early as A.D. 1295, St. Paul's had a cushion covered with knotted thread: "pulvinar opertum de albo filo nodato."[1]
Quilting,
too, must not be forgotten here; and a short look at Nos. 727, p. 14, and 786, p. 16, will be sufficient to make us understand how, in hands guided by taste, a work of real, though humble art, may be brought out and shewn upon any article, from a lady's skirt to a gentleman's daily skull-cap, by such a use of the needle.
Crochet, knitting done with linen thread, and in the convents throughout Flanders, as well as the thick kinds of lace wrought there upon the cushion with bobbins, came, under the name of nun's lace, to be everywhere much employed, from the sixteenth century and upwards, for bordering altar-cloths, albs, and every sort of towel required in the celebration of the liturgy. No. 1358, p. 72, is a good example.
Section III.—Tapestry.
Though regarding actual time so very old, still in comparison
with weaving and embroidery, the art of tapestry
is, it would seem, the youngest of the three.
It is neither real weaving, nor true embroidery, but unites in its working those two processes into one. Though wrought in a loom and upon a warp stretched out along its frame, it has no woof thrown across those threads with a shuttle or any like appliance, but its weft is done with many short threads, all variously coloured, and put in by a kind of needle. It is not embroidery, though so very like it, for tapestry is not worked upon what is really a web—having both warp and woof—but upon a series of closely set fine strings.
From the way in which tapestry is spoken of in Holy Writ, we are sure the art must be very old; but if it did not take its first rise in Egypt, we are led by the same authority to conclude that it soon became much and successfully cultivated by the people of that land. The woman in Proverbs vii. 16, says:—"I have woven my bed with cords. I have covered it with painted tapestry, brought from Egypt." While, therefore, in those words we hear how it used to be employed as an article of household furniture among the Israelites, by them are we also told that the Egyptians were the makers.
- ↑ Dugdale, p. 316.
