Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 1.djvu/351

Rh Another figured in Hoare's Wiltshire, belonging to St. Thomas's church, Salisbury. And this list also, the reader will most likely be able, from his own observation, to augment.

It remains merely to offer an explanation of the mode by which this kind of decoration was effected.

In the first place let it be noted, that velvet, having a shifting surface, it necessarily becomes one of the most difficult of materials to work upon. No doubt the early embroideresses fully experienced the inconvenience, for they did not, at least in all the examples to which my attention has been directed, attempt a labour that would have been both perplexing and, certainly to the extent they followed it, insuperable. All their needlework is first done upon some other material (en raport), such as linen, canvass, silk, or vellum, and their operations (appliquées) subsequently sewn upon the velvet. This was simply the universal method adopted to produce these very beautiful specimens of manual ingenuity that now elicit our admiration. A more particular account, however, shall be given, for knowing the process by which Early English embroidery