CRETAN EMBROIDERY. Silk on Muslin, heightened with gold and silver thread.

As every embroideress knows, colour in embroidery is very much influenced by texture. The colour of a skein of silk looking different from the same colour when worked. Juxtaposition with other colours, again, alters the effect of a colour. As a general principle, especially where many colours are employed, we are more likely to secure harmony if we choose reds, for instance, inclining to orange, blues inclining to green, yellows inclining to green or brown, blacks of a greenish or olive tone. Perfectly frank and pure colours, however, may be harmonized, especially with the use of gold, though they are more difficult to deal with—unless one can command the natural, primitive instinct of the Hungarian, the Greek, or the Persian peasant.

For bold decorative work few kinds of embroidery design are more delightful than the bordered cloths and covers from Bokhara. Here, again, the colours are chiefly red and green in different shades, the reds concentrated in the form of big flowers in the intervals of an open arabesque of thin stems and curved and pointed leaves in green, the whole design upon a white linen ground.

BOKHARA EMBROIDERY. Silk on linen, chiefly in chain stitch.
The large flowers are worked in two shades of rich red inclining to crimson with yellow centres relieved by dark blue. The blue & yellow & red are repeated in the smaller flowers.

The leaves are blueish green with a red line down centre. They are outlined with bronze brown which I also used for the stems & spirals.

Inner border, between red lines. The star flowers are alternately blue & red with yellow centres with bronze leaves. The outer border, also between red lines. The flowers are red with blue & yellow centres alternately, & green & bronze leaves.

Such joyful, frank, and bold colour, however, would be usually considered too bright for the ordinary English interior, and under our gray skies; and colour, after all, is so much a question of climate, and though for its full splendour we turn to the south and east, we need not want for models of beautiful, if quieter, harmonies in the natural tints of our native country at different seasons of the year. There are abundant suggestions to be had from field and hedgerow at all times—arrangements in russet, or gold, or green. What can be more beautiful as a colour motive than the frail pink or white of the blossoms of the briar rose, starring the green arabesque of thorny stem and leaf; or its scarlet hip and bronze green leaf in the autumn; or the crisp, white pattern of the field daisy on the pale green of the hay field, relieved by the yellow centres and by the red of sorrel; or the brave scarlet of the poppy between the thin gold threads of the ripe corn. Then, too, there are beautiful schemes of colour to be found in the plumage of our birds. Take the colours of a jay, for instance—a mass of fawn-coloured gray with a pinkish tinge, relieved with touches of intense black and white and small bars of turquoise blue and white. A charming scheme for an embroidered pattern might be made of such an arrangement, if the colours were used in similar proportions to those of nature—say in a costume.