Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving

Embroidery and Tapestry
Weaving, by Grace

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Title: Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving
Author: Grace Christie

Release Date: January 16, 2007 [eBook #20386]
Language: English
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"Flowers, Plants and Fishes, Birds, Beasts, Flyes, and Bees, Hils,
Dales, Plaines, Pastures, Skies, Seas, Rivers, Trees, There's nothing
neere at hand, or farthest sought, But with the needle may be shap'd
and wrought."
--JOHN TAYLOR ("The Praise of the Needle").
The Artistic Crafts Series of Technical Handbooks Edited by W. R.
Lethaby
EMBROIDERY AND TAPESTRY WEAVING
A Practical Text-Book of Design and Workmanship
by
MRS. ARCHIBALD H. CHRISTIE
With Drawings by the Author and Other Illustrations
Second Edition Revised (A reprint of the First Edition, with various
slight alterations in text)
Third Edition Revised (A reprint of the Second Edition)

Published by John Hogg 13 Paternoster Row London 1912

[Illustration: Frontispiece See page 249.]

Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co. at the Ballantyne Press,
Edinburgh

EDITOR'S PREFACE
Needlework, which is still practised traditionally in every house, was
once a splendid art, an art in which English workers were especially
famous, so that, early in the XIIIth century, vestments embroidered in
England were eagerly accepted in Rome, and the kind of work wrought
here was known over Europe as "English Work." Embroideries façon
d'Angleterre often occupy the first place in foreign inventories.
At Durham are preserved some beautiful fragments of embroidery
worked in the Xth century, and many examples, belonging to the great
period of the XIIIth and XIVth centuries, are preserved at the South
Kensington Museum, which is particularly rich in specimens of this art.
In order to judge of what were then its possibilities it is worth while to
go and see there three notable copes, the blue cope, the Sion cope, and
the rose-colour Jesse-tree cope, the last two of which are certainly
English, and the former probably so. The Sion cope bears a remnant of
an inscription which has unfortunately been cut down and otherwise
injured, so that all that I have been able to read is as follows: DAVN
PERS : DE : V ...; probably the name of the donor.
In the XIIIth century the craft of embroidery was practised both by men
and women.
That great art patron, Henry the Third, chiefly employed for his
embroideries, says Mr. Hudson Turner, "a certain Mabel of Bury St.
Edmund's, whose skill as an embroideress seems to have been
remarkable, and many interesting records of her curious performances
might be collected." And I have found a record of an embroidered
chasuble made for the king by "Mabilia" of St. Edmund's in 1242. The

most splendid piece of embroidery produced for this king must have
been the altar frontal of Westminster Abbey, completed about 1269. It
was silk, garnished with pearls, jewels, and translucent enamels. Four
embroideresses worked on it for three years and three-quarters, and it
seems to have cost a sum equal to about £3000 of our money.
"The London Broderers" did not receive a formal charter of
incorporation until 1561, but they must have been a properly organised
craft centuries before. In 2 Henry IV. it was reported to Parliament that
divers persons of the "Craft of Brauderie" made unfit work of inferior
materials, evading the search of "the Wardens of Brauderie" in the said
City of London.
In Paris, in the year 1295, there were ninety-three embroiderers and
embroideresses registered as belonging to the trade. The term of
apprenticeship to the craft was for eight years, and no employer might
take more than one apprentice at a time. In the XVIth century the Guild
was at the height of its power, and embroideries were so much in
demand that the Jardin des Plantes in Paris was established to furnish
flower-subjects for embroidery design. It was founded by the gardener,
Jean Robin, and by Pierre Vallet, "brodeur" to Henry IV. In the XVIIIth
century the company numbered 250 past-masters.
To this craft the present volume forms, I believe, an admirable
introduction and text-book, not only on the side of workmanship, but
also on that difficult subject, "design"--difficult, that