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While examining and judging embroideries, we must be careful not to be deceived by the different dates often occurring in the grounding and the applied materials. Much embroidery was worked on fabrics that were already old and even worn out; and others have been transferred centuries ago, and perhaps more than once, to fresh grounds.1

This sometimes causes a good deal of difficulty in dating specimens. One should begin by ascertaining whether the needlework was originally intended to be cut out (opus consutum), and so laid on a ground of another material, and worked down and finished there.

Of course it is always evident and easily ascertained, whether the work has been transferred at all. If so-and from each succeeding transference-small fragments may be found showing on the cut edges. You will often see remains of two or more of these layers, reminding you of the three Trojan cities dug up at different depths under each other at Hissarlik.

In judging each specimen the acumen of the expert is needed to obtain a correct opinion, and he should not only be an archæologist, but a botanist and a herald besides; and, in fact, no kind of knowledge is useless in deciphering the secrets of human art. But even when so armed, he is often checked and puzzled by some

1 Elsewhere I have spoken of the embroideries of the early Christian times found in the Fayoum, in Egypt. These afford notable examples of the ancient method in putting in patches on a worn or frayed garment. They invariably embroidered them, and so added a grace to the old and honoured vestment, and justified the classical appellation, "Healer of clothes" for a darner. The comparatively modern additions of the restorer, are in ancient as in later specimens, often a puzzle to the archæologist.

2 The specimens in the South Kensington Museum, where Dr. Rock gives their approximate dates, are most useful to the student of this subject.

accidental caprice of design or mode of weaving, and after wasting trouble and time, has to cast it aside as defying classification.

It is, however, as well to note these exceptions, as, when compared, they sometimes explain each other.

What I have said regards, of course, the historical and archæological side of the study of textiles, and I have treated of them as being either the origin or the imitations of different styles of embroidery, and so inseparably connected with the art which is the subject and motive of this book; and not only in this does the connection between them exist, but in the fact that as embroideries always need a ground, silken and other textiles are an absolute necessity to their existence.

For these reasons alone I have given this chapter on materials, short and imperfect, but suggesting further research into the writings of the authors I have quoted, and, I hope, exciting the interest of the reader.

175

CHAPTER V.

COLOUR.

"My soul, what gracious glorious powers
To hue and radiance God has given !"
Cautley, "Emblems," p. 21.

It is my intention to confine myself to the discussion of colour, in as far as it belongs to the dyes of textiles and the materials for embroidery. I will adhere as closely as I can to this part of what is a great and most interesting subject-one which the science of to day has opened out, and by the test of experiment, cleared of erroneous theories; revealing to us all its beauty and fitness for the use and delight of man.

As through all ages the eye has been gradually educated to appreciate harmony in colour, so dissonance

that is, what errs against harmony-hurts us, without apparently a sufficient reason; and we have to seek the causes of our sensations in the scientific works and lectures of Professor Tyndall and others.

There is no doubt that the appreciation of colour has belonged in different degrees to the eye of every animal, but especially to that of man, ever since light first painted the flowers of the field. The eye is created to see colour, as well as form. But we know that men, being accustomed to acquiesce in the powers with which they find themselves gifted by nature, enjoy and use them, long before they begin to study, classify, and name them. When we recollect that the circulation of the blood was not known within the last three hundred years, and

that Albert Dürer painted the skeleton Death on the bridge of Lucerne, with one bone in the upper and one in the lower arm, we shall be surprised to find that the ancients had named the colours they saw, with some degree of descriptive and scientific precision. The word "purple," for instance, covered a multitude of tints, which had not as yet been differentiated, either in common parlance or in poetry,' though as articles of commerce the purple tints had been early distinguished.

What names have we now, in this present advanced day, for defining tastes or smells? We say that something smells like a violet, or a rose, or a sea breeze, or a frosted cabbage. We say a smell is nice or nasty, that a taste is delicious or nauseous; but beyond calling it sweet or sour, we have no descriptive words for either smells or tastes, whereas the nations who traded in the materials for dyes exchanged their nomenclatures, which we can recognize from the descriptive remarks of different authors.

Colour, as an art, was born in those lands which cluster round the eastern shores of the Mediterraneanthe northern coasts of Syria and Arabia, and the isles of Greece. All art grew in that area, and all its adjuncts and materials there came to perfection, though often imported from more southern and eastern

sources.2

E. Curtius says that the science of colour came into Europe with the Phoenicians and accompanied the worship of Astarte. This, of course, applies to artistic textiles, as the Greeks had already acquired the art of dyeing for plain weaving. Numa, in his regulations for necessary weaving, refers also to colour. The Italians

1

"Seeing, they saw not, neither did they understand."

See Pliny's "Natural History," which gives much information on the subject.

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