Page:Arts & Crafts Essays.djvu/383

 eminently possessed by hand-spun and hand-woven linen, which, with its rounded and separate thread, and the creamy tint of its partial bleaching, made an ideal ground for embroidery. Or if silk were preferred, the silks of past centuries were at once thick, firm, soft and pure, quite free from the dress or artificial thickening, by whose aid a silk nowadays tries to look rich when it is not. The oatmeal cloth, diagonal cloth, cotton-backed satin, velveteen and plush, so much used now, are very inferior materials as grounds for needlework to the hand-loom linens and silks on which so large a part of the old embroidery remaining to us was worked. And so very much of the beauty of the embroidery depends on the appropriateness of the material. Cloth, serge, and plush are not appropriate; embroidery 359