ginated
at the Edgewater Tapestry Looms.

_Courtesy of the Edgewater Tapestry Looms_]

The mechanical and commercial effect of this stitchery discouraged its
use; its printed patterns and the regularity of its counted stitches
giving neither provocation nor scope to originality of thought or
design. This was not the fault of the stitch itself, since
"cross-stitch" was the first form of needle decoration. It is, in fact,
the A B C of all decorative stitchery, the method evolved by all
primitive races except the American Indian. It followed, more or less
closely, the development of the art of weaving. When this had passed
from the weaving together of osiers into mats or baskets, and had
reached the stage of the weaving of hair and vegetable fiber into cloth,
the decoration of such cloth with independent colored fiber was the next
step in the creation of values, and, naturally, the form of decorative
stitches followed the lines of weaving. Simple as was its evolution, and
its preliminary use, cross-stitch has a past which entitles it to
reverence. With many races it has remained a habitual form of
expression, and, as in Moorish and Algerian work, is carried to a
refinement of beauty which would seem beyond so simple a method. It has
given form to a lasting style of design, to geometrical borders, which
have survived races and periods of history, and still remain an
underlying part of the world of decorative linens.

It is interesting to note that it had no place in aboriginal embroidery,
and marks its creation as following the art of weaving. It is a long
step from this traditional past of its origin to the short past of the
stitchery of America, where the little fingers of small Puritan maids
followed the lines evolved by the generations of the earlier world.

CHAPTER VI -- REVIVAL OF EMBROIDERY, AND THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY OF
DECORATIVE ART

When French needlework had had its day, and the evanescent life of
Berlin woolwork had passed, for a period of half a century needlework
ceased to flourish in America. Indeed, the art seemed to have died out
root and branch, and only necessary and utilitarian needlework was
practiced. It seems strange, after all the wonderful triumphs of the
needle in earlier years, that for the succeeding half or three-quarters
of a century needlework as an art should actually have ceased to be. It
had died, branch and stem and root, vanished as if it had never been.
During at leas