Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III STUART PERIOD Decadence in design of embroidery during the reign of James I. —Religious subjects in vogue.—The influence of tapestry upon the needlework picture.—Royalist influence upon subjects of the needlework picture. — John Taylor's " The Needle's Excellency."—Pattern Book for Embroidery, 1632, published by Richard Shorleyker.—Peter Stent's catalogue.— Beadwork.—Needlework miniatures.—Badges of Charles I, worked in his own hair.—Inventory of Dame Anne Sherley. —The needlework of Lady Betty Paulet.—The importance of needlework in the education of women during the Stuart period.—The embroideries attributed to Little Gidding.— Descriptive terms for various stitches.—Purl embroidery.— Spangles. — Embroidered books. — Embroidered gloves. — Crewel hangings of the seventeenth century. MBROIDERY during the seventeenth century failed to maintain the level of earlier periods in design, though the technical cleverness of some of the raised work of the period is remarkable, and perhaps marks the highest achievement of English craftsmanship after the great period of ecclesiastical embroidery. The characteristic patterns of Elizabethan work survive her reign, but they gradually degenerate into a stiffness and sameness which at last finds expression in some of the ugliest and most trivial work that ever occupied the needle. The exceptions to this degeneration are the boldly drawn and effective designs for crewel embroidery upon curtains and hangings, and some quilted work with embroidered patterns in yellow silk, derived originally from oriental sources, of which mention is found very early in the seventeenth century.1 The latter was often made in small panels, illustrating shields and other heraldic devices, and was also used for cotton and linen garments; sometimes th...