was a matter
which, M. Lefebure points out, received close attention from the artists
of the Middle Ages. Many undertook long journeys to obtain the more
famous recipes, which they filed, subsequently adding to and correcting
them as experience dictated. Nor were great artists above making and
supplying designs for embroidery. Raphael made designs for Francis I.,
and Boucher for Louis XV.; and in the Ambras collection at Vienna is a
superb set of sacerdotal robes from designs by the brothers Van Eyck and
their pupils. Early in the sixteenth century books of embroidery designs
were produced, and their success was so great that in a few years French,
German, Italian, Flemish, and English publishers spread broadcast books
of design made by their best engravers. In the same century, in order to
give the designers opportunity of studying directly from nature, Jean
Robin opened a garden with conservatories, in which he cultivated strange
varieties of plants then but little known in our latitudes. The rich
brocades and brocadelles of the time are characterized by the
introduction of large flowery patterns, with pomegranates and other
fruits with fine foliage.

The second part of M. Lefebure's book is devoted to the history of lace,
and though some may not find it quite as interesting as the earlier
portion it will more than repay perusal; and those who still work in this
delicate and fanciful art will find many valuable suggestions in it, as
well as a large number of exceedingly beautiful designs. Compared to
embroidery, lace seems comparatively modern. M. Lefebure and Mr. Alan
Cole tell us that there is no reliable or documentary evidence to prove
the existence of lace before the fifteenth century. Of course in the
East, light tissues, such as gauzes, muslins, and nets, were made at very
early times, and were used as veils and scarfs after the manner of
subsequent laces, and women enriched them with some sort of embroidery,
or varied the openness of them by here and there drawing out threads.
The threads of fringes seem also to have been plaited and knotted
together, and the borders of one of the many fashions of Roman toga were
of open reticulated weaving. The Egyptian Museum at the Louvre has a
curious network embellished with glass beads; and the monk Reginald, who
took part in opening the tomb of St. Cuthbert at Durham in the twelfth
century, writes that the Saint's shroud had a fringe of linen threads an
inch