middle, and covered over one half with pink and yellow rosettes on a blue ground; on the other half are six large vultures, each surrounded with a hieroglyphic text which is really an epitaph. The side flaps are adorned first with some narrow bands of colour; then with a fringe pattern; then with a row of broad panels, red, green, and yellow, with a device or picture and inscription in the two other colours; on this border there are kneeling gazelles, each with a pink Abyssinian lotus blossom hanging to its collar. The rest of the side flaps and the whole of the front and back flaps are composed of large squares, alternately pink and green. This, for its antiquity, its style, its stitchery, materials, and colours, is a most interesting work of early art, and an example of the perfection to which it had attained. It is remarkable how much variety of effect has been produced with only four colours, by the artistic manner of placing and contrasting them. To our more advanced taste, however, the whole effect of the contrasting colours is inharmonious and gaudy, though certainly striking and typical.'

Another piece of Egyptian application, from the Museum at Turin, is a pretty leaf pattern cut out in red stuff, laid on a white ground, and worked down with a darker outline of the same colour.2

Fig. 22.

Piece of appliqué in red stuff and red outlines from Egypt.

We have an instance of ancient "application" of about

See "The Funeral Tent of an Egyptian Queen," by Villiers Stuart. 2 See Auberville's "Tissus," Plate i.

600 years later, Greek in its beauty of design and execution. Alas! we can only ascertain, from tattered fragments taken out of a tomb in the Crimea, that it was parsemé with figures on horseback or in chariots. The border is very beautiful. Compare the fragments of which we have obtained a copy with the mantle of Demeter, from a Greek vase, and you will perceive how the styles correspond (Pl. 16, Fig. 23). The ground material is of the finest woven wool, of a deep violet or purple colour, enriched with application of another fine woollen fabric of a most brilliant green, worked down, outlined and embroidered in white, black, and gold-coloured wool, apparently in stem stitches.' The accompanying illustration gives the effect and general design of the outer border only, in which the applied leaf is worked down in red, gold, and white.

It is much to be regretted that the centre of the mantle is so tattered and discoloured that it is impossible. to do more than ascertain that the design that is embroidered on it consists of figures on horseback or in chariots, in spirited attitudes. The second and broader

border is to be found (pl. 15).

Fig. 23.

Narrow border of a Greek mantle.

"Opus consutum cannot in any sense perhaps be the

name of a stitch or stitches.

But it applies to a peculiar

1 "Compte Rendu de la Commission Archéologique, St. Petersburg, 1881." Pl. iii. pp. 112, 119.

style of embroidery employing certain stitches. It is the term given to all work cut out of plain or embroidered materials, and applied by working down" to another material as grounding. It includes all raised and stuffed application in silk, woollen, and metal thread work. It has been given to all work in which the scissors are active agents, whether in cutting out the outlines or in incising the pattern, as in much of the linen and muslin embroideries of our day, now called "Madeira work," of which a great deal was made in the first part of the century by English ladies who designed and collected patterns from each other, and gave the produce of their industry as gifts to their friends for collars, cuffs, and trimmings.'

"Cut work" is named by Chaucer, and is constantly to be found in inventories from his time to the beginning of the last century. At Coire, in the Grisons, is a very beautiful chasuble, of which the orphrey is of the school of the elder Holbein or Lucas Cranach, applied and raised so as to form a high relief. The figures are covered with satin and embroidered. The chasuble itself is of fine Saracenic silk, woven with golden inscriptions in broad stripes. The colours are brown, crimson, and gold.

In the later Middle Ages, a good deal of this work was executed in Germany for wall hangings; figures were cut out in different materials, and embroidered down and finished by putting in the details in various stitches. As art they are generally a failure, being more gaudy than beautiful. This, however, is not necessarily the case, for there is at the Hotel Cluny a complete suite of hangings of the time of Francis the First, partly applied

1

In the British Museum is the lining of a shield which shows the arms of Redvers, third Earl of Albemarle (who died 1260), applied in different coloured silks.