we meet with such notices as this:—"capæ opere plumario factæ id est, brudatæ."
This term was given to embroidery needlework because the stitches were laid down never across but longwise, and so put together that they seemed to overlap one another like the feathers in the plumage of a bird. Not inaptly then was this style called "feather-stitch" work, in contra-*distinction to that done in cross and tent stitch, or the "cushion-style," as we shall, a little further on, have occasion to notice next.
Among the many specimens here done in feather-stitch, in all ages, we would especially instance No. 84, p. 3.
The "opus pulvinarium," or "cushion style," was that sort of embroidery like the present so-called Berlin-work. As now, so then it was done in the same stitchery, with pretty much the same materials, and put if not always, at least often, to the same purpose of being used for cushions, upon which to sit or to kneel in church, or uphold the mass-*book at the altar; hence its name of "cushion-style." In working it, silken thread is known to have been often used. Among other specimens, and in silk, the rare and beautiful liturgical cushion of a date corresponding to the London inventory, is to be seen here, No. 1324, p. 59. Being so well adapted for working heraldry, from an early period till now, this stitch has been mostly used for the purpose; and the emblazoned orphreys, like the narrow hem on the Syon cope, are wrought in it.
The oldest, the most elaborate, the best known sample in the world, and what to us is more interesting still from being in reality not French but English needlework, is the so-called, but misnamed, Bayeux tapestry, a shred of which is in this collection, No. 675, p. 6. Of all this more anon, § IV.
The "opus pectineum" was a kind of woven-work imitative of embroidery, and used as such, in truth, about which we have a description in the Dictionary of the Londoner, John Garland, who thus speaks of the process: "Textrices ducunt pectines cum trama quæ trahitur a spola et pano," &c.[1] From this use of a comb-like instrument—"pecten"—in the manufacture the work itself received the distinctive appellation of "pectineum," or comb-wrought. Before John Garland forsook England for France, to teach a school there, he must have often seen, while at home, his countrywomen sitting down to such an occupation; and the "amictus de dono dominæ Kathærinæ de Lovell de opere pectineo,"[2] may perhaps have been the doing of that same lady's own hands.
