tambour-frame and
needle;[613] but in 1707 the "Broiderers' Company," we presume, found
that the Indian manufactures were engrossing the market, and a fresh
statute was obtained, forbidding the importation from India of any
wrought material. This cruel prohibition carried its own punishment.
The Indian trade was ours, and we might have adapted and assimilated
the Indian taste for design. We might have brought over men and women
great in their most ancient craft, and so produced the most splendid
Indo-English School. The Portuguese at least sent out their own silks
and satins to be worked at Goa; _we_ threw away our chance, and signed
the death-warrant of our art.

About the middle of the last century, several ladies, notably Miss
Linwood, Miss Moritt, of Rokeby, and Mrs. Delany, copied pictures in
worsteds. Some of these are wonderfully clever and even very pretty,
but they are rather a painful effort of pictorial art under
difficulties, than legitimate embroideries. These pictures would have
served the purpose of decoration better as medallions in the centres
of arabesque panels, than framed and glazed in imitation of oil
paintings. Some of the followers of this school produced works that
are shocking to all artistic sense, especially as seen now, when the
moths have spoiled them. They can only be classed with such abortive
attempts at decoration as glass cases filled with decayed stuffed
birds, and vases of faded and broken wax flowers.

I may record with praise the efforts of Mrs. Pawsey,[614] a lady who
started a school of needlework at Aylesbury. She was patronized by
Queen Charlotte; and for her she worked the beautiful bed at Hampton
Court, of purple satin, with wreaths of flowers in crewels touched up
with silk, which look as if they might have been copied from the
flower-pieces of a Dutch master. The execution is very fine, and
reminds one of the best French work of the same period. Mrs. Pawsey
taught and helped ladies to embroider in silk and chenille, as well as
crewels, and in many country houses we can recognize specimens of her
style; usually on screens worked in silk and chenille, with bunches of
flowers in vases or baskets, artistically designed.

This was our last attempt at excellence, immediately followed by the
total collapse of our decorative needlework, and the advent of the
Berlin wool patterns.

POSTSCRIPT.

A postscript to this chapter will perhaps be acceptable to those who
have taken