CHAPTER VII

ON FIGURE-WORK

In the last chapter, when speaking of appliqué, I had occasion to mention how well it lends itself to representation of the human form, to be worked on a fairly large scale. I consider it eminently suitable for this because of the slight amount of stitchery required to produce the desired effect, the features being merely outlined, with the exception perhaps of the eyes and lips, which might be worked solid.

Large masses of drapery, &c., are tedious to work and may very well be represented by a piece of beautiful woven material; while the features and limbs, if well-drawn to start with, may be outlined accurately by skilful fingers without calling for a greater knowledge of anatomy or artistic expression than the average embroidress may be expected to possess.

But now we have come to figure-work as a special branch of Church embroidery. My own opinion may be briefly stated that only those who can _draw_ correctly ought to attempt it, because, of all methods of representation, needlework is one of the least direct, and therefore one of the most difficult.

It is possible, perhaps, to get a fairly satisfactory figure worked by a person who cannot draw, if the principal lines and shading are distinctly marked out on the material to be worked, as well as a fully coloured drawing provided by the designer. But stitching is not, so to speak, a natural medium for expressing ideas, and the slightest deviation from what is intended by the artist may result in something entirely different in character—approaching, possibly, very near the grotesque on the one hand, or frivolity on the other. And as we seem in these days of general but superficial education of the masses, to have almost lost the feeling of reverence for religious effigies, looked upon as _symbols_ only, irrespective of any æsthetic properties they may or may not possess, it is more than ever necessary to do the _best things_ in the _best way_ we know of. This is why I would strongly urge all who wish to enrich their embroideries with the human figure to practise drawing first. I would further suggest that the drawing should be chiefly from the antique, and the study altogether more with regard to typical than individual forms, as this training is not for the painting of ‘pictures,’ but for the sake of knowing what are the elements of human beauty and how they ought to be applied or modified. Neither am I including the study of design, which, as I have before remarked, is a study in itself. I am suggesting only such a practice of drawing as shall enable the needlewoman to know what is required of her in following out the idea and intention of her design, and to be able to carry out the same intelligently; she will not then place an eye on the cheek-bone or an ear on the jaw, or allow the fold of a garment to suggest a dislocated limb.

It is taken for granted that the embroidress is already quite dexterous and proficient in the use of the finest floss-silks and has had a good deal of practice in the usual stitches. Her mind should be unencumbered with any thought of _technique_, and the hand should respond without effort.

There is no new stitch to learn for this work, but there are several ways of employing the old ones.

Each method being usually associated with some distinct style or date, it is well to be conversant with the various standards, and then the worker is able to choose that which appeals to her most, or which seems the right one for any special requirement.

The decoration and vestments of a church may very well be of a _later_ date than the building, but it seems a sort of anachronism to have it distinctively _earlier_, unless it actually is a treasure handed down from past generations.

Among the earliest examples to which we have access are the remains of Christian Coptic embroidery, done, it is believed, in the fifth or sixth century (see Illustration I.)

It is all worked in coarse split-stitch or (which has much the same effect) by threading the needle with two strands of silk at once and bringing it up from the back between the two threads. The features are marked out with dark brown silk, and are formed in a somewhat rough-and-ready way by making almost every stitch express a feature by its direction and colour, the rest of the face being filled up as best it can. The hands in the same way; each finger is simply and crudely expressed by a single or double row of split-stitch. The garments are shaded, the rows of stitching following the direction of the folds.

The earliest English figure work was usually done also in split-stitch, but much finer. The faces, hands, and feet were worked with the stitch all in one direction, either vertical or horizontal, and the details marked out with very fine black silk or dark brown. Sometimes the lips were put in with red. There was no shading of the flesh-tints, but they were, so far as one can tell, quite white. The Worcester fragments and the Durham stole and maniple are examples of this work; the latter, being in such good preservation, is the easiest to study. The garments and sometimes the whole figure were worked in gold or silver thread all laid one way; or again, with the face-lines vertical and the rest horizontal. The fragments from the vestment of Walter de Cantelupe (1236-1265 or 6) show a particularly beautiful scroll-work in a flowing pattern all over it. There are many small figures seated and crowned and holding a sceptre. The whole of the work is done entirely in fine gold-thread laid in one direction, and outlined with dark brown or black on what seems to have been crimson or rose-coloured Oriental silk. There is a small piece of it in the V. and A. Museum South Kensington, and some more in Worcester Cathedral Church, from which my drawing is taken.

But the most celebrated work, which began about this time and flourished for about a century, making England famous for its embroidery, was the world-renowned ‘Opus Anglicanum,’ of which we have one of the most perfect specimens in the well-known ‘Syon Cope’ at South Kensington. One of the characteristics of this work is the way the faces are treated. Split-stitch in one shade of fine floss is still used, but, instead of lying in straight lines, it is begun in the centre of the cheek and worked round and round, in more or less circular lines, till they merge into the semicircular ones of the neck, or radiate towards the eye-socket and the straight line of the nose. The direction of the stitch gives an _appearance_ of shading, although it is all done in one shade of very fine silk. The effect of relief is also attained by the same means, slightly accentuated by mechanical assistance—possibly the round head of a metal pin heated and pressed wherever such an effect is desired. The figure of St. Paul (Fig. II.) shows the general effect and the accompanying diagram (p. 34) the method of work. It will be observed by anyone who will make the experiment, that fine split-stitch, crewel, or chain-stitch worked solid in a circular direction in this way, if done out of a frame, will naturally cause such depressions as are to be seen in the early specimens of ‘Opus Anglicanum.’ It needed very little mechanical appliance to make these indentations regular and more effective; but by degrees this desire for effect grew beyond bounds, and the modelling became frightfully exaggerated at the same time that the natural and moderate relief of eyelids, nose, and lips, caused by a few extra stitches, developed into an actual stuffing, till figure embroidery was a thing of the past, and a debased condition of taste delighted itself with dolls dressed in silks and laces attached to needleworked ‘pictures,’ which had to be framed and glazed to keep them free from dust!

The arrangement of stitches, as in the ‘Opus Anglicanum,’ has been revived in modern times by some of the Sisterhoods, where they make a point of being ‘Early English’; but it is a style apt to become too quaint to suit modern ideas of reverence, and it is certainly much more difficult to manage successfully than the vertical or horizontal arrangement (see ‘_a_’ p. 34).

‘_b_’ shows a combination of both, and ‘_c_’ of the vertical method. Fig. III. is a drawing from a figure of the Blessed Virgin in a group representing the ‘Annunciation’ on an altar-frontal at St. Thomas’s, Salisbury. The whole of the frontal is closely ‘parsemé,’ with the typical Cherubim, Angels, flowers, &c., of the period (thirteenth to sixteenth centuries) and very much ornamented with free and graceful scroll-work. There is a return to the simpler method for working the face; or perhaps I should say a continuation of this method, which has never been entirely given up, in spite of prevailing fashion; probably the embroiderer instinctively feels it to be the most manageable. I mean the evenly worked surface (be it split-stitch or satin-stitch) on which the features are worked in outline. These stitches lie in the vertical direction, and there is little, if any, shading. The dress is worked in several shades of blue (also vertical split-stitch or fine satin-stitch), and there is very little attempt to give the appearance of relief in the folds. The cloak is worked entirely in gold thread, laid horizontally, with the folds marked on afterwards in rather scratchy lines of green silk. The lining of the cloak is in silver thread, flecked with black to indicate vair. The hair is pale golden-brown, in split-stitch, following the natural curves, and is very delicately drawn and worked. The whole of the group is characterised by great simplicity and sweetness. The vase containing the lilies, which stands in the centre between the Angel and the Blessed Virgin, is of richly raised gold-work; a scroll behind her shoulders with the words ‘Ecce Ancilla Dn̅i’ balances the wings of the Angel in the composition of the design.

During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries there was a spontaneous growth of feeling for truth and beauty in all the arts; more correct drawing and richer colouring combined with strong and graceful design to produce perfection in needlework. In the most beautiful examples of this period (with few exceptions) the faces are worked in natural shades of flesh-tints, with fine floss-silks in satin-stitch, either ‘short’ or ‘long and short,’ in the vertical direction, with a fair amount of shading, but no cast shadows. The garments fall in noble lines and give the opportunity for a fine variety of colour. Precious stones, metals, and pearls were used with moderation, not that lavish profusion which afterwards degenerated into vulgar display.

Illustration IV. is taken from part of an orphrey in the Victoria and Albert Museum, designed by Rafaelino del Garbo, and represents, I think, the highest point to which ‘effect’ should go in the matter of shading and appearance of relief, perspective, &c. It is a piece of Florentine work, and shows distinctly the influence of the place and the age. This reproduction of course does not do it justice; it is a perfect marvel of colour, while the drawing shows a master’s hand. The whole of the architectural background is worked in gold thread laid horizontally, the effect both of colour and shading being entirely produced by means of the silk it is couched with. In places the gold is completely veiled by the stitches, in others it gleams through, and again it is left quite bare and shining with its own lustre alone. Every line of the architecture is accentuated with gold twist of different degrees of thickness, and sometimes varied again by being twisted in the opposite direction.

The garments consist of the _same gold thread_ which forms the background; it is simply carried through the whole of the work,[4] with the exception of the head and nimbus, which are worked separately and appliqué to it afterwards. The hands, even, are done over the gold in short satin-stitch. The flesh-tints are coloured strongly but finely, and the shading is put in boldly. The sympathy between design and work is so marked as almost to indicate the same hand; but we have other examples, which are known to have been designed by one person and worked by another, which show the same _rapport_, such as the designs by Pollaiuolo embroidered by Paolo da Verona (in the church of S. Giovanni at Florence).[5]

The garments of the figures in the older embroidery were usually worked in split-stitch in much the same manner as the faces; that is to say, the stitching is done in rows, following the lines of the drawing.

In the Syon cope, for instance, the tunic of the figure illustrated in Fig. II. is worked in three shades of blue floss; the palest has faded so much as to be out of range altogether (a habit unfortunately common to pale shades of blue); the two darker ones seem to have remained almost entirely unaffected by age, light, and wear. The upper garment is worked in gold thread, with a border of green and a lining of soft yellowish-brown floss silk. The gold-work is done in the same way as the background of the cope. The threads lie in the same direction throughout—not merely in the case of the figure I am describing, but wherever gold is introduced at all—in large masses, as in the vesture, or in quite small quantities, such as the narrow border of the tunic. It is stitched so as to form the same zigzag pattern.

The lining of the upper robe is worked in a very fine split-stitch, with either very little shading or none besides that which is caused by the different directions of the stitch.

The folds in the gold-worked part are indicated by means of voided lines, which are afterwards filled up with stitches of black silk. The voiding at the folds gives a low relief, as the gold goes down and comes up again instead of all lying flat on the surface.

The hair is in fine lines of alternate blue-grey and white floss, done in split-stitch. In some of the other figures it is gold and black, or gold and white, or black and white, but always in alternate lines in the same style. In early English work the bearded faces have the upper lip shaven.

Three shades of each colour are commonly employed, not often following each other very closely, especially in the case of the green, of which the lighter shades incline towards yellow and the darker towards blue.

There were very few different colours in general use for embroidery till towards the end of the fourteenth century, after which they became much more varied, but still more harmonious, till crude and violent colours came in with the nineteenth century. The dyes formerly were mostly from Eastern sources, whence the silks also came, and where, until quite lately, very stringent rules were in force concerning the colours and dyes permitted to be used.

_D’or nué_ seems to have been the favourite method of doing the garments about the sixteenth century. Laid-work, kept down with either self-coloured silk or gold thread, lightly couched, is also to be seen; and later, a pretty use of short-stitch in floss, worked vertically over gold threads laid horizontally—something like _d’or nué_, but very much coarser and more practical for the larger figures, which were then becoming more frequently worked (see diagram).

Another way of treating drapery is to work it solidly in long-and-short-stitch (vertical), boldly shaded, and afterwards enriching it with fine gold threads laid horizontally over the whole garment a little distance apart, and sewn down singly with fine sewing silks or split floss of the same shades as those it passes over; or sprays or diapers may be effective worked over the plain shaded silks.

The background of figure-work is not very often composed entirely of stitching in these days, when so many beautiful woven fabrics are so easily procured and time seems shorter than it used to be. But still, where there is not a very large expanse to fill, a worked background is not a luxury unattainable; a very satisfactory and glorious one is gold thread laid in diaper-patterns. Laid-work and darning are quicker—the latter makes a beautifully broken colour for showing up large outline figure-work done on unbleached linen or worsted material for hangings.

I do not fancy any of my readers would undertake such a piece of work as the background of the Syon cope; but the way it was probably done has been suggested by Mr. Lewis Day thus:—

‘The stitch runs from point to point of the zigzag pattern, then it penetrates the stuff, is carried round a thread of flax laid at the back of the material, and is brought to the surface again through the hole made by the needle in passing down. That is to say, the silken thread only _dips_ through the linen at the points in the pattern, and is then caught down by a thread of flax on the under-surface of the linen … it is a kind of work on which two persons might be employed, one on either side of the stuff.’[6]

I venture to differ from his opinion on one point only, and that is that probably the silken or gold thread was not the one worked backwards and forwards through the stuff, since the flax thread from behind would do the work just as well. The gold or silk would thus be saved from friction, and would not need to be cut into needlefuls and threaded in a needle, but could be used from continuously, as I have before suggested for long lines of couching; it is, in fact, precisely the same thing, with the exception of taking the ‘working’ needle back through the hole it made, instead of at a little distance from it. This method is so often used in fine gold-work for turning at the end of a row when one does not want it to appear on the surface that I fancy it would be suggested by this.