Identifier: needleworkasart00alfo (find matches)
Title: Needlework as art
Year: 1886 (1880s)
Authors: Alford, Marianne Margaret Compton Cust, Viscountess, 1817-1888
Subjects: Embroidery Needlework
Publisher: London, S. Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington
Contributing Library: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute Library

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Jeremiah, vol. i. p. 319). 1 Scandinavian art became strongly tinctured with that of Byzantium.The Varangian Guards were, probably, answerable for this, by theirintercourse between Greece and their native land, which lasted somany centuries. There have come down to us, as witnesses of thisintercourse, many coins and much jewellery, in which all that isOriental in its style has been leavened by its passage through Byzantineand Romanesque channels. Gibbon, writing of this period, says : Thehabits of pilgrimage and piracy had approximated the countries of theearth (see Gibbons Decline and Fall, chap. lv.). Greek embroidered patterns and Greek forms of dress still linger inIceland. There was lately brought to England a brides dress, whichmight have belonged to the Greek wife of a Varangian guardsman.It is embroidered with a border in gold of the classical honeysucklepattern; and the bridal wreath of gilt metal flowers might, from itsstyle, be supposed to have been taken from a Greek tomb.
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Style. 41 into Rome, as they had long done into the Greek islands,by the Red Sea or by land through Tyre. Ezekiel (590b.c.) mentions the Indian trade through Aden. Theo-doras dress has a deep border of gold, embroideredwith classical warriors pursuing each other with swords.1Works enriched with precious stones and pearls nowappear for the first time in European art, and testify toits Oriental impress. The Byzantine Christian style was essentially the artof mosaic. Its patterns for architecture or dress, easilysquare themselves into little compartments, suggestingthe stitches of counted embroideries ( opus pulvi-narium ). In the beginning of the fourth century, when Greekinfluence was still languishing, we may date the com-mencement of ecclesiastical art. It was a new birth, andhad to struggle through an infancy of nearly 800 years,ienorine, or unconscious of all rules of drawing, colour-ine, and design. Outlines filled in with flat surfaces ofcolours represented again the art of paint

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