Jacobean Embroidery: Its Forms and Fillings, Including Late Tudor

E-text prepared by Stacy Brown, Julie Barkley, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/)
PUBLISHERS' NOTE.
Plates 1, l0a, 11, 12 (part of), 20 and 23 have already been published in Needlecraft Monthly Magazine and are included in this collection by permission of the Editor.
TO redeem the monotony of plain surfaces has ever been the aim of all the arts, but especially that of the needle, which being the oldest expression of decorative intention, has, from the earliest time, been very dependent on its groundwork for its ultimate results. This is particularly the case in embroideries of the type of what is commonly known as Jacobean, where the ground fabric is extensively visible, as it is also in that wondrous achievement, the Bayeux tapestry worked in coarse wools upon homespun linen and therefore quite miscalled tapestry.
Inaccuracy in nomenclature is one of the stumbling blocks the student encounters, and the tendency of the day to classify styles by the restricted formula of monarchical periods is likewise misleading. No style is ever solely distinctive of one reign, or even one century, the law of evolution rules the arts as it does nature, there is always a correlation between styles in art and circumstances of existence that is productive of gradual changes of taste, therefore, pronounced evidences in design are, actually, the culminating point in a course of combined influences which have reached the period of individual expression.
Crewel work of the type of Jacobean, was the outcome of that earlier wool embroidery that even in the zenith of fame of the Ecclesiastical broderers still quietly went on its way.
In the middle ages, furnishing of rooms was scanty, and embroidered hangings, cushion and stool covers provided the necessary notes of colour and comfort; the wall hangings of the 13th century were of coarse canvas decorated with a design executed in wools.
It is curious how in English embroideries there has always been a predilection on the part of the designers for interlacing stems, and for the inconsequent introduction of birds and beasts.