y another of like character.

[Illustration: THE WINGED MOON

Designed by Dora Wheeler and executed in needle-woven tapestry by The
Associated Artists, 1883.]

Then one day appeared Mrs. Langtry in her then radiance of beauty,
insisting upon a conference with me upon the production of a set of
bed-hangings which were intended for the astonishment of the London
world and to overshadow all the modest and schooled productions of the
Kensington, when she herself should be the proud exhibitor. She looked
at all the beautiful things we had done and were doing, and admired and
approved, but still she wanted "something different, something unusual."
I suggested a canopy of our strong, gauze-like, creamy silk
bolting-cloth, the tissue used in flour mills for sifting the superfine
flour. I explained that the canopy could be crosses on the under side
with loops of full-blown, sunset-colored roses, and the hanging border
heaped with them. That there might be a coverlet of bolting-cloth lined
with the delicatest shade of rose-pink satin, sprinkled plentifully with
rose petals fallen from the wreaths above. This idea satisfied the
pretty lady, who seemed to find great pleasure in the range of our
exhibits, our designs and our workrooms, and when her order was
completed, she was triumphantly satisfied with its beauty and
unusualness. The scattered petals were true portraits done from nature,
and looked as though they could be shaken off at any minute. I came to
see much of this beautiful specimen of womanhood, who played her part in
the eyes of the world; and of things of more lasting importance than her
somewhat ephemeral career, I should be tempted to tell amusing
conclusions. She was an Oriental butterfly, which flitted along our
sober, serious by-path of business and labor, looking for honey of any
sort to be gathered on its sober track.

When Mr. Tiffany came to me with an order for the drop-curtain of a
theater, I did not trouble myself about a scheme for it, knowing that it
had probably taken exact and interesting form in his own mind. It was a
beautiful lesson to me, this largeness of purpose in needlework. The
design for this curtain turned out to be a very realistic view of a
vista in the woods, which gave opportunity for wonderful studies of
color, from clear sun-lit foregrounds to tangles of misty green, melting
into blue perspectives of distance. It was really a daring experiment in
methods of applique, for no stitche