It surprises us in these latter days of demand for the best conditions
in the prosecution of decorative work, that it should have lived at all
through the days of existence in one-roomed log cabins of early settlers
and the conflicting demands of pioneer life. It survived them all, and
the little, fast-arriving Puritan children were taught their stitches as
religiously as their commandments; and so American embroidery grew to be
an art which has enriched the past and future of its executants.
After the two periods of French and Spanish needlework passed by, there
appeared what was known as Berlin woolwork. Those who in earlier times
were devoted to fine embroidery solaced their idleness with this new
work--certainly a poor substitute for the beautiful embroidery of the
preceding generation, but answering the purpose of traditional
employment for the leisure class. This came into vogue and was rather
extensively used for coverings of screens, chairs, sofas, footstools and
the various specimens of household furniture made by workmen who had
served with Adam, Chippendale and Sheraton, and who had brought books of
patterns with them to the prosperous, growing market of the New World.
Berlin woolwork was a method of cross-stitch upon canvas in colored
wools or silks--in fact, an extension of sampler methods into pictures
and screens, or the more utilitarian chair and sofa covers. It was
sometimes varied by using broadcloth or velvet as a foundation, the
canvas threads being drawn out after the picture was complete. We
occasionally find entire sets of beautiful old mahogany chairs, with
cushions of cross-stitch embroidery, the subjects ranging over
everything in the animal or vegetable world, so that one might sit in
turn upon horses, bead-eyed and curled lap dogs, or wreaths of lilies
and roses.
Occasionally, also, a glassed and framed picture of elaborate design and
beautiful workmanship is seen, but as a rule it must be confessed that
in America this method of embroidery, as an art, failed to achieve
dignity. This was not in the least owing to the actual technique of the
process, since beautiful tapestries have been accomplished, taking
canvas as a medium and foundation for a dexterous use of design and
color.
The square blocks of the canvas stitch are no more objectionable in an
art process than the block of enamel of which priceless mosaics are
made, but one can easily see that if every design for mosaic work could
be indefinitely reproduced and sold by the thousands, with numbered and
colored blocks of glass, something--we hardly know what--would be lost
in even the most exact reproductions.
Original design, however simple, is the expression of a thought, and
passes directly from the mind of the originator to the material upon
which it is expressed; but when the design becomes an article of
commercial supply it loses in interest, and if the process of production
is simple, requiring little thought and skill, the work also fails to
call out in us the reverence we willingly accord to skillful and
painstaking embroidery.
[Illustration: BED HANGING of polychrome cross-stitch appliquéd on blue
woolen ground.
_Courtesy of Brooklyn Museum_]
[Illustration: NEEDLEPOINT SCREEN made in fine and coarse point. Single
cross-stitch.
_Courtesy of the Edgewater Tapestry Looms_]
Yet we must acknowledge there are many examples of Berlin woolwork which
possess the merits of beautiful color and exact and even workmanship.
Some of them are done upon the finest of canvas with silks of exquisite
shadings, and where figures are represented the faces are worked with
silk in "single stitch," which means one crossing of the canvas instead
of two, as in ordinary cross-stitch. The latter was of course better
suited for furniture coverings, both in strength and quality of surface,
while the method of single stitch succeeded in presenting a smooth and
well-shaded surface, sufficiently like a painted one to stand for a
picture. Indeed, veritable pictures were produced in this method and
were effective and interesting. In these specimens the faces and hands,
while worked in the same cross-stitch, were varied by being done on a
single crossing of the canvas with one stitch, while the costumes and
accessories of the picture were done over the larger square of two
threads of the canvas, with the double crossing of the stitch.
The faces were, in some cases, still further differentiated by being
wrought in silk instead of wool threads.
The embroidered chair and sofa covers had quite the effect of
tapestries, and were far better than a not uncommon variation of the
same needlework, where the broadcloth or velvet background held the
embroidery.
The designs were copied from patterns printed in color upon cross-ruled
paper, and consisted of bunches of flowers of various sorts, or pictures
of dogs, and horses, and birds. A white lap dog worked upon a dark
background was the favorite design for a footstool, and this small
object tapered out the existence of decorative cross-stitch, until it
grew to be in use only as a decoration for toilet slippers. The final
end of this style of work was long deferred on account of the fact that
a pair of cloth slippers, embroidered by the hands of some affectionate
girl or doting woman, was a token which was not too unusual to carry
inconvenient significance. It might mean much or little, much tenderness
or affection, or a work of idleness tinctured with sentiment.
[Illustration: _Left_--HAND-WOVEN TAPESTRY of fine and coarse
needlepoint.
_Courtesy of the Edgewater Tapestry Looms_
_Right_--TAPESTRY woven on a hand loom. The design worked in fine point
and the background coarse point. A new effect in hand weave originated
at the Edgewater Tapestry Looms.
_Courtesy of the Edgewater Tapestry Looms_]
The mechanical and commercial effect of this stitchery discouraged its
use; its printed patterns and the regularity of its counted stitches
giving neither provocation nor scope to originality of thought or
design. This was not the fault of the stitch itself, since
"cross-stitch" was the first form of needle decoration. It is, in fact,
the A B C of all decorative stitchery, the method evolved by all
primitive races except the American Indian. It followed, more or less
closely, the development of the art of weaving. When this had passed
from the weaving together of osiers into mats or baskets, and had
reached the stage of the weaving of hair and vegetable fiber into cloth,
the decoration of such cloth with independent colored fiber was the next
step in the creation of values, and, naturally, the form of decorative
stitches followed the lines of weaving. Simple as was its evolution, and
its preliminary use, cross-stitch has a past which entitles it to
reverence. With many races it has remained a habitual form of
expression, and, as in Moorish and Algerian work, is carried to a
refinement of beauty which would seem beyond so simple a method. It has
given form to a lasting style of design, to geometrical borders, which
have survived races and periods of history, and still remain an
underlying part of the world of decorative linens.
It is interesting to note that it had no place in aboriginal embroidery,
and marks its creation as following the art of weaving. It is a long
step from this traditional past of its origin to the short past of the
stitchery of America, where the little fingers of small Puritan maids
followed the lines evolved by the generations of the earlier world.