Fig. 29.
Part of James II.’s Coronation Dress.
From an old Print.
Occasionally, however, we meet with pieces of exceptionally beautiful work of the end of the seventeenth and early part of the eighteenth centuries. The style is the most refined Louis Quatorze, but the work is actually English. The white satin coverlets belonging to the Marquis of Bath and the Duke of Leeds are not to be exceeded in delicacy and splendour. The embroidered dresses of the Duke and Duchess of Buckingham, in Westminster Abbey (early eighteenth century) are of this description.
From Queen Anne to George III., a great deal of furniture was covered with the different cushion stitches, either in geometrical or kaleidoscope patterns, or else displaying groups of flowers or figures, quaint and sometimes pretty. These designs are generally, however, wanting in grace, and their German feeling shows them to be the precursors of the Berlin wool patterns.
When the crewel-work hangings ceased to be the fashion, home work took another direction. All the ladies imitated Indian dimity patterns, on muslin, in coloured silks or thread, with the tambour-frame and needle;[613] but in 1707 the “Broiderers’ Company,” we presume, found that the Indian manufactures were engrossing the market, and a fresh statute was obtained, forbidding the importation from India of any wrought material. This cruel prohibition carried its own punishment. The Indian trade was ours, and we might have adapted and assimilated the Indian taste for design. We might have brought over men and women great in their most ancient craft, and so produced the most splendid Indo-English School. The Portuguese at least sent out their own silks and satins to be worked at Goa; we threw away our chance, and signed the death-warrant of our art.
About the middle of the last century, several ladies, notably Miss Linwood, Miss Moritt, of Rokeby, and Mrs. Delany, copied pictures in worsteds. Some of these are wonderfully clever and even very pretty, but they are rather a painful effort of pictorial art under difficulties, than legitimate embroideries. These pictures would have served the purpose of decoration better as medallions in the centres of arabesque panels, than framed and glazed in imitation of oil paintings. Some of the followers of this school produced works that are shocking to all artistic sense, especially as seen now, when the moths have spoiled them. They can only be classed with such abortive attempts at decoration as glass cases filled with decayed stuffed birds, and vases of faded and broken wax flowers.
I may record with praise the efforts of Mrs. Pawsey,[614] a lady who started a school of needlework at Aylesbury. She was patronized by Queen Charlotte; and for her she worked the beautiful bed at Hampton Court, of purple satin, with wreaths of flowers in crewels touched up with silk, which look as if they might have been copied from the flower-pieces of a Dutch master. The execution is very fine, and reminds one of the best French work of the same period. Mrs. Pawsey taught and helped ladies to embroider in silk and chenille, as well as crewels, and in many country houses we can recognize specimens of her style; usually on screens worked in silk and chenille, with bunches of flowers in vases or baskets, artistically designed.
This was our last attempt at excellence, immediately followed by the total collapse of our decorative needlework, and the advent of the Berlin wool patterns.