But in the Middle Ages the embroiderers were ambitious artists. The deeds of Roland and the siege of Troy, all romantic and classical lore, provided subjects for the needle.
Shakespeare gives a pretty picture of the graceful weaver and embroiderer:—
* * * “Would ever with Marina be:—
Be’t when she weaves the sleided silk,
With fingers long, small, white as milk;
Or when she would with sharp neeld wound
The cambric, which she makes more sound
By hurting it....
Deep clerks she dumbs; and with her neeld composes
Nature’s own shape, of bud, bird, branch, or berry,
That even her art sisters the natural roses.”[13]
Before closing this Introduction, I will take the opportunity to protest against the abuse of the phrase “High Art.” It is generally appropriated by that which is the lowest and most feeble.
An old design for a chair or table, by no means remarkable originally, but cheaply copied, and covered with a quaint and dismal cretonne or poorly worked pattern, of which the design is neither new nor artistic, is introduced by the upholsterer as belonging to “High Art furniture.” The epithet has succeeded to what was once “fashionable” and “elegant.” To get rid of carpets, and put down rugs, to hang up rows of plates instead of family portraits—this also is “high art.” Likewise gowns lumped upon the shoulders, with all the folds drawn across, instead of hanging draperies. The term is never used when we speak of the great arts—painting, sculpture, and architecture. It is, in fact, only the slang of the cabinet-maker, the upholsterer, and milliner.
All true Art is very high indeed and apparent; and needs not to be introduced with a puff. It sits enthroned between Poetry and History. Even those who are ignorant of its laws feel its influence, and the soothing grace which it sheds, falling like the rain, equally upon the just and the unjust. Man’s nature always responds to the truly high and beautiful; only the most degraded are deprived of this source of happiness. And there are but few women, till debased by cruelty, misery, or drink, that do not try in some humble way (but especially with their needle) to adorn their own persons, their children, and their homes; and if their art is not high, it yet has the power to elevate them.[14] While the most ambitious women try a higher flight, into the regions of poetry, literature, painting, and even sculpture (why has no woman ever been an architect?), millions have enjoyed the art of the needle for thousands of years, and it will continue to be a solace and a delight as long as the world lasts, for, like all art, it gives the ever new joy of creation.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] See Duke of Argyll’s “Unity of Nature.”
[4] Walls, pillars, and roofs were certainly hung with textile ornament before they were carved or painted. This is Semper’s theory, and though Woltmann and Woermann (“History of Painting,” Eng. Trans., Sidney Colvin, p. 38) hardly accept this view, they do not gainsay it. The women who wove hangings for the grove, or more literally, “coverings for the houses” of the grove, were probably the priestesses of Astarte, and wove and worked the hangings of various colours. 2 Kings xxii.; Ezek. xvi. 16-18.
“It is probable that the earliest kind of pictures were either woven or embroidered upon figured stuffs of various colours; and that in these decorations the Greeks in the first instance imitated the Semitic races, who had practised them from time immemorial.” See Woltmann and Woermann’s “History of Painting” (Eng. Trans.), p. 38.