Committee of Examination will be
attractively exhibited without expense to the artist, but in case
of sale a commission of 10 per cent will be charged upon the price
received.

There was good teaching from the first, but very independent judgment,
and it was not long before the more liberal and less chastened American
mind followed national impulses. Why, said the practical American, shall
we spend time and effort in doing things which are not adequate in final
effect to the labor and cost we bestow upon them, and which do not
really accord with costly surroundings, and, in addition to these
detriments, can and probably will be eaten by moths when all is done?
The result of this interrogative reasoning was an immediate resort to
satins and silks and flosses, wherewith larger and more important things
than tidies were created--lambrequins, hangings, bedspreads, screens,
and many other furnishings, all wrought in exquisite flosses, and more
or less beautiful in color.

The institution of this Society of Decorative Art was in every respect a
timely and popular movement. It followed the example of the English
Society in making needlework the chief object of instruction. Our
artists became interested in the matter of design, as the English
artists had been, and under their influence the scope of embroidery was
much enlarged. I remember the first contribution which indicated
original talent was a piece of needlework by Mrs. W. S. Hoyt of Pelham,
which was peculiarly ingenious, making a curious link between the
cross-stitch tapestries of the German school and the woven tapestries of
France. This needlework was done upon a fabric which imitated the corded
texture of tapestries, and was stamped in a design which carried the
color and idea of a tapestry background. Upon this surface Mrs. Hoyt had
drawn a group of figures in mediaeval costumes, afterward working them in
single cross-stitch over the ribs produced by the filling threads of the
fabric. The figures and costumes were done in faded tints which
harmonized with the background, the stitches keeping the general effect
of surface in the fabric. It will be seen that the result was extremely
like that of a tapestry of the fifteenth century. This was followed by
an exhibit of various landscape pictures of Mrs. Holmes of Boston, a
daughter-in-law of the poet and writer. Mrs. Holmes had chosen silks and
bits of weavings for her medium, using them as a painter uses