CHAPTER XVI
NEEDLECRAFT AND DECORATIVE ARTS
She wrought all Needleworks that Women exercise,
With Pin Frame or Stoole all Pictures Artificiall,
Curious Knots or Traits that Fancy could devise,
Beasts, Birds, or Flowers even as things Naturall.
—Epitaph of Elizabeth Lucar. Church St. Michael, Crooked Lane, London, 1537.
Human nature was the same in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as to-day; waves of devotion to some special form of ornamentation either for the household or the wardrobe swept over families, neighborhoods, communities; when we reach the days of newspapers we find in their columns some evidence of the names and character of these decorations. In 1716 Mr. Brownell, the Boston schoolmaster, advertised that at his school young women and children could be taught "all sorts of fine works as Feather-works, Filigree, and Painting on Glass, Embroidering a new way, Turkeywork for Handkerchiefs two new Ways, fine new fashion Purses, flourishing ishing and Plain work," The perishable nature of the material would prevent the preservation of many specimens of feather-work; but very pretty flowers for head-dresses and bonnets were made of minute feathers or portions of feathers pasted on a firm foundation in many collected shapes. This work may have been suggested by the beautiful feather flowers made in many of the South Sea Islands; perhaps an old sea captain brought some home to his wife or sweetheart as a gift. The sober colors of many of our home birds would not make so brilliant a bouquet as the songless birds of the tropics, especially the millions of the various parrot tribes; still an everyday New England rooster has a wealth of splendid glistening color, while blue jays, red-headed woodpeckers, yellow birds, and an occasional oriole or scarlet tanager could furnish beautiful feathers enough to waken the ire of an Audubon Society.
Painting on glass was an amusement of more scope. In England it was all the mode, and some very quaint specimens survive; simpering beauties, flowers, and fruit were the favorite subjects. Coats of arms, too, were painted on glass, and handsome they were. It is not possible to state exactly the position which the study of armorial bearings and significations had for two or three centuries. It seemed to bear relatively the same place that a profound study of literature has to-day—the pastime and delight of cultured people. We have been amused for a few years past at the domination of color in literature; every book title had a color word, as The Red Robe, Under the Red Lamp, A Study in Scarlet, The Red Badge of Courage, etc. This idiasm—as Mr. Ingleby would call it—has extended to music, and even into scientific suggestion and medicine; but this attributing unusual qualities to colors is nothing new. In the Cotton Manuscripts, a series of essays on music six hundred years old, the relation between music and color, especially in coat armor, is given; for instance, "fire-red" was the most malignant color in arms, and only third in benignity in music. All gentlefolk were profoundly wise as to the meaning of colors in coats of arms, etc., and their influence on the character and life of the persons bearing the arms.
This interest in the study of heraldry wavered in intensity but did not die till the days of a new nation; and we find from the middle of the seventeenth to the middle of the eighteenth century that young girls in the families of gentlefolk paid much attention to the making of coats of arms. Those painted on glass were the richest in color and the most satisfactory, but embroidered ones were more common. The choicest materials were used, the drawing was carefully executed, and the stitches minute. It is interesting to note that the laws of the herald were strictly regarded in the setting of the stitches. In azure the stitches were laid parallel across the escutcheon; in gules, perpendicular; in purpure, diagonally from right to left, and so on.
