tailieunhanh - NEEDLEWORK AS ART

In the Preface to the "Handbook of Art Needlework," which I edited for the Royal School at South Kensington in 1880, I undertook to write a second part, to be devoted to design, colour, and the common-sense modes of treating decorative art, as applied especially to embroidered hangings, furniture, | NEEDLEWORK AS ART BY LADY M. ALFORD Illustration London SAMPSON LOW MARSTON SEARLE AND RIVINGTON CROWN BUILDINGS 188 FLEET STREET. 1886. _All rights LONDON PRINTED BY GILBERT AND RIVINGTON LIMITED ST. JOHN S SQUARE. Illustration TELEMACHUS PENELOPE DEDICATED BY PERMISSION TO THE QUEEN. TO THE QUEEN. Your Majesty s most gracious acceptance of the Dedication of my book on Needlework as Art casts a light upon the subject that shows its worthiness and my inability to do it justice. Still I hope I may fill a gap in the artistic literature of our day and I venture to lay my work at your Majesty s feet with loyal MARIAN M. ALFORD. PREFACE In the Preface to the Handbook of Art Needlework which I edited for the Royal School at South Kensington in 1880 I undertook to write a second part to be devoted to design colour and the common-sense modes of treating decorative art as applied especially to embroidered hangings furniture dress and the smaller objects of luxury. Circumstances have since then obliged me to reconsider this intention and I have found it more practicable to cast the information which I have collected from Eastern and Western sources into the form of a separate work which in no way supersedes or interferes with the technical instruction supposed to be conveyed in a handbook. I have found so much amusement in learning for myself the history of the art of embroidery and in tracing the beginnings and the interchanges of national schools that I cannot but hope that I may excite a similar interest in some of my readers and so induce those who are capable to help and lift it to a higher place than it has been allowed in these latter days to occupy. If I have given too important a position to the art of needlework I would observe that while I have been writing decorative embroidery has come to the front and is at this moment one of the hobbies of the day and I would point out that it contains in itself all the necessary .