



Produced by Julia Miller, jenniemuse, Sam W. and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)






Transcriber's Note

Dagger symbols are shown as a + sign. A female/Venus symbol occurs
once (+ sign with a circle on top), and is noted as such. A carat
(^) is used to indicate superscripted characters. The word Shush
has a breve (u-shaped symbol) above the letter u. A circumflex has
been used in this version of this e-text instead--Shush.

The original text contained an errata list. The corrections have been
made to this text, and the list moved to the end of the book for
reference purposes only.

Other notes may be found at the end of the book.




                NEEDLEWORK AS ART

                       BY

                 LADY M. ALFORD


                 [Illustration]


                     London:
  SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, AND RIVINGTON,
       CROWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET.
                      1886.

            [_All rights reserved._]




                  LONDON:
  PRINTED BY GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, LIMITED,
              ST. JOHN'S SQUARE.




  [Illustration: TELEMACHUS    PENELOPE]




DEDICATED BY PERMISSION

TO

THE QUEEN.




TO

THE QUEEN.


_Your Majesty's most gracious acceptance of the Dedication of my book
on "Needlework as Art" casts a light upon the subject that shows its
worthiness, and my inability to do it justice. Still, I hope I may
fill a gap in the artistic literature of our day, and I venture to lay
my work at your Majesty's feet with loyal devotion._

                                           MARIAN M. ALFORD.




PREFACE.


In the Preface to the "Handbook of Art Needlework," which I edited for
the Royal School at South Kensington in 1880, I undertook to write a
second part, to be devoted to design, colour, and the common-sense
modes of treating decorative art, as applied especially to embroidered
hangings, furniture, dress, and the smaller objects of luxury.

Circumstances have, since then, obliged me to reconsider this
intention; and I have found it more practicable to cast the
information which I have collected from Eastern and Western sources
into the form of a separate work, which in no way supersedes or
interferes with the technical instruction supposed to be conveyed in a
handbook. I have found so much amusement in learning for myself the
history of the art of embroidery, and in tracing the beginnings and
the interchanges of national schools, that I cannot but hope that I
may excite a similar interest in some of my readers, and so induce
those who are capable, to help and lift it to a higher place than it
has been allowed in these latter days to occupy. If I have given too
important a position to the art of needlework, I would observe that
while I have been writing, decorative embroidery has come to the
front, and is at this moment one of the hobbies of the day; and I
would point out that it contains in itself all the necessary elements
of art; it may exercise the imagination and the fancy; it needs
education in form, colour, and composition, as well as the craft of a
practised hand, to express its language and perfect its beauty.

I confess that when I undertook this task, I did not anticipate the
time I have had to spend in collecting and epitomizing the many
notices to be found in German, French, and English authors, on what
has been considered among us, at least in this century, as merely a
secondary art, and therefore, as such, of little importance. Cursory
notices of needlework are scattered through almost every book on art;
and under the head of textiles it is usual to find embroidery
acknowledged as being worthy of notice, though not to be named in
company with sculpture, architecture, or painting, however beautifully
or thoughtfully its works may be carried out. I have tried to show
that it deserves higher estimation.

My first intention was simply to consider STYLE, good or bad, as it
influences our embroidery of to-day, and to find some rules by which
to guide that of the future in its next phase. But when we search into
the fluctuations of style, and their causes, we find they have an
historical succession, and that we must begin at the beginning and
trace them through the life of mankind.

This led me to attempt a sketch of consecutive styles, their overlap
and variations.

I then found that DESIGN, PATTERNS, STITCHES, MATERIALS, each require
a separate study.

COLOUR, as applied