the
whole together. The old "quilting" work was made in tiny panels,
illustrating shields and other heraldic devices, and had a surface as
fine as carved ivory. When, as in the case of one sample at South
Kensington, the quilt is additionally embroidered with beautiful fine
floss silk flowers, the effect is very lovely.

VIII

STUART PICTURES

VIII

STUART PICTURES

"Petit point"--"Stump work"--Royalistic symbols.

Though these pictures bear the name of Stuart, many of them are
undoubtedly Tudor. The earliest (if the evidence of costume is of any
value) must have been worked in Elizabeth's time, but as the
authenticated specimens date only from the reign of James I. they are
known as Stuart. The only pictures worked in the early days of this art
were worked in petit-point, the tiny stitch which imitated tapestry, and
very quaint are the specimens left to us. The favourite themes were
entirely pagan. Gods and goddesses disported themselves among leafy
trees. Cupid lightly shot his arrows, the woods were inhabited by an
unknown flora and fauna which seem all its own. The very dogs seem to be
a different species, having more likeness to the china dogs of the
spotted or liver and white variety which the Staffordshire potters made
at the beginning of our own century. Innumerable little castles were
perched in perfectly inaccessible positions on towering crags, and the
laws of perspective were generally conspicuous by their absence. The sun
in those days was a very visible body, and apparently delightful to
work, no Stuart picture being without one; the rolling clouds oftentimes
are confused with the convoluted body of the caterpillar, little
difference being made in the design. The birds were of very brilliant
plumage, and the world was evidently a very gay and sportive place when
these fair ladies spent their leisure over this embroidery! These early
pictures seldom show the religious feeling that afterwards slowly worked
its way through the Stuart days (though, perhaps, disguised under
royalistic symbolism), until in the reign of Queen Anne it became more
or less a fashion, in pictorial needle-craft. It burst out afresh in the
early nineteenth century and became an absolute obsession of the early
Victorian Berlin-wool workers with most disastrous results to both
design and work.

Until the end of Charles I.'s reign needlework pictures must have been
scarce, as we find one enumerated in the inv