Needlework As Art Part 6

[40] Nearchus (Strabo, XV. i. 67) says that the people of India had such a genius for imitation that they counterfeited sponges, which they saw used by the Macedonians, and produced perfect imitations of the real object. See Sir G. Birdwood's "Industrial Arts of India," ii. p. 133 (ed. 1884).

[41] Ibid., ii. p. 131 (ed. 1884).

[42] See Sir G. Birdwood, p. 129 (ed. 1884). If Fergusson is right in suggesting that the art of Central America was planted there in the third or fourth century of our era, it would, perhaps, appear to have taken refuge in America when it was driven out of India by the Sa.s.sanians, and was really Dravidian. He gives to the Turanian races all the mound buildings, as well as the fylfot or mystic cross, and he looks in Central India for the discovery of some remains that will give us the secret of the origin of the Indo-Aryan style. He thinks the Archaic Dravidian is allied with the Chinese. See Fergusson's "Architecture."

[43] Etruscan and Indian golden ornaments, including the "Bolla" and the "Trichinopoly" chains and coral, are to be found throughout Scandinavia and in Ireland. See "Atlas de l'Archeologie du Nord," par la Societe Royale des Antiquaires du Nord. Copenhagen, 1857.

[44] Arrian tells us of the Celts, "a people near the Great Ionian Bay," who sent an emba.s.sy to Alexander before the battle of the Granicus--"a people strong and of a haughty spirit." Alexander asked them if they feared anything. They answered that they feared the "sky might fall upon their heads." He dismissed them, observing that the Celts were an arrogant nation (Arrian, i. 4, 10).

[45] According to Yates, the merchandise of Eastern Asia pa.s.sed through Slavonia to the north of Europe in the Middle Ages, without the intervention of Greece or Italy. This may account for certain terms of nomenclature which evidently came with goods transported straight to the north. Yates' "Textrinum Antiquorum,"

vol. i. p. 225-246.

[46] These northern ideas, spreading over Germany, England, and France, flourished especially on German soil; and Oriental-patterned embroideries for hangings and dress were worked in every st.i.tch, on every material, as may be seen in the museums and printed catalogues of Vienna, Berlin, Munich, &c.

[47] Except, perhaps, the Serpent and Tree cope in Bock's Kleinodien.

[48] The different Celtic nationalities are always recognizable. There was found in a grave-mound at Hof, in Norway, a brooch, showing at a glance that it was Christian and Celtic, though taken from the grave of a pagan Viking. Another at Berdal, in Norway, was at once recognized by M. Lorange as being undoubtedly Irish.

There are many other instances of evident Celtic Christian art found on the west coast of Norway under similar conditions--probably spoil from the British Islands, which were subject to the descents of the pagan Vikings for centuries after the time of St. Columba's preaching of Christianity in Scotland. For information on the subject, see G. Stephen's "Monuments of Runic Art," and F. Anderson's "Pagan Art in Scotland."

[49] "Scotland in Pagan Times," by J. Anderson, pp. 3-7.

[50] On a vase in the British Museum, Minerva appears with her aegis on her breast, and clothed in a petticoat and upper tunic worked in sprays, and a border of kneeling lions. On another Panathenaic vase she has a gown bordered with fighting men, evidently the sacred peplos. (Fig. 4.)

[51] See the account of the veil of Here in the Iliad, and that of the mantle of Ulysses in the Odyssey.

[52] See Butcher and Lang's Odyssey.

[53] "Der Stil."

[54] The Greeks collected into one focus all that they found of beauty in art from many distant sources--Egyptian, Indian, a.s.syrian--and thus fired their inborn genius, which thenceforth radiated its splendour over the whole civilized world.

[55] Homer's Iliad, xviii. 480-617 (Butcher and Lang).

[56] See "Woltmann and Woermann." Trans. Sidney Colvin, p. 64.

[57] Except, perhaps, the keystone arch.

[58] Virg. aeneid iii. Trans. G.L.G.

[59] The Indian Cush.

[60] Except in the art of the Celts, whose Indo-Chinese style shows evidence of Mongolian importation, and later we find traces of a similar influence: for instance, "Yarkand rugs are semi-Chinese, semi-Tartar, resembling also the works of India and Persia. It is easy to distinguish from what source each comes, as one perceives the influence of the neighbouring native art"

("On j.a.pan," by Dresser, p. 322).

[61] See a paper by M. Terrien de la Couperie in the Journal of the Society of Arts, 1881.

[62] "Rome had to be overthrown that the new religion and the new civilization might be established.

Christianity did its work in winning to it those Teutonic conquerors, but how vast was the cost to the world, occasioned by the necessity of casting into the boiling cauldron of barbarous warfare, that n.o.ble civilization and the treasures which Rome had gathered in the spoil of a conquered universe! Had any old Roman, or Christian father been gifted with Jeremiah's prescience, he might have seen the fire blazing amidst the forests of Germany, and the cauldron settling down with its mouth turned towards the south, and would have uttered his lamentation in plaintive tones, such as Jeremiah's, and in the same melancholy key" ("Holy Bible," with Commentary by Canon Cook, Introduction to Jeremiah, vol. i. p. 319).

[63] Scandinavian art became strongly tinctured with that of Byzantium. The Varangian Guards were, probably, answerable for this, by their intercourse between Greece and their native land, which lasted so many centuries.

There have come down to us, as witnesses of this intercourse, many coins and much jewellery, in which all that is Oriental in its style has been leavened by its pa.s.sage through Byzantine and Romanesque channels.

Gibbon, writing of this period, says: "The habits of pilgrimage and piracy had approximated the countries of the earth" (see Gibbon's "Decline and Fall," chap. lv.).

Greek embroidered patterns and Greek forms of dress still linger in Iceland. There was lately brought to England a bride's dress, which might have belonged to the Greek wife of a Varangian guardsman. It is embroidered with a border in gold of the cla.s.sical honeysuckle pattern; and the bridal wreath of gilt metal flowers might, from its style, be supposed to have been taken from a Greek tomb.

[64] Evidently an imitation of the peplos of Minerva (see fig. 4, p. 32).

[65] The descent from the Persian of Arab or Moorish art, as we generally call it when speaking of its Spanish development, is to be accounted for by the presence of a considerable colony of Persians in Spain in the time of the Moors, as attested by numerous doc.u.ments still in existence. See Col. Murdoch Smith's "Preface to Persian Art," Series of Art Handbooks of the Kensington Museum.

[66] Ronsard, poet, politician, and diplomatist, compares the Queen of Navarre to Pallas Athene:--

"Elle adonnait son courage A mainte bel ouvrage Dessus la toile, et encor A joindre la soie et l'or.

Vous d'un pareil exercise Mariez par artifice Dessus la toile en mainte traits L'or et la soie en pourtraict."

[67] Mary de Medici brought back with her from Italy Federigo Vinciolo as her designer for embroideries.

[68] See "Art Needlework," by E. Maxse, and "Manuel de la Broderie," by Madame E. F. Celnart.

[69] From the Italian translation by Signor Minghetti.

[70] Gaston, Duke of Orleans (died 1660), kept hothouses on purpose to supply models for floral textile designs.

Le Brun often drew the embroideries for the hangings in rooms he had himself designed and decorated.

[71] We have all seen the dining-room wine-coolers modelled in imitation of Roman tombs; and there is a drawing-room in a splendid mansion still furnished with cinerary urns covering the walls, while curule chairs most uncomfortably furnish the seats.

[72] In his designs for papers and textiles, Mr. Morris'

poetical and artistic feeling--his admiration and sensitiveness for all that is beautiful and graceful (as well as quaint)--his respect for precedent, added to his own fanciful originality,--have given a colour and seal to the whole decorative art of England of to-day. It is a step towards a new school. The sobriety and tenderness of his colouring gives a sense of harmony, and reconciles us to his repet.i.tions of large vegetable forms, which remind us sometimes of a kitchen-garden in a tornado. For domestic decoration we should, as far as possible, adhere to reposing forms and colours. Our flowers should lie in their allotted s.p.a.ces, quiet and undisturbed by elemental struggles, which have no business in our windowed and gla.s.s-protected rooms.

CHAPTER II.

DESIGN.

_Gorgo._ Behold these 'broideries! Finer saw you never.

_Praxinoe._ Ye G.o.ds! What artists work'd these pictures in?

What kind of painter could these clear lines limn?

How true they stand! nay, lifelike, moving ever; Not worked--_created!_ Woman, thou art clever!

(Scene at a Festival) _Theocritus_, Idyll xv. line 78.

The word design, as applied to needlework, includes the principles and laws of the art: the motives and their hereditary outcome; the art creating the principles; the laws controlling the art.

Design means intention, motive, and should as such be applied to the smallest as to the greatest efforts of art. That which results from it, either as picture or pattern, is a record of the thoughts which produced it, and by its style fixes the date, of its production.