10

HISTORY OF LACK.

CHAPTEK ri.

OUTWORK.

“ Kt lor8, sous vos lucis h mille fenestrages,llaiseuls et poinct couppe's et tous vos clairs ouvrages.”

Jean Godard, 1588.

It is from that open-work embroidery which in the sixteenthcentury came into such universal use that we must derive theorigin of lace, and, in order to work out the subject, trace itthrough all its gradations.

This embroidery, though comprising a wide variety of decora-tion, went bv the general name of outwork.

The fashion of adorning linen has prevailed from the earliesttimes. Either the edges were worked in close embroidery—thethreads drawn and fashioned with a needle in various forms—or theends of the cloth unravelled and plaited with geometric precision.

To judge from the description of the linen grave-clothes of St.Cuthbert, as given by an eye-witness 1 to his disinterment in thetwelfth century, they were ornamented in a manner similar tothat we have described. “ There had been,” says the chronicler,“ put over him a sheet .... this sheet had a fringe of linenthread of a finger’s length; upon its sides and ends were wovena border of projecting workmanship fabricated of the thread itself,bearing the figures of birds and beasts, so arranged that betweenevery two pairs there were interwoven among them the repre-sentation of a branching tree which divides the figures. Thistree, so tastefully depicted, appears to be putting forth its leaves,”Ac. There can be no doubt that this sheet, for many centuriespreserved in the cathedral church of Durham, was a specimenof drawn or cut w'ork, which, though later it came into generaluse, was at an early period of our history alone used for ecclesias-tical purposes, and an art which was, till the dissolution ofmonasteries, looked upon as a church secret.

1 Translated from the “ Libellus do Admirandis beati Cuthbcrti Miraculis,” ofReginald, monk of Durham, by Rev. J. Rain. Durham, 1855.