Santa 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.

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CHAPTER IV.

MATERIALS.

I. RAW MATERIALS.

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 Sir

Gardiner Wilkinson.
Pliny and the Periplus;

All these modern writers quote 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 aesthetic 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."

1 Periplus of the Erythrean Sea.

2 It is described by Yates as having the appearance of a flat ribbon, with the edges thickened like a hem.

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.1

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. 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" might

This rough bark is probably the reason that it absorbs colour into its substance (perhaps under the scales); and it may also account for its being capable of felting.

2

It may be laid down as a fundamental rule in technical style, that the product shall preserve the peculiar characteristics of the raw material. Unfortunately, the artist is often ignorant of the qualities of the fabric for which he is designing, and the workman who has to carry it out is a mechanic, in these days, instead of a craftsman.

Nothing has been alien immemorial have spun,

well be played with textiles only.
to the crafts which from time
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.1

Jute (a rough sort of hemp) has been long an article of commercial importance for the manufacture of coarsefigured 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." This material is now coming into notice.

1 Molochinus, or malva silvestris (wild hemp), Yates, pp. 292-317, is sometimes spoken of as a mallow, sometimes as a nettle. In the Vocabulary of Papias (A.D. 1050) it is said that the cloth called molocina. is made from thread of mallow, and used for dress in Egypt. Garments of molochinus were brought from India, according to the Periplus (see Pliny, 146, 166, 170, 171). It was seldom used by the ancients, but both Greeks and Romans made it serve for mats and ropes. The Thracians wove of it garments and sheets. It is not named in the Scriptures.

2 See Gibbs' "British Honduras.”