Needlework As Art Part 26

1875, i. p. 67. Plano Carpini (p. 755) says the courtiers of Karakorum were clad in "white purpura;" and that on the first day of the great festival in honour of the inauguration of Kuyuk Khan, all the Mogul n.o.bles were clad in pourpre blanche, the second day in ruby purple, and the third in blue purple: on the fourth day they appeared in Baudichin (cloth of gold). (Yule, "Marco Polo," vol. i. p. 376.) White purple is also named in the inventories of Sta. Maria Maggiore at Rome, and those of Notre Dame in Paris. "Histoire du Tissu Ancien, a l'Exposition de l'Union Generale des Arts Decoratifs."

[293] Francois Le Normant, in his "Grande Grece," tells of the dye of the purple of Tarentum from the murex, found in the Mare Piccolo. He says that Tarentine muslins, woven from the filaments of the pinna dipped in the dye of the murex, rivalled those of Cos. Le Normant laments the total neglect of the murex in these days (could its trade be revived?) Plutarch says that Alexander the Great, having made himself master of Susa (Shushan), found, amongst other riches of marvellous value, "purple of Hermione" worth forty thousand talents (Quintus Curtius says fifty thousand), which, though it had been stored 190 years, retained all its freshness and beauty. See Plutarch's "Lives," edited by J. and W.

Langhorne, vol. ii. p. 739; Blumner, i. p. 224-240. The reason a.s.signed for their dye being so perfect was that the Susanians knew how to comb the wool to be dipped, and prepare it with honey. According to Aristotle the dress of Alcisthenes, the Sybarite, was dyed with this purple from Shushan (Ciampini, Vet. Mon.).

[294] Semper gives us an account of iodine colours.

Some, he says, were extracted from sea-weeds, green and yellow; the purples, when finest, from the sh.e.l.l-fish.

The Phnician coasts gave the best purples; those of the Atlantic the best blacks and browns. And thus he completes the scale of iodine colours. See Semper, "Der Stil," i. p. 206.

[295] Heaps of the sh.e.l.ls of this "murex trunculus" have been found at Pompeii, near the dyers' works. Hardouin says that in his time they were found at Otranto, and similar remains have been noticed at Sidon. Sir James Lacaita informs me that the living sh.e.l.ls are still found along the sh.o.r.es of the Adriatic, as well as on the wash near Argos. No doubt the Phnicians traded first in the produce of the Sidonian and Tyrian coasts, though they afterwards went farther afield in collecting their dyes. Auberville says that the purple of the Romans was a deep violet (double dyed, purpurae dibaphae), and that this colour was Asiatic. The Phnicians traded in it, and sold it for its weight in silver.

Instead of fading in the sunshine, its colour intensified. The enduring nature of this colour is proved by the purple fragments from a Greek tomb in the Crimea of about 300 B.C., described in chapter on st.i.tches, p. 217. See "Histoire du Tissu Ancien, a l'Exposition de l'Union Generale des Arts Decoratifs."

[296] Though really red of the purest colour, it doubtless received its name of Tyrian purple as being one of the materials of the amethystine double dye. The web or fleece was first dipped in the dye of Purpura, and then in that of the Buccinum, or they reversed the process to give a different tint. This is Pliny's account of the process of dyeing, which is very simple, and gives no details. Semper says that the ancients called black and white the two extremes of purple--white the thinnest, and black the thickest or most solid layer of colour. Both were thus considered as colour. (Semper, i. pp. 205-7.) As long as there is light, black always appears to be either blue, or brown, or green, till with darkness all colour disappears.

[297] Exod. xxv. Semper (i. p. 103) suggests that these rams' skins were dyed with the periploca secamone--a plant still used for this purpose in Egypt.

[298] Jeremiah xxii. 14.

[299] Ezekiel xxiii. 14: "The images of the Chaldeans."

"The men portrayed in vermilion on the wall."

[300] Villiers Stuart, "Funeral Tent of an Egyptian Queen." See Appendix.

[301] 2 Chron. ii. 7.

[302] The Arabs received the kermis from Armenia, and the name was originally "Quer-mes," "oak-apple." Sardis was famed for its kermes dye. See Birdwood, "Indian Arts," p. 238, ed. 1880, and Yule's "Marco Polo," i. p.

67.

[303] Isa. ii. 18.

[304] Renouf's Hibbert Lectures, p. 67-69. It may be called balance, rather than harmony.

[305] Wilkinson, "Manners of the Ancient Egyptians,"

vol. iii. pp. 301-3.

[306] Blumner, p. 220. See Pliny, "Natural History,"

x.x.xv. 42.

[307] Semper, i. p. 248.

[308] See Birdwood's "Indian Arts," p. 272. In the Code of Manu, black garments are sacred to the Indian Saturn, yellow to Venus, and red to Mars. See Birdwood, p. 235.

[309] See Floyer's "Unexplored Baluchistan," pp. 278, 373, 406. The Persians produce their deep yellow from the skin of the pomegranate, by boiling it in alum.

Major Murdoch Smith describes the Persian processes for dyeing patterns red and black in textiles. The Italian women dye their own dresses in the pomegranate yellow; also in turmeric yellow, and other vegetable dyes.

[310] Pliny, "Natural History," xxii. 3. Unfortunately, Pliny seldom condescends to give us the recipes for dyeing processes.

[311] Logan's "Scottish Garb."

[312] See Elton's "Origins of English History."

[313] The Cretan tincture was extracted from a plant which Theophrastus, Dioscorides, and Pliny respectively name. The last calls it the _Phycos thala.s.sion_. This was not a sea-weed, but a lichen--probably the same from which the orchid purple of modern art is prepared. See Birdwood, "Indian Arts," i. p. 238.

[314] The same scale of colour varies as much on the different textiles employed, as it does from the colours extracted from other chemicals. Silk, wool, cotton, flax, give very different results. The colouring matter may be identical, yet you cannot place them side by side without being aware that they may be repellant, instead of harmonious in tone. The scale is sometimes removed to another pitch, and they will no more harmonize than instruments that have not been attuned to the same diapason. See Redgrave's Report on Textile Fabrics.

[315] With the changes in colouring materials has arisen the necessity for discovering new mordants. The gas colour of madder is exactly the same chemically as that extracted from the vegetable, but the old mordant does not fix it, and it changes very soon to a dull blackish-purple hue.

[316] Pliny, "Natural History," ix. 12. The most unnatural, and the most disagreeable dyes, are the magentas. Sir G. Birdwood tells us that the Maharajah of Cashmere has adopted a most efficient plan for the suppression of magenta dyes within his dominions--first, a duty of 45 per cent. on entering the country, and at a certain distance within the frontier, they are confiscated and destroyed.

CHAPTER VI.

_Part 1._

St.i.tCHES.

St.i.tches in needlework correspond to the touches of the pencil or brush in drawing or painting, or to the strokes of the chisel in sculpture. The needle is the one implement of the craft by which endless forms of surface-work are executed. With a thread through its one eye, it blindly follows each effort of its pointed foot, urged by the intelligent or mechanical hand grouping the st.i.tches, which, being long or short, single or mixed, slanting, upright, or crossed, are selected as the best fitted for the design and purpose in hand. The word "st.i.tches" does not, however, in this chapter represent merely the plural of one particular process of needle insertion, but the produce and effect of each different kind of st.i.tch by grouping and repet.i.tion, according to its most ancient nomenclature. That which is astonishing is the endless variety of surface, of design, of hints and suggestions, of startling effects, and of lovely combinations, resulting from the direction of the needle and manipulation of the materials, and differing from each other according to the power or the caprice of the worker. But the machine is always the same--the threaded needle strikes the same interval, forming the "st.i.tch."

This venerable implement, _the needle_, has, through the ages, varied but little in form. The attenuated body, the sharp foot, the rounded head, and the eye to hold the thread, are the same in principle, whether it is found in the cave-man's grave, formed of a fish's bone or shaped from that of a larger animal; hammered of the finest bronze, as from Egypt, or of gold, like those found in Scandinavia. A bronze needle was lately discovered in the tomb of a woman of the Vikings in Scotland, and its value is shown by its being placed in a silver case.

Steel needles were first made in England in 1545, by a native of India. His successor, Christopher Greening, established a workshop in 1560 at Long Crendon, in Bucks, which existed there as a needle factory till quite lately. The rustic poetic drama, ent.i.tled "Gammer Gurton's Needle," performed at Ch. Coll., Cambridge, in 1566, was a regular comedy, of which a lost needle was the hero. In those days the village needle was evidently still a rare and precious possession.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 20.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, Bronze needles from Egyptian tombs now in British Museum. 6. Cave-man's needle from the Pinhole, Churchfield, Ereswell Crag. 7. Bone needle from La Madeleine, Dordogne.]

The art of embroidery consists of a design, which includes the pattern, and the handicraft or st.i.tches--the "motive" and the "needlework."

In painting, as in sculpture, the first idea, as well as the last touch, must come from the same head and hand. But in needlework it is not so. The pattern is the result of tradition. It is almost always simply a variation of old forms, altered and renewed by surrounding circ.u.mstances and sudden or gradual periods of change.

However much the design may alter, rising often to the highest point of decorative art, and as often falling back to the lowest and most meaningless repet.i.tions and imitations, the _st.i.tches_ themselves vary but little. The same are to be found in Egyptian and Greek specimens, and the cla.s.sical names are those used by mediaeval writers, and have come down to us, "floating like bubbles on the waves of time."

Sir George Birdwood[317] thinks that every kind of st.i.tch is found in traditional Indian work. I confess that I have not been able hitherto to trace any of the "mosaic" st.i.tches to India, nor do we ever see them in Chinese or j.a.panese embroidery, which shows every other variety. They are, however, occasionally found in Egyptian work.

The following is a list of st.i.tches, under the nomenclature of cla.s.sical, Roman and mediaeval authors:--

Opus Phrygionium or Phrygium. Pa.s.sing or metal thread work.

Opus Pulvinarium. Shrine or cushion work.

Opus Plumarium. Plumage or feather work.

Opus Consutum. Cut work.

Opus Araneum or Filatorium. Net or lace work.

Opus Pectineum. Tapestry or combed work.

Here are two English lists of st.i.tches; their quaintness must be my excuse for copying them. The first is from Taylor, the water-poet's "Praise of the Needle" (sixteenth century):--

"Tent work, raised work, laid work, prest work, Net work, most curious pearl or rare Italian cut work, Fine fern st.i.tch, finny st.i.tch, new st.i.tch, and chain st.i.tch, Brave bred st.i.tch, fisher st.i.tch, Irish st.i.tch, and queen's st.i.tch, The Spanish st.i.tch, rosemary st.i.tch, and maw st.i.tch, The smarting whip st.i.tch, back st.i.tch, and the cross st.i.tch.-- All these are good, and these we must allow, And these are everywhere in practice now."

The second list is from Rees' "Cyclopaedia" (St.i.tches), 1819:--