Viscountess Marianne Margaret Compton Cust Alford

In venturing to approach so great a subject as the history of style, I would beg my readers to believe how well I am aware that on each point much more has been already carefully treated by previous writers, than will fall within the limits of a chapter that is intended only to throw light on textile art, and especially on embroidery.

I suppose it is the same in all subjects of human speculation which are worthy of serious study; and therefore I ought not to have been surprised to find how much has already been written on needlework and embroidery, and how unconsciously I, at least, have passed by and ignored these notices, till it struck me that I ought to know something of the history and principles of the art which with others, I was striving to revive and improve.

Then new and old facts crowded round me, and became significant and interesting. I longed to know something of the first worker and the first needle; and behold the needle has been found!—among the dÉbris of the life of the Neolithic cave-man, made of bone and very neatly fashioned.

Alas! the workwoman and her work are gone to dust; but there is the needle!—proof positive that the craft existed before the last glacial period in Britain.[15] How long ago this was, we may conjecture, but can never finally ascertain. Then I find embroidery named by the earliest historians, by every poet of antiquity, and by the first travellers in the East; and it has been the subject of laws and enactments from the date of the Code of Manu in India, to the present century. One becomes eager to systematize all this information, and to share with the workers and thinkers of the craft, the pleasure found in its study.

Perhaps what is here collected may appear somewhat bald and disjointed; but antiquity, both human and historical, is apt to be bald; and its dislocation and disjointed condition are owing to the frequent cataclysms, physical, political, and social, which needlework has survived, bringing down to us the same stitches which served the same purposes for decoration under the Code of Manu, and adorned the Sanctuary in the wilderness; and those stitches probably were not new then.

I propose to give a slight sketch of the origin of the styles[16] that have followed each other, noting the national influences that have displaced or altered them, and the overlap of style caused by outside events.

First, I would define what “Style” means.

Style is the mark impressed on art by a national period, short or long. It fades, it wanes, and then some historical element enters on the scene, which carries with it new materials, needs, and tastes (either imported or springing up under the new conditions). The style of the day in art and literature alters so perceptibly, that all who have had any artistic training are at once aware of the difference.

Of late years, the science of history has been greatly assisted by the science of language. When the mute language of art shall have been patiently deciphered, the historian will be furnished with new powers in his researches after truth.

The first “ineffaceable” is a word; the second a pattern. This is proved by the history of needlework. As the world grows old, its youth becomes more interesting. Alas! the childhood of mankind is so distant, and it was so long before it learned its letters, that but few facts have come down to us, on which we may firmly build our theories; yet we must acknowledge the great stride that has been made in the last few years, in the scientific mode of extracting history from the ruins and tombs, and even the dust-heaps, of the past. Whole epochs, which fifty years ago were as blank as the then maps of Central Africa, are being now gradually covered with landmarks.

Layard, Rawlinson, C. T. Newton, Botta, Rassam, Schliemann, Birch, G. Smith, and a crowd of archÆologists, and even unscientific explorers, are collecting the materials from which the history of mankind is being reconstructed.

From them I have sought information about the art of embroidery, and I find that Semper gives it a high pre-eminence as to its antiquity, making it the foundation and starting-point of all art. He clothes not only man, but architecture, with the products of the loom and the needle; and derives from them in succession, painting, bas-relief, and sculpture.[17]

---

Style has to be considered in two different aspects, from two different standpoints. First, historically and archÆologically, distinguishing and dating the forms which follow upon each other; and tracing them back in the order of their natural sequence; so as to guide us to the root, nay, to the seed[18] of each and all art. The subsidiary art of embroidery, in its highest form the handmaid of architecture, is full of suggestion, and may assist us greatly in the search which culminates in the text of “In the beginning.”

The other point of view from which style should be considered is the Æsthetic. This enables us to criticize the works of different periods; extracting, as far as we may, rules for the beautiful and the commendable, and seeking to find the “why?” also observing the operation of the law by which decay follows too soon after the best and highest efforts of genius, thought, and invention in art.

My present object is the history of consecutive styles, in so far as they concern needlework.

Alas! nothing endures. This law is acknowledged by Goethe, when he makes Jove answer Venus, who bewailed that all that is beautiful must die,—that he had only bestowed beauty on the evanescent.

It seems as if the moment the best is attained, men, ceasing to struggle for the better, fall back at once hopelessly and become mere imitators. They no longer follow a type, but copy a model, and then copy the copy. Imitation is a precipice, a swift descent through poverty of thought into the chaos of mannerism, in the place of style.

The imitative tendency, as existing in all human minds, cannot be ignored or despised. In individuals it accompanies enthusiasm for the beautiful, and the graceful charm of sympathy. It maintains continuity between specimen and specimen, between artist and artist, between century and century; and it is this which enables an adept to say with certainty of consecutive styles, “This is Spanish work of the sixteenth century; that is Flemish or German work of the seventeenth century.” The theory of development and of the survival of the fittest has been worked so hard, that it sometimes breaks down under the task imposed upon it. It would need to include Death in its procedure. In our creed, Death, means the moment of entrance into a higher existence; but in art it means extinction, leaving behind neither a history nor an artisan—only, perhaps, an infinitely small tradition, like the grain of corn preserved in the wrappings of a mummy, from which at first accident, and then care and culture, may evoke a future life.

The various ways in which art has appeared at the beginning cannot here be discussed; nor how the Chinese and Hindu may have leapt into a perfection which has stood still for thousands of years, protected alike from expansion as from destruction, by the swaddling bands of codified custom; while Greek art rose like the sun, shone over the civilized world, and set—never again to see another epoch of glory. These subjects must be left for the study of the anthropological philosopher, who is working for the assistance and guidance of the future historian of art.

Style in needlework has passed through many phases since the aboriginal, prehistoric woman, with the bone needle, drew together the edges of the skins of the animals she had prepared for food.

For absolute necessity, in forming the garments and covering the tent, needlework need go no further than the seam. This, however, in the woven or plaited material, must fray where it is shaped, and become fringed at the edges. Every long seam is a suggestion, and every shaped edge a snare.

The fringe lends itself to the tassel, and the shaped seam suggests a pattern; up-stitches are needed for binding the web, and before she is aware of it, the worker finds herself adorning, embroidering; and the craft enters the outskirts of the region of art. The humble early efforts at decoration, called by the French “primitif,” are the first we know and class, and are found in all savage attempts at ornament. This style consists mainly of straight lines, zigzags, wavy lines, dots, and little discs.[19]

Gold discs of many sizes, and worked with a variety of patterns, are found equally in the tomb of the warrior at MycenÆ, and in Ashantee, accompanied in both cases with gold masks covering the faces of the dead. The discs or buttons remind us of those found in Etruscan tombs, though the execution of these last is more advanced. They appear to be the origin of the “clavus” or nail-headed pattern woven into silks in the Palace of the CÆsars. The last recorded survival of this pattern is in woven materials for ecclesiastical purposes in the Middle Ages.

Of very early needlework we only find here and there a fragment, illustrated occasionally by passing allusions in poetry and history.

The ornamental art of Hissarlik[20] is so primitive that we cannot feel that it has any resemblance to that described as Trojan by Homer, who probably adorned his song with the art he had known elsewhere.[21]

We know not what the actual heroes of the Iliad and Odyssey wore; but we do know that what Homer describes, he must have seen. Was Homer, therefore, the contemporary of the siege of Troy?—or does he not rather speak of the customs and costumes of his own time, and apply them to the traditions of the heroic ages of Greece? Whatever be the date of Homer himself, we can, with the help of contemporary survivals, reconstruct the house and the hall, and even furnish them, and clothe the women and the princes, the beggars and the herdsmen.

From the remains of Egyptian, Babylonian, and Assyrian art we can perceive their differences and their affinities. It is from textile fragments, found mostly in tombs, that we obtain dates, and can suggest them for other specimens.

The funeral tent of Shishak’s mother-in-law, at Boulac, is most valuable as showing what was the textile art of that early period.[22]

Corselet decorated with patterns and animal figures Fig. 1.
Egyptian corselet. (Wilkinson’s “Ancient Egyptians.”)

The corselet which, according to Herodotus, was given by Amasis, King of Egypt, to the Temple of Minerva at Lindos, in Rhodes, was possibly worked in this style; for Babylonian embroidery was greatly prized in Egypt, and imitated.

The second corselet given by Amasis to the LacÆdemonians was worked in gold and colours, with animals and other decorations. This was of the seventh century B.C.[23]

Amongst the arms painted on the wall of the tomb of Rameses, at Thebes (in Egypt), is a corselet, apparently of rich stuff,[24] embroidered with lions and other devices. (Fig. 1.) The Phoenicians imbibed and reproduced the styles they met with in their voyages. The bowls found in Cyprus described and engraved in the September number of the “Magazine of Art” (1883), are most interesting illustrations of the meeting of two national styles, the Assyrian and the Egyptian.[25]

Homer’s “Shield of Achilles”[26] must, in general design, have resembled these bowls (see Pl. 5). They also recall the description by Josephus of the Temple veils at Jerusalem, which were Babylonian.[27]

Phoenicia, which was the carrier of all art, dropped specimens here and there, for many hundred years, along the borders of the Mediterranean and the coasts of Spain. We fancy we can trace her ocean-path by the western shores of Africa, and even to America; otherwise, how could it happen that a mummy-wrapping in Peru should so nearly resemble some of those wrappings found at Saccarah,[28] in Egypt, woven in precisely the same tapestry fashion?

Among the puzzling phenomena due probably to Phoenician commerce, is the complete suite of the sacerdotal ornaments of a High Priest, found in his tomb,[29] now in the Vatican Museum. This reminds us of other specimens of archaic art from distant sources, that our attention is forcibly arrested, and we wonder whence they came, and whether they were collected from alien civilizations by the Phoenicians before they dispersed them.[30]

Certain Egyptian sculptures of deformed and repulsive divinities—idols of the baser sort—are most interesting and puzzling by their affinity in style to the Indo-Dravidian and the art of Mexico, while they are entirely unlike that of Egypt. If Atlantis and its arts never existed, it may be suggested that it was the eastern coast of America that was spoken of under that name by the Egyptian priest with whom Herodotus conversed.

The Babylonian and Ninevite embroideries, carefully executed on their bas-reliefs, have a masculine look, which suggests the design of an artist and the work of slaves. There is no following out of graceful fancies; one set of selected forms (each probably with a symbolical intention) following another. The effect, as seen on the sculptures in the British Museum, is royally gorgeous; and one feels that creatures inferior to monarchs or satraps could never have aspired to such splendours. Probably the embroidery on their corselets was executed in gold wire, treated as thread, and taken through the material; and the same system was carried out in adorning the trappings of the horses and the chariots. The solid masses of embroidery may have been afterwards subjected to the action of the hammer, which would account for their appearing like jeweller’s work in the bas-reliefs (Pl. 1 and 2).

Pl. 1.

See larger image

Assurbanipal fighting lions.
British Museum.

Portion of a Babylonian Royal Mantle. Layard’s “Monuments,” series i., pl. 9.

The style of the Babylonian embroideries appears to have been naturalistic though conventionalized. We may judge of their styles for different purposes by the reliefs in the British Museum. From their veils and curtains at a later date, when they had crossed their art with that of India, we may imagine the mystical design of the Temple curtain as described by Josephus; in fact, as much as possible embracing all things on the earth and above it, excepting the images of the heavenly bodies.[31]

Small carpets from Persia of the Middle Ages, as well as those woven and embroidered even to the present day, are echoes of the ancient Babylonian style, and most interesting as historical records of the traditions of human taste. Our artistic interests are stirred when we read in Ezekiel lists of the fabrics and materials of which Tyre had become the central depÔt, and we enjoy tracing them to the various looms, named in verse and history, where they were adorned with embroidery, and then either became articles of commerce, or were stored away to be kept religiously as heirlooms, or presented as gifts to the temples or to honoured guests.

Mr. G. Smith, after saying that the Babylonian is without doubt the oldest of civilizations, continues thus:—“To us the history of Babylonia has an interest beyond that of Egypt, on account of its more intimate connection with our own civilization.[32] Babylon was the centre from which it spread into Assyria, thence to Asia Minor and Phoenicia, then to Greece and Rome, and so to all Europe. The Jews brought the traditions of the creation and of early religion from Ur of the Chaldees,[33] and thus preserved they became the heritage of all mankind; while the science and civilization of that wonderful people (the Babylonians) became the basis of modern research and advancement.”[34]

The hangings of the Tabernacle are so carefully described in the book of Exodus, that we can see in fancy the linen curtains, blue or white, embroidered in scarlet, purple, blue, and gold; the cherubim in the woven material; the fringes enriched with flowers, buds, fruit, and golden bells: and we can appreciate how little of Egyptian art and style the children of Israel brought back from their long captivity, and how soon they reverted to their ancient Chaldean proclivities, after returning to their wandering life of the tent.

On the bronze gates from the mound of Balawat, near Nimroud, set up by Shalmaneser to celebrate his conquest of Tyre and Sidon,[35] we find a portable tabernacle, evidently meant to accompany the army on a march. It is not much larger than a four-post bed, with transverse poles for drawing the curtains, all fringed with bells and fruit. This is an illustration of the motive for the Tabernacle of the forty years’ wandering in the desert. (Fig. 2.)

Fig. 2.
Tabernacle on gates of Balawat, time of Shalmaneser II. (British Museum).

Egyptian textile art is, perhaps, that of which we have the most early specimens. These are to be seen at Boulac, at Vienna, Turin, and the British Museum.[36] The Hieroglyphic, the Archaic, and the GrÆco-Egyptian are all unmistakably the consecutive outcome of the national original style, which had totally disappeared in the beginning of our era. Few of the embroideries are more than two thousand five hundred years old. But the great piece of patchwork in leather, “the funeral tent of an Egyptian queen,” as it covered the remains of a contemporary of Solomon,[37] absolutely exhibits the proficiency of the designer and the needlework of the eleventh century B.C. (Pl. 44.)

The connection between Indian and Egyptian early art appears to have existed only in their use of the lotus as an emblem and a constant decoration; but their manner of employing it was characteristically different. (Pl. 12 and 13.)

The Phoenicians carried with them the seeds of the Egyptian style over the ancient world; but these seeds only took root and flourished on the soil of Greece. The imitations of Egyptian style reappeared in Rome, and again in France “under the two Empires.” In both cases they were only imitations, and neither had any permanent influence on the art of their day.

I shall have to allude very often to our Eastern sources of artistic culture.

Our own Aryan ancestors were so impregnated with beautiful ideas, that we must believe that we inherit from them all our graceful appreciation of naturalistic ornament. But even Aryan art met with reverses on its Eastern soil, from which it constantly rose again and renewed itself.

The Mongols crushed for a time the element of beauty in India. They introduced a barbarous and hideous style which has its only counterpart in that of Central America. It was the produce of a religion, superstitious, cruel, and devilish.

The Aryan art of India, which was elegant and spiritual, was revived by the kindred influence of Persia, and by the Renaissance in Europe. Italian and other artists were employed in India, and “the spirit of aerial grace, and the delicate sense of beauty in natural forms, blossomed afresh and flourished for 300 years. Birds, flowers, fruit, butterflies, became once more the legitimate ornament of every material.”[38]

I continue to quote from Sir G. Birdwood’s “Arts of India.” “The Code of Manu, from 900 to 300 B.C., has secured to the village system of India a permanent class of hereditary artistic workmen and artisans, who have through these 2500 years, at least, been trained to the same manipulations, and who therefore translate any foreign work which is placed before them to copy, into something characteristically Indian.”[39] Indian art has borrowed freely from all sources without losing its own individuality. It has been said, “There is nothing newer in it than of the sixteenth century; and even then nothing was original, especially in the minor arts.” But this is owing to the Hindu being equally endowed with assimilative and receptive capacity,[40] so that in the hands of the Indian craftsman everything assumes the distinctive expression of ancient Indian art.

In India everything is hand-wrought; but as the spirit of its decorative art “is that of a crystallized tradition, its type has remained almost unaltered since the Aryan genius culminated in the RamÂyana and MahabhÂrata—and yet each artisan in India is a true artist.”[41] In art, unfortunately, “the letter killeth;” and true artists as they are, the ancient traditions bind and cramp them, while the ancient materials, the dyes, and the absolute command of time are failing: so that the beauty of Indian embroideries and other decorations is gradually reducing itself to mannerism, which is more dangerous to art than even had been the vicissitudes of war; for when peaceful days returned, and the waves of conquest had subsided, the ancient arts were found again deeply embedded in the traditions of the people. They gradually returned to their old ways, which are so indelible in the Hindu mind, that they will perhaps survive even the fashions of to-day.[42]

From Yates’ account it would appear that Europe had been fertilized with taste in art and manufactures from the East by three different routes.

The Egyptian civilization, with all its Eastern antecedents and traditions, came to us by the Mediterranean and the Adriatic; the Phoenicians being the merchants who brought it through those channels. The Etruscans, who were the pedlars of Europe, travelled north, conveying golden ornaments and coral, and bringing back jet and amber. Their commercial track is to be traced by the contents of tombs on their path.[43]

St. John. From King Alfred’s Celtic Book of the Gospels.
Lambeth Palace Library.

Secondly, there was also a Slavonian route from Eastern Asia, which conveyed Oriental art to the north of Europe. Celtic art, which certainly has something of the Indo-Chinese style, came to us probably by this route. Another branch of the Celtic family was settled on the north-eastern shores of the Adriatic. Celtic ideas and forms in art probably crossed Europe from this point,[44] and came to us meeting a cognate influence,[45] arriving from the north.[46] (Pl. 3.)

Thirdly, Oriental taste and textiles came from the Byzantine Empire in the early days of Christianity, spreading to Sicily, Italy, Spain, and finally to France, Germany, and Britain.

Runic art, whether Scandinavian or our own purer Celtic, is so remarkable for its independence of all other European national and traditional design, that I cannot omit a brief notice of it, though we have no ascertained relics of any of its embroideries.[47] It appears to have received, in addition to its own universal stamp—evidently derived from one original source—certain influences impressed on it like a seal by each country through which it flowed.[48] Wherever the Runes are carved in stone, or worked on bronze, gold, silver, ivory, or wood, or painted in their splendid illuminations (pl. 4), the involved serpent, which was the sign of their faith, appears, sometimes covered with Runic inscriptions; and this inscribed serpent, later, is twined round or heaped at the foot of the peculiar Scandinavian-shaped cross, the type of conversion. The serpent was sometimes altered into the partial semblance of a four-footed animal, the body and tail being lengthened and twined, and sometimes split, to give a new turn to the pattern. (Fig. 3.) All these zoomorphic patterns, as well as the human figures seen in the Book of Kells, the missal at Lambeth, and the Lindisfarne Book (which is, however, more English in its style), are yet of an Indo-Chinese type; the wicker-work motives often replacing the involved serpent design.

Fig. 3.
Celtic Zoomorphic pattern.

The Paganism of our own Celtic art, when it appears, is an interpolation between our first and second Christian conversions, and was brought to us in the incursions of the Vikings over Scotland and into England.

Page from the Lindisfarne MSS. British Museum

Silver bowl from Palestrina. Ganneau. “Journal Asiatique, Coupe de Palestrina.” 1880.

Our knowledge of their advanced and most singular art comes out of their tombs, in which the warrior was laid with all his arms and his horse and his precious possessions, splendidly clothed according to his degree—in the belief that he would need them again in a future world.

This northern tradition was so long-lived, that Frederick Casimir, a knight of the Teutonic Order, was buried with his sword and his horse at Treves, in 1781.[49]

Greek embroideries we can perfectly appreciate, by studying Hope’s “Costumes of the Ancients,” and the works of Millingen and others; also the fictile vases in the British Museum and elsewhere. On these are depicted the Hellenic gods, the wars, and the home life of the Greeks. The worked or woven patterns on their draperies are infinitely varied, and range over many centuries of design, and they are almost always beautiful. It is melancholy to have to confess that in this, as in all their art, the Greek taste is inimitable; yet we may profit by the lessons it teaches us. These are: variety without redundancy; grace without affectation; simplicity without poverty; the appropriate, the harmonious, and the serene, rather than that which is astonishing, painful, or awe-inspiring. These principles were carried into the smallest arts, and we can trace them in the shaping of a cup or the decoration of a mantle, as in the frieze of the Parthenon.

Homer makes constant mention of the women’s work. Penelope’s web is oftenest quoted. This was a shroud for her Father-in-law. Ulysses brought home a large collection of fine embroidered garments, contributed by his fair hostesses during his travels.

Pallas Athene patronized the craft of the embroiderers; and the sacred peplos which robed her statue, and was renewed every year, was embroidered by noble maidens, under the superintendence of a priestess of her temple. It represented the battles of the gods and the giants (fig. 4), till the portraits of living men were profanely introduced into the design. The new peplos was carried to the temple, floating like a flag, in procession through the city.

The goddess to whom the Greeks gave the protection of this art was wise as well as accomplished, and knew that it was good for women reverently to approach art by painting with their needles. She always was seen in embroidered garments, and worked as well as wove them herself. She appeared to Ulysses in the steading of Eumoeus, the swineherd, as a “woman tall and fair, and skilful in splendid handiwork.”[50]

Homer never tires of praising the women’s work, and the chests of splendid garments laid up in the treasure-houses.[51] Helen gave of her work to Telemachus: “Helen, the fair lady, stood by the coffer wherein were her robes of curious needlework which she herself had wrought. Then Helen, the fair lady, lifted it out, the widest and most beautifully embroidered of all—and it shone like a star; and this she sent as a gift to his future wife.”[52]

Semper’s theory is, that the one chief import of Oriental style being embroideries, therefore the hangings and dresses arriving from Asia gave the poetic Greek the motives for his art, his civilization, his legends, and his gods.[53] This may or may not be; there is no doubt that they influenced them.[54]

BÖttiger accordingly believes that Homer’s descriptions of beautiful dress and furnishings are derived from, or at least influenced by, what he had learnt of the Babylonian and Chaldean embroideries. This is very probable, and would account for his poetical design on the shield of Achilles, in which his own inspiration dictated the possibilities of the then practised arts of Asia, of which the fame and occasional glimpses were already drifting westward. (Plate 5.)

The description of the shield of Achilles is as follows: Hephaistos, “the lame god,” “threw bronze that weareth not, into the fire; and tin, and precious gold and silver.” “He fashioned the shield great and strong, with five folds (or circles) in the shield itself.” “Then wrought he the earth and the sea, and the unwearying sun, and the moon waxing to its full, and the signs, every one wherewith the heavens are crowned.” “Also he fashioned therein two cities of mortal men; and here were marriage feasts, and brides led home by the blaze of torches—young men whirling in the dance, and the women standing each at her door marvelling.” Then a street fight, and the elders sitting in judgment. The other city was being besieged; and there is a wonderful description of the battle fought on the river banks, and “Strife, Tumult, and Death” personified, and mingling in the fight. Then he set in the shield the labours of the husbandman. This is so exquisitely beautiful that with difficulty I refrain from quoting it all. “He wrought thereon a herd of kine with upright horns, and the kine were fashioned of gold and tin,” “and herdsmen of gold were following after them.” “Also did the glorious lame god devise a dancing-place like unto that which once, in wide Knosos, Daidalos wrought for Ariadne of the lovely tresses. There were youths dancing and maidens of costly wooing, their hands upon their waists.” “And now would they run round with deft feet exceedingly lightly”—“and now would they run in lines to meet each other.” “And a great company stood round the lovely dance in joy; and among them a divine minstrel was making music on his lyre; and through the midst of them, as he began his strain, two tumblers whirled. Also he set therein the great might of the River of Ocean, around the utmost rim of the cunningly-fashioned shield.”[55]

There is, indeed, every proof that Greek art was the joint product of the Egyptian and Assyrian civilizations. Their amalgamation gave birth to the archaic style, struggling to express the strength and the beauty of man—half heroic, half divine. Gradually, all the surrounding decorations of life assumed as a governing principle and motive, the worth of noble beauty.

The Greeks were the first artists. They broke away from the ancient trammels of customary forms, and replaced law with liberty of thought, and tradition with poetry.

They destroyed no old ideas, but they selected, appropriated, and evoked beauty from every source. From the great days of Athens we may date the moment when materials became entirely subservient to art, and the minds of individual men were stamped on their works and dated them. Phases indeed followed each other, showing the links of tradition which still bound men’s minds together to a certain extent, and formed the general style of the day. Yet there was in art from that time—life, sometimes death,—but then a resurrection.

It appears from classical writers that about 300 B.C. Greek art had thrown itself into many new forms. Painting, for example, had tried all themes excepting landscapes. We are told that within the space of 150 years the art had passed through every technical stage; from the tinted profile system of Polygnotus to the proper pictorial system of natural scenes, composed with natural backgrounds; and PeiraiÏkos is named as an artist of genre—a painter of barbers and cobblers, booths, asses, eatables, and such-like realistic subjects.[56]

I suppose there is no doubt that all the Romans knew or felt of art was borrowed directly or indirectly from Greece,[57] first through Phoenician and perhaps Etruscan sources, and finally by conquest. Everything we have of their art shows their imitation of Grecian models. Their embroideries would certainly have shown the same impress.

Greece—herself crushed and demoralized—even as late as the Eastern Empire gave to Rome the fashion of the Byzantine taste, which she at once adopted, and it was called the Romanesque. This style, which was partly Arab, still prevails in Eastern Europe, having clung to the Greek Church. In her best days, Roman poetry, architecture, and decorative arts were Greek of Greece, imitating its highest types, but never creating.

It is surely allowable to quote here one of Virgil’s Homeric echoes, which touches upon our especial subject,—

It is sad to mark how not only the refinements of taste, but even the guiding principles of art, were gradually lost in the humiliation of a conquered people, the dulness and discouragement which followed on the expatriation or destruction of their accumulated treasures, and the deterioration of the Greek artist and artisan, carried prisoners to Rome, and settled there because it was the seat of luxury and empire. As the captive Jews hung their harps on the willow-trees by the waters of Babylon, and refused to sing, so Greek genius succumbed, weighed down by Roman chains. It sickened and died in exile.

Late Roman art reminds us of the art of Etruria in its archaic days, except that the freshness and promise are wanting, and that the one was in its first, the other its second childhood.

Before entering on the subject of Christian art, I must again refer, however briefly, to the Eastern origin of all art. It is evident that this had always flowed in streams of many types from that high watershed of Central Asia, where our human race is said to have been created, and whence all wisdom and knowledge have emanated. In the image of the Creator, man issued from thence, endowed with the gift of the creative power. Wave after wave of fresh and apparently differing nationalities followed each other; partially submerging those that had gone before, and spreading till it had reached the furthest shores of the Northern seas and the Atlantic, and encircled the Mediterranean. They all followed the same course from east to west. The Greek civilization was indeed so dazzling and strong, that it lighted the world all around; and India, Persia, and Assyria felt its influence reflected back on its old Asian cradle.

But from the same high watershed[59] flowed other tribal types towards China, Java, and Japan, that had no affinity with any western civilization; and while the Assyrian, Persian, Indian, and Mongolian styles mixed and overlapped so near their sources, that it is sometimes hardly possible to reason out and classify their resemblances and their differences, the tribes flowing Eastward turned aside and went their own way, and have remained till now perfectly distinct.[60] In spite of their matchless dexterity in the manipulation of their materials, the infinite variety of their stitches, and exquisite finish in execution, carrying out to the utmost point the intended effect, yet Chinese and Japanese textile art differs in its inner principles from all our accepted canons of taste; so that their want of harmony, and sometimes their absurdity, is a puzzle of which we cannot find the key. This I have already alluded to (p. 3).

I purposely avoid the questions suggested by Chinese art. The immense antiquity it claims cannot be allowed without hesitation. M. Terrien de la Couperie, however, believes that he has found the actual point of departure of Chinese civilization, and he considers it to be an early offshoot from Babylon.[61] He supports his theory on linguistic grounds, and we must anxiously wait to see if it is corroborated by further researches into the earliest records of the archaic Chinese literature. But immobility in art is a Chinese characteristic, and no national cataclysms seem to have disturbed it. The oldest specimens known are very like the most modern. Yet an adept, learned in Chinese art, can detect the signs which mark its different epochs.

In this they differ from the Japanese, who, added to their inherited exquisite appreciation of natural beauty, have a power of assimilation that might lead in time to their possessing a school of art which, being really original, might become the style of the future. The civilization of Japan is not older than the fifth century A.D., and was probably then imported from Corea. Some of the earliest specimens we know of their art are embroidered religious pictures by the son of a Mikado Sholokutaiski, who was in the seventh century the great apostle of Buddhism in Japan; and the next earliest works are by the first nun, Honi, in the eighth century. We have European work as old, and it is most interesting to compare the differences of their styles and stitches.

We must now return to the beginning of our era, when we find Greek taste, such as it was, still influencing and colouring art in Italy, and throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa, wherever Roman colonies were founded, till the eighth century. It died hard; but by that time the barbarians had poured from the east and north in successive waves, and conquered and suppressed the classical civilization.

Nothing is so puzzling in textile art as the mixture of styles during the first 1000 years A.D. The GrÆco-Roman, the Byzantine, and the Egyptian, crossed by the Arabian, Persian, and Indian styles, were reproduced in the Sicilian looms. Certain stock patterns, such as the reclining hares or fawns, as we find them on the Shishak pall, or that of the Tree of Life, approached by worshipping men or animals, originating in Assyrian art, are employed as borders, and fill up vacant spaces. The information collected from the tombs in the Crimea immediately preceding our era, is supplemented by the variety in style and materials from the Fayoum, now placed by Herr Graf’schen in the Museum at Vienna.

Christian art, which began in Byzantium, gradually grew, and formed itself into the Gothic,[62] which in time overcame the general chaos of style. Eastern art continued to flow westward, modifying and suggesting. When the Phoenicians and Carthaginians had laid down their ancient commercial sceptre, it was taken up by the Greeks, and later by the Venetians and Genoese, always trading with Asiatic goods. Then the arts of the Scandinavians[63] and of the Celts (who were the weavers), though barbaric, still retained and spread certain Oriental traditions. Luxury was born in Babylon, and Persia became its nurse, whence all its glories and refinements spread over the world. But if luxury was Babylonian, art was Greek. Alas! the love of luxury survived in Rome the taste for art.

The Empress Theodora. Mosaic at Ravenna. Church of San. Vitale.

At Ravenna we learn much of the early Christian period from the mosaics in the churches. The Empress Theodora and her ladies appear to be clothed in Indian shawl stuffs. (Plate 6.) These, of course, had drifted into Rome, as they had long done into the Greek islands, by the Red Sea or by land through Tyre. Ezekiel (590 B.C.) mentions the Indian trade through Aden. Theodora’s dress has a deep border of gold, embroidered with classical warriors pursuing each other with swords.[64] Works enriched with precious stones and pearls now appear for the first time in European art, and testify to its Oriental impress.

The Byzantine Christian style was essentially the art of mosaic. Its patterns for architecture or dress, easily square themselves into little compartments, suggesting the stitches of “counted” embroideries (“opus pulvinarium”).

In the beginning of the fourth century, when Greek influence was still languishing, we may date the commencement of ecclesiastical art. It was a new birth, and had to struggle through an infancy of nearly 800 years, ignoring, or unconscious of all rules of drawing, colouring, and design. Outlines filled in with flat surfaces of colours represented again the art of painting, which had returned to archaic types, and in no way differed from the essential properties of the art of “acu pingere” or needlework, which was in the same phase—being, fortunately for it, that to which it was best suited.

Therefore fine works of art were then executed by the needle, of which a very few survive, either in description or copied into more lasting materials; and showing that, with the minor arts of mosaic and illumination, it was in a state of higher perfection than the greater arts, which till the twelfth century were all but in abeyance.

In discussing textile art, I am obliged to pass over a part of the dark ages, and to approach the period when it must be studied chiefly in Sicily, which became the half-way house on the high road to the East, and later the resting-place of the Crusaders to and from the Holy Land.

Sicily, which had succeeded to Constantinople as being the great manufacturing mart during the Middle Ages, was in the hands of the Moors, the origin and source of all European Gothic textile art. Yet even at Palermo and Messina this art was long controlled by the traditions of Greece, ancient and modern, while fertilized by Persian and Indian forms and traditional symbolisms.

The next European phase was the Gothic.[65] This was Arab and Moresque steeped in northern ideas; and finding its congenial soil, it grew into the most splendid, thoughtful, and finished style, far transcending anything that it had borrowed from eastern or southern sources.

All its traditions were carried out in the smaller decorative arts—mosaics, ivories, and metal works; and, last and not least, beautiful embroideries, to adorn the altars and the dresses of monarchs and nobles. (Plate 7.)

When taste was imperfect or declined, then the decorations were all rude, and the embroideries shared in the general rudeness or poverty; but as these crafts rose again, adding to themselves grace and beauty by study and experience, then needlework in England, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain grew and flourished.[66]

Italian embroidery XV. Century
Kensington Museum

Italian orphreys XVI. Century
South Kensington Museum

Orphreys French and Spanish
XVI. Century Then came the Reformation, which, in Germany and England especially, gave a blow to the arts which had reserved their best efforts for the Church; and the change of style effected by the Renaissance was not suited to the solemnity of ecclesiastical decoration.

The styles of the fifteenth and sixteenth century embroideries are better adapted for secular purposes; though their extreme beauty as architectural ornament in Italy, reconciles one to their want of religious character, on the principle that it was allowable to dedicate to the Church all that in its day was brightest and best. (Plate 8.)

We possess much domestic embroidery of the Renaissance which is exceedingly beautiful—Italian, Spanish, and German. English needlework had lost its prestige from the time of the Reformation.[67]

The best efforts of the German schools of embroidery preceded the Reformation, while those of Belgium never lost their excellence,[68] and still hold their high position among the workers of golden orphreys. In Italy they always retained much of the classical element. Probably the ancient frescoes which served as models were originally painted by Greek artists and their Roman imitators. This style flourished for a hundred years. The French adopted and modified it.

The decorative style of that period is sometimes called the Arabesque, and sometimes the Grotesque. The fashion was really copied from the excavated palaces and tombs of the best Roman era. Raphael admired, and caused his pupils to imitate and copy them; and they influenced all decorative art for a considerable period. As long as beautiful forms of flowers, fruit, birds, and animals were adhered to, the Arabesque was a charming decoration, gay and brilliant; but when the beautiful was set aside, and the ugly ideas were reproduced, the style became the Grotesque, which word only means the grotto, cave, or tomb style, and is as undescriptive to us as the word Arabesque, which has nothing to do with the Arabs or their arts.

It would appear that if the beautiful only is permissible in decorative art, and that if without beauty there is no reason that it should exist at all, then the Grotesque should not be allowed, except as a scherzo of the pencil; to be relegated, like all other caricatures, to the portfolio.

A grotesque is something startling, laughable, perhaps ridiculous. A woman with the head of a goose and a flowery tail may be a symbolical, but it never can be an agreeable object. When the idea conveyed is a great one, then it is excusable. The Ninevite bull, with a human head and five legs, is a grotesque, but it is also a symbol of majesty and might. A Satyr is a grotesque, but he has been so long recorded and accepted that he has ceased to surprise us; and the Greeks spent so much genius in making him a graceful creature, that he has become picturesque, if not beautiful.

Arabesques and Grotesques have now so long prevailed in decoration, that we have ceased to criticize them on principle, and accept them gratefully, in proportion to the gay fancy and reticent genius of the designer. Most Arabesques are, in fact, only graceful nonsense.

Spanish Coverlet, from Goa. Velvet and gold, PlÂteresque style, seventeenth century.

Vitruvius (writing first century B.C.) says, that “in his time, on the covering of the walls were painted rather monstrosities than images of known things. Thus, instead of columns you will see reeds with crisp foliage, and candlesticks supporting temples; and on the top of these there are rods and twisted ornaments, and in the volutes senseless little figures sitting there; likewise flowers with figures growing out of their calyxes. Here a human head, there an animal’s.”[69] Evidently Vitruvius did not approve of grotesques, and his contemporary criticism is most valuable and amusing.

In the Louis Quatorze period, a species of vegetable grotesque was the fashion, from which we suffer even now, and it deserves censure. Leaves and flowers of different plants were made to grow from the same stem, as only artificial flowers could do. The Greeks introduced into their decorations sprays and wreaths of bay, olive, oak, ivy, and vine, with their fruits; which are exquisitely composed and carefully studied from nature. It is true that they sometimes invented flowers of different shapes, following each other on the same stem, and untrammelled by any natural laws. These classical freaks of fancy are so graceful that their want of truth does not shock us, but they are more safely copied than imitated.

The Renaissance was particularly marked in Spain and Portugal by the embroideries which the latter drew from their Indian possessions in Goa, whilst we in England were sedulously thrusting from our shores any beautiful Indian textiles that we imagined could injure our own home manufactures. It was, consequently, the worst phase of needlework with us, while Spanish and Portuguese embroideries of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are especially fine, their designs being European, and their needlework Oriental. Their Renaissance, which went by the name of the PlÂteresque, is a style apart. (Pl. 9.) The reason of its name is that it seems to have been originally intended for, and is best suited to, the shapes and decorations of gold and silver plate. It is extremely rich and ornate; not so appropriate to architecture as to the smaller arts, and wanting, perhaps, the simplicity which gives dignity. The style called Louis Quatorze following on the Renaissance in Germany, England, Spain, Italy, and France, assumed in each of these countries distinguishing characteristics, into which we have not time to enter now. In this style France took the lead and appropriated it, and rightly named it after the magnificent monarch who fostered it. This was a splendid era; and its furniture and wall decorations, dress, plate, and books shine in all the fertile richness and grace of French artistic ingenuity.[70] The new style asserted itself everywhere, and remodelled every art; but the long reign of Louis Quatorze gave the fashion time to wane and change. Under Louis XV. the defects increased and the beauties diminished. The fine heavy borders were broken up into fragmentary forms; all flow and strength were eliminated; and what remained of the Louis Quatorze style became, under its next phase, only remarkable for the sparkling prettiness which is inherent in all French art.

In Italy this very ornate style was distinguished as the “Sette-cento,” and was a chastened imitation or appropriation of the Spanish PlÂteresque and the French Louis Quatorze. In Germany it was a decided heavy copy of both, of which there are splendid examples in the adornment of the German palaces, royal and episcopal. In England the Continental taste was faintly reflected during the reign of Queen Anne and the first Georges; but except in the characteristic upholstery of the Chippendales, and one or two palaces, such as Blenheim and Castle Howard, we did not produce much that was original in the style of that day.

Under Louis XV., Boucher and Watteau, in France, produced designs that were well suited to tapestries and embroideries. All the heathen gods, with Cupids, garlands, floating ribbons, crowns, and cyphers were everywhere carved, gilded, and worked. It was the visible tide of the frivolity in which poor Marie Antoinette was drowned; though before the Revolution she had somewhat simplified the forms of decoration, and straight lines instead of curves, and delicacy rather than splendour, had superseded, at least at court, the extravagant richness of palatial furniture.

This was followed by the Revolution; and then came the attempt at classical severity (so contrary to the French nature) which the Republic affected.[71] Dress was adorned with embroidered spots and Etruscan borders, and the ladies wore diadems, and tried to be as like as possible to the Greek women painted in fictile art. Napoleon attempted a dress which was supposed to be Roman at his coronation. Trophies were woven and embroidered, and the “honeysuckle,” “key,” and “egg and anchor” patterns were everywhere. With the fall of the Empire the classical taste collapsed, and the Egyptian, Greek, and Roman furniture were handed over to hotels and lodging-houses. In most of the palaces on the Continent an apartment is still to be seen, furnished in this style. It was the necessary tribute of flattery to the great conqueror, who in that character inhabited so many of them for a short time. But there was no sign of the style being taken up enthusiastically anywhere out of France.

After the fall of the Empire, all pretence of style was in abeyance, and it was then gradually replaced by a general craving for the “antique,” the “rococo,” and finally the “baroc,” as the outcome of that part of a gentleman’s education called the “grand tour.” Every one bought up old furniture; Italy and Spain were ransacked; and foreign works of all ages were added to the hereditary house furnishings. Every wealthy home became a museum. Now the numerous exhibitions of the last few years, bringing together the works of all Europe and other continents, have enabled us to continue to collect and compare and furnish, without any reference to a particular style.

Meantime “Young England” had become Æsthetic. Bohemianism was the fashion, and the studio had to be furnished as a picturesque lounge:—ragged tapestries for backgrounds; antique chairs and bits of colour as cushions and draperies; shiny earthenware pots to hold a flower and to catch a high light. All these bridged the space between the new Æstheticism and the old family museums; and from their combination arose the style called by courtesy the “Queen Anne”—a style which can be brought within the reach of the most moderate fortunes. In humble mansions you will be aware of the grouping of the old pieces of furniture, culminating perhaps in “my grandmother’s cabinet,” and her portrait by Hogarth; or “my great-grandfather’s sword and pistols, which he carried at Culloden;” and his father’s clock, a relic perhaps of the Scotch Dutch.

The English style of to-day is really a conglomerate of the preceding two hundred years, and it is formed from the dÉbris of our family life. It belongs mostly to the period of the pigtail; but it stretches back, and includes all that followed the Protectorate, and is therefore coeval with the wig. The name of “Queen Anne” would really do as well as any other, only that the style of her reign, which was heavy Louis Quatorze, is looked upon with suspicion, and never admitted for imitation. The “Nineteenth Century” would be a better name, for it has formed itself only within the last thirty years, in the very heart of the century, and is, in fact, a fortunate result of preceding conditions. It owes its existence, as I have said, partly to the archÆological tendencies of the day.

The maimed tables and chairs, which had painfully ascended from saloon to bedroom, nursery, and attic, till they reposed in the garret (the Bedlam of crazy furniture), now have descended in all the prestige of antiquarian and family interest. Their history is recorded; the old embroideries are restored, named, and honoured. What is not beautiful, is credited with being “quaint”—the “quaint” is more easily imitated than the beautiful; and we have elected this for the characteristic of our new decorations. To be quaint, is really to be funny without intending it, and its claim to prettiness is its naÏvetÉ, which is sometimes touching as well as amusing: this was the special characteristic of the revival in the Middle Ages. To imitate quaintness must be a mistake in art; as in life it is absurd to imitate innocence.

The nineteenth century “Queen Anne” has its merits. [72] It combines simplicity, roominess and comfort, colour, light and shade. Soft colouring to harmonize the new furniture with the tender tints of the faded quaintnesses just restored to society; care in grouping even the commonest objects, so as to give pleasure to the eye; a revived taste for embroidered instead of woven materials, giving scope to the talents of the women of the house;—all these are so much gained in every-day domestic decoration. The poorest and most trivial arrangements are striving to attain to a something artistic and agreeable. This is still confined to the educated classes; but as good and bad alike have to begin on the surface, and gradually filter through to the dregs of society, we may hope that the women who wore the last chignon and the last crinoline may yet solace their sordid lives in flowing or tight woollen garments, adorned with their own needlework; and that the dark-stained floor of the cottage or humble lodging will set off the shining brass kettle, and the flower in a brown or blue pot, consciously selected with a view to the picturesque, and enjoyed accordingly.

From what we know, it would seem that a vital change in a national style is never produced by the inspiration of one individual genius or great original inventor. It invariably evolves itself slowly, by the patient, persistent efforts of generations, polishing and touching up the same motive, and at last reaching human perfection.

The annihilation of a style is oftenest caused by war passing over the land, or revolution breaking up the fountains of social life, and swamping the art and the artist.

But another cause of such an extinction—perhaps the saddest—is that having reached perfection as far as it may, it deteriorates, sickens, corrupts, and finally is thrown aside—superseded, hidden, and overlapped by a newer fashion; and the worst and latest effort discredits in the eyes of men, the splendid successes that preceded its fall. Though the next succeeding phase may be less worthy to live than the last, yet, carrying with it the freshness of a new spring, it is acceptable for the time being.

The moral I should draw from this is, that you cannot force style; you may prune, direct, and polish it, but you must accept that of your day, and only in accordance with that taste can your work be useful. Not accepting it idly or wearily, but cheerfully, on principle, seeking to raise it; refusing by word or deed to truckle to the false, the base, or the lawless in your art, or to act against the acknowledged canons of good taste. Not for a moment should ambition be checked, but it should always be accompanied by the grace of modesty.

To the young decorator or artist who feels the glow of original design prompting him to reject old lines, and follow his own new and perhaps crude ideas, a few words of warning, and encouragement also, may be of use.

In art, as in poetry, we may recognize the Psalmist’s experience: “My heart burned within me, and at the last I spake with my tongue.”

In small as in great things, crude ideas should not be brought to the front. No one should give his thoughts to the world till his heart has burned within him, and he has been forced to express himself.

Another wise saying, “Read yourself full, and then write yourself empty,” also applies to art. Knowledge must first be accumulated before you can originate. Wait till your experience and your thoughts insist on expression; then subject the expressed idea to cultivated criticism, and profit by the opinion you would respect if another’s work, and not your own, were under discussion.

It is true that taste is surprisingly various. Some will dislike your design, because its style is a reflection of the Gothic; another may be objected to as being frivolously Oriental-looking and brilliant, whereas the critic likes only the sober and the dull. Few are sufficiently educated to appreciate style: and we cannot rule our own by anybody’s opinion; but we can generalize and find something that shall be agreeable to all—something approaching to a golden mean. The artist for decoration should be sensitively alive to any suggestion from the style of that which he is to adorn, remembering the antecedent motives of its form, its history, and its date. He should try to make his new work harmonize with the old; but of one thing he may be certain—unless he absolutely copies an old design, his own will carry the visible and unmistakable stamp of his day.

Even while suggesting copies this difficulty arises—how can a perfect facsimile be obtained? No reproduction is ever really exact, unless cast off by the hundred, stamped or printed by a machine.

It has been said that the translator of a poem adds to, or takes from the original, that which he has or has not of the same poetical power; and in art the copy requires the same qualities to guide the hand that transmits the original motive to another material. An artist usually carries out his own ideas from the first sketch blocked out on the canvas, or scribbled on the bit of waste paper, to the last finishing touch. It is, as far as it can be in human art, the visible transcript of his own thought. In needlework this can hardly ever be. The designer, whether he be St. Dunstan, Pollaiolo, Torrigiano, or Walter Crane, only executes a drawing which leaves his hands for good, and is translated into embroidery by the patient needlewoman who simply fills in an outline, ignorant of art, unappreciative of its subtleties, and incapable of giving life and expression, even when she is aware that they are indicated in the original design. This is almost always the case; but there are exceptions. Charlemagne’s dalmatic, for instance, shows signs of having been either the work of the artist himself, or else carried out under his immediate supervision.

[15] Boyd Dawkins’ “Early Man in Britain,” p. 285. See also chapter on stitches (post), p. 195.