Needlework As Art Part 2

[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 pa.s.sed 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 debris 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 st.i.tches which served the same purposes for decoration under the Code of Manu, and adorned the Sanctuary in the wilderness; and those st.i.tches 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 a.s.sisted 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, Ra.s.sam, Schliemann, Birch, G.

Smith, and a crowd of archaeologists, 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 archaeologically, 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 a.s.sist 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 aesthetic. 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 a.s.sistance and guidance of the future historian of art.

Style in needlework has pa.s.sed 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 ta.s.sel, and the shaped seam suggests a pattern; up-st.i.tches 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 cla.s.s, 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 Mycenae, and in Ashantee, accompanied in both cases with gold masks covering the faces of the dead. The discs or b.u.t.tons 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 Caesars. 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, ill.u.s.trated occasionally by pa.s.sing 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 a.s.syrian 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]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 Lacaedemonians 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 Phnicians 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 ill.u.s.trations of the meeting of two national styles, the a.s.syrian and the Egyptian.[25]