Part 15
(h) The embroidery and work hitherto alluded to has been such as requires a foundation of a closely woven nature, like linen, cloth, silk, and velvet. But there are varieties of embroidery done upon netted or meshed grounds. And on to these open grounds, embroidery in darning and chain stitches can be wrought. For the most part the embroideries upon open or meshed grounds have a lace-like appearance. In lace, the contrast between close work and open, or partially open, spaces about it plays an important part. The methods of making lace by the needle, or by bobbins on a cushion, are totally distinct from the methods of making lace-like embroideries upon net.
(i) Akin to lace and embroideries upon net is embroidery in which much of its special effect is obtained by the withdrawal of threads from the material, and then either whipping or overcasting in button-hole stitches the undrawn threads. The Persians and embroiderers in the Grecian Archipelago have excelled in such work, producing wondrously delicate textile grills of ingenious geometric patterns. In this drawn thread work, as it is called, we often meet with the employment of button-hole stitching, which is an important stitch in making needlepoint lace (Fig. 6).
[Illustration: Fig. 6.--Button-hole Stitching, as used in needlepoint lace.]
(j) We also meet with the use of a weaving stitch resembling in effect, on a small scale, willow weaving for hurdles. This weaving stitch, and the method of compacting together the threads made with it, are closely allied to that special method of weaving known as tapestry weaving. Some of the earliest specimens of tapestry weaving consist of ornamental borders, bands, and panels, which were inwoven into tunics and cloaks worn by Greeks and Romans from the fourth century before Christ, up to the eighth or ninth after Christ. The scale of the work in these is so small, as compared with that of large tapestry wall-hangings of the fifteenth century, that the method may be regarded as being related more to drawn thread embroidery than to weaving into an extensive field of warp threads.
A sketch of the different employments of the foregoing methods of embroidery is not to be included in this paper. The universality of embroidery from the earliest of historic times is attested by evidences of its practice amongst primitive tribes throughout the world. Fragments of stitched materials or undoubted indications of them have been found in the remains of early American Indians, and in the cave dwellings of men who lived thousands of years before the period of historic Egyptians and Assyrians. Of Greek short and long stitch, and chain stitch and applique embroidery, there are specimens of the third or fourth century B.C. preserved in the Hermitage at St. Petersburg. Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans were skilful in the use of tapestry weaving stitches. Dainty embroidery, with delicate silken threads, was practised by the Chinese long before similar work was done in the countries west of Persia, or in countries which came within the Byzantine Empire. In the early days of that Empire, the Emperor Theodosius I. framed rules respecting the importation of silk, and made regulations for the labour employed in the _gynaecea_, the public weaving and embroidering rooms of that period, the development and organisation of which are traceable to the apartments allotted in private houses to the sempstresses and embroideresses who formed part of the well-to-do households of early classic times.
ALAN S. COLE.
DESIGN
"_Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well._"--SOLOMON.
"_Produce; produce; be it but the infinitesimallest product, produce._"--CARLYLE.
For the last sixty years, ever since the Gothic Revival set in, we have done our best to resuscitate the art of embroidery. First the Church and then the world took up the task, and much admirable work has been done by the "Schools," the shops, and at home. And yet the verdict still must be "the old is better."
Considering all things, this lack of absolute success is perplexing and needs to be explained. For we have realised our ideals. Never was a time when the art and science of needlework were so thoroughly understood as in England at the present moment. Our designers can design in any style. Every old method is at our fingers' ends. Every ingenious stitch of old humanity has been mastered, and a descriptive name given to it of our own devising. Every traditional pattern--wave, lotus, daisy, convolvulus, honeysuckle, "Sacred Horn" or tree of life; every animal form, or bird, fish or reptile, has been traced to its source, and its symbolism laid bare. Every phase of the world's primal schools of design--Egyptian, Babylonian, Indian, Chinese, Greek, Byzantine, European--has been illustrated and made easy of imitation. We are archaeologists: we are critics: we are artists. We are lovers of old work: we are learned in historical and aesthetic questions, in technical rules and principles of design. We are colourists, and can play with colour as musicians play with notes. What is more, we are in terrible earnestness about the whole business. The honour of the British nation, the credit of Royalty, are, in a manner, staked upon the success of our "Schools of Needlework." And yet, in spite of all these favouring circumstances, we get no nearer to the old work that first mocked us to emulation in regard to power of initiative and human interest.
Truth and gallantry prompt me to add, it is not in stitchery but in design that we lag behind the old. Fair English hands can copy every trick of ancient artistry: finger-skill was never defter, will was never more ardent to do fine things, than now. Yet our work hangs fire. It fails in design. Why?
Now, Emerson has well said that all the arts have their origin in some enthusiasm. Mark this, however: that whereas the design of old needlework is based upon enthusiasm for birds, flowers, and animal life,[1] the design of modern needlework has its origin in enthusiasm for antique art. Nature is, of course, the groundwork of all art, even of ours; but it is not to Nature at first-hand that we go. The flowers we embroider were not plucked from field and garden, but from the camphor-scented preserves at Kensington. Our needlework conveys no pretty message of
"The life that breathes, the life that lives,"
it savours only of the now stiff and stark device of dead hands. Our art holds no mirror up to Nature as we see her, it only reflects the reflection of dead periods. Nay, not content with merely rifling the _motifs_ of moth-fretted rags, we must needs turn for novelty to an old Persian tile which, well magnified, makes a capital design for a quilt that one might perchance sleep under in spite of what is outside! Or we are not ashamed to ask our best embroideresses to copy the barbaric wriggles and childlike crudities of a seventh-century "Book of Kells," a task which cramps her style and robs Celtic art of all its wonder.
We have, I said, realised our ideals. We can do splendidly what we set ourselves to do--namely, to mimic old masterpieces. The question is, What next? Shall we continue to hunt old trails, and die, not leaving the world richer than we found it? Or shall we for art and honour's sake boldly adventure something--drop this wearisome translation of old styles and translate Nature instead?
Think of the gain to the "Schools," and to the designers themselves, if we elect to take another starting-point! No more museum-inspired work! No more scruples about styles! No more dry-as-dust stock patterns! No more loathly Persian-tile quilts! No more awful "Zoomorphic" table-cloths! No more cast-iron-looking altar cloths, or Syon Cope angels, or stumpy Norfolk-screen saints! No more Tudor roses and pumped-out Christian imagery suggesting that Christianity is dead and buried! But, instead, we shall have design _by_ living men _for_ living men--something that expresses fresh realisations of sacred facts, personal broodings, skill, joy in Nature--in grace of form and gladness of colour; design that shall recall Shakespeare's maid who
"... with her neeld composes Nature's own shape, of bud, bird, branch, or berry, That even Art sisters the natural roses."
For, after all, modern design should be as the old--living thought, artfully expressed: fancy that has taken fair shapes. And needlework is still a pictorial art that requires a real artist to direct the design, a real artist to ply the needle. Given these, and our needlework can be as full of story as the Bayeux tapestry, as full of imagery as the Syon Cope, and better drawn. The charm of old embroidery lies in this, that it clothes current thought in current shapes. It meant something to the workers, and to the man in the street for whom it was done. And for our work to gain the same sensibility, the same range of appeal, the same human interest, we must employ the same means. We must clothe modern ideas in modern dress; adorn our design with living fancy, and rise to the height of our knowledge and capacities.
Doubtless there is danger to the untrained designer in direct resort to Nature. For the tendency in his or her case is to copy outright, to give us pure crude fact and not to _design_ at all. Still there is hope in honest error: none in the icy perfections of the mere stylist. For the unskilled designer there is no training like drawing from an old herbal; for in all old drawing of Nature there is a large element of design. Besides which, the very limitations of the materials used in realising a design in needlework, be it ever so naturally coloured, hinders a too definite presentation of the real.
For the professional stylist, the confirmed conventionalist, an hour in his garden, a stroll in the embroidered meadows, a dip into an old herbal, a few carefully-drawn cribs from Curtis's _Botanical Magazine_, or even--for lack of something better--Sutton's last Illustrated Catalogue, is wholesome exercise, and will do more to revive the original instincts of a true designer than a month of sixpenny days at a stuffy museum. The old masters are dead, but "the flowers," as Victor Hugo says, "the flowers last always."
JOHN D. SEDDING.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] A strip of sixteenth-century needlework in my possession (6 ft. by 2 ft. 6 in.) figures thirty different specimens of plants, six animals, and four birds, besides ornamental sprays of foliage.
ON DESIGNING FOR THE ART OF EMBROIDERY
In every form of art the thing which is of primary importance is the question of Design.
By Design I understand the inventive arrangement of lines and masses, for their own sake, in such a relation to one another, that they form a fine, harmonious whole: a whole, that is, towards which each part contributes, and is in such a combination with every other part that the result is a unity of effect, so completely satisfying us that we have no sense of demanding in it more or less.
After this statement and definition let me proceed to touch briefly upon four points in relation to the matter, as it concerns itself with the art of Embroidery; and the first of these four points shall be this. Before you commence your design, consider carefully the conditions under which the finished work is to be seen. There is a tendency in embroidery to be too uniformly delicate and minute. To be too delicate, or even minute, in something which is always to be seen close under one's eyes is, it may be, impossible; but in an altar-cloth, a banner, a wall-hanging, this delicacy and minuteness are not merely thrown away, but they tend to make the thing ineffective. For such objects as these I have mentioned, the main lines and masses of the design should, it would seem in the nature of the case, be well emphasised; if they are well emphasised, and of course fine in their character and arrangement, there is produced a sense of largeness and dignity which is of the highest value, and for the absence of which no amount of curious workmanship will atone. In making your design, let these main lines and masses be the first things you attend to, and secure. Stand away at a distance, and see if they tell out satisfactorily, before you go on to put in a single touch of detail.
For the second point: remember that embroidery deals with its objects as if they were all on the same plane. It has been sometimes described as the art of painting with the needle; but it necessarily and essentially differs from the art of painting in this, that it, properly, represents all things as being equally near to you, as laid out before you on the same plane. It would seem, therefore, to be a sound rule to fill the spaces, left for you by the arrangement of your main lines and masses, with such forms as shall occupy these spaces, one by one, completely; with such patterns, I mean, as shall appear to have their natural and full development within the limits of each space: avoid the appearance of one thing being behind the other, with portions of it cut off and obscured by what comes in front of it. But in this, as in so much else, an immense deal must be left to the instinct of the artist.
Thirdly: aim at simplicity in the elements or motives of your design; do not crowd it with a score of different elements, which produce a sense of confusion and irritation, and, in reality, prove only a poverty of invention. A real richness of invention, as well as a richness of effect, lies in using one or two, perhaps at most three, elements, with variety in the treatment of them. Make yourself thoroughly master of the essential points, in whatever elements you choose as the basis of your design, before you set pencil to paper; and you will find in almost any natural form you fix upon more than enough to give you all the variety and richness you require, if you have sufficient natural fancy to play with it.
Lastly: return again and again, and for evermore, to Nature. The value of studying specimens of old embroidery is immense; it makes you familiar with the principles and methods, which experience has found to be true and useful; it puts you into possession of the traditions of the art. He that has no reverence for the traditions of his art seals his own doom; he that is careless about them, or treats them with superciliousness, or will not give the time and pains necessary to understand them, but thinks to start off afresh along clean new lines of his own, stamps himself as an upstart--makes himself perhaps, if he is clever, a nine days' curiosity--but loses himself, by and by, in extravagances, and brings no fruit to perfection. The study of old work, then, is of the highest importance, is essential; the patient and humble study of it. But for what end? To learn principles and methods, to secure a sound foundation for oneself; not to slavishly imitate results, and live on bound hand and foot in the swaddling clothes of precedent. Learn your business in the schools, but go out to Nature for your inspirations. See Nature through your own eyes, and be a persistent and curious observer of her infinite wonders. Yet to see Nature in herself is not everything, it is but half the matter; the other half is to know how to use her for the purposes of fine art, to know how to translate her into the language of art. And this knowledge we acquire by a sound acquaintance with the essential conditions of whatever art we practise, a frank acceptance of these conditions, and a reverential appreciation of the teaching and examples of past workmen. Timidity and impudence are both alike fatal to an artist: timidity, which makes it impossible for him to see with his own eyes, and find his own methods; and impudence, which makes him imagine that his own eyes, and his own methods, are the best that ever were.
SELWYN IMAGE.
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