Part 21

A PLEA FOR SIMPLICITY.

The simplest patterns are by no means the least beautiful. It is too much the fashion to underrate the artistic value of the less pretentious forms of needlework, and especially of flat ornament, which has, nevertheless, its own very important place in decoration. As for geometric pattern, that is quite beneath consideration--it is so mechanical! Mechanical is a word as easily spoken as another; but if needlework is mechanical, that is more often the fault of the needlewoman than of the mechanism she employs. The Orientals, who indulged so freely in geometric device, were the least mechanical of workers. It is our rigid way of working it which robs geometric ornament of its charm. The needleworker has less than ever occasion to be afraid of geometric pattern; for it is peculiarly difficult to get in it that appearance of rule-and-compass-work which makes ornament so dull.

The one real objection to geometric pattern is that it is nowadays so cheaply and so mechanically got by weaving that, however freely it may be rendered, there is a danger of its suggesting mechanical production, which embroidery emphatically ought not to do. There is a similar objection nowadays to some stitches, such, for example, as chain-stitch and back-stitch, which suggest the sewing-machine.

Embroidery does not to-day take quite the place it once did. It was used, for example, by the early Coptic Christians to supplement tapestry. That is to say, what they could not weave they stitched; it was only to get more delicate detail than their tapestry loom would allow, that they had recourse to the needle. Needlework was, in fact, an adjunct to weaving. Later, in mediæval times, the Germans of Cologne, for their church vestments and the like, wove what they could, and enriched their woven figures with embroidery.

Again, a great deal of Oriental embroidery, and of peasant work everywhere, is merely the result of circumstances. Where money is scarce and time is of no account, it answers a woman's purpose to do for herself with her needle what might in some respects be even better done on the loom. Her preference for handwork is not that it has artistic possibilities, but that it costs her less. She would in many cases prefer the more mechanically produced fabric, if she could get it at the same price. We do not find that Orientals reject the productions of the power-loom--which they would do if they had the artistic instincts with which we credit them.

It results from our conditions of to-day that there are some kinds of needlework we admire, which yet are not worth our doing, such, for example, as the all-over work, which does not amount to more than simple diaper, and which really is not so much embroidering on a textile as converting it into one of another kind. Glorified instances of this kind of work occur in the shawl work of Cashmere, and in those beautiful bits of Persian stitching which remind one of carpet-work in miniature, if they are not in fact related to carpet-weaving.

Embroidery was at one time the readiest, and practically the only, means of getting enrichment of certain kinds. To-day we get machine embroidery. As machinery is perfected, and learns to do what formerly could be done only by the needle, hand-workers get pushed aside and fall out of work. Their chance is, in keeping always in advance of the machine. There is this hope for them, that the monotony of machine-made things produces in the end a reaction in favour of handwork--provided always it gives us something which manufacture cannot. Possibly also there is scope for amateurs and home-artists in that combination of embroidery and hand-weaving with which the power-loom, though it has superseded it, does not enter into competition.

It is not so much for geometric ornament as for simple pattern that I here make my plea, for that reticent work of which so much was at one time done in this country--mere back-stitching, for example, or what looks like it, in yellow silk upon white linen; or the modest diaper, archaic, if you like, but inevitably characteristic, in which the naïveté of the sampler seems always to linger; or again, the admirably simple work in Illustration 89. This last does not show so delicately in the photographic reproduction as it should, because, being in grey and yellow on white linen, the relative value of the two shades of colour is lost in the process. In the original the broader yellow bands are much more in tone with the ground, and do not assert themselves so much. Such as it is, only an artist could have designed that border-work, and any neat-handed woman could have embroidered it.

Think again of the delicate work in white on white, too familiar to need illustration, which makes no loud claim to be art, but is content to be beautiful! Is that to be a thing altogether of the past now that we have Art Needlework? Art needlework! It has helped put an end to the patience of the modern worker, and to inspire her too often with ambitions quite beyond her powers of fulfilment.

What one misses in the work of the present day is that reticent and unpretending stitchery, which, thinking to be no more than a labour of loving patience, is really a work of art, better deserving the title than a flaunting floral quilt which goes by the name of "art needlework"--designed apparently to worry the eye by day and to give bad dreams by night to whoever may have the misfortune to sleep under it. Is anyone nowadays modest enough to do work such as the couching in outline in Illustration 90? Yet what distinction there is about it!

EMBROIDERY DESIGN.

Perfect art results only when designer and worker are entirely in sympathy, when the designer knows quite what the worker can do with her materials, and when the worker not only understands what the designer meant, but feels with him. And it is the test of a practical designer that he not only knows the conditions under which his design is to be carried out, but is ready to submit to them.

The distinction here made between designer and embroiderer is not casual, but afore-thought, notwithstanding the division of labour it implies. Enthusiasm has a habit of outrunning reason. Because in some branches of industry subdivision of labour has been carried to absurd excess, it is the fashion to demand in all branches of it the autograph work of one person, which is no less absurd. To try and link together faculties which Nature has for the most part put asunder, is futile.

That designer and worker should be one and the same person is an ideal, but one only very occasionally fulfilled. When that happens (Illustrations 61 and 88) it is well. But the attempt to realise it commonly works out in one of two ways: either a good design is spoilt in the working for want of executive skill on the part of the designer, or good workmanship is spent on poor design, as good, perhaps, as one has any right to expect of a skilled needleworker.

The fact is, you can only make out all the world to be designers by reducing design to what all the world can do. And that is not much. There is a point of view from which it does not amount to design at all.

The study of design forms part of the education of an embroidress, not so much that she may design what she works, but that she may know in the first place what good design is, and, in the second, be equal to the ever-recurring occasion when a design has to be modified or adapted. If, in thus manipulating design not hers, she should discover a faculty of invention, she will want no telling to exercise it. A designer wants no encouragement to design--she designs.

There would be no occasion to insist upon this, were it not for the prevalence at the present moment of the idea that a worker, in whatever art or handicraft, is in artistic duty bound to design whatever she puts hand to do. That is a theory as false as it is unkind; let no embroidress be discouraged by it. Let her, unless she is inwardly impelled to invent, remain content to do good needlework. That is her art. Her business as an artist is to make beautiful things. Co-operation in the making of them is no crime.

And what, then, about originality? Originality is a gift beyond price. But it is not a thing which even the designer should struggle after. It comes, if it is there. There is a revengeful consolation for the pain we suffer from design about us writhing to be up-to-date, in the thought that its contortions tell what pain it cost to do. The birth of beauty is a less agonising travail; and the thing to seek is beauty, not novelty. Whoever planned the lines of the border in Illustration 91, or treated the leafage in Illustration 92, was not trying to be original, but determined to do his best. Artists and workers of individuality and character are themselves, without being so much as aware that originality has gone out of them.

To assume, then, that every needlewoman is, or can ever be, competent to design what she embroiders, is to make very small account of design. How is it possible to take design seriously and yet think it is to be mastered without years of patient study, which few workwomen can or will devote to it? Any cultivated woman may for herself invent (if it is to be called invention) something better worth working than is to be bought ready to work. And that may do for many purposes, so long as it does not claim to be more than it is; but in the case of really important work, to be executed at considerable cost not only of material, but of patient labour, surely it is worth giving serious thought to its design. The scant consideration commonly given to it shows how little the worker is in earnest. Or has she thought? And is she persuaded that her artless spray of flowers, or the ironed-off pattern she has bought, is all that art could be? It would be rude to tell her she was wasting silk! How should she know?

The only way of knowing is to study, to look at good work, old work by preference; it is worth no one's while to praise that unduly. And if in all that is now so readily accessible she finds nothing to admire, nothing which appeals to her, nothing which inspires her, then her case is hopeless. If, on the other hand, she finds only so much as one style of work sympathetic to her, studies that, lets its spirit sink into her, tries to do something worthy of it, then she is on the right road. Measure yourself with the best, not with the common run of work; and if that should put you out of conceit with your own work, no great harm is done; sooner or later you have got to come to a modest opinion of yourself, if ever you are to do even moderate things.

But the "best" above referred to does not necessarily mean the most masterly. The best of a simple kind is not calculated to discourage anyone--rather, it looks as if it must be easy to do that; and in trying to do it you learn how much goes to the doing it. Good design need not be of any great importance or pretensions. It may be quite simple, if only it is right; if the lines are true, the colour harmonious; if it is adapted to its place, to its use and purpose, to execution not only with the needle but in the particular kind of needlework to be employed.

There has of late years been something of a revival of needlework design in schools of art, and some very promising and even most accomplished work has been done; but in many instances, as it seems to me, it is rather design which has been translated into needlework, than design clearly made for execution with the needle. A really appropriate and practical design for embroidery should be schemed not merely with a view to its execution with the needle, but with a view to its execution in a particular stitch or stitches--and possibly by a particular embroidress. To be safe in designing work so minute as that on Illustration 93, one must be sure of the needlewoman who is to execute it.

My reference to old work must not be taken to imply that design should be in imitation of what has been done, or that it should follow on those lines. Design was once upon a time traditional; but the chain of tradition has snapped, and now conscious design must be eclectic--that is to say, one must study old work to see what has been done, and how it has been done, and then do one's own in one's own way. It is at least as foolish to break quite away from what has been done as to tether yourself to it. And in what has been done you will see, not only what is worth doing, but what is not. That, each must judge for herself. For my part, it seems to me the thing best worth doing is ornament. Any way, this much is certain (and you have only to go to a museum to prove it), that there is no need for needleworkers, unless their instinct draws them that way, to take to needle painting, to pictures in silk, or even to flower stitching.

The limitations of embroidery are not so rigidly marked as the boundaries of many another craft. There is little technical difficulty in representing flowers, for example, very naturally--too naturally for any dignified decorative purpose. Embroiderer or embroidery designer will, as a matter of fact, be constantly inspired by flower forms, and silk gives the pure colour of their petals as nearly as may be. But, though the pattern be a veritable flower garden, the embroidress will not forget, to use the happy phrase of William Morris, that she is gardening with silks and gold threads.

Let the needleworker study the work of the needle in preference to that of the brush; let her aim at what stuff and threads will give her, and give more readily than would something else. Let her work according to the needle: take that for her guide, not be misled by what some other tool can do better; do what the needle can do best, and be content with that. That is the way to Art in Needlework, and the surest way.

EMBROIDERY MATERIALS.

Embroidery is not among the things which have to be done, and must be done, therefore, as best one can do them. It is in the nature of a superfluity: the excuse for it is that it is beautiful. It is not worth doing unless it is done well, and in material worth the work done on it. If you are going to spend the time you must spend to do good work, it is worth while using good stuff, foolish to use anything else. The stuff need not be costly, but it should be the best of its kind; and it should be chosen with reference to the work to be done on it, and vice versâ. A mean ground-stuff suggests, if it does not necessitate, its being embroidered all over, ground-work as well as pattern; a worthier one, that it should not be hidden altogether from view; a really beautiful one, that enough of it should be left bare of ornament that its quality may be appreciated.

It goes without saying, that for big, bold stitching a proportionately coarse ground-stuff should be used, and for delicate work, one of finer texture; whether it be linen, woollen cloth, or silk, your purpose will determine.