Page:Arts & Crafts Essays.djvu/435

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Design.

"… with her neeld composes
Nature's own shape, of bud, bird, branch, or berry,
That even Art sisters the natural roses."

For, after all, modern design should be as the old—living thought, artfully expressed: fancy that has taken fair shapes. And needlework is still a pictorial art that requires a real artist to direct the design, a real artist to ply the needle. Given these, and our needlework can be as full of story as the Bayeux tapestry, as full of imagery as the Syon Cope, and better drawn. The charm of old embroidery lies in this, that it clothes current thought in current shapes. It meant something to the workers, and to the man in the street for whom it was done. And for our work to gain the same sensibility, the same range of appeal, the same human interest, we must employ the same means. We must clothe modern ideas

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