Fig. 232.—Bed Cover, Flemish Work. Victoria and Albert Museum.
In modern heraldic embroidery the design is the weak point, but improvement would certainly follow the study of good early work and also of good examples of other decorative methods if they were intelligently adapted to the materials employed. The purpose and character of the object must influence the work, and considerations of weight and substance affect the making of a banner, which is to wave and flow, at least to some extent that would not need to be insisted on in a framed panel. Not that the treatment need be wholly flat, like the diagrammatic shield of an early roll of arms, for it may well have such definition of the charges as are seen on the Black Prince’s surcoat; also the complete form of an object may be sufficiently suggested without the employment of methods more suitable to another material. Thus, it is not particularly difficult to indicate that a thing is round without making it as round as possible.
Fig. 233.—Design for Lace. Arms of Frederick II, King of Denmark. From the pattern-book of the Duchess of Brunswick.
Lace.—Although heraldry does not appear to have been so extensively practised in lace as in other forms of needlework, it is still used to a considerable extent, and generally as a device that is introduced as a personal detail in a large pattern.
Among the few examples of heraldic lace at South Kensington are a piece of English needlepoint and the bedcover of Flemish work in which the double-headed eagle is well done (Fig. 232), which will repay study, and serve to explain the method of this kind of work.
The method of making the preliminary designs for lace is set forth in the pattern-books which began to be produced in the sixteenth century, and of which very interesting examples are extant. The lace design, Fig. 233, is from a book of patterns which belonged to the Duchess of Brunswick and is now in the National Art Library of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and represents the arms of Frederick II, King of Denmark. It has the usual characteristics of the German heraldry of its time.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Needlework as Art, Lady Marion Alford.