The Development of Embroidery in America Part 6

Occasionally, also, a gla.s.sed and framed picture of elaborate design and beautiful workmanship is seen, but as a rule it must be confessed that in America this method of embroidery, as an art, failed to achieve dignity. This was not in the least owing to the actual technique of the process, since beautiful tapestries have been accomplished, taking canvas as a medium and foundation for a dexterous use of design and color.

The square blocks of the canvas st.i.tch are no more objectionable in an art process than the block of enamel of which priceless mosaics are made, but one can easily see that if every design for mosaic work could be indefinitely reproduced and sold by the thousands, with numbered and colored blocks of gla.s.s, something--we hardly know what--would be lost in even the most exact reproductions.

Original design, however simple, is the expression of a thought, and pa.s.ses directly from the mind of the originator to the material upon which it is expressed; but when the design becomes an article of commercial supply it loses in interest, and if the process of production is simple, requiring little thought and skill, the work also fails to call out in us the reverence we willingly accord to skillful and painstaking embroidery.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BED HANGING of polychrome cross-st.i.tch appliqued on blue woolen ground.

_Courtesy of Brooklyn Museum_]

[Ill.u.s.tration: NEEDLEPOINT SCREEN made in fine and coa.r.s.e point. Single cross-st.i.tch.

_Courtesy of the Edgewater Tapestry Looms_]

Yet we must acknowledge there are many examples of Berlin woolwork which possess the merits of beautiful color and exact and even workmanship.

Some of them are done upon the finest of canvas with silks of exquisite shadings, and where figures are represented the faces are worked with silk in "single st.i.tch," which means one crossing of the canvas instead of two, as in ordinary cross-st.i.tch. The latter was of course better suited for furniture coverings, both in strength and quality of surface, while the method of single st.i.tch succeeded in presenting a smooth and well-shaded surface, sufficiently like a painted one to stand for a picture. Indeed, veritable pictures were produced in this method and were effective and interesting. In these specimens the faces and hands, while worked in the same cross-st.i.tch, were varied by being done on a single crossing of the canvas with one st.i.tch, while the costumes and accessories of the picture were done over the larger square of two threads of the canvas, with the double crossing of the st.i.tch.

The faces were, in some cases, still further differentiated by being wrought in silk instead of wool threads.

The embroidered chair and sofa covers had quite the effect of tapestries, and were far better than a not uncommon variation of the same needlework, where the broadcloth or velvet background held the embroidery.

The designs were copied from patterns printed in color upon cross-ruled paper, and consisted of bunches of flowers of various sorts, or pictures of dogs, and horses, and birds. A white lap dog worked upon a dark background was the favorite design for a footstool, and this small object tapered out the existence of decorative cross-st.i.tch, until it grew to be in use only as a decoration for toilet slippers. The final end of this style of work was long deferred on account of the fact that a pair of cloth slippers, embroidered by the hands of some affectionate girl or doting woman, was a token which was not too unusual to carry inconvenient significance. It might mean much or little, much tenderness or affection, or a work of idleness tinctured with sentiment.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Left_--HAND-WOVEN TAPESTRY of fine and coa.r.s.e needlepoint.

_Courtesy of the Edgewater Tapestry Looms_

_Right_--TAPESTRY woven on a hand loom. The design worked in fine point and the background coa.r.s.e point. A new effect in hand weave originated at the Edgewater Tapestry Looms.

_Courtesy of the Edgewater Tapestry Looms_]

The mechanical and commercial effect of this st.i.tchery discouraged its use; its printed patterns and the regularity of its counted st.i.tches giving neither provocation nor scope to originality of thought or design. This was not the fault of the st.i.tch itself, since "cross-st.i.tch" was the first form of needle decoration. It is, in fact, the A B C of all decorative st.i.tchery, the method evolved by all primitive races except the American Indian. It followed, more or less closely, the development of the art of weaving. When this had pa.s.sed from the weaving together of osiers into mats or baskets, and had reached the stage of the weaving of hair and vegetable fiber into cloth, the decoration of such cloth with independent colored fiber was the next step in the creation of values, and, naturally, the form of decorative st.i.tches followed the lines of weaving. Simple as was its evolution, and its preliminary use, cross-st.i.tch has a past which ent.i.tles it to reverence. With many races it has remained a habitual form of expression, and, as in Moorish and Algerian work, is carried to a refinement of beauty which would seem beyond so simple a method. It has given form to a lasting style of design, to geometrical borders, which have survived races and periods of history, and still remain an underlying part of the world of decorative linens.

It is interesting to note that it had no place in aboriginal embroidery, and marks its creation as following the art of weaving. It is a long step from this traditional past of its origin to the short past of the st.i.tchery of America, where the little fingers of small Puritan maids followed the lines evolved by the generations of the earlier world.

CHAPTER VI -- REVIVAL OF EMBROIDERY, AND THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY OF DECORATIVE ART

When French needlework had had its day, and the evanescent life of Berlin woolwork had pa.s.sed, for a period of half a century needlework ceased to flourish in America. Indeed, the art seemed to have died out root and branch, and only necessary and utilitarian needlework was practiced. It seems strange, after all the wonderful triumphs of the needle in earlier years, that for the succeeding half or three-quarters of a century needlework as an art should actually have ceased to be. It had died, branch and stem and root, vanished as if it had never been.

During at least half a century we were a people without decorative needlework art in any form. The eyes and thoughts of women were turned in other directions.

Of course there is always a reason for a change in public taste, something in the development of the time leads and governs every trend of popular thought. It may be the attraction of new inventions, or the perfection of new processes, or even, and this is not uncommon, the charm and fascination of some rare personality, whose ruling is absolute in its own immediate vicinity, and whose example spreads like circles in water far and far beyond the immediate personal influence. We cannot trace this apparent dearth of the art to one particular cause, we only know that in America the practice and study of music succeeded to its place in almost every household. The needle, that honored implement of woman, bade fair to be a thing almost of tradition, something which would be in time relegated to museums and collections, to be studied historically, as we study the implements of the Stone Age, and other prehistoric periods.

I remember an amusing story told by a Baltimore friend, not given to the manufacture of instances, that during those years of dearth soon after the Civil War she was visiting a lovely southern family who had lived through the days of privation. One day there arose a great cry and disturbance in the house, which turned out to be a quest for _the_ needle, where was _the_ needle. n.o.body could find it, although it could be proved that at a certain date it had been quilted into its accustomed place on the edge of the drawing-room curtain of the east window.

Finally it was found on the wrong curtain, minus the point, and this disability gave rise to a discussion. Should it be taken to town, and have the point renewed by the watchmaker? This decision was discouraged by the daughter of the house, who related that the last time she had taken it for the same purpose, the watchmaker had said to her, "Miss Ca.s.sy, I have put a point on that needle three times, and I would seriously advise you to buy a new one."

It was only in America that the needle had ceased to be an active implement. In England it had never been so constantly or feverishly employed. For the second time in its long history, its work became purely personal. The same necessity which impressed itself upon the poor little mother of mankind, when she sought among the fig leaves for wherewithal to clothe herself, was upon the domestic woman, who sewed cloth into skirts instead of vegetable fiber into ap.r.o.ns.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Left_--EMBROIDERED MITS

_Right_--WHITE COTTON VEST embroidered in colors. Eighteenth-nineteenth century American.

_Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art_]

[Ill.u.s.tration: WHITE MULL embroidered in colors. Eighteenth-nineteenth century American.

_Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art_]

[Ill.u.s.tration: EMBROIDERED VALANCE, part of set and spread for high-post bedstead, 1788. Worked in crewels on India cotton, by Mrs. Gideon Granger, Canandaigua, New York.]

It is curious to contrast the effect of this loss of embroidery in the two countries, England and America. Doubtless there were other reasons than the lost popularity of needlework as an art, that in England it should have resulted in the life or death practice of necessary needlework, and in America, that the facile fingers of woman simply turned to the ivory keys of the piano for occupation. But the fact remains that starvation threatened the woman of one country, while in the other they were practicing scales. In England it was a period of stress and strain, of veritable "work for a living," the period of "The Song of the Shirt." Happily, in this blessed land, where hunger was unknown, we were not conscious of its terrors, and perhaps hardly knew why the "cambric needle" and the darning needle were the only ones in the market. Embroidery needles had "gone out." Then came the relief of the sewing machine, born in America, where it was scarcely needed, but speedily flying across the ocean to its life-saving work in England, where the tragedy of the poor seamstress was on the stage of life. Like many another form of relief, it was not entirely adequate to the situation. Its first effect was to create a need of remunerative work.

The sewing machine took upon itself the toil of the seamstress, but it left the seamstress idle and hungry. This was a new and even darker situation than the last, but Englishwomen came to the rescue with a resuscitated form of needlework and embroidery tiptoed upon the empty stage, new garments covering her ancient form, and was welcomed with universal acclaim.

Most cultivated and fortunate Englishwomen had a certain knowledge of art and were eager to put all of their uncoined effort at the service of that body of unhappy women, who, without money, had the culture which goes with the use and possession of money. These unfortunate sisters, who were rather malodorously called decayed gentlewomen, became eager and petted pupils of a new and popular organization called the South Kensington School. Its peculiar claims upon English society gave it from the first the help of the most advanced and intelligent artistic a.s.sistance. The result of this was not only a resuscitation of old methods of embroidery, but the great gain to the school, or society, of design and criticism of such men as Burne-Jones, Walter Crane, and William Morris.

It was with this vogue that it appeared in America, and attracted the attention of those who were afterward to be interested in the formation of a society which was founded for almost identical purposes. Not indeed to prevent starvation of body, but to comfort the souls of women who pined for independence, who did not care to indulge in luxuries which fathers and brothers and husbands found it hard to supply. So, from what was perhaps a social and mental, rather than a physical, want, grew the great remedy of a resuscitation of one of the valuable arts of the world, a woman's art, hers by right of inheritance as well as peculiar fitness.

With true business enterprise, the new English Society prepared an important exhibit for our memorial fair, the Centennial, held in Philadelphia to mark the one-hundredth anniversary of national independence. This exhibit of Kensington Embroidery all unwittingly sowed the seed not only of great results, but in decorative art worked in many other directions. The exhibits of art needlework from the New Kensington School of Art in London, their beauty, novelty and easy adaptiveness, exactly fitted it to experiment by all the dreaming forces of the American woman. They were good needlewomen by inheritance and sensitive to art influences by nature, and the initiative capacity which belongs to power and feeling enabled them at once to seize upon this mode of expression and make it their own. It was the means of inaugurating another era of true decorative needlework, perfectly adapted to the capacity of all women, and destined to be developed on lines peculiarly national in character. The effect of this exhibit was not exactly what was expected in the sale of its works, and long afterward, when discussing this apparent failure, in the face of an immediate adoption in America of the Society's methods and productions, I explained it to myself and an English friend, by the national difference in the race feeling for art, and especially for color.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DETAIL of linen coverlet worked in colored wool.

_Courtesy of Brooklyn Museum_]

[Ill.u.s.tration: LINEN COVERLET embroidered in Kensington st.i.tch with colored wool.

_Courtesy of Brooklyn Museum_]

It seems to me, after the observation and intimacy of years with the growing art of decoration in this country, that the color gift is a race gift with us. English art-work is nearly always characterized by subdued and modified harmony, while that of America has vivid and striking notes which play upon a higher key, and still melt as softly into each other as the perfect modulations of the best English art. I was very conscious of this during the year of my directorship of the Woman's Building and exhibits in the World's Columbian Fair at Chicago, that place of wonderful comparisons of the art-work of the world. I could nearly always recognize work of American origin by its singing color-quality, as different from the sharp semibarbaric notes of Oriental art as from the minor cadences of English decorative work. But to return to the effect of the English exhibit at the Philadelphia Centennial: it was followed by the immediate formation of the Society of Decorative Art in New York City, which became the parent of like societies in every considerable city or town in the United States. By its good fortune in having a president who belonged by right of birth, and certainly of ability and achievement, to the best of New York society, the movement enlisted the sympathy and interest of the influential cla.s.s of New York women, while there was waiting in the shadow a troop of able women who were shut out from the costly gayeties of society by comparative poverty, but connected with it by friendships and a.s.sociations, often, indeed, by ties of blood.

Embroidery became once more the most facile and successful of pursuits.

Graduates from the Kensington School were employed as teachers in nearly all of the different societies, and in this way every city became the center of this new-old form of embroidery, for what is called "Kensington Embroidery" is in fact a far-away repet.i.tion of old triumphs of the British needle. I use the word "British" advisedly, for it was when England was known as Britain among the nations that her embroidery was a thing of almost priceless value. In modern English embroidery, the days of Queen Anne have been the limit of backward imitation; and, in fact, ancient English embroidery was a process of long and a.s.siduous labor, as well as of knowledge and inspiration. Our hurried modern conditions would not encourage the repet.i.tion of the hand-breadth pictures in embroidery of the earliest specimens, where countless numbers of st.i.tches were lavished upon a single production. The embroidered picture of The Garden of Eden described in chapter four is a specimen of the minute representation. These specimens are, to the art of needlework, what the Dutch school of painting is to the great mural canvases of the present day.

The development of the nineteenth century in America was only at first an exact reflection of English methods. The first thing which marked the influence of national character and taste was, that English models and designs almost immediately disappeared, only a few such, consisting of those which had been given to the art by masters of design like Morris and Marcus Ward, were retained, and American needlewomen boldly took to the representation of vivid and graceful groups of natural flowers, following the lead of Moravian practice and of flower painting, rather than that of decorative design.

As a natural result, crewels were soon discarded in favor of silks, and natural extravagance, or national influence, led to the use of costly materials instead of the linens of English choice and preference. So the old flower embroidery of Bethlehem had a second birth. American girl art-students soon found their opportunity in the creation of applied design, and before embroidery had ceased to be a matter of representation of flowers in colored silks, the flowers grew into restrained and appropriate borders, or proper and correct s.p.a.ce decoration, and the day of women designers for manufacturers had come.

The circulars of the first Society of Decorative Art were not only comprehensive, but were ambitious. Its objects were set forth as follows:

1. To encourage profitable industries among women who possess artistic talent, and to furnish a standard of excellence and a market for their work.

2. To acc.u.mulate and distribute information concerning the various art industries which have been found remunerative in other countries, and to form cla.s.ses in Art Needlework.

3. To establish rooms for the exhibition and sale of Sculptures, Paintings, Wood Carvings, Paintings upon Slate, Porcelain and Pottery, Lacework, Art and Ecclesiastical Needlework, Tapestries and Hangings, and, in short, decorative work of any description, done by women, and of sufficient excellence to meet the recently stimulated demand for such work.

4. To form Auxiliary Committees in other cities and towns of the United States, which committees shall receive and p.r.o.nounce upon work produced in, or in the vicinity of, such places, and which, if approved by them, may be consigned to the salesrooms in New York.

5. To make connections with potteries, by which desirable forms for decoration, or original designs for special orders, may be procured, and with manufacturers and importers of the various materials used in art work, by which artists may profit.