FOOTNOTES:

Floral designFig. 14.Radiated Pattern.

I would venture here to find fault with a very common method of converting a natural object into a conventional pattern, by radiation. Certain modes of repetition are very objectionable. A pattern, for instance, repeated four times round a centre, or a natural flower repeated exactly, but lying north, south, east, and west, are more or less inartistic, we may say vulgar. (Fig.14.)

Leaves radiating out from a central flowerFig. 15.Radiated Sunflower.

A natural flower may be conventionalized and radiated by placing it in the centre of the composition facing you; and the leaves arranged surrounding it, so as to formalize the design, though there is nothing really unnatural in the way in which they are made to grow. The illustration of a radiated sunflower explains my meaning.

It has been already observed that by repetition almost any object may be reduced to a pattern, but taste must be exercised in the selection of what is appropriate andbeautiful. Radiation is also really a useful factor in conventional art, but common sense must guide the artist here as well as taste. In radiating the forms of a flower, nature gives endless hints of beauty; but a radiating pattern of human figures would be ridiculous, and even the branches of a tree cannot be so treated.

The awning of the classic hypæthral hall or court was often reproduced in Roman arabesques. Sometimes we find it in a classical tomb, painted over the ceiling, and recalling its original use. This was revived in the Cinque-cento Renaissance; and again in Adams’ “Eighteenth Century Decorations,” it became an accepted pattern, called “the shell,” losing its original motive, and descending to fill up the panels of tea-caddies and surround keyholes. When thus reduced to the appearance of a little ruff, it needs some thought to recognize it, and give it credit for its first motive.

Oval shell patternFig. 16.

It is amusing to find how a form which it seems impossible to reduce to a pattern, will yet fall into one by a judicious arrangement of light and shadow, and by repetition. There is a little frieze in one of the Indiancases on the staircase in the British Museum, which is extremely pretty and effective. It consists of a repetition of little balconies with recesses and pillars and figures in pairs. I give it as illustrating the way conventional patterns grow. This balcony pattern is of the sixth century,A.D.

A sectioned balcony, with people in each of the sectionsFig. 17.Indian Balcony Pattern, from steps of tope of Jamal-Zartri, Afghanistan. British Museum.

The ancient palmated pattern called Chrysoclavus, from the beginning of our era to the thirteenth century was partly a nail-headed design, and had become a Christian symbol. It was, probably, originally the primitive spot pattern; afterwards promoted to being an ornament of discs in colour or metal: this was Assyrian, Etruscan, and Mycenæan.[128](Pl.70.)

Among the conventional patterns which have apparently no hidden meaning, but which clearly show their descent, are the Chinese and Japanese wicker and lattice-work designs. The beauty of these is wonderful.

Semper shows that wicker (including bamboo work) was the foundation of all Chinese civilized life, for constructing houses, bridges, utensils, and for decoration. He gives this wicker-work origin to the universal keypattern, which may, however, have a double source—the wave, and the wicker-work.

We find the Key pattern in a tomb at Essiout, in Egypt, painted perhaps about 1600B.C., in company with some other very old friends,[129]the Tuscan border, the Egg and Tongue, and the Bead, the Daisy, and the Wave. (Pl.17, No. 2.) We meet it everywhere in ancient and modern decoration. There are several forms of it on a large terra-cotta vase in the British Museum from Kameiros in Rhodes, and on Chinese fictiles and embroideries. It is found also on garments in Iceland, whither the Greek patterns must have drifted through Norway, and, as they could go no further, there they remained.

I have often spoken of the extraordinary survival of a pattern. This is easy to account for when fashion, “the disturber,” had not yet existed. Then the ancient motive told its own tale, and its great age was its claim to perpetual youth; but it is more remarkable where we meet with revivals at distant periods, and apparently without any connecting link of ancestry or style.

For instance, the women of Genoa wore large cotton veils, printed with the Indian conventional tree and beast pattern, down to thirty years ago, when the fashion changed, and winter bonnets and summer muslin veils displaced the old costume. These patterns are now being printed in England on scores of cotton curtains for beds and windows.

Geometrical patterns may be reduced to a very few primitive elements.

Different patterns formed from circles and squares

Fig. 18.Varied adjustments of Square and Circle.

1. The Line, including straight and wavy lines.

2. The Angular Forms, including squares, oblongs, cubes, &c.

3. The Triangular, including zigzags, diamonds, &c.

4. The Circular, including all spots, discs, and radiations.

All these can be blended or mixed so as to form endless varieties. For instance, the square and the circle can intersect each other in different proportions, so as to give an entirely new effect to the pattern, each time the balance is altered or the phase of the repetition varied. The illustration will explain this. (Fig.18.)

Right angles may intersect each other so as to produce the whole gamut of Chinese lattice-work decoration, and all the Celtic and Scandinavian entwined patterns, from which so many of the embroideries in the Italian pictures of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are probably descended.

The Moorish patterns are geometrical, and are created on the principle of avoiding in art the representation of any created thing. They show much ingenuity in keeping clear of any possible meaning. Most of these conventional patterns are founded on the ogee-arch and a kind of honeycomb pattern, involved and inverted. Their tiles, which nearest approach textile design, have, indeed, certain vegetable forms added to the others, but always geometrically arranged as no vegetables ever grew.

Geometrical patterns begin with primitive forms, and come down to the floor-cloth designs of to-day. They can be extracted in endless variety from the combinations of the kaleidoscope. This style is well suited for pavements in mosaic—either secular or ecclesiastical.

The Opus Alexandrinum furnishes us with most beautiful examples and adaptations for large or small spaces, so as to form the richest or the simplest floor decorations. How worthily a church may be thus adorned may be seen on the vast area of the floor ofSanta Maria Maggiore in Rome, or that of the Church of St. Mark in Venice.

The nearest approach to the Opus Alexandrinum in textiles has been in Patchwork, of which a more artistic use may yet be made. We might exercise ingenuity in this direction, giving really fine and effective designs to our workers in patches, whose productions are, in general, simply alarming.

The fine quilting patterns of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are almost always geometrical, and make the best background to more resplendent embroideries overlying them, which is partly owing to their being only forms, and conveying no idea or inherited meaning. These expressionless designs are well fitted for spaces and borders in which the centres are elaborated, and require enclosing or framing; likewise, they are suited for large areas, which must not be perfectly plain, and yet not too disturbing to the eye, so as to distract it from the more important ornaments on the wall or ceiling. They suit carpets in passages or on staircases much better than any other kind of design, and form the best figured backgrounds for pictures. Both eye and mind often need repose, and therefore the simpler the geometrical pattern is, the better. Complicated and too ingenious combinations are painfully fatiguing. Simplicity and flatness are the greatest merits in such forms, as in shadowless patterns for textiles, and especially for embroideries.

If we turn to nature to assist us with new geometrical patterns, we shall find the most exquisite forms in the crystals of every newly-fallen snowflake, and in the nodal-points on a plate of metal or glass, covered with sand, and struck by sound. We shall hardly ever find in these a repetition of exactly the same combination, and their variety is only equalled by their beauty.

FOOTNOTES:[96]Sir G. Birdwood tells us of patterns of an Indian brocade called “Chundtara” (moon and stars), figured all over with representations of heavenly bodies.[97]Pliny, “Natural History,” lib. xxx. c. 8, § 34.[98]There is a shell pattern in gold on a twelfth century fragment of a Bishop’s garment at Worcester.[99]See Wilkinson’s “Ancient Egyptians,” vol. iii. pp. 132, 133, 350, 553.[100]Bötticher, in his “Tektonik,” will allow of but one origin for the “egg and tongue” pattern. I cannot give up the evident descent from the lotus flower and bud; but I have said before that a pattern has sometimes a double parentage, and it may be so in this case.[101]The lotus is almost entirely lost as a native growth in India, and is fast disappearing in Egypt. The lotus blossom in Egypt was not only a sacred emblem, but also anobjet de luxe. At their feasts, the honoured guests were presented with the flowers, and as they faded, slaves carried round baskets of fresh blossoms. See Wilkinson’s “Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians.”[102]See the Book of Lindisfarne, and the two Celtic bronze shields in the British Museum. These last are very curious. The long involved lines show their origin, and the shields are enriched with enamel and corals, in repetitions of the prehistoric cross.[103]See “Album of Photographs of the Marien-Kirche, Dantzic,” Taf. 31.[104]Woltmann and Woermann, Eng. Trans., p. 202.[105]Charlemagne’s dress, in his tomb, was covered with golden elephants. This must have been Indian. His mantle was “parsemé” with golden bees.[106]Elsewhere there is a notice of Miss Morritt’s really beautifully embroidered landscapes at Rokeby; and all who saw them will remember the extremely clever and effective pictures in crewels by an accomplished American lady, Mrs. Oliver Wendell Holmes, exhibited in London a few years ago. These exceptional cases do not, however, disprove the objections against employing the most unfit and unmanageable materials for producing subjects alien to the art of embroidery.[107]See Redgrave’s “Manual of Design,” pp. 50-61.[108]See Appendix 21, by Ch. T. Newton, to the first edition of Ruskin’s “Stones of Venice.” He gives, as instances of this pattern, certain coins from Prienè, where the River Mæander is symbolized by the angular key pattern. Appendix,No. 1.[109]“(Euripidesloquitur) Not horse-cocks, nor yet goat-stags, such as they depict on Persian carpets” (Aristophanes, “The Frogs,” v. 939-944). The Persian carpets, which are the legitimate descendants of Babylonian art, are curiously fragmentary. In a modern design are to be seen birds, indicated by a head, bill, and eyes; little coffee-pots, and flowers broken off at the stalks, and small quadrupeds without any particular form; also the prehistoric cross, the Tau, and bits of broken-up wave and key patterns. All these, repeated into a pattern, remind us of scraps in a kaleidoscope, thrown together accidentally, or else taken up by chance where history and art have dropped them.[110]“Soma” or “Homa” (“Sarcostemma Viminale vel Brevistigma”), from Cashmere and the Hindu Cush, still used by the Brahmins, and the juice of which was the first intoxicant of the human race. See Birdwood’s “Indian Art,” vol. ii. pp. 336, 337.[111]“The Hom, the sacred Persian tree, is constantly placed between two animals, chained to it.” See Pl.23, Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.[112]The Hom or Homa, the sacred tree of Assyrian and Persian sculpture and textiles, is accounted for as a pattern by Dr. Rock, who says: “From the earliest antiquity a tradition came down through middle Asia, of some holy tree, perhaps the tree of life spoken of as growing in Paradise.” It is always represented as something like a shrub, and is a conventional portrait of a palm; but Rock says it has every look of having belonged to the family of the Asclepiadeæ. For its last transformation into a vine, see Pl.24.[113]Rock’s “Introduction,” p. cxxxi.[114]Sir George Birdwood says: “The intimate absorption of Hindu life in the unseen realities of man’s spiritual consciousness is seldom sufficiently acknowledged by Europeans, and, indeed, cannot be fully comprehended by men whose belief in the supernatural has been destroyed by the prevailing material ideas of modern society. Every thought, wish, and deed of the Hindu belongs to the world of the unseen as well as the seen; and nothing shows this more strikingly than the traditionary works of India. Everything that is made has a direct religious use, or some religious symbolism. The materials of which different articles are fashioned, their weight, and the colours with which they are painted, are fixed by religious rule. An obscured symbolism of material and colour is to be traced also in the forms of things, even for the most domestic uses. Every detail of Indian decoration, Aryan or Turanian, has a religious meaning, and the arts of India will never be rightly understood until there are brought to their study, a familiar acquaintance with the character and subjects of the religious poetry, national legends, and mythological scriptures that have always been their inspiration, and of which they are the perfected imagery.” See Sir George Birdwood’s “Indian Arts,” part i. p. 2.[115]The Persian tree of life was not alien to the worship of the Zoroastrian religion of the Sassanides, and is said to have been the origin of the worship of Bacchus. It was introduced by Oriental weavers into Sicilian and Spanish stuffs.[116]Sir G. Birdwood suggests that the honeysuckle pattern is derived from the Tree of Life, cone, and palm, refashioned and combined with the graceful ingenuity of Greek art, and covering a mixture of sacred traditional emblems.[117]Haug, in his “Essays on the Sacred Writings of the Parsees” (pp. 132, 239), tells us that these people still hold the homa to be sacred, and from it squeeze a juice used by them in their religious ceremonies.[118]See Perrot et Chipiez, “Histoire de l’Art,” vol. ii. pp. 260, 267, Pl. xiv.[119]See Appendix,No. 1.[120]India, in return, afterwards influenced Persia, the successor of Babylon.[121]In India, the elephant is a very common element in a pattern; in Egypt, the serpent; in Persia, the lion. In animal patterns, certain emblems were grouped together. The lion and the goose represent strength and prudence; the lion and eagle, strength and dominion; the lion and dove, strength and gentleness. We may see these double emblems on Sicilian textiles.[122]Chinese art is crowded with symbolisms.[123]The double-headed eagle was the badge of Saladin, as well as that of the Holy Roman Empire.[124]Ezekiel xvii.[125]In the earliest days of Christianity.[126]“A cloud pattern from which issue two clasped hands is the device of Guizot Marchand or Guido Mercator, printer, in 1498. He lived at the College of Navarre.”—Dibdin’s “Decameron,” ii. pp. 33-36.[127]See Gori (tom. iii. pp. 20, 84), as cited by Rock, Introduction, p. liii. The same netted pattern was found in the grave of an Archbishop of York of about the end of the thirteenth century. Its name,fundata, is derived fromfunda, the fisherman’s net; also, in later times, it was calledlaqueata. See Rock’s Introduction (p. liv.). See also M. Ch. Clermont Ganneau’s “L’Imagerie Phénicienne,” Coupe de Palestrina; and Chaldée et Assyrie, in Perrot and Chipiez, ii. p. 736. Another instance is shown here of the fundata occurring in the bronze flat bowl copied from Layard’s “Monuments,” 2nd series, plate 62. The whole design of the bowl is Babylonian, consisting of a rich border of repetitions of the tree of life; each has the peculiar ornament of little knobs often seen on their head-dresses.[128]See Bock’s “L. Gewänder,” p. 129; Gori, “Thes. Dipt.” ii. pp. 20, 275; Marquardt, “Handbuch Röm. Alt.” vii. pp. 527-31 (Eng. Trans.). Authorities differ in describing the Chrysoclavus. Sir G. Birdwood calls it a button pattern (“Indian Arts,” vol. ii. p. 241). The “Chrysoclavus” was the name given to the palmated or triumphal pattern with which the consular robes are invariably embroidered in the Roman Consular ivories at Zurich, Halberstadt, and in the South Kensington Museum. The tenacious life of this pattern is curiously shown in the way it appears in the fifteenth century on Italian playing-cards. (See “Cartes à Jouer,” an anonymous French book in the print-room of the British Museum.) The kings and knaves wear the Byzantine humeral, and the Chrysoclavus pattern is carved on their chairs. Till lately English playing-cards showed the same dress-pattern. I shall discuss the Latin Clavus and the Chrysoclavus amongst ecclesiastical embroideries, pp. 308, 336 (post).[129]See Wilkinson’s “Ancient Egyptians,” i. p. 125. The date of these mural paintings may, however, be even as late as the time of Alexander the Great.

[96]Sir G. Birdwood tells us of patterns of an Indian brocade called “Chundtara” (moon and stars), figured all over with representations of heavenly bodies.

[97]Pliny, “Natural History,” lib. xxx. c. 8, § 34.

[98]There is a shell pattern in gold on a twelfth century fragment of a Bishop’s garment at Worcester.

[99]See Wilkinson’s “Ancient Egyptians,” vol. iii. pp. 132, 133, 350, 553.

[100]Bötticher, in his “Tektonik,” will allow of but one origin for the “egg and tongue” pattern. I cannot give up the evident descent from the lotus flower and bud; but I have said before that a pattern has sometimes a double parentage, and it may be so in this case.

[101]The lotus is almost entirely lost as a native growth in India, and is fast disappearing in Egypt. The lotus blossom in Egypt was not only a sacred emblem, but also anobjet de luxe. At their feasts, the honoured guests were presented with the flowers, and as they faded, slaves carried round baskets of fresh blossoms. See Wilkinson’s “Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians.”

[102]See the Book of Lindisfarne, and the two Celtic bronze shields in the British Museum. These last are very curious. The long involved lines show their origin, and the shields are enriched with enamel and corals, in repetitions of the prehistoric cross.

[103]See “Album of Photographs of the Marien-Kirche, Dantzic,” Taf. 31.

[104]Woltmann and Woermann, Eng. Trans., p. 202.

[105]Charlemagne’s dress, in his tomb, was covered with golden elephants. This must have been Indian. His mantle was “parsemé” with golden bees.

[106]Elsewhere there is a notice of Miss Morritt’s really beautifully embroidered landscapes at Rokeby; and all who saw them will remember the extremely clever and effective pictures in crewels by an accomplished American lady, Mrs. Oliver Wendell Holmes, exhibited in London a few years ago. These exceptional cases do not, however, disprove the objections against employing the most unfit and unmanageable materials for producing subjects alien to the art of embroidery.

[107]See Redgrave’s “Manual of Design,” pp. 50-61.

[108]See Appendix 21, by Ch. T. Newton, to the first edition of Ruskin’s “Stones of Venice.” He gives, as instances of this pattern, certain coins from Prienè, where the River Mæander is symbolized by the angular key pattern. Appendix,No. 1.

[109]“(Euripidesloquitur) Not horse-cocks, nor yet goat-stags, such as they depict on Persian carpets” (Aristophanes, “The Frogs,” v. 939-944). The Persian carpets, which are the legitimate descendants of Babylonian art, are curiously fragmentary. In a modern design are to be seen birds, indicated by a head, bill, and eyes; little coffee-pots, and flowers broken off at the stalks, and small quadrupeds without any particular form; also the prehistoric cross, the Tau, and bits of broken-up wave and key patterns. All these, repeated into a pattern, remind us of scraps in a kaleidoscope, thrown together accidentally, or else taken up by chance where history and art have dropped them.

[110]“Soma” or “Homa” (“Sarcostemma Viminale vel Brevistigma”), from Cashmere and the Hindu Cush, still used by the Brahmins, and the juice of which was the first intoxicant of the human race. See Birdwood’s “Indian Art,” vol. ii. pp. 336, 337.

[111]“The Hom, the sacred Persian tree, is constantly placed between two animals, chained to it.” See Pl.23, Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

[112]The Hom or Homa, the sacred tree of Assyrian and Persian sculpture and textiles, is accounted for as a pattern by Dr. Rock, who says: “From the earliest antiquity a tradition came down through middle Asia, of some holy tree, perhaps the tree of life spoken of as growing in Paradise.” It is always represented as something like a shrub, and is a conventional portrait of a palm; but Rock says it has every look of having belonged to the family of the Asclepiadeæ. For its last transformation into a vine, see Pl.24.

[113]Rock’s “Introduction,” p. cxxxi.

[114]Sir George Birdwood says: “The intimate absorption of Hindu life in the unseen realities of man’s spiritual consciousness is seldom sufficiently acknowledged by Europeans, and, indeed, cannot be fully comprehended by men whose belief in the supernatural has been destroyed by the prevailing material ideas of modern society. Every thought, wish, and deed of the Hindu belongs to the world of the unseen as well as the seen; and nothing shows this more strikingly than the traditionary works of India. Everything that is made has a direct religious use, or some religious symbolism. The materials of which different articles are fashioned, their weight, and the colours with which they are painted, are fixed by religious rule. An obscured symbolism of material and colour is to be traced also in the forms of things, even for the most domestic uses. Every detail of Indian decoration, Aryan or Turanian, has a religious meaning, and the arts of India will never be rightly understood until there are brought to their study, a familiar acquaintance with the character and subjects of the religious poetry, national legends, and mythological scriptures that have always been their inspiration, and of which they are the perfected imagery.” See Sir George Birdwood’s “Indian Arts,” part i. p. 2.

[115]The Persian tree of life was not alien to the worship of the Zoroastrian religion of the Sassanides, and is said to have been the origin of the worship of Bacchus. It was introduced by Oriental weavers into Sicilian and Spanish stuffs.

[116]Sir G. Birdwood suggests that the honeysuckle pattern is derived from the Tree of Life, cone, and palm, refashioned and combined with the graceful ingenuity of Greek art, and covering a mixture of sacred traditional emblems.

[117]Haug, in his “Essays on the Sacred Writings of the Parsees” (pp. 132, 239), tells us that these people still hold the homa to be sacred, and from it squeeze a juice used by them in their religious ceremonies.

[118]See Perrot et Chipiez, “Histoire de l’Art,” vol. ii. pp. 260, 267, Pl. xiv.

[119]See Appendix,No. 1.

[120]India, in return, afterwards influenced Persia, the successor of Babylon.

[121]In India, the elephant is a very common element in a pattern; in Egypt, the serpent; in Persia, the lion. In animal patterns, certain emblems were grouped together. The lion and the goose represent strength and prudence; the lion and eagle, strength and dominion; the lion and dove, strength and gentleness. We may see these double emblems on Sicilian textiles.

[122]Chinese art is crowded with symbolisms.

[123]The double-headed eagle was the badge of Saladin, as well as that of the Holy Roman Empire.

[124]Ezekiel xvii.

[125]In the earliest days of Christianity.

[126]“A cloud pattern from which issue two clasped hands is the device of Guizot Marchand or Guido Mercator, printer, in 1498. He lived at the College of Navarre.”—Dibdin’s “Decameron,” ii. pp. 33-36.

[127]See Gori (tom. iii. pp. 20, 84), as cited by Rock, Introduction, p. liii. The same netted pattern was found in the grave of an Archbishop of York of about the end of the thirteenth century. Its name,fundata, is derived fromfunda, the fisherman’s net; also, in later times, it was calledlaqueata. See Rock’s Introduction (p. liv.). See also M. Ch. Clermont Ganneau’s “L’Imagerie Phénicienne,” Coupe de Palestrina; and Chaldée et Assyrie, in Perrot and Chipiez, ii. p. 736. Another instance is shown here of the fundata occurring in the bronze flat bowl copied from Layard’s “Monuments,” 2nd series, plate 62. The whole design of the bowl is Babylonian, consisting of a rich border of repetitions of the tree of life; each has the peculiar ornament of little knobs often seen on their head-dresses.

[128]See Bock’s “L. Gewänder,” p. 129; Gori, “Thes. Dipt.” ii. pp. 20, 275; Marquardt, “Handbuch Röm. Alt.” vii. pp. 527-31 (Eng. Trans.). Authorities differ in describing the Chrysoclavus. Sir G. Birdwood calls it a button pattern (“Indian Arts,” vol. ii. p. 241). The “Chrysoclavus” was the name given to the palmated or triumphal pattern with which the consular robes are invariably embroidered in the Roman Consular ivories at Zurich, Halberstadt, and in the South Kensington Museum. The tenacious life of this pattern is curiously shown in the way it appears in the fifteenth century on Italian playing-cards. (See “Cartes à Jouer,” an anonymous French book in the print-room of the British Museum.) The kings and knaves wear the Byzantine humeral, and the Chrysoclavus pattern is carved on their chairs. Till lately English playing-cards showed the same dress-pattern. I shall discuss the Latin Clavus and the Chrysoclavus amongst ecclesiastical embroideries, pp. 308, 336 (post).

[129]See Wilkinson’s “Ancient Egyptians,” i. p. 125. The date of these mural paintings may, however, be even as late as the time of Alexander the Great.

The history of an art must, more or less, include that of its raw material.

This is too true to be disputed, but in the art of embroidery it opens out such endless avenues, through such vast regions of technical study, that we must acknowledge the difficulty, or rather the impossibility, of including in one volume even a tithe of the information already collected.

I shall, therefore, only dedicate a few pages to the history of those fibres which have always been most important in the different phases of our civilization.

Among books on textile materials, I must again name the “Textrinum Antiquorum,” by Yates. His premature death, and the loss that the world of art and manufacture has sustained by the chain of his invaluable researches being broken, cannot be appreciated but through the study of the first and only volume of this already rare book, from which I venture to quote largely.

Semper’s “Der Stil” is a work of reference on this subject, so valuable that it should, by a good translation, be placed within the reach of non-German scholars.

From Colonel Yule’s “Marco Polo,” and his abundant notes, we learn much of Asiatic textile art in the thirteenth century, and its early traditions in the immutable East, and Sir G. Birdwood’s books on this Indian art are most instructive.

Egyptian textiles are splendidly illustrated by SirGardiner Wilkinson. All these modern writers quote Pliny and the Periplus;[130]and Pliny quotes all the classic authors, from Homer to his day. Here is a wide field for gathering information regarding the materials for embroidery in past ages.

When we use the phrase “raw material” so glibly, with an æsthetic contempt for that which the art of man has neither manipulated nor reorganized, we show our own coarse appreciation, if not ignorance, of the wonderful inherent beauty and microscopic delicacy of form, colour, and substance of those materials which we fashion for our own uses.

Few know the structure of the tender filaments of wool, flax, cotton, and silk; or that each has its peculiar form and attributes, and its individual capabilities for the purposes for which they appear to us to have been created, i.e. the clothing and adornment of man’s dress and his home.

I should like to draw attention to these well-attested facts.

Seen through a microscope, the forms of these raw materials differ greatly.

Flax is difficult to describe, as it varies according to the soil and climate it comes from. Its fibre, however, has always a shiny outer surface, and is transparent, cylindrical, and pipe-like; apparently with breaks or joints like those of a cane.

Cotton also varies so much in its own kind, that every description is different and somewhat puzzling. Semper says that it approaches the ribbon form, with thickened edges, and is like a half-cylinder twisted spirally; but when wetted with oil, it swells into a complete cylinder.[131]

Wool and hair are hollow pipes without joints. Woollen fibres look like cylindrical snakes with a scaly surface. This roughness gives wool a clinging power which exceeds that of any other material, except the hair of some few animals.[132]

Silk threads consist of twin pipes laid parallel, and held together by the varnish with which they are glazed. Silk is tough and elastic.

The qualities needed for textile materials may be thus enumerated: Pliability, toughness (i.e. tensile strength), and intrinsic durability.

Of course, the material must to a certain degree influence the style of the fabric, and its selection must be according to the effect intended to be produced.[133]The fashions of the day, and the needs of the special manufacture, must greatly modify the choice of materials, which fluctuate, often disappear, and sometimes revive again.

Certain materials which have been, at one period, much admired, have been entirely lost; and indeed we may say that the only permanently employed textiles are wool, flax, cotton, and silk, which apparently never can be superseded. With them, all domestic requirements can be satisfied, and all artistic and decorative fabrics produced, varied, and perfected; and these, from all time recorded in history, have been enriched and glorified with gold, either inwoven or embroidered.

The game of “animal, vegetable, or mineral” mightwell be played with textiles only. Nothing has been alien to the crafts which from time immemorial have spun, woven, felted, netted, and embroidered.

The materials now in general use, and which, once known, have never been abandoned, I have already named, and shall discuss their history separately; they are wool, flax, cotton, and silk. To these I must add hemp, both wild and cultivated.

Hemp is a kind of nettle. It was grown in Colchis, and in those cool regions which did not produce flax. Hemp is hardly grown in India, except to extract from it the narcotic, Cannabis Indica. It was a northern production used throughout Scandinavia. Herodotus (iv. 14) says, “Hemp grows in the land of the Scythians, in a wild state, but it is now cultivated.” From its Latin name,cannabis, comes our canvas, which has always been much used as a ground for counted stitches and backing for embroidery, its stiffness being its qualification for such purposes.[134]

Jute (a rough sort of hemp) has been long an article of commercial importance for the manufacture of coarse-figured fabrics, dyed and woven, sometimes embroidered.

The fibre of the Aloe has been used in the Riviera for laces and “macrami” (knotted fringes).

The fibres of grasses, such as the “Honduras silk grass” (Rhea or Ramie), valuable for beauty, fineness, and toughness, have been worked or woven into stuffs.[135]This material is now coming into notice.

Spartum is often named for coarse weaving;[136]also the fibres of barks, especially those of palm branches.[137]

Another substance of classic use, and even now employed, though rather as a curiosity than as an article of commerce, is the silky filament produced by the shell-fish pinna; and also the fibres of certain sea-weeds.

Fur and hair, especially that of camels and goats, has always been much prized.[138]We have seen both African and Indian striped or primitively decorated rugs of wool, touched here and there with scraps of cotton or silk, or some other odd material; and amongst them, tufts of human hair. The sentiment that motived the use of human hair has been either love or hate—the votive or the triumphal. We know that Delilah was not a stranger to this art. She wove into her web Samson’s seven locks of strength, and “fastened them with a pin” (Judges xvi.).

In the thirteenth century it was the custom for ladies to weave their own hair into their gifts to favoured knights. King Ris, if he had received any such tokenfrom his lady-love, returned it with interest; for he sent her a mantle in which were inwoven the beards of nine conquered kings, a tenth space being left for that of King Arthur, which he promised to add in course of time.[139]

Leather has been from the remotest antiquity employed for the art of embroidery, either for the ground, as in the mantle of Boadicea, made of skins with the fur turned inwards and the leather outside, dressed, and embroidered on the seams;[140]or else as fine inlaid and onlaid application, as in the “funeral tent of an Egyptian queen” in the museum at Boulac, which is certainly the earliest specimen of needlework decoration that exists.[141](Pl.44.) The old Indian embroideries in leather are generally applied one on another. The North American Indians also embroider on leather.[142]

Feather work will be discussed under the heading of “Opus Plumarium.”[143]

On the surface of textiles many substances have been fastened down, in order to give brilliancy to the general effect—skins of insects, beetles’ wings, the claws and teeth of various animals.[144]

Asbestos linen is the only mineral substance, besides gold, silver, and tin,[145]that has been employed inembroidery. It has the remarkable quality of indestructibility by fire. Asbestos linen can be cleansed by fire instead of water.[146]It is a soapy crystal, found in veins of serpentine and cipolino in Cyprus, and other Greek islands. Pliny says it was woven for the funeral obsequies of monarchs, as it preserved the ashes apart, being itself unharmed by the fires of cremation. There are several fragments existing, found in tombs. One of these is in the British Museum.[147]

Marco Polo speaks of a stone fibre found at Chinchin, which answers in description to asbestos. It was spun by mixing it with threads of flax soaked in oil; and when woven, was passed through the fire to remove the flax and the oil.[148]

A miraculous napkin of asbestos was long kept at Monte Casino.

Coral, pearls, and beads of many forms have been used for the enrichment of embroideries, and for decorating textiles. The whole surface of the original fabric has often been entirely covered with them, or the pattern itself has been worked in nothing else. Pearls are constantly seen worked on dress, coats-of-arms, and embroidered portraits. Seed pearls, large coarse pearls, and sometimes fine and precious ones, were surrounded with gold thread embroidery. Coral was so much used in Sicilian embroideries, and so little elsewhere, that one gives the name of “Sicilian” to all such work; but occasionally we find coral embroideries in Spain and elsewhere (Pl.32).

Pl. 32.Three figures in the center, with a leaf pattern borderSee larger image

Pl. 32.

Portion of Dalmatic embroidered by Blanche, Queen of Charles IV. of Bohemia (fifteenth century).The figures in pearls, on a background of beaten gold. Bock’s “Liturgische Gewänder.” Vol. i. taf. xi.

Beads of glass were common in Egypt from the earliest times, strung together by threads so as to form breastplates rather than necklaces. Whence beads originally came we cannot tell, but it seems that the Phœnicians dropped them on all the shores of the world. Then, as now, savages had a passion for beads, and civilized men and women still admire them as trimmings. In the Middle Ages they were sometimes worked into pictures.[149]

In as far as materials are essential to the art of embroidery, I must restrict myself to the history of silk, wool, flax, cotton, and gold. With these all the finest works have been executed for the artistic adornment of dress and hangings. All other materials have been occasional experiments, or else were resorted to in the absence or ignorance of the above five most important factors in our domestic civilization. The history of wool must take precedence as being that of the original, if not the first, of textile materials.

The wool of sheep and the hair of goats were used very early in the world’s history for clothing, and probably also for hangings. The earliest civilizations plaited, span,[150]wove, and felted them.

There is no reason to suppose that goats and sheep preceded the creation of man. No early fossils record them. Our sheep are supposed by zoologists to bedescended from the Argali or Ovis Ammon of Linnæus, inhabiting the central regions of Asia.[151]

It is possible that plaited grasses may have preceded wool. But though certain prehistoric specimens are supposed to have been found in Spain, yet of this there is but imperfect proof.

The pastoral tribes wandering over those fair regions that extend from Khotan to Arabia, following their flocks and herds, and studying where best to feed, increase, and multiply them, and obtain from them the finest texture of wool, are spoken of nowhere more than in the collected books of the Old Testament, open to us all; and there we learn how important a place these shepherds held in the world’s civilization. “Watching their flocks by night,” they watched the stars also, and they were astronomers; seeking the best pastures and fodder, they learned to be botanists, florists, and agriculturalists. They became also philosophers, poets, prophets, and kings.[152]Job and his country were enriched through the breeding of sheep. The seven daughters of Jethro, the High-priest, tended their father’s flocks.

The Arabians were always great breeders of sheep. The Greeks and Romans, from Homer to Virgil, sang of the herdsman’s life. Our Lord Himself did not disdain to be called “the Good Shepherd.”[153]

The merchants who traded from the Arabian Gulf to Egypt, and across thence to the shores of the Mediterranean, and the Phœnicians of Sidon who brought overland their bales of raw material and manufactured Oriental fabrics, knew well where to find the best goods for their customers; and we hear frequently whence came this orthat coloured wool. Chemmis, the city of Pan, retained its celebrity in the woollen trade down to the conquest of Egypt by the Romans. Nineveh and Babylon encouraged the manufactures and commerce in woollen tents, wall-hangings, and carpets. Nowhere were they so richly embroidered.[154]

Solomon purchased woollens from Egypt. Damascus supplied the Tyrians with wool for their rugs. The stuffs and textile fabrics of wool, of the Chinese, Assyrians, and Chaldeans, are recorded in the earliest writings of the human race. How much their decoration depended on weaving, and how much on embroidery, we cannot tell. The products of the Babylonian looms are alluded to in the Book of Joshua,[155]and also by Ezekiel.[156]

Assyrian stuffs were always celebrated for their splendid colours and various designs; among which were hunting scenes, battles, and special emblematic adornments.[157]

From Miletus came the wool valued most highly by the Greeks. Spain produced the best black, and the north of Italy the best white wool. The Narbonensian and Egyptian wools were supposed to be the most durable, and when they became shabby, were dipped again and served another generation.

From Yates’ account of the great variety of wools, remarkable for their fine texture, their whiteness,[158]theirblackness,[159]or their redness, their cool or their warm tints, it is evident that the ancients valued highly these different qualities.[160]The cloths that were of greatest account were of the finest or the warmest kinds. The sheep of Miletus, Attica, Megaris, and Tarentum were clothed in jackets, in order to preserve the fineness and whiteness of their own coats, and to protect them from being torn by the thorny bushes in their pastures. Columella calls them the “covered” and the “soft,” and says they were often kept in the house.

We find notices of the peculiarities of the various national breeds, caused by the soil on which their pasture grew, and the rivers and streams at which they drank, and these peculiarities were, if possible, encouraged. There is evidence also that some improvement of the breeds by crossing was practised in early times.

As in all the life of the Greeks, the religious element had much influence in perfecting their flocks of sheep—only the most beautiful animals were considered worthy of sacrifice to the gods.

A few of the rare specimens of stuffs which have beenrescued from tombs, especially in the Crimea, and in the Fayoum, in Egypt, show a wool so fine and shining that it might be taken for silk, and the beauty of the weaving is marvellous, and much varied in style.

A warrior’s tomb in the district of Kuban contained a funeral pall, covering the sarcophagus, measuring at least three metres and a half each way, woven of brown wool, in twelve narrow strips sewn together and afterwards painted. The ground is yellowish, the design brown. The figures repeat mythical subjects, and alternate with patterns, and there is a border. One strip contains a scene from the story of Peleus and Thetis. Apparently this is Attic design. The coloured dresses worn by women of rank, and hung on the statues of the gods, were sometimes painted, sometimes stamped, and often embroidered, and they were nearly all of woollen fabrics.

One of the great advantages of wool is its power of absorbing colour, as the pigment sinks into its very fibre, instead of clinging to the surface. It can be dyed of deeper colours than flax, cotton, or silk.

Pliny tells us that Tanaquil combed, span, and wove her wool, and she herself made the royal mantle which Servius Tullius used to wear, and it was covered with a wavy pattern (undulata). Thence came the custom that when a maiden became a bride, her attendants carried a distaff trimmed with combed wool, and a spindle with yarn upon it. The robes worked by Tanaquil were dedicated by Servius Tullius to the statue of Fortune in her temple at Rome, and were still hanging there in the days of Tiberius.[161]Pliny remarks that it was a wonder that it neither fell from the image, nor was eaten by the moths, during five hundred and sixty years.

He gives us interesting details of the weaving of woollen cloths, and speaks of the thick coarse wool with “great thick hair,” used for carpets from the time of Homer. The same passage mentions felt. He tells us of the cloths with a curly nap, used in the days of Augustus; of the “papaverata” woven with flowers resembling poppies; and we hear from him of the cloth of divers colours woven in Babylon, and called thence Babylonica; and the Alexandrian webs, with many-coloured threads (polymita)[162], comparing them with those made in Gaul; and those woven by the Parthians.[163]

We have already said that the wool of Miletus was a proverbial favourite with the Greeks. Eustathius speaks of the excellence of the Milesian carpets and hangings. Virgil represents the virgins of Cyrene spinning Milesian wool dyed of a deep sea-green.[164]

In the British Museum is a fragment of Egyptian woollen or worsted embroidery on white linen, discoloured by its use as mummy wrapping; but the stitches of worsted remain a perfectly clear bright crimson and indigo blue. This shows how wool absorbs the colour and retains it. Even when the surface is faded, it can be made to emit it again by chemical processes.

In tombs in the Crimea have been found variously woven and adorned woollen fabrics. There are fragments resembling in their texture a fine rep—a sort of corded stuff; another material resembling a woollen crêpe, or fine “nun’s gauze.” This veiled a golden wreath. Then there is a stuff like what is now called “atlas”—a kind of woollen satin. Some woollens are woven simply like linen; some are wide, some very narrow, sewn together in strips, woven in meandering designs.One, like a piece of Gobelin tapestry, has a border of ducks with yellow wings and dark green heads and throats,[165]and then another with a pattern of stags’ heads. This description recalls the specimens on plate16and plate39.

From these tombs are collected stuffs of wool, woven and embroidered in gold with combinations of many colours; and, in fact, through this collection, now placed in the Museum at St. Petersburg, we become aware that 300B.C.the Greeks had learned all the secrets of the art of weaving wool. They, however, lost it, and it is only in India that its continuity was never broken. Indian looms still weave, of the finest fleeces, such shawls of Babylonian design as repeat the texture of the ancient Greek garments. But were they Greek? or did those beautiful woven fabrics come from Persia or India?[166]

The first we know of Scandinavian wool for dress, is a fragment from a Celtic barrow in Yorkshire—a woollen plaited shroud. This fabric was an advance upon the original northern savage costume—a sheep-skin fashioned and sewn with a fish-bone for a needle, sinews for thread, and a thorn for a pin. But we must imagine that some use was made, besides plaiting, of the spun wool, of which the early northern women have left us evidence, in the whorls of their spindles, from prehistoric times.

Wool has always appeared to be a natural material for dress. It is warm in winter, light in summer, and is always beautiful as it hangs in lovely soft draperies, heavy enough to draw the fabric into graceful curved lines, and yet capable of yielding to each movement inlittle rippling folds, covering, but not concealing the forms to which they cling. Classical draperies are explained by it. What the Italians call the “eyes of the folds,” are particularly beautiful in woollens, and lend themselves to sculpturesque art.

The other natural use of wool is for carpets. We have the evidence of the imitations, in mosaic, of carpets from the stone floors in Nineveh (now in the British Museum), that the art of weaving large and small rugs, and the principles of composition for such purposes was at that date well understood. The carpet-weaving traditions of Babylon appear to have been inherited by the occupiers of the soil, as it is supposed that the Saracens learned from Persia the art of weaving pile carpets, and imported thence craftsmen into Spain. We can trace Persian carpet patterns in Indian floor coverings. The Greeks called themtapetes; and the Latins adopted the name; and hence the Italiantapeti, Frenchtapis, and our word tapestry.

As artistic material, to which the world owes much beauty and comfort, woollens have always played a great part in the decorations of our houses, as of our garments. Fabrics have been made of them of every description, from the cheapest and commonest to the most refined; but if woollen stuffs are to be beautiful, they must befine, and worked or embroidered by hand.

Woollens brocaded or figured are not so effective as silken hangings. Woollen velvets are without light, dull and heavy. Still, even amongst our English fabrics, there have always been varieties of texture[167]and adaptations to different effects, and some are beautiful.

Worsted thread, so called from Worsted, in Norfolk, where the materials for weaving and embroidering are manufactured, has always been very important in embroidery. Worsteds after a time gave way to a very beautiful material, called “German wool,” which again has yielded the supremacy to “crewels”[168](resembling the old worsteds). These crewels are nearly the same in substance and in their loose texture as the threads prepared from wool for tapestry weaving.

We may claim, in England, the superiority in this manufacture, though we are constantly receiving from France novelties which give us good hints, and urge us to keep pace with the science of the Gobelins in their woollen dyes. The French, in return, employ our wools, especially those of Lincolnshire, in their tapestry workshops.

The wool and hair of goats should be a study by itself. They have from the earliest times been used in India for the finest and softest fabrics, such as the lovely shawls of Cashmere and the neighbouring provinces. Cloth of Tars in the Middle Ages is supposed to be what is now called Cashmere.

Boyd Dawkins tells us that “The art of spinning and the manufacture of linen were introduced into Europe in the Neolithic age, and have been preserved with little variation from that period to the present day, in certain remote parts of Europe, having only been superseded in modern times by the complicated machinery so familiar to us. The spindle and distaff, or perforated spindle whorls, are of stone, pottery, or bone, such as are constantly found in Neolithic tombs and habitations. Thread fromthe Swiss lake cities is proved to be of flax, and there is evidence of weaving in some sort of loom.”[169]

The meaning of the word Byssus has been disputed; some authorities asserting that it includes both flax and cotton fabrics. Without the aid of the microscope, the dispute as to whether the material of the Egyptian mummy wrappings was cotton or flax, or a mixture of the two, would never have been settled; but now that the difference of the structure of each has been clearly ascertained, we know that cotton was never employed in Egypt, except for certain domestic uses. The mummy wrappings are entirely linen. Cotton was forbidden for the priests’ dress in the temple, though they might wear it when not on duty.[170]

There are specimens of Egyptian painted or printed patterns on fine linen in the British Museum;[171]and it is curious to see in Egyptian mural paintings the same patterned chintzes on furniture that were common a hundred years ago in England. Both must have come from India, and therefore were certainly cotton fabrics.

Herodotus says the mummy cloths were of “byssine sindon,” which may be translated “linen cloth.”[172]Cotton he calls “tree wool.”

Yates has carefully argued the whole question, and, we think, has proved that byssus was flax, and not cotton.[173]He quotes Philo, who certainly must have believed that it was made of flax, from the description he gives of its appearance and qualities, which in no way apply to cotton or hemp. He says that “The Jewish high priests wore a linen garment of the purest byssus—which was a symbol of firmness, incorruption, and of the clearest splendour, for fine linen is very difficult to tear. It is made of nothing mortal, and becomes brighter and more resembling light, the more it is cleansed by washing.”[174]

Here is another quotation: “Cloth of byssus symbolizes firm faith. Its threads surpass even ropes of broom in firmness and strength.”[175]Pliny says the flax grown in Egypt was superior to any other, and it was exported to Arabia and India.[176]The first known existing fragment of flax linen in Europe was taken from the tomb of the Seven Brothers in the Crimea. Its date is 300B.C.

In Solomon’s time the Jews evidently depended upon Egypt for their fine linen. Herodotus describes the corselet of Amasis, the fineness of the linen, and the embroidered decorations of men and animals, partly gold and partly tree wool (i.e. cotton).[177]

All the finest linen certainly came then from Egypt, and was much finer than any that is now made. That we call cambric, was woven there many centuries before it was made in Cambray.[178]

Through the Phœnicians the fine linen came to Rome,as appears from the following notice of embroidery on linen by Flavius Vopiscus, in his “Life of the Emperor Carinus:” “Why should I mention the linen cloths brought from Tyre and Sidon, which are so thin as to be transparent, which glow with purple, or are prized on account of their laborious embroideries?”[179]

The history of a fine embroidered linen curtain for a Roman house might have been this:—Grown in Egypt; carried to Nomenticum (Artois), and there woven; taken to India to be embroidered, and thence as merchandise to Rome.

While flax was making its way northward, the Celts must also have taken it across Europe from their resting-place, after emigrating from the East. The wordlinen—lin-white—is a Celtic epithet, whereasflaxis an Anglo-Saxon word.[180]

The Atrebates wove linen in Artois, 1800 years ago. Jerome speaks of their “indumenta,” or shirts of fine linen; and the great weavers of to-day are still the Flemish descendants of the Atrebates. Their Celtic descent is witnessed in the Irish by their superiority in the crafts of the loom.

The fine laces of Venice, France, and Belgium are all of linen, i.e. flaxen thread. Clearness and strength in these delicate fabrics cannot be obtained with cotton, which, especially when it is washed, swells and fluffs, and never has the radiant appearance and purity of flax.

Embroidery is always a natural accompaniment of fine linen. Those that are still preserved to us from earlyand Middle-Age times are nearly all on linen, if not on silk. The woollen fragments are very few and imperfect. They have been invariably “fretted” by the moth.

White needle embroidery is mostly worked in linen-thread, though cotton-thread has been used a great deal, and is very fit for the purpose.

Cotton was native to India,[181]as flax was to Egypt. It not only was grown, woven, and printed there from the remotest antiquity, but was cultivated nowhere else. The Egyptians do not appear to have grown it till the fourteenth centuryA.D., though they had long imported it as raw material, and as plain and printed webs.[182]It was called tree-wool.

It was first woven in Italy in the thirteenth century, and used for making paper; and in the sixteenth, the plant was grown in the south of Europe. From Italy it was carried into the Low Countries, and only reached England in the seventeenth century,[183]so lately has the great staple of our manufactures first belonged to us.

The fibre of cotton has neither the strength nor the durability of flax or silk, but it is the third in the group of the most universally qualified materials for all purposes of domestic textile art, ranging from carpets and sails, to fine chintzes for dress, and filmy muslins. The cloudy effect of these delicate fabrics is their own peculiar beauty. Muslins for hangings, printed or embroidered,have always been a luxury from India; they were called “carbasa,” and were much esteemed in Rome as a protection against the sun.[184]

But we have much earlier notice of them, as being the curtains described in the Book of Esther, hung with silver rings to the pillars of marble in the banqueting hall at Susa or Shushan: “blue and white muslin” (i.e. carpas,[185]mistranslated “green” in the Authorized Version), “fastened with cords of fine linen and purple.”

The word “carbasina” occurs in a play by Statius, evidently translated from a writer of the new Greek comedy period. It may be inferred, therefore, that the Greeks used cotton 200B.C.[186]A century before, Nearchus (one of Alexander’s admirals) speaks of the cotton-trees in India as if they were a new discovery. Yates gives us many quotations from Latin classical authors, proving the common use of cotton. Its Latin name wasbambacinum, frombombax, hence the Italianbambagio,bambagino,bambasino.

The variety of cotton fabrics in India is very numerous, each having its distinctive beauties and qualities inherited by tradition from early times. They are enumerated and described in Sir G. Birdwood’s “Arts of India.” Almost all of them have been made to carry embroideries—the transparent muslins,[187]as well as the fine cloths, and the stronger and thicker fabrics.[188]

Most old English houses contain some hangings of thickly woven cotton, probably Indian, worked in crewel or worsted, of the time of James I., or a little earlier; and beautiful patterns wrought in silk or thread, on fine cotton linen, reminding one of the arabesques of the Taj Mahal, succeeded those of the Jacobean style.

Transparent muslins were often embroidered in gold and silver, or spangled and embossed with beetles’ wings; and gold, silver, and silk were lavished on Indian cotton grounds, as well as on silken stuffs. Linen was not much embroidered in India, but often printed like chintz.

Buckram, or plush of cotton, was certainly imported from the East to England, from the thirteenth century to the time of Elizabeth. There is at Ashridge, in Hertfordshire, a small jacket of very fine cotton-plush amongst the baby linen prepared by Elizabeth for the expected heir of Philip and Mary, and there are other small dresses of this material of the date of James I. A similar material called fustian is also named by Marco Polo as a cotton fabric; it is supposed to have been made in Egypt by the Arabs. This sort of cotton-plush, variously manipulated, is repeatedly mentioned by Herr Graf’schen in his “Catalogue of Egyptian Textiles from the Fayoum.”

Plano Carpini says the tunics of the Tartars were “bacramo,” or else of baudichin (cloth of gold). Falstaff’s “men in buckram” may be thus explained.[189]

I have already said that cotton is inferior in its qualities to silk and flax, except in the production of transparent muslins. Its peculiarity is its tendency to “crinkle” or crumple in wearing, therefore it does not present a smooth flat surface, except by means of dressing, which unfits it for clinging effects but suits printed patterns. Such stuffs as workhouse sheeting, imitating certain fabrics of the sixteenth century, and which it has been the fashion of late to cover with embroidery, do not repay, by effective beauty, the trouble bestowed upon them.

A somewhat profane French writer, giving his ideas on the Creation, says that gold, the latest metal, was expressly created for the demoralization of mankind. This is an ugly version of the fact that it is found on the surface of the earth’s crust, and that its beauty and worth makes it a desirable possession for which men will ever contend.

Gold adorns every work of the artistic animal—man. It is the most becoming setting to all other beautiful things, the most gorgeous reflection of light and colour, the richest and softest background, the most harmonious medium for high lights. In all works of decoration it represents sunshine where it is not, and doubles it where it is. The word “illumination” in books belongs to the gilded illustrations of immortal thoughts.

In embroideries, as grounding or as pattern, gold gives the glory: “Her clothing is of wrought gold.” The raiment of needlework is comparatively ineffective without golden lights or background. As colour, it never can offend the eye, except when used to accentuate aggressivelya vulgar pattern, or when it flashes and dazzles from over-polish and too lavish expenditure.

Silver follows gold as a splendid element in decoration,[190]but it is not of such universal application and use; and when employed together, the proportion of gold should preponderate. Golden tissues belong to the earliest civilizations.

Sir G. Birdwood says that “The art of gold brocades is older than the Code of Manu.... The excellence of the art passed in the long course of ages, from one place to another; and Babylon, Tarsus, Alexandria, Baghdad, Damascus, Antioch, Tabriz, Sicily, and Tripoli successively became celebrated for their gold and silver-wrought tissues, silks, and brocades.... Through every disguise (and mingling of style) it is not impossible to infer the essential identity of the brocades with the fabrics of blue, purple, and scarlet, worked in gold, of ancient Babylonian art.”[191]

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