Needlework As Art

by Viscountess Marianne Margaret Compton Cust Alford

I have not space to linger over the many descriptions of Oriental, Grecian, and Roman work to be gathered from classical authors, but from them this lesson is to be learned that the first principle which guided those great decorators was the individuality and appropriateness of each design to the purpose for which it was intended and the place it was to fill. But even their peculiar excellences did not save them from the universal law of destruction. When the hangings were worn, or became for any reason distasteful, they were replaced by others, often by gifts or spoils from friendly allies or conquered kings. The quantity of gold laid upon these great religious or national works was the cause of their destruction as soon as they were withdrawn and superseded by something of a newer fashion. The intrinsic value in precious metals of such works is proved by Pliny’s statement that Nero gave four millions of sesterces for covers of couches in a banqueting-hall.[452] The hangings or carpets taken by the Caliph Omar from Kosroes’ white palace (A.D. 651) must have been some of the finest and most valuable embroideries ever known. They formed a tapestry carpet or hanging, representing all the flowers of spring, worked in coloured silks, gold, and precious stones. Kosroes entreated Omar to keep it intact for himself, but he was so virtuous that he cut it up into little bits and divided it amongst his generals. Gibbon describes this wonderful piece of work.[453] We have heard much of a marvellous carpet, given lately by the Guicowar of Baroda to the tomb of Mahomet at Medina, which, from its description, recalls the style of Kosroes’ hangings; and their history gives us a notable instance of how works of art in the time of war and conquest come to be considered only for the value of their materials. War, the enemy of culture, all but effaces whole phases of art when a country is overrun and plundered. But there is almost always a residuum, which has influence whenever there is a revival, beginning with the smaller arts of luxury in more peaceful and prosperous days.[454]

To return to the classical veils and hangings. You may see them on Babylonian bas-reliefs, on Greek fictile vases, or painted in frescoes on the walls of Egyptian tombs and temples; in the houses in Pompeii and Herculaneum, and in the remains of Roman villas and tombs everywhere. From all of these we may learn something.

The obvious intention of hangings in household decoration is to cover bare walls, so as to adorn at once that which was rough or common, without delay or trouble. They were also used as curtains to shut out the cold or the heat, and to give privacy to rooms without doors or windows. Hangings on bare walls have always been meant to hang straight down, undisturbed by folds, whereas curtains and portières would probably have to be looped up or continually drawn aside. The designs to be worked upon them should necessarily be regulated by their shape and use.

Semper considers that a square is an expressionless form, and that it should be avoided.[455] If you wish to give dignity to a room, its hanging decorations should be divided into panels of greater height than breadth, so as to elevate the spaces they cover. Horizontal stripes bring down the ceiling, and even in furniture, look ill except as borders. Nothing can be more ugly or inartistic than the curtains one finds in old illuminations, covered with bands of the same pattern throughout the surface, but even this is less unpleasant on the walls than lines crossing each other at right angles. The Romans looked on chequers as barbarous national characteristics, and left them to the Gauls and Britons. Chequers should be avoided unless they express a meaning, as in Scotch tartans. Semper observes that the striped stuffs, especially those of Oriental fabrics, were never intended to be spread out flat, but to be draped in folds and loops, and the lines only seen broken up. He continues:—“One rule, which cannot be neglected with impunity, is this: that whether the hanging or screen is supposed to stand or to hang, there must be an above and a below to every pattern, and it must, moreover, be upright.” All foliage designs, and those containing animals, must start from below, and grow upwards. Another of his laws is that the heaviest colours should be placed below, and the palest and brightest above. This may be disputed. It must be first determined where contrast is needed. If the darkest part of the pattern is below, it may be necessary to give it the lightest background, on the principle of balancing quantities in colour. The dado, or lowest border, will often give the necessary weight to the design. Semper goes on to say, “A surface may be made to appear to stand, or to hang down, according to its decoration. For instance, a triangle will hang or stand, according as its apex points downwards or upwards. But in draped curtains all symmetry of design is lost, and the rich forms and fulness of folds rather tend to destroy the effect of elaborate patterns, and to take their place.”

Another important difference between standing and hanging tapestries is their finish or edge, the upper one being an upright continuous border, and the lower one a fringe. In both cases it is a continuation of the main threads of the material, and these belong exclusively to the hanging tapestries and curtains. The fringe is so essential a part of hanging decoration, that we must pause and give it our best consideration. In Babylonian art it is most important. The extreme solidity of the knotted fringes in their dress and hangings show either the thickness of the woven substance, or that the fringes were made by enriching the warp and adding to it. They are almost always, on the Assyrian sculptures, simply knotted fringes; but the little portable Chaldean temple on the bronze gates from Balawat (near Nimroud), in the British Museum, shows fringes of bells or fruit like those of the Jewish tabernacle in the wilderness (fig. [2]). On Egyptian linen we sometimes see, woven or worked, a reticulated pattern which imitates a fringe.

The carpets of the Egyptians, Babylonians, and Persians were evidently used sometimes as hangings, though many of their designs would not have served both purposes equally well. That the Babylonian weavers, however, understood that a carpet lying on the ground should be covered with an even pattern, and be finished with a border all round, is evident from the exquisitely chiselled designs, imitating carpets, on two portions of pavements in the British Museum (pl. [27]); and we may compare these with the different treatment of designs for the veils of the temples, both in Babylon and Egypt, on which were represented the signs of the zodiac and all the heavenly bodies, and other symbolical and unconventional forms. The Atrium of the Greek and Pompeian houses, which was modelled on the same idea, was separated from the Court by curtains, hung on rods or nails. On festive occasions these may have been garlanded with natural flowers. If so, we may be sure that the little wreaths worked on them, as we learn from frescoes, would combine with the gala day’s decorations, and would be designed with that view. The Greek artist would never have approved of natural flowers or trees, embroidered as if growing out of a dado, simulating a garden worked in wool. This would have been considered a bad attempt at pictorial art.

M. Louis de Ronchaud, in his “Tapisseries des Anciens,” speaks of the hangings which he supposes to have decked the recess that contained the chryselephantine statue of Athenè Parthenos in her temple at Athens. He says these votive hangings dressed the pillars that surrounded the Hecatompedon, and formed a tent over the head of the goddess. M. de Ronchaud believes that among the subjects of the Delphic embroideries, described by Euripides in the tragedy of Ion, may be recognized some derived from the designs on saffron-coloured hangings, spoken of by the poet as “the wings of the peplos.”[456]

The downfall of decorative art, domestic as well as national, kept pace with the downfall of the Roman Empire. During the Dark Ages, of such art there seems to have been very little; and of that the best was Celtic or Anglo-Saxon. But the darkness shrouds from our view the artistic life of the world, and the dawn was very long in breaking. We must therefore return to the subject of hangings, after a gap of nearly a thousand years, when the first stirrings of the European revival came, in the twelfth century.[457] Symonds says: “The arts and the inventions, the knowledge and the books, which suddenly became vital at the time of the Renaissance, had long lain neglected on the shores of that Dead Sea which we call ‘The Middle Ages.’”[458]

There can be no doubt that, during the Dark Ages, hangings woven and embroidered continued to be the custom throughout Europe. Our own Anglo-Saxon records prove that such furnishings were employed to mitigate the cold bareness of our northern homes from the earliest times. Sir G. Dasent informs me that in Icelandic Sagas, as early as the eleventh century, there are frequent notices of hangings both in churches and in the halls of houses; such, for instance, as the Saga of Charlemagne, i.e. scenes out of Charlemagne’s life, worked on hangings 20 ells long. In Scaldic poetry, a periphrasis for a “lady” is “the ground of hangings,” or “the bridge of hangings,” all pointing to embroidery.

From illuminated MSS. engraved in Strutt’s “Antiquities of the English,” and contemporary European work of the tenth to the thirteenth centuries, we find that the favourite style of embroidery, when not representing historical or sacred subjects, was a parsemé pattern. Armorial bearings were generally reserved for cushions, chair-backs, and the baldachinos of altars, beds, and thrones.[459] Richer and more flowing designs were later introduced.