The latter nations, with their inherent love of barbaric splendour and Asiatic predilections for georgeous[georgeous] colouring, surpassed the Egyptians in the art of embroidery.
The Persians and surrounding nations inherited from the older races this love of colour and early traditions of design, which are still seen in their tapestry, carpets, and embroidered work of all kinds.
The ancient Phrygian and Lydian people, who inhabited a portion of Asia Minor, were cultured races whom the Greeks and Romans always regarded as the inventors of embroidery—"phrygio" being the Roman word for embroiderer. The Phrygian embroidered patterns were mostly geometric, but in the later periods plant and animal forms were also used. Most of the decoration of the Ionian Greek pottery, consisting of bands of animals, birds, rosettes, and lozenges, are copies from the embroidered work of Asia Minor. To-day, even, the women of these parts embroider their bodices, aprons, head-coverings, and towels in an almost similar style of ornament.
The rock-cut façades of the Phrygian tombs, unlike the imitated timber constructions of the Lydian tombs, have sculptured decorations that have been copied from geometrical forms of embroidery, and in many cases these façades resemble an embroidered curtain or carpet that would be hung up to serve the purposes of a door to the entrance of the earlier square domestic wooden buildings, of which the Phrygian and Lydian tombs were imitations in stone.
The Assyrian thresholds (Fig. 166, former volume) and many other sculptures and wall decorations in painted tiles of Chaldean and Persian origin were usually copies of embroidery, all of which clearly shows that embroidery and pattern weaving preceded stone, wood, and metal sculpture.
The Greeks were highly skilled in making embroidery. Homer repeatedly alludes to this art as an employment for women. Helen of Troy and Penelope wrought beautiful robes and hangings in their looms, embroidering them with rich needlework. On a Greek vase from Chiusi, Penelope is represented at work on a loom of the “high warp” (haute-lisse) or vertical pattern which is used so much to-day by the embroiderers and carpet weavers of the East. We have many allusions in the Bible to those who made all kinds of cunning needlework. Josephus says that the veil of the Temple at Jerusalem “was a Babylonian curtain embroidered with blue and fine linen, with scarlet and purple, and of a texture that was wonderful.”
In England, during the Anglo-Saxon times, embroidered work had a great reputation, so much so that it was greatly prized and in request in France and other parts of Europe, where it was known as “Anglicum Opus.” From an inventory of Charles V. of France (1364-80) we learn that he had a room furnished with English “hullings” or hangings embroidered in blue, with figures of lions, eagles, and leopards. Embroidery was the chief occupation of Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman ladies. Bede and other old historians frequently extolled the excellence of design and workmanship of the English embroidered palls, copes, corporals, chasubles, and hangings. After the Conquest and during the Norman period all kinds of heraldic devices were introduced amongst the ornament and floriated patterns; sometimes stories and romances were illustrated with the needle, and belonging to this order the famous Bayeux Tapestry may be mentioned, which represented in the form of a long frieze the Conquest of England by the Normans. It is supposed to have been wrought by Queen Matilda and her maidens, but was probably made to the order of Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, and brother-in-law to the Queen. It is not only a celebrated piece of needlework, but is an invaluable record of the costume of the period (Fig. 271). A coloured photograph of it is now in the Kensington Museum.
Fig. 271.—Norman Archer from the Bayeux Tapestry.
About the date of the thirteenth century various technical names were given to the different kinds of embroidery, such as “opus plumarium,” or, as it is now called, “feather-stitch,” a kind of needlework where the stitches are laid lengthwise, and not across, overlapping each other like the feathers in a bird’s plumage; “opus pulvinarium,” or “cushion” style, where the work is done in cross and tent stitch; “opus pectineum,” where the embroidery is made to represent or imitate weaving, and had the design carried through from front to back of the foundation material. The Opus Anglicum, so highly prized, seems to have been a kind of chain-stitch embroidery, giving a granulated surface. The workwoman would start, for instance, in the case of executing the face of a human figure, at a point in the centre of the cheek or chin, and work around it in a circular method, and where the hollows and dimples would occur, a heated metal rod with a small bulb at the end of it would be used to press down the cavities.