass-book at the altar; hence its
name of “cushion-style.” In working it silken thread is known to
have been often used. Among other specimens, and in silk, there is a
beautiful cushion of a date corresponding to the London inventory at
South Kensington, no. 1324. Being well adapted for working heraldry
this stitch has been used from an early period for the purpose; and
emblazoned orphreys, like the narrow hem on the Syon cope, were wrought
in it.
The “opus pectineum” was a kind of woven work imitative of embroidery,
and employed to supply it. John Garland, in his dictionary, explains
that it was made by means of a comb, or some comb-like instrument:
and from this the work itself received the distinctive appellation
of “pectineum,” or comb-wrought. Before John Garland left England
for France, to teach a school there, he must have often seen his
countrywomen at such an occupation; and the amice given by Katherine
Lovell to St. Paul’s, “de opere pectineo,” may perhaps have been the
work of her own hands.
Women in the middle ages were so ready at the needle that they could
make their embroidery look as if it had been done in the loom, really
woven. A shred of crimson cendal figured in gold and silver thread
with a knight on horseback, armed as of the latter time of Edward
the first, was shown to us some time ago. At first sight the mounted
warrior seemed to have been not hand-worked but woven; so flat, so even
was every thread. Looking at it however through a glass and turning it
about, we found it to have been embroidered by the finger in such a way
that the stitches laid down upon the surface were carried through into
the canvas lining at the back of the thin silk. In this same manner
all the design, both before and behind, upon the fine English-wrought
chasuble at South Kensington, no. 673, was probably worked.
At the latter end of the thirteenth century our countrywomen invented
a new way of embroidery. Without giving up altogether the old “opus
plumarium” or feather-stitch, they mixed it with a new style, both of
needlework and mechanism. So beautiful was the novel method deemed
abroad that it won for itself the complimentary appellation of “opus
Anglicum,” or English work. In what its peculiarity consisted has long
been a question and a puzzle among foreign archæological writers; and
a living one of eminence, M. Voisin, noticing a cope of English work
given to the church of Tournai, says: “Il serait curieux de savoir
quelle broderie ou quel tissu on designait sous le nom de _opus
Anglicum_.”
But if we examine that very fine piece of English needlework, the Syon
cope, at South Kensington, no. 9182, we find that the first stitches
for the human face were begun in the centre of the cheek, and worked
in circular lines; falling (after the further side had been made)
into straight lines, which were so carried on through the rest of the
fleshes; in some instances, also, through the draperies. But this
was done in a sort of chain-stitch, and a newly practised mechanical
appliance was brought into use. After the whole figure had thus been
wrought with this kind of chain-stitch in circles and straight lines,
then with a little thin iron rod ending in a small bulb or smooth knob
slightly heated, those middle spots in the faces that had been worked
in circular lines were pressed down; and the deep wide dimples in the
throat, especially of aged persons. By the hollows thus lastingly
sunk a play of light and shadow is brought out, which at a short
distance lends to the portion so treated the appearance of low relief.
Chain-stitch, then, worked in circular lines and relief given to parts
by hollows sunk into the faces and other portions of the persons,
constitute the elements of the “opus Anglicum,” or embroidery after the
English manner. How the chain-stitch was worked into circles for the
faces, and straight lines for the rest of the figures, is well shown by
a woodcut, after a portion of the Steeple Aston embroideries, given in
the archæological journal, vol iv. p. 285.
Although not merely the faces and the extremities but the dresses also
of the persons figured were generally wrought in chain-stitch, and
afterwards treated as we have just described, another practice was to
work the draperies in feather-stitch, which was also employed for the
grounding, and diapered after a simple, zigzag design; as we find in
the Syon cope.
[Illustration: Part of the orphrey of the Syon cope.]
How highly English embroideries were at one period appreciated by
foreigners may be gathered from the especial notice taken of them
abroad; as we may find in continental documents. Matilda, queen of
William the conqueror, carried away from the abbey of Abingdon its
richest vestments, and would not be put off with inferior ones. In his
will A. D. 1360 cardinal Talairand, bishop of Albano, speaks of the
English embroideries on a costly set of white vestments. A bishop of
Tournai, in 1343, bequeathed to that cathedral an old English cope,
as well as a beautiful corporal “of English work.” Among the copes
reserved for prelates’ use in the chapel of Charles duke of Bourgogne,
brother-in-law to John duke of Bedford, there was one of English work
very elaborately fraught with many figures, as appears from this
description of it: “une chappe de brodeure d’or, façon d’Engleterre,
à plusieurs histoires de N.D. et anges et autres ymages, estans en
laceures escriptes, garnie d’un orfroir d’icelle façon fait à apostres,
desquelles les manteulx sont tous couvertes de perles, et leur
diadesmes pourphiler de perles, estans en manière de tabernacles, faits
de deux arbres, dont les tiges sont touts couvertes de perles, et à la
dite chappe y a une bille des dites armes, garnie de perles comme la
dessus dicte.”
While so coveted abroad, our English embroidery was highly prized
and well paid for at home. We find in the Issue Rolls that Henry the
third had a chasuble embroidered by Mabilia of Bury St. Edmund’s; and
that Edward the second paid a hundred marks to Rose the wife of John
de Bureford, a citizen and mercer of London, for a choir-cope of her
embroidering, and which was to be sent to the Pope as an offering from
the queen.
English embroidery afterwards lost its first high reputation. Through
those years wasted with the wars of the Roses the work of the English
needle was very poor, very coarse, and, so to say, ragged; as, for
instance, the chasuble at South Kensington, no. 4045. Nothing of the
celebrated chain-stitch with dimpled faces in the figures can be found
about it: every part is worked in the feather-stitch, slovenly put
down. During the early part of the seventeenth century our embroiderers
again struck out a new style, which consisted in throwing up the
figures a good height above the grounding. Of this raised work there
is a fine specimen in the fourth of the copes preserved in the chapter
library at Durham. It is said to have been wrought for and given by
Charles the first to that cathedral. This red silk vestment is well
sprinkled with bodiless cherubic heads crowned with rays and borne up
by wings; while upon the hood is David, holding in one hand the head
of Goliah; the whole done in highly raised embroidery. Bibles of the
large folio size, covered in rich silk or satin and embroidered with
the royal arms done in bold raised-work, are still to be found in our
libraries. More than one of these volumes is said to have been a gift
from the king to a forefather of the present owner.
This style of raised embroidery remained in use for many years. Not
only large Bibles but smaller volumes, especially prayer-books, had
bindings enriched with it. Generally such examples are attributed,
and in most cases wrongly, to the so-called nuns of Little Gidding.
The same kind of work is sometimes found on the broad frames of old
looking-glasses: setting forth perhaps, as in the specimen no. 892, the
story of Ahasuerus and Esther, or a passage in some courtship carried
on after the manners of Arcadia.
Few people at the present day have a just idea of the labour, the
money, and the length of time often bestowed of old upon embroideries,
which had been sketched as well as wrought by the hands of men, each
in his own craft the ablest and most cunning of his time. In behalf
of England plenty of evidence has been produced already: as a proof
of the same labour elsewhere a remarkable passage may be quoted,
given, in his life of Antonio Pollaiuolo, by Vasari: “For San Giovanni
in Florence there were made certain very rich vestments after the
design of this master, all of gold-wove velvet with pile upon pile
(di broccato riccio sopra riccio), each woven of one entire piece and
without seam, embroidered with the most subtile mastery of that art by
Paolo da Verona, a man most eminent of his calling, and of incomparable
ingenuity. This work took twenty-six years for its completion, being
wholly in close stitch (questi ricami fatti con punto serrato); but
the excellent method of which is now all but lost, the custom being
in these days to make the stitches much wider (il punteggiare piu
largo), whereby the work is rendered less durable and much less
pleasing to the eye.” These vestments may yet be seen framed and glazed
in presses around the sacristy of San Giovanni. Antonio died in 1498.
The magnificent cope before referred to, now at Stonyhurst, is of one
seamless piece of gorgeous gold tissue figured with bold wide-spreading
foliage in crimson velvet, pile upon pile, and dotted with small gold
spots; probably it came from the same loom that threw off these famous
San Giovanni vestments.
[Illustration: Embroidered Saddle-cloth of the sixteenth century.]