ART NEEDLEWORK.*
THE history of needlework is practically co-extensive with the history of eivilieation. The Victorian Library for Gentle- women offers us a modestly small volume, called The Gentle- woman's Book of Art Needlework,—small, that is to say, in comparison with the wide field it opens to us ; and but small are the gleanings it contains. We are taken rapidly over a retrospection of needlework as practised by the ancient Egyptians, Israelites, Phrygians, and Greeks ; some thirty pages dispose of "Needlework of the Olden Time ; " the same number are devoted to the Victorian age ; and we then glance breathlessly at Church work, lace, tapestry, and the embroidery of literature and art.
It is to be feared that the days are gone for ever in which a man, or a woman either, would devote twenty-six years of life to one object, as did an artist of Verona, who took that time to execute the life of St. John in needle- work, as an offering to the Church of St. John in Florence. The Victorian gentlewoman buys her work designed, pre- pared, traced, probably begun for her ; she believes implicitly what she is told as to colour and material ; possibly she pays some one else to finish it for her. We heard at one time a good deal of " art-work " jargon talked,--resthetic chair-backs superseded Berlin woolwork, sunflowers took the place of roses with beaded leaves ; but, in spite of it all, "crazy patch- work " and outlined scenes from nursery rhymes are still offered to us at the perennial bazaar, and machine-made "point" and " guipure " have almost starved the ancient trade of lace-making out of the country. Some of the oldest needlework extant was found in Egyptian and Egypto-Roman tombs,—a rough sort of flaxen cloth, like the bath-towelling of our own day ; it has loops of wool worked with some kind of needle raised on one side of the stuff only, and a kind of tapestry partly woven and partly outlined in needlework. The mum- mies, which an insatiable modern curiosity has disturbed, are wrapped in linen, as less liable than woollen cloth to the ravages of moth, and the art of weaving the flax that grew so plentifully on the banks of the Nile was probably learned by the Israelites during their sojourn in Egypt. Ezekiel speaks of "fine linen with broidered work from Egypt." Linen seems the natural ground and foundation of all embroidery; it often lasts longer than the work itself ; can be cleaned, and will not fray or wear out as do more costly silks and satins. We cannot agree with Miss Masters that velveteen or fine twilled flannel are good foundations for embroidery, or that arrasene upon velvet is to be recommended. Mr. Albert Fleming has done good service to art-workers by reviving among the hills of Westtnoreland the art of spinning and weaving, as Mr. Ruskin says, the soundest and fairest linen fabrics that care can weave or field-dew blanch." He has gone back some few centuries for models, one achievement of the Langdale weavers being the making of a very fine linen, a reproduction of Egyptian mummy-cloth. It should be gratifying to our national pride to remember that, from Anglo-Saxon days down through the Middle Ages, English work won for itself a wide fame. Many of our Queens and Prin- cesses, like Solomon's paragon, "sought wool and flax and worked willingly with their bands." Katharine of Arragon introduced fine stitching of black silk upon linen, called Spanish work ; Queen Elizabeth made a smock for her brother Edward's christening when she was only= years old ; and Mary, Queen of Scots, tried to propitiate her Majesty of England with offerings of head-dresses and night- caps wrought by her own delicate handiwork.. Though the extravagance and luxury of women's dress is a favourite theme just now, they have ceased to wear red velvet gloves with gauntlets of white satin worked in silks and gold thread and spangles, or even of perfumed leather enriched with seed- pearls and gold thread, as in the days of Henry VIII, and his
* The Gentlewoman' Book of Art Needlework, By Ellen T. Masters. London : Henry and Co.
daughter. The time of samplers is gone by, but some of the old stitches have come into fashion again, we find "Russian
cross-stitch," chain-stitch, tent-stitch, and various forms of applique on German, English, and Italian work of the thir- teenth and fourteenth centuries.
Church work has a history and a vocabulary of its own, and needs a special training before even the rudiments can be learned ; it may be studied at the South Kensington Museum, the famous Syon Cope being one of the finest specimens of thirteenth-century work that exists, The col- lection of lace is also interesting, especially the old needle-
point, which must have worn out both patience and eyes. Ruffs cannot have been economical wear, twenty-five yards of fine lace being sometimes required to edge a ruff, without counting the fine cut-work of which it would be made. Gold lace and embroidery, as well as thread and "bone lace," were enor- mously worn during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, and Ben Jonson, writing in a fin-de-sieele style at the end of the sixteenth century, says :— "She must have that Rich gown for such a groat day, a DOW one
For the next, a richer for the third ; have the chamber filled with A succession of grooms, footmen, ushers, And other messengers ; besides embroiderers, Jewellers, tirewomen, semsters, feathermen, Perfumers ; whilst she feels not how the land Drops away, nor the acres melt; nor foresees The change, when the mercer has your woods For her velvets ; never weighs what her pride
costs, Sir."
Lace-making in England has almost died out, though it still lingers in Devonshire, Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire, and various attempts have been made to revive the industry ;
but the flood of cheap machine-made imitations has almost drowned it, and as the old workers die, few younger ones take their vacant places. The Queen has done her best for Honiton lace. Her own wedding-dress was made in the
little fishing-village of Beer, and her elder daughters and the Princess of Wales also wore drosses of the same delicate fabric. Plain needlework is one of the " subjects" that her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools have to master, and they pass judgment on darning, patching, stitching, hemming, and button-holing,--terms that to most men are as a foreign lan- guage, the word they know best being "herring-boning," though it would puzzle them to describe the process, or even to recognise it when they see it. The Germans are beyond us in fine white or blue embroidery on linen, though Irish workers, notably those of Mount Mellick, produce excellent work in a variety of beautiful stitches. One form of English work peculiar to the seventeenth century that no one could wish to revive, is the elaborate " stump " or " stamp " work, in which biblical or historical scenes were reproduced in relief with the most realistic fidelity, such as Hagar and
Ishmael, represented by raised and stuffed figures dressed in knitted silk garments, with gimp hair ; or Charles I.
and Henrietta Maria and their attendants under a needle- work canopy, their draperies made of twisted silk over canvas, the trimmings of needle-point lace stitched over with button-holes, and the background crowded with raised fruit, flowers, and acorns. In striking contrast was another bygone fashion of the eighteenth century, delicate panels of flowers worked in feather-stitch on white silk, or a landscape with figures, such as a lady walking in a garden admiring a flower she has just picked, the figure lightly touched in with water- colours, then as lightly outlined in floss silk, the Vandyked frill round the bodice, and the high lights on the skirt, being filled in with pearly-shaded tints, It is said that " gentlewomen " are not as fond of work as they used to be in pre-Victorian ages ; but let the idle re- member for their encouragement that, among the noble, learned, valiant men whose dust reposes in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey, lies Catherine Sloper, date 1620, whose epitaph is at present unique ;—
"Exquisite at her needle."
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