International studio (18.1902/1903)

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"TABLE MAT'

DESIGNED BY ANN MACBETH
EMBRCHDERED BY CLARA BENTLEY

of the needle is not soteiy conSned to the manu-
facture, or even the decoration, of garments, and
in the hand of the woman it makes its appeal in
poetry and has its piace in art. As the plough to
the peasant or the pen to the writer, so the needle
lives in our sentiments as a personal effect of the
woman—part of her physical beiongings, as it were,
and without which life wouid be incomplete, and
the world a loser of a form of art which
is aimost coeval with the existence of
mankind. And the needie bears with it
a dignity of iabour that, if it be not greater
than the plough, is yet one that puts it into
the same category of absoiute necessities.
For man, if he cannot iive without the
piough, can equally as iittie do without the
iabour of the needie. And, to make an-
other comparison, much of the poetry
which comes from the pen is not for
a moment to be compared with those
harmonies of form and cofour which owe
their origin to the art of embroidery—the
art by instinct of the woman. And this
instinct, whethef primitive or inherited,
remains with some women as a constant
quantity — an artistic expression ever
seeking outlet. And among such artists
is Miss Ann Macbeth, whose works iflus-
trate this article. With no one is the
association of the needfe and the hand
more close or the resufts more precious
than with her, and she may fairfy be said
to befong to that class of workers who cfaim

companionship with Penefope and hnd them-
selves at home in the company of those
Mediteval artists, whether ecclesiastical or lay,
whose needles have made history and whose
efforts are to be met with in the sacristy of the
church, among the treasures of the castie and
house, or more fuiiy given to the world as
forming part of the coiiections of our various
museums. But we have in these iatter days
iost sight somewhat of that traditionai use of
the needie which in not very remote days
brought a personal eiement to bear upon the
beauty of househoid surroundings. The do-
mestic suppiy that existed so fruitfulfy has been
supplanted by the art neediework emporium.
Formerly no young girl's education was judged
to be compieted untii she had worked her sampler
and had thus added her share to the accepted
tradition of neediework, and carried it a generation
farther on. For the sampler was a purely tradi-
tional piece of art needlework, whose stitches and
ornament were a heritage transmitted from mother
to daughter; it was rareiy ugly, oftentimes was
very beautiful, and bore on its face a standard of
artistic value that makes it to-day one of the
sought-for treasures of the antique collector. And
the skiif thus attained by the young worker was
an abiding one, and her needie found employ-
ment in a hundred ways that to-day are either

TABLE MAT ]N SAT]N'

DES]GNED BY ANN MACBETH
EMBROJDERED BY CLARA BENTLEY

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