BLACK WORK.
A curious phase of Old English embroidery is the well-known "Black Work," which is said to have been introduced by Catherine of Aragon into England, and was also known as "Spanish work." The work itself was a marvel of neatness, precision, and elegant design, but the result cannot be said to have been commensurate with the labour of its production. Most frequently the design was of scroll-work, worked with a fine black silk back-stitching or chain-stitch. Round and round the stitches go, following each other closely. Bunches of grapes are frequently worked solidly, and even the popular peascod is worked in outline stitch, and often the petit point period lace stitches are copied, and roses and birds worked separately and after stitched to the design. There are many examples of this famous "Spanish" work in the South Kensington Museum. Quilts, hangings, coats, caps, jackets, smocks are all to be seen, some with a couched thread of gold and silver following the lines of the scrolls. This is said to be the Spanish stitch referred to in the old list of stitches, and very likely may be so, as the style and manner are certainly not English; and we know that Catherine of Aragon brought wonders of Spanish stitchery with her, and she herself was devoted to the use of the needle. The story of how when called before Cardinal Wolsey and Campeggio, to answer to King Henry's accusations, she had a skein of embroidery silk round her neck is well known.
The black silk outline stitchery or linen lasted well through the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Very little of it is seen outside the museums, as, not being strikingly beautiful or attractive, it has been destroyed.
Another phase of the same stitchery was working cotton and linen garments, hangings, and quilts in a kind of quilted pattern with yellow silk.
Anything more unlike the quilting of fifty years ago cannot be imagined. The finest materials were used, the padding being placed bit by bit in its place—not in the wholesale fashion of later years, when a sheet or two of wadding was placed between the sheets of cotton or linen, and a coarse back-stitching outlined in great scrawling patterns held the whole together. The old "quilting" work was made in tiny panels, illustrating shields and other heraldic devices, and had a surface as fine as carved ivory. When, as in the case of one sample at South Kensington, the quilt is additionally embroidered with beautiful fine floss silk flowers, the effect is very lovely.