Sini TuuliaAm browsing Art In Needlework from 1900, and the foreword is talking about the uses of embroidery, and holy shit, this might be the nicest thing an Edwardian writer has said about anyone 'foreign' in anything I've read:
"In the case of a material in itself unsightly, the one course is to cover it entirely with stitching, as did the Persian and other untireable people of the East."
Untireable people of the East. Wow. That's almost pretty alright! 😂
Written by Lewis F. Day and Mary Buckle. It's chock full of photos of all kinds of exquisite examples of embroidery from all over, so I suppose at least one of them must have been suitably impressed, enough to forget to be as racist as they usually would be!
I've previously only sort of leafed through this one, as it's hundreds of pages long and chock full of pictures, which is why I've only now noticed how charming it is:
"One should employ canvas stitch only where there is no objection to a line which keeps step with the canvas ; then there is a positive charm (for frank people at least) in the frank confession of the way the work is done.
There are many degrees in the frankness with which this convention has been accepted, according perhaps to the coarseness of the canvas ground, perhaps to the personality of the worker. The animal forms at the top of Illustration 6 are uncompromisingly square."
Uncompromisingly square! 😆
Oh and here's a link, also:
https://archive.org/details/artinneedleworkb00dayliala/artinneedleworkb00dayliala/mode/2up
Ohh, they are upset about the nomenclature of stitches. It's extremely endearing to me, because same:
"HERRING-BONE is the name by which it is customary to distinguish a variety of stitches somewhat resembling the spine of a fish such as the herring. It would be simpler to describe them as "fish-bone" but that term has been appropriated to describe a particular variety of it. One would have thought it more convenient to use fish for the generic term, and a particular fish for the specific. However, it saves confusion to use names as far as possible in their accepted sense."
The sass! 😂
"Ordinary herring-bone is such a familiar stitch that the necessity of describing it is rather a matter of literary consistency than of practical importance."
I could literally quote this entire book, apparently. It delights me! Literary consistency! They went ahead and described it, as they should!