ROMANCE OF TAPESTRY

Evening Star, Issue 21748, 16 June 1934, Page 24

ROMANCE OF TAPESTRY

It is interesting and rather amusing to reflect that the great needlework revival which has taken place all over the world during the last two or three years owes its origin at least in part to the post-war trade depression and “ hard-times,” (says an exchange). When some historian of the future casts a backward eye on the social life of the years following the Great War, remarks a contemporary writer, he will see first the hectic ten years of running about w’hen nobody stayed at home —the era which produced he “ flapper ” and the night club and the rauch-talkcd-about younger generation and their dancing mothers. Then, about 1928, he will see how the pendulum began to swing in the other direction' —the home was rediscovered as a place in which to stay occasionally, and not merely a refuge; when there was nowhere else to go. And then our historian will probably remark that with the great financial crash, of 1929 began a period in which the hostess, instead of taking her dinner guests on to a theatre and a night club afterwards, offered them contract or backgammon, or even the simple delights of anagrams. Simultaneously the British woman once more took up her needle which she had dropped some ten years before, and with fresh delight discovered the ancient fascination of needle-point. She was followed by the women of New Zealand as by those in other rem'ote parts of the Empire, with the result that here as elsewhere there has lately been a veritable renaissance of the art. Everywhere you see women patiently working stitches that were old when the Crusaders, threw their bright banners to the wind and fared forth valiantly against the infidel. And with what pride does the woman of to-day regard the finished piece of work which is used to cover the.seat or back of a chair, the top of a footstool or bench, or used in a purely decorative manner as a bell pull. Although more and more women every day take up .this work, not many perhaps realise that when they take the first simple half-stitch, which is the primary step, they have in their hands, whichdrnow so well how to drive a car or swing a golf club, a direct link with the fabulous past. For the tapestry patterns of to-day, ■the work of which is simplified by modern methods, arc nevertheless often exact reproductions of the tapestries of 700 and 800 years ago which have become part of the artistic glory of Franco.; and the stitches employed are the same as those worked by the hands that waved farewell to the knights of the Middle Ages from the towers of some Gothic castle.

There is nothing more fascinating and glamorous than the history of tapestry. The famous tapestries which are to be seen in the museums of the Continent and. this country are the living, day-by-day record of great deeds of the time. Those ■of the Renaissance . are alive with the naivete, the mysticism, the fantasy left t from the Middle Ages.