DOI Artikel:
Strange, Edward F.: Needlework at the Liverpool school of art
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20710#0164
Needlework at Liverpool
NEEDLEWORK AT THE LIVER- restore something of its ancient worth and dignity
POOL SCHOOL OF ART. BY to the time-honoured industry, to invest it with
EDWARD F. STRANGE. new forms and new uses, and to place it once
again on the high-road to its ancient office.
Of all the handicrafts of old time, none is We have, nowadays, little occasion—perhaps
more pleasant and more beautiful than the most unhappily, little time—for the making of tapestry
ancient study of needlework, none better fitted, hangings. The Church is once again demanding,
as Adrian Poyntz put it some three hundred years and to some extent receiving, the services of skilled
ago, to "sattisfy the gentle mindes of vertuous needlewomen. But secular employment abounds ;
women." Once it was a great and noble occu- and the finely-furnished house offers large and
pation, an essential of all completed education, generous opportunities for good and artistic work,
a means of recording the
triumphs of war and of
the chase, of displaying by-
gone histories and familiar
moralities in a convenient
manner which added sub-
stantially to comfort if not
to edification. From the
great achievements of
tapestry—the epic period
of the craft—it declined,
by way of the adornment
of chasuble, cope, and altar
frontal; and further, but
still pleasantly, by that of
the making of lace and
book-binding, to the
samplers and needlework
imitations of pictures of the
eighteenth and early nine-
teenth centuries; and again
to the crochet and tatting
of the early Victorian age ;
preserving even at this
lowest level an uncommon
amount of unintelligent
ingenuity and misapplied
purpose. It has remained
r r . embroidered table cloth designed and executed
for our own generation to by Gwendolen parry
147
NEEDLEWORK AT THE LIVER- restore something of its ancient worth and dignity
POOL SCHOOL OF ART. BY to the time-honoured industry, to invest it with
EDWARD F. STRANGE. new forms and new uses, and to place it once
again on the high-road to its ancient office.
Of all the handicrafts of old time, none is We have, nowadays, little occasion—perhaps
more pleasant and more beautiful than the most unhappily, little time—for the making of tapestry
ancient study of needlework, none better fitted, hangings. The Church is once again demanding,
as Adrian Poyntz put it some three hundred years and to some extent receiving, the services of skilled
ago, to "sattisfy the gentle mindes of vertuous needlewomen. But secular employment abounds ;
women." Once it was a great and noble occu- and the finely-furnished house offers large and
pation, an essential of all completed education, generous opportunities for good and artistic work,
a means of recording the
triumphs of war and of
the chase, of displaying by-
gone histories and familiar
moralities in a convenient
manner which added sub-
stantially to comfort if not
to edification. From the
great achievements of
tapestry—the epic period
of the craft—it declined,
by way of the adornment
of chasuble, cope, and altar
frontal; and further, but
still pleasantly, by that of
the making of lace and
book-binding, to the
samplers and needlework
imitations of pictures of the
eighteenth and early nine-
teenth centuries; and again
to the crochet and tatting
of the early Victorian age ;
preserving even at this
lowest level an uncommon
amount of unintelligent
ingenuity and misapplied
purpose. It has remained
r r . embroidered table cloth designed and executed
for our own generation to by Gwendolen parry
147