Needlework As Art Part 27

"Spanish st.i.tch, Tent st.i.tch on the finger, Tent st.i.tch in the tent or frame, Irish st.i.tch, Fore st.i.tch, Gold st.i.tch, Twist st.i.tch, Fern st.i.tch, Broad st.i.tch, Rosemary st.i.tch, Chip st.i.tch, Raised work, Geneva work, Cut work, Laid work, Back st.i.tch, Queen's st.i.tch, Satin st.i.tch, Finny st.i.tch, Chain st.i.tch, Fisher's st.i.tch, Bow st.i.tch, Cross st.i.tch, Needlework purl, Virgin's device, Open cut work, St.i.tch work, Through st.i.tch, Rock work, Net work, and Lent work.

"All which are swete manners of work wroughte by the needle with silke of all natures, purls, wyres, and weft or foreign bread ('braid'), etc., etc."

_Part 2._

PLAIN WORK AND WHITE WORK.

We are told that the primal man and woman sewed in Paradise.

To "sew," in contradistinction to the word to "embroider," is derived from the Sanskrit _su_, _suchi_, and thence imported into Latin, _suo_.[318] To prove how highly esteemed needlework was among the Romans, I may mention that the equivalent of the phrase "to hit the right nail on the head" was _rem acu tangere_, "to touch the question with the point of the needle."

"Plain work" is that which is necessary. As soon as textiles are needed for covering and clothing, the means are invented for drawing the cut edges together, and for preventing the fraying where the material is lacerated by the shaping process. Hence the "seam," the "hem," and all the forms of st.i.tches that bind and plait. These necessary st.i.tches const.i.tute plain needlework, and are closely followed by decorative st.i.tches, which in gradation cover the s.p.a.ce between plain needlework and embroidery.

Semper has given us his archaeological theories for the origin of needlework and its st.i.tches.

These are his arguments, if not always his words. He says: "The seam is one of the first human successful efforts to conquer difficulties."[319]

A string, a ribbon, a band, may serve to keep together several loose things; but by means of the seam, small things actually become large ones. For example: a full-grown man can, by its help, cover himself with a garment made of the skins of many small animals. When Eve sewed fig-leaves together, she made of these small pieces a garment of patchwork.

Acting on the principle of making a virtue of necessity, accepting and adorning the severe facts of life, seams came to be an important vehicle of ornament. The Gauls and Britons embroidered the seams of their fur garments. "We may judge of the antiquity of the seam by its universal and mythological meaning. The seam, the tie, the knot, the plait, and the mesh are the earliest symbols of fate uniting events."[320]

We find but little mention of plain work in mediaeval writings. When linen was worked for some honourable purpose, such as a gift to a friend or a royal personage, it was generally embroidered or st.i.tched in some fancy fashion. Queen Elizabeth presented Edward VI., on his second birthday, with a smock made by herself. Fine linen was about this time constantly edged with bone laces.

Mrs. Floyer has written so well, and given us so much practical information on plain needlework, that I feel it unnecessary to enter at any length into the principles of plain sewing, as my theme is needlework as decorative art.

Mrs. Floyer has, as it were, unpicked and unravelled every st.i.tch in plain work, till she has discovered and laid bare its intention, its construction, and effect. She, has also given us rules made clear to the dullest understanding, instructing us how to teach the young and ignorant. She shows us the quickest and most perfect way of working different materials for different purposes, and tells us how to select them. I will, therefore, refer my readers to her most useful and instructive books,[321] and pa.s.s on at once from the craft of plain needlework, to st.i.tches as the art of embroidery.

The link between plain and decorative work deserves attention. This link is "white embroidery." I imagine it was not a very ancient form of the art, and was practised first in mediaeval days; when we begin to have constant notices of it. The first white laces appear to have followed close upon the first white embroideries.

There is a tomb of the fourteenth century in the Church of the Ara Cli at Rome, where the effigy of a knight lies on his bed, draped with a sheet and a coverlet, both embroidered. These are evidently of linen worked in white.[322] I give a drawing of them in ill.u.s.tration (pl. 39).

From that date we find continually mention of such work by nuns and ladies.[323] In England it was especially called "nuns' work" (plate 42). There is a great survival of this st.i.tchery in Italy amongst the peasantry. They have always adorned their smocks and ap.r.o.ns, and their linen head-coverings, and the borders of sheets for great occasions, with patterns in "flat st.i.tches," "cut st.i.tches," and "drawn work."

The Greek peasants do the same. In Germany will be found much curious white embroidery, of designs which show their antiquity; and from Spain we get "Spanish work" in black, on white linen, which is nearly allied to the st.i.tches of white work.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pl. 39.

Embroidery imitated in marble on the tomb of a knight, in the Church of the Ara Cli, Rome.]

Lord Arundel of Wardour possesses a linen cover for a tabernacle (or else it is a processional cloak) which is of the purest Hispano-Moorish design, and unrivalled in beauty. It is embroidered in Spanish st.i.tches in white thread, on the finest linen, and is intersected with fine lace insertion (pl. 40). It is said to have been found in the time of Elizabeth with some other articles in a dry well; among them a little satin shoe, of which the shape proves its date to be of the end of Henry VIII.'s reign. Russian embroidery, consisting of geometrical patterns in red, blue, and black thread, is of this cla.s.s.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pl. 40.

Processional Cloak, time of Henry VIII., belonging to Lord Arundel of Wardour.]

In England alone, the peasantry do no white work for home use, and we must suppose it has never been a domestic occupation. Indeed, the love of the needle is by no means an English national tendency, in the lower cla.s.ses. Nothing but the plainest work is taught in our schools.

Anything approaching to decorative art, with us, has been the accomplishment of educated women, and not the employment of leisure moments in the houses of the poor.

Semper, in "Der Stil,"[324] gives rules for white embroidery, and the reasons from which he deduces them are good. He says, that allowing it as a maxim that each textile has its own uses and its own beauties, we should place nothing on linen which would militate against its inherent qualities and merits; and that, as the great beauty of flax is its smoothness and purity, all projections and roughnesses should be avoided which would catch dust or throw a shadow. Carrying out this idea, it would appear that satin, and not lace st.i.tches are therefore, the most suitable for this kind of decoration. The accepted rule for selecting the st.i.tch for each piece of work is this: on stout grounds the thread should be round and rich, whereas delicate materials carry best the most refined and shining thread work; and in embroidering the smooth surface of linen fabrics, the flattest st.i.tches are the most appropriate.

_Part 3._

OPUS PHRYGIUM (_or gold work_).

Gold embroideries were by the Romans attributed to the Phrygians. All gold work was vaguely supposed to be theirs, as all other embroidery was included in the craft of the Plumarii in Rome.

It has been disputed whether needlework in gold preceded the weaving of flat gold or thread into stuffs, or whether it was an after-thought, and an enrichment of such textiles. I imagine that the embroidery was the first, and that the after-thought was the art of weaving gold. Babylonian embroideries appear to be of gold wire, as we see them in the Ninevite marbles.

An instance of the way golden embroideries were displayed among the Greeks is that of the Athenian peplos, which, as I have already said (p. 32), was worked by embroideresses under the superintendence of two Arrhephorae of n.o.ble birth. It was either scarlet or saffron colour, and blazed with golden representations of the battles of the giants, or local myths and events in the history of Athens.[325]

The art of the Phrygians, who gave their name in Rome to all golden thread-work, has come down to us through the cla.s.sic "auriphrygium"

and the "orphreys" of the Middle Ages. Semper thinks that the flat gold embroidery was the first invented.[326]

The Phrygians had attained to the utmost perfection in tissue ornament when the Romans conquered them, and finding their art congenial to the growing luxury of Rome, they imported and domesticated it; both the people and their work retaining their national designation. Pliny, ignorant of the claims of the Chinese, gave to the Phrygians the credit of being the inventors of all embroidery.[327] The garments they thus decorated were called "phrygionae," and the work itself "opus Phrygium." The term "auriphrygium," at first given to work in gold only, was in time applied to all embroidery that admitted gold into its composition; and hence the English mediaeval term, "orphreys."

All the gold st.i.tches now called "pa.s.sing" came from Phrygia; Semper attributes all the "mosaic st.i.tches" to the Phrygians, calling them "opus Phrygionium."[328] Gold st.i.tches are splendidly exemplified in the embroidered mantle of St. Stephen, of the ninth century. The only somewhat earlier piece of mediaeval gold embroidery with which I am acquainted is the dalmatic of Charlemagne in the Vatican, richly embroidered in fine gold thread; and the mantle of the Emperor Henry II. in the Museum at Munich, worked by his Empress Kunigunda, who appears to have been somewhat parsimonious in her use of the precious material.

Almost all ecclesiastical and royal ancient embroideries were illuminated with golden grounds--golden outlines or golden flat embroideries. Later still, raised gold thread work has imitated gilt carvings or goldsmiths' jewellery; and we feel that it was at once removed from its place as embroidery, and became an elaborate imitation of what should belong to another craft.[329] Such deviations from the proper office and motive of needlework are so dangerously near to bad style and bad taste, that they always and inevitably have fallen into disrepute.

_Part 4._

OPUS PULVINARIUM (_or cushion work_).

This "opus pulvinarium" is not only to be found in Oriental work, but it has also survived in a very few fragments from Egypt.[330] One of these, in the British Museum, is worked on canvas, in wool and flax; another in a white shining thread, resembling asbestos, on linen or fine canvas. They are regular "canvas" or "cross" st.i.tches, and therefore, under mediaeval nomenclature, would be cla.s.sed as "opus pulvinarium." This name must include all st.i.tches in gold, silk, and wool, whether Phrygian, Egyptian, or Babylonian in their origin, excepting the flat and lace st.i.tches (plate 41).

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pl. 41.

MOSAIC St.i.tCHES.

1. Italian Pattern, sixteenth century. From Frida Lipperheide's Musterbuch. 2. Scandinavian. Bock, i. taf. xi. 3. Egyptian.

From Auberville's "Tissus," p. 1.]

Semper's term, "mosaic" st.i.tches, is a good one, as it covers all that are relegated into patterns in small square s.p.a.ces, counted by the threads of the textile on which they are laid.[331] He believes that the mosaic patterns and cross st.i.tches in needlework preceded the tesselated pavements, and formed their first motive, though the st.i.tch now refers itself back to the mosaic, at least in name.

It is remarkable that in Chaldea and a.s.syria there still exist some ruined walls, which are adorned with pilasters, panels, and other architectural forms, covered with some sort of encaustic, imitating textile patterns.[332] The effect is produced by means of a kind of mosaic work of small nails or wedges of baked clay, with china or glazed coloured heads. These are inlaid into the unbaked clay or earth, of which the walls are constructed, and while binding it together, give the effect of the surface being hung with a material which has a pattern worked all over in cross st.i.tch.

The Chinese, the Chaldeans, and the a.s.syrians long continued to show in their buildings the tradition of this style of decoration. In Egypt there has been found some unfinished mural painting where the plaster has been previously prepared by dividing it into small rectangular s.p.a.ces, apparently on the principle of the canvas ground for cross st.i.tches.

The name "mosaic" st.i.tch does not interfere with, or militate against the cla.s.sical appellation of _opus pulvinarium_, which means "shrine work" or "cushion st.i.tches." These appear to have been from the first considered as the best suited for adorning cushions, chairs, footstools, and the beds on which men reclined at their feasts, as they are firmly-set st.i.tches which will stand friction.

Most of the work now done in Syria, Turkey, Greece, and the Princ.i.p.alities, shows different forms of the mosaic st.i.tches; so also does the national Russian work, which is Byzantine. All these designs are conventional and mostly geometrical.

This work, in the East, is generally the same on both sides. We may infer that the spoil antic.i.p.ated by Sisera's mother, "the garments embroidered on both sides, fit for the necks of those who divide the spoil," was of this kind.

Thus we see that the "opus pulvinarium" has a very respectable ancestry; and though it had somewhat degenerated in the early part of our century, and had languished and almost died out under the name of Berlin wool work, yet it has done good service through the days of mediaeval art down to the present time, both in England and throughout Europe (pl. 42); and it will probably revive and continue to be generally used.

Though the least available for historical or pictorial work, and not by any means the best for flower-pieces (as the squareness of the st.i.tches refuses to lend itself to flowing lines or gradations of colour, unless the st.i.tches are extremely fine, and the work, in consequence, very laborious), yet it finds its especial fitness in all geometrical designs. It is also particularly well suited to heraldic subjects.

A remarkable example of the use of cross st.i.tches exists in the borders of the Syon cope, in which the coats-of-arms are so executed.

This is of the thirteenth century; and besides these cushion st.i.tches, it exhibits all those which are grouped in the style called opus Anglic.u.m or Anglicanum.