Of such work as this "opus pectineum," or comb-drawn, wrought by English women here at home, we have several specimens in this collection, pp. 24, 33, 38, &c.
Foreign ones are plentifully represented in the many samples of such webs from Germany, especially from Cologne, pp. 61, 62, 63, &c.
Likely is it that Helisend, the bold young lady from the south of England, and one of the waiting maids to the English Maud, queen of David, king of Scotland, circa A.D. 1150, got, from her cunning in such work, the reputation of being so skilful in weaving and church-embroidery:—"operis texturæ scientia purpuraria nobilis extiterat, et aurifrixoria artificiosæ compositionis peroptima super omnes Angliæ mulieres tunc temporis principaliter enituerat."[1]
Our mediæval countrywomen were so quick at the needle that they could make their embroidery look as if it had been done in the loom—really woven. Not long ago, a shred of crimson cendal, figured in gold and silver thread with a knight on horseback, armed as of the latter time of Edward I., was shown us. At the moment we took the mounted warrior to have been, not hand-worked, but woven, so flat, so even was every thread. Looking at it however through a glass and turning it about, we found it to have been unmistakably embroidered by the finger in such a way that the stitches for laying down upon the surface, and not drawing through the gold threads and thus saving expense, were carried right into the canvas lining at the back of this thin silk. After this same manner was really done, to our thinking, all the design, both before and behind upon that fine English-wrought chasuble, No. 673, p. 5.
At the latter end of the thirteenth century our women struck out for themselves a new way of embroidery. Without leaving aside the old and usual "opus plumarium," or feather-stitch, they mixed it with a new style, both of needle-work and mechanism. So beautiful and telling was the novel method deemed abroad, that it won for itself from admiring Christendom the complimentary appellation of "opus Anglicum," or English work. In what its peculiarity consisted has long been a question and a puzzle among foreign archæological writers; and a living one of eminence, the Canon Voisin, vicar general to the bishop of Tournai, while noticing a cope of English work given to that church, says:—"Il serait curieux de savoir quelle broderie ou quel tissu on designait sous le nom de opus Anglicum."[2]
