Art in Needlework Part 9

[Ill.u.s.tration: 58. COUCHED GOLD NOT QUITE SOLID.]

That this less solid manner was not confined to the far East is shown by the Venetian valance, B, on the lower part of the page, which has very much the appearance of gold lace.

A good example of outline (single thread) in gold is given in Ill.u.s.tration 59, part of an Italian housing, which reminds one both in effect and in design of damascening, to which it is in some respects equivalent; only, instead of gold and silver wire beaten into black iron or steel, we have gold and silver thread sewn on to dark velvet. The design recalls also the French bookbindings of the period of Henri II., in which the tooled ornament was precisely of this character. The resemblance is none the less that an occasional detail is worked more solidly; but, in the main, this is outline work, and a beautiful example of it. The art in work of that kind is, of course, largely in the design. Gold thread work in spiral forms has very much the effect of filagree in gold wire.

The next step is where the cords of gold enclose little touches of embroidery in coloured floss, as in Ill.u.s.tration 91. These have the value of so many jewels or bits of bright enamel. In fact, just as outline work in simple gold thread resembles damascening or filagree, so this outlining of little s.p.a.ces of coloured silk suggests enamel. The cord of the embroiderer answers to the cloisons of the enameller, the surfaces of shining floss to the films of vitreous enamel.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 59. COUCHED OUTLINE WORK.]

Applique embroidery is constantly edged with gold or silver thread. An effective, if rather rude, example of this, the thread here again double, is given in Ill.u.s.tration 60.

In couching more than one thread at a time there is a difficulty in turning the angles. The threads give, of necessity, only gently rounded forms. To get anything like a sharp point, you must stop short with the inner thread before reaching the extreme turning point, and take it up again on your way back. What applies to two threads, applies of course still more forcibly to three.

The colour with which gold thread is sewn is a question of considerable importance. If the st.i.tches are close enough together to make solid work, they give a flush of colour to the gold. Advantage is commonly taken of this both in mediaeval and Oriental work to warm the tint by sewing it down with red. The Chinese will even work with a deeper and a paler red to get two coppery shades. White st.i.tching pales the gold, yellow modifies it least, green cools it, and blue makes it greener. The closer the st.i.tches, the deeper the tint, of course.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 60. APPLIQUe--SATIN ON VELVET.]

You can get thus various shades of gold out of the same thread, and even gradation from one to another, as may be seen in a great deal of Spanish work of the 16th century, in which the gold ornament is often quite delicately shaded from yellowish gold to ruddy copper on the one hand, and to bronzy green on the other. Similar use may be made of vari-coloured silks in couching white or other cord; but gold reflects the colour much better than silk, and gives much more subtle effects.

The Flemings and Italians of the early Renaissance went further. They had a way of laying threads of gold and sewing them so closely over with coloured silk that in many parts it quite hid the gold. Only in proportion as they wanted to lighten the colour of the draperies in their pictorial embroideries did they s.p.a.ce the st.i.tches farther and farther apart, and let the gold gleam through. Except in the high lights it did not p.r.o.nounce itself positively. The effect is not unlike what is seen in paintings of the primitive school, where the high lights of the red and blue draperies are hatched with gold. The practice of the embroiderer may be reminiscent of that, or that may be the origin of the primitive painters' convention. It is more as if the embroiderer wanted to represent a precious tissue, a stuff shot with gold.

Ill.u.s.tration 80 gives part of a figure worked in this way, relieved against a more golden architectural background rendered by the very same double threads of gold which run through the figures. In the architecture, however, they are couched in st.i.tches which are never so near as to take away from the effect of the gold. The two degrees of obscuring or clouding gold by oversewing are here shown in most instructive contrast. The cords, as usual, are laid in horizontal courses. That was the convenient way of working; but it resulted in a corded look, which has very much the appearance of tapestry; and there is no doubt that resemblance to tapestry was in the end consciously sought. That the method here employed was laborious needs no saying; but it gave most beautiful, if pictorial, results.

APPLIQUe.

Embroidery, it has been shown, is much of it on the surface of the stuff, not just needle st.i.tches, but the st.i.tching-on of something--cord, gold thread, or whatever it may be. And instances have been given where the design of such work was not merely in outline, but where certain details were filled in with st.i.tching. Yet another practice, and one more strictly in keeping with the onlaying of cord, was to onlay the solid also, applying, that is to say, the surface colour also in the form of pieces of silk cut to shape.

Patterns of this kind may be conceived as line work developing into leafy terminations, the APPLIQUe only an adjunct to couching (Ill.u.s.tration 63); or they may be thought of as ma.s.sive work eked out with line: the applique, that is to say, the main thing, the couching only supplementary (Ill.u.s.tration 92). An intermediate kind is where outline and ma.s.s--couching and applique--play parts of equal importance in the scheme of design (Ill.u.s.tration 60).

Couched cord or filoselle is useful in covering the raw edge of the onlay, not so much masking the joints as making them sightly.

Applique must be carefully and exactly done, and is best worked in a frame. It is almost as much a man's work as a woman's. Embroidery proper is properly woman's work; but here, as in the case of tailoring, the man comes in. The getting ready for applique is not the kind of thing a woman can do best.

The finishing may sometimes be done in the hand, and very bold, coa.r.s.e work may possibly be worked throughout in the hand, and outlined with b.u.t.tonhole-st.i.tch (chain-st.i.tch is not so appropriate); but when a couched outline is employed it must be done in a frame, and, indeed, work with any pretensions to finish is invariably begun and finished in the frame.

[Sidenote: TO WORK APPLIQUe]

To work applique you want, in fact, two frames--one on which to mount the material to be embroidered, and another on which to mount the material to be applied. The backing in each case should be of smooth holland. This is stretched on to the frame, and then pasted with stiff starch or what not; the silk or velvet is laid on to it and stroked with a soft rag until it adheres, and is left to dry gently. When dry, the outlines of the complete design are traced upon the one, and those of the details to be applied upon the other. (You may paste, of course, silks of two or three colours upon one backing for this.) The stuff to be applied is then loosened from its frame, the details are cleanly cut out with scissors, or, better still, a knife (in either case sharp), and transferred to their place in the design on the other frame. There they are kept in position by short steel pins planted upright into the stuff until you are sure they fit, and then tacked firmly down, with care that the st.i.tches are such as will be quite covered by the final couching, chain st.i.tch, or whatever is to be your outline.

In the case of silk or other delicate material, peculiar care must be taken that the paste is not moist enough to penetrate the stuff; but an experienced worker has no fear of that.

A firm outline is a condition of applique, and couched cord fulfils it most perfectly. Much depends upon a tasteful and tactful choice of colour for it. You fatten your pattern by outlining it with a colour which goes with it (Ill.u.s.tration 62, B). You thin it by one which goes into the ground. Very subtle use may be made of a double outline or of a corded line upon couched floss. There is a double outline to the ornament in Ill.u.s.tration 92: the inner one next to the yellow satin applique is of gold, the outer one next the crimson velvet ground is of white sewn with pale blue. This gives emphasis to the bold forms of the leaf.a.ge. The mid-rib there is of silver couching; the minor veinings are st.i.tched in silk, and are rather insignificant.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 61. APPLIQUe PANEL BY MISS KEIGHLEY.]

The less there is of extra st.i.tching on applique the better as a rule.

It disturbs the breadth, which is so valuable a characteristic of onlay.

In no case is much mixing of methods to be desired; but if applique is to be supplemented, it had best be with couching, which is not so much st.i.tching as st.i.tched down, itself another form of applied work.

Applique of itself is not, of course, adapted to pictorial work, but that in a.s.sociation with judicious st.i.tching and couching it may be used to admirable decorative purpose in figure design is shown by Miss Mabel Keighley's panel, Ill.u.s.tration 61. What an artist may do depends upon the artist. Miss Keighley's panel indicates the use that may be made of texture in the stuff onlaid.

Applique is especially appropriate to bold church work, fulfilling perfectly that condition of legibility so desirable in work necessarily seen oftenest from afar. Broadly designed, it may be as fine in its way as a piece of mediaeval stained gla.s.s, and it gives to silk and velvet their true worth. The pattern may be readable as far off as you can distinguish colour.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 62. A. COUNTERCHANGE. B. APPLIQUe.]

Applique work is thought by some to be an inferior kind of embroidery, which it is not. It is not a lower but another kind of needlework, in which more is made of the stuff than of the st.i.tching. In it the craft of the needleworker is not carried to its limit; but, on the other hand, it makes great demands upon design. You cannot begin by just throwing about sprays of natural flowers. It calls peremptorily for treatment--by which test the decorative artist stands or falls.

Effective it must be; coa.r.s.e it may be; vulgar it should not be; trivial it can hardly be; mere prettiness is beyond its scope; but it lends itself to dignity of design and n.o.bility of treatment. Of course, it is not popular.

A usual form of applique is in satin upon velvet. Velvet on satin (B, Ill.u.s.tration 62) is comparatively rare; but it may be very beautiful, though there is a danger that it may look like weaving.

Silk upon silk (figured damask) is shown in Ill.u.s.tration 63, designed to be seen from a nearer point of view, and less p.r.o.nounced in pattern accordingly. The strap work, applied in ribbon, is broken by cross st.i.tches in couples, which take away from the severity of the lines. The grape bunches are onlaid, each in one piece of silk, the forms of the separate grapes expressed by couching. The French knots in the centre of the grapes add greatly to the richness of the surface. The leaves are in one piece. It would have been possible to use two or three, joining them at the veins.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 63. APPLIQUe--SILK ON SILK DAMASK.]

The application of leather to velvet, as in Ill.u.s.tration 94, allows modification in the way of execution, and of design adapted to it.

Leather does not fray, and needs, therefore, no sewing over at the edge, but only sewing down, which may be done, as in this case, well within the edge of the material, giving the effect of a double outline. The Chinese do small work in linen, making similar use of the st.i.tching within the outline, but turning the cut edge of the stuff under; it would not do to leave it raw. On a bolder scale, but in precisely the same manner, is embroidered the wonderful tent of Francois Ier., taken at the battle of Pavia, and now in the Armoury at Madrid--obviously Arab work. Something of the kind was done also in Morocco, which points to leather work as the possible origin of this method.

Another ingenious Chinese notion is to sew down little five-petalled flowers (turned under at the edges) with long stamen st.i.tches radiating from a central eye of knots.

INLAY, MOSAIC, CUT-WORK.

A step beyond the process of onlaying is INLAY, where one material is not laid on to the other, but into it, both being perhaps backed by a common material. The process is, in fact, precisely a.n.a.logous to that inlay of bra.s.s and tortoisesh.e.l.l which goes by the name of its inventor, Boule. The work is difficult, but thorough. It does not recommend itself to those who want to get effect cheaply. The process is suited only to close-textured stuffs, such as cloth, which do not fray.

[Sidenote: TO WORK INLAY.]

The materials are not pasted on to linen, as in the case of applique.

The cloth to be inlaid is placed upon the other, and both are cut through with one action of the knife, so that the parts cannot but fit.

The coherent piece of material (the ground, say, of the pattern) is then laid upon a piece of strong linen already in a frame; the vacant s.p.a.ces in it are filled up by pieces of the other stuff, and all is tacked down in place. That done, the work is taken out of the frame, and the edges sewn together. The backing can then, if necessary, be removed; and in Oriental work it generally was.

Inlay lends itself most invitingly to COUNTERCHANGE in design, as seen in the stole at A, Ill.u.s.tration 62. Light and dark, ground and pattern, are there identical. You cannot say either is ground; each forms the ground to the other. And from the mere fact of the counterchanging you gather that it is inlaid, and not onlaid.

[Sidenote: TO WORK COUNTERCHANGE.]

Prior to inlaying in materials which are at all likely to fray, you first back them with paper, thin but tough, firmly pasted; then, having tacked the two together, and pinned them with drawing-pins on to a board, you slip between it and the stuff a sheet of gla.s.s, and with a very sharp knife (kept sharp by an oilstone at hand) cut out the pattern. What was cut out of one material has only to be fitted into the other, and sewn together as before, and you have two pieces of inlaid work--what is the ground in one forming the pattern in the other, and _vice versa_. By this ingenious means there is absolutely no waste of stuff. You get, moreover, almost invariably a broad and dignified effect: the process does not lend itself to triviality. It was used by the Italians, and more especially by the Spaniards of the Renaissance, who borrowed the idea, of course, from the Arabs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 64. INLAY IN COLOURED CLOTHS.]

In India they still inlay in cloth most marvellously, not only counterchanging the pattern, but inlaying the inlays with smaller patternwork, thus combining great simplicity of effect with wonderful minuteness of detail. They mask the joins with chain-st.i.tch, the colour of it artfully chosen with regard to the two colours of the cloth it divides or joins. Further, they often patch together pieces of this kind of inlay.

Inlay itself is a sort of PATCHWORK. You cut pieces out of your cloth, and patch it with pieces of another colour, covering the joins perhaps, as on Ill.u.s.tration 64, with chain st.i.tch, which gives it some resemblance to cloisonne enamel, the cloisons being of chain-st.i.tch.