Part 8 (1/2)

Chain-st.i.tch consists of loops simulating the links of a simple chain.

Some of the most famous work of the Middle Ages was worked in this st.i.tch, which is enduring, and of its nature necessitates careful execution. We are more familiar with it in the dainty work of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in the airy brightness and simplicity of which lies a peculiar charm, contrasted with the more pompous and pretentious work of the same period. This st.i.tch is also wrought with a hook on any loose material stretched in a tambour frame.

Tapestry-st.i.tch consists of a building-up of st.i.tches laid one beside another, and gives a surface slightly resembling that of tapestry. I give the name as it is so often used, but it is vague, and leads to the confusion that exists in people's minds between loom-tapestry and embroidery. The st.i.tch is worked in a frame, and is particularly suitable for the drapery of figures and anything that requires skilful blending of several colours, or a certain amount of shading. This facility of ”painting” with the needle is in itself a danger, for it tempts some people to produce a highly shaded imitation of a picture, an attempt which must be a failure both as a decorative and as a pictorial achievement. It cannot be said too often that the essential qualities of all good needlework are a broad surface, bold lines and pure, brilliant and, as a rule, simple colouring; all of which being qualities attainable through, and prescribed by, the limitations of this art.

Applique has been, and is still, a favourite method of work, which Vasari tells us Botticelli praised as being very suitable to processional banners and hangings used in the open air, as it is solid and enduring, also bold and effective in style. It is more accurately described as a _method_ of work in which various st.i.tches are made use of, for it consists of designs embroidered on a stout ground and then cut out and laid on silk or velvet, and edged round with lines of gold or silk, and sometimes with pearls. It requires considerable deftness and judgment in applying, as the work could well be spoilt by clumsy and heavy finis.h.i.+ng. It is now looked upon as solely ecclesiastical, I believe, and is a.s.sociated in our minds with garish red, gold and white, and with dull geometric ornament, though there is absolutely no reason why church embroidery of to-day should be limited to ungraceful forms and staring colours. A certain period of work, thick and solid, but not very interesting, either as to method or design, has been stereotyped into what is known as Ecclesiastical Embroidery, the mechanical characteristics of the style being, of course, emphasised and exaggerated in the process. Church work will never be of the finest while these characteristics are insisted on; the more pity, as it is seemly that the richest and n.o.blest work should be devoted to churches, and to all buildings that belong to and are an expression of the communal life of the people. Another and simpler form of applied work is to cut out the desired forms in one material and lay upon another, securing the applique with st.i.tches round the outline, which are hidden by an edging cord. The work may be further enriched by light ornament of lines and flourishes laid directly on the ground material.

Couching is an effective method of work, in which broad ma.s.ses of silk or gold thread are laid down and secured by a network or diaper of crossing threads, through which the under surface s.h.i.+nes very prettily.

It is often used in conjunction with applique. There are as many varieties of couching st.i.tches as the worker has invention for; in some the threads are laid simply and flatly on the form to be covered, while in others a slight relief is obtained by layers of soft linen thread which form a kind of moulding or stuffing, and which are covered by the silk threads or whatever is to be the final decorative surface.

The ingenious patchwork coverlets of our grandmothers, formed of sc.r.a.ps of old gowns pieced together in certain symmetrical forms, const.i.tute the romance of family history, but this method has an older origin than would be imagined. Queen Isis-em-Kheb's embalmed body went down the Nile to its burial-place under a canopy that was lately discovered, and is preserved in the Boulak Museum. It consists of many squares of gazelle-hide of different colours sewn together and ornamented with various devices. Under the name of patchwork, or mosaic-like piecing together of different coloured stuffs, comes also the Persian work made at Resht. Bits of fine cloth are cut out for leaves, flowers, and so forth, and neatly st.i.tched together with great accuracy. This done, the work is further carried out and enriched by chain and other st.i.tches.

The result is perfectly smooth flat work, no easy feat when done on a large scale, as it often is.

Darning and running need little explanation. The former st.i.tch is familiar to us in the well-known Cretan and Turkish cloths: the st.i.tch here is used mechanically in parallel lines, and simulates weaving, so that these handsome borders in a deep rich red might as well have come from the loom as from the needle. Another method of darning is looser and coa.r.s.er, and suitable only for cloths and hangings not subject to much wear and rubbing; the st.i.tches follow the curves of the design, which the needle paints, as it were, shading and blending the colours.

It is necessary to use this facility for shading temperately, however, or the flatness essential to decorative work is lost.

The foregoing is a rough list of st.i.tches which could be copiously supplemented, but that I am obliged to pa.s.s on to another important point, that of design. If needlework is to be looked upon seriously, it is necessary to secure appropriate and practicable designs. Where the worker does not invent for herself, she should at least interpret her designer, just as the designer interprets and does not attempt to imitate nature. It follows from this, that it is better to avoid using designs of artists who know nothing of the capacities of needlework, and design beautiful and intricate forms without reference to the execution, the result being unsatisfactory and incomplete. Regarding the design itself, broad bold lines should be chosen, and broad harmonious colour (which should be roughly planned before setting to work), with as much minute work, and st.i.tches introducing play of colour, as befits the purpose of the work and humour of the worker; there should be no scratching, no indefiniteness of form or colour, no vagueness that allows the eye to puzzle over the design--beyond that indefinable sense of mystery which arrests the attention and withholds the full charm of the work for a moment, to unfold it to those who stop to give it more than a glance. But there are so many different st.i.tches and so many different modes of setting to work, that it will soon be seen that these few hints do not apply to all of them. One method, for instance, consists of trusting entirely to design, and leaves colour out of account: white work on white linen, white on dark ground, or black or dark blue upon white. Again, some work depends more on magnificence of colour than on form, as, for example, the handsome Italian hangings of the seventeenth century, worked in floss-silk, on linen sometimes, and sometimes on a dusky open canvas which makes the silks gleam and glow like precious stones.

In thus slightly describing the methods chiefly used in embroidery, I do so princ.i.p.ally from old examples, as modern embroidery, being a dilettante pastime, has little distinct character, and is, in its best points, usually imitative. Eastern work still retains the old professional skill, but beauty of colour is rapidly disappearing, and little attention is paid to durability of the dyes used. In speaking rather slightingly of modern needlework, I must add that its non-success is often due more to the use of poor materials than to want of skill in working. It is surely folly to waste time over work that looks shabby in a month. The worker should use judgment and thought to procure materials, not necessarily rich, but each good and genuine of its kind.

Lastly, she should not be sparing of her own handiwork, for, while a slightly executed piece of work depends wholly on design, in one where the actual st.i.tchery is more elaborate, but the design less masterly, the patience and thought lavished on it render it in a different way equally pleasing, and bring it more within the scope of the amateur.

MAY MORRIS.

OF LACE

Lace is a term freely used at the present time to describe various sorts of open ornament in thread work, the successful effect of which depends very much upon the contrasting of more or less closely-textured forms with grounds or intervening s.p.a.ces filled in with meshes of equal size or with cross-ties, bars, etc. Whence it has come to pa.s.s that fabrics having an appearance of this description, such as embroideries upon nets, cut linen works, drawn thread works, and machine-woven counterfeits of lace-like fabrics, are frequently called laces. But they differ in make from those productions of certain specialised handicrafts to which from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries lace owes its fame.

These specialised handicrafts are divisible into two branches. The one branch involves the employment of a needle to loop a continuous thread into varieties of shapes and devices; the other is in the nature of making corresponding or similar ornament by twisting and plaiting together a number of separate threads, the loose ends of which have to be fastened in a row on a cus.h.i.+on or pillow, the supply of the threads being wound around the heads of lengthened bobbins, so shaped for convenience in handling. The first-named branch is needlepoint lace-making; the second, bobbin or pillow lace-making. Needlepoint lace-making may be regarded as a species of embroidery, whilst bobbin or pillow lace-making is closely allied to the twisting and knotting together of threads for fringes. Embroidery, however, postulates a foundation of material to be enriched with needlework, whereas needlepoint and pillow lace are wrought independently of any corresponding foundation of material.

The production of slender needles and small metal pins is an important incident in the history of lace-making by hand. Broadly speaking, the manufacture for a widespread consumption of such metal pins and needles does not date earlier than the fourteenth century. Without small implements of this character delicate lace-making is not possible. It is therefore fair to a.s.sume that although historic nations like the Egyptian, a.s.syrian, Hebrew, Greek, and Roman, made use of fringes and knotted cords upon their hangings, cloaks, and tunics, lace was unknown to them. Their bone, wooden, or metal pins and needles were suited to certain cla.s.ses of embroidery and to the making of nets, looped cords, etc., but not to such lace-making as we know it from the early days of the sixteenth century.

About the end of the fifteenth century, with the development in Europe of fine linen for underclothing, collars and cuffs just visible beyond the outer garments came into vogue, and a taste was speedily manifested for tr.i.m.m.i.n.g linen unders.h.i.+rts, collars and cuffs, with insertions and borders of kindred material. This taste seems to have been first displayed in a marked manner by Venetian and Flemish women; for the earliest known books of engraved patterns for linen ornamental borders and insertions are those which were published during the commencement of the sixteenth century at Venice and Antwerp. But such patterns were designed in the first place for various sorts of embroidery upon a material, such as darning upon canvas (_punto fa su la rete a maglia quadra_), drawn thread work of reticulated patterns (_punto tirato_ or _punto a reticella_), and cut work (_punto tagliato_). Patterns for quite other sorts of work, such as point in the air (_punto in aere_) and thread work twisted and plaited by means of little leaden weights or bobbins (_merletti a piombini_), were about thirty years later in publication. These two last-named cla.s.ses of work are respectively identifiable (_punto in aere_) with needlepoint and (_merletti a piombini_) with bobbin lace-making; and they seem to date from about 1540.

The sixteenth-century and earliest known needlepoint laces (_punto in aere_) are of narrow lengths or bands, the patterns of which are composed princ.i.p.ally of repeated open squares filled in with circular, star, and other geometric shapes, set upon diagonal and cross lines which radiate from the centre of each square to its corners and sides.

When the bands were to serve as borders they would have a dentated edging added to them; this edging might be made of either needlepoint or bobbin lace. As time went on the dimensions of both lace bands and lace vand.y.k.es increased so that, whilst these served as tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs to linen, lace of considerable width and various shapes came to be made, and ruffs, collars, and cuffs were wholly made of it. Such lace was thin and wiry in appearance. The leading lines of the patterns formed squares and geometrical figures, amongst which were disposed small wheel and seed forms, little triangles, and such like. A few years later the details of these geometrically planned patterns became more varied, tiny human figures, fruits, vases and flowers, being used as ornamental details.

But a more distinct change in character of pattern was effected when flowing scrolls with leaf and blossom devices, held together by means of little ties or bars, were adopted. Different portions of the scrolls and blossoms with their connecting links or bars would often be enriched with little loops or _picots_, with st.i.tched reliefs, and varieties of close and open work. Then came a taste for arranging the bars or ties into trellis grounds, or grounds of hexagons, over which small ornamental devices would be scattered in balanced groups. At the same time, the bobbin or pillow lace-workers produced grounds of small equal-size meshes in plaited threads. This inventiveness on the part of the bobbin or pillow workers reacted upon the needlepoint workers, who in their turn produced still more delicate grounds with meshes of single and double twisted threads.

Lace, pa.s.sing from stage to stage, thus became a filmy tissue or fabric, and its original use as a somewhat stiff, wiry-looking tr.i.m.m.i.n.g to linen consequently changed. Larger articles than borders, collars, and cuffs were made of the new filmy material, and lace flounces, veils, loose sleeves, curtains, and bed-covers were produced. This transition may be traced through the first hundred and twenty years of lace-making. It culminated during the succeeding ninety years in a development of fanciful pattern-making, in which realistic representation of flowers, trees, cupids, warriors, sportsmen, animals of the chase, emblems of all sorts, rococo and architectural ornament, is typical. Whilst the eighteenth century may perhaps be regarded as a period of questionable propriety in the employment of ornament hardly appropriate to the twisting, plaiting, and looping together of threads, it is nevertheless notable for _tours de force_ in lace-making achieved without regard to cost or trouble. From this stage, the climax of which may be placed about 1760, the designing of lace patterns declined; and from the end of the eighteenth to the first twenty years or so of the nineteenth centuries, laces, although still made with the needle and bobbins, became little more than finely-meshed nets powdered over with dots or leaves, or single blossoms, or tiny sprays.

Within the limits of a brief note like the present, it is not possible to discuss local peculiarities in methods of work and styles of design which established the characters of the various Venetian and other Italian points, of the French points of Alencon and Argentan, of the cloudy Valenciennes, Mechlin, and Brussels laces. Neither can one touch upon the nurturing of the industry by nuns in convents, by workers subsidised by State grants, and so forth. It would require more s.p.a.ce than is available to fairly discuss what styles of ornament are least or most suited to lace-making; or whether lace is less rightly employed as a tissue for the making of entire articles of costume or of household use, than as an ornamental accessory or tr.i.m.m.i.n.g to costume.

Whilst very much lace is a fantastic adjunct to costume, serving a purpose sometimes like that of _appoggiature_ and _fioriture_ in music, other lace, such as the carved-ivory-looking scrolls of Venetian raised points, which are princ.i.p.ally a.s.sociated with the _jabots_ and ruffles of kings, ministers, and marshals, and with the ornamentation of priests' vestments, is certainly more dignified in character. The loops, twists, and plaits of threads are more noticeable in laces of comparatively small dimensions than they are in laces of great size.