Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving | Page 9

in the ways in which this may be
carried out.
[Illustration: Fig. 16.]
[Illustration: Fig. 17.]
Another method would be to plan a continuous flowing line with forms
branching out on one side or on both. Figs. 18 and 19 are border
designs, for which purpose this arrangement is often used, though it can
also well form an all-over pattern; sometimes these lines used over a
surface are made to cross each other, tartan wise, by running in two
directions, producing an apparently complicated design by very simple
means.
[Illustration: Figs. 18 and 19.]
[Illustration: Fig. 20.]
Designs may be planned on the counterchange principle. This is a
system of mass designing that involves the problem of making a pattern
out of one shape, continually repeated, and fitting into itself in such a
way as to leave no interstices. The simplest example of this is to be
found in the chess board, and it will easily be seen that a great number
of shapes might be used instead of the square. Fig. 20 is an example of
a counterchange design carried out in inlay; for this method of work
counterchange is very suitable. On reference to the chapter upon this
work another example will be found (page 181). Fig. 21 illustrates the
same principle, further complicated by the repetition of the form in
three directions instead of in two only.
[Illustration: Fig. 21.]

A method of further enriching a straightforward pattern, covering a
plain surface, is to work a subsidiary pattern upon the background. This
is usually of a monotonous and formal character in order not to clash
with the primary decoration, though this relationship may sometimes be
found reversed. It has the appearance of being some decoration
belonging to the ground rather than to the primary pattern; in its
simplest form it appears as a mere repeating dot or a lattice (see fig. 22),
but it may be so elaborated as to cover with an intricate design every
portion of the exposed ground not decorated with the main pattern.
Many other distinct kinds of work might be mentioned, such as
needlework pictures, the story-telling embroideries that can be made so
particularly attractive. Embroidered landscapes, formal gardens,
mysterious woods, views of towns and palaces, are, if rightly treated,
very fine. In order to learn the way to work such subjects we must go to
the XVIth and XVIIth century petit point pictures, and to the detail in
fine tapestries. The wrong method of going to work is to imitate the
effect sought after by the painter.
[Illustration: Fig. 22.]
It is a mistake in embroidery design to be too naturalistic. In painting it
may be the especial aim to exactly imitate nature, but here are wanted
embroidery flowers, animals and figures, possessing the character and
likeness of the things represented, but in no way trying to make us
believe that they are real. The semblance of a bumble bee crawling
upon the tea cloth gives a hardly pleasant sensation and much savours
of the practical joke, which is seldom in good taste; the needle,
however, adds convention to almost anything, and will usually manage
the bee all right unless the worker goes out of the way to add a shadow
and a high light. Such things as perspective, light and shade or
modelling of form, should all be very much simplified if not avoided,
for embroidery conforms to the requirements of decoration and must
not falsify the surface that it ornaments. Shading is made use of in
order to give more variety to, and exhibit the beauty of, colour by
means of gradation, to explain more clearly the design, and so on; it is
not employed for the purpose of fixing the lighting of the composition

from one point by means of systematically adjusted light and shade, or
of making a form stand out so realistically as to almost project from the
background.
In avoiding too much resemblance to natural forms it is not necessary
to make things ugly; a conventional flower implies no unmeaning
straightness or impossible curve, it may keep all its interesting
characteristics, but it has to obey other requirements specially
necessary in the particular design. Another point to be noted is that,
since there is freedom of choice of flowers and other objects, only those
perfect and well-formed should be chosen; all accidents of growth and
disease may, happily, be omitted; if anything of this kind is put in it
helps to give the naturalistic look which is to be avoided. Both sides of
a leaf should match, though it may happen in nature, through
misfortune, that one is deformed and small.
In figure work, which, though ambitious, is one of the most interesting
kinds of embroidery, the figures, like all other things, must be treated
with a