Embroidery is the art of ornamenting woven fabric into designs in needle-work. Embroidery differs from tapestry in that the design is stitched on the top of a woven material, whereas in tapestry the design is woven into it.
In embroidering stuffs a kind of stretching-frame is used because the more the piece is stretched the easier it is worked. The art was common in the East in very ancient times. The Jews appear to have acquired it from the Egyptians; Homer makes frequent allusion to it; and Phrygia was celebrated for its embroidery, which was in great demand at Eome. The Anglo-Saxons had a continental reputation, and from the llth to the 16th century the art of pictorial needlework was of the highest importance both as a recreation and as an industry. Embroidery is commonly divided into two classes: white embroidery applied to dress and furniture, in which the French and the Swiss excel; and embroidery in silk, gold, and silver, chiefly in demand for ecclesiastical vestments, etc. The Chinese, Hindus, Persians, and Turks traditionally excel in such work. Research Embroidery
Engraving is the art of representing objects and depicting characters on metal, wood, precious stones, etc, by means of incisions made with instruments variously adapted to the substances operated upon and the description of work intended.
Impressions from metal plates are named engravings, prints, or plates those printed from wood being called indifferently wood engravings and wood-cuts. While, however, these impressions are not altogether dissimilar in appearance, the processes are distinct. In plates the lines intended to print are incised, and in order to take an impression the plate is daubed over with a thick ink which fills all the lines. The surface is then wiped perfectly clean, leaving only the incised lines filled with ink. A piece of damp paper is now laid on the face of the plate, and both are passed through the press, which causes the ink to pass from the plate to the paper. This operation needs to be repeated for every impression, for the wood block, on the contrary, the spaces between the lines of the drawing are cut out, leaving the lines standing up like type, the printing being from the inked surface of the raised lines, and effected much more rapidly than plate printing.
Engraving on wood, intended for printing or taking impressing from, long preceded engraving on metals. The art is of eastern origin, and at least as early as the 10th century engraving and printing from wood blocks was common in China. We first hear of wood engraving being cultivated in Europe by the Italians and Germans in the 13th century. For a hundred and fifty years, however, there is small indication of the practice of the art, which was at first confined to the production of block-books, playing cards, and religious prints. In the 15th century the art of printing from engraved plates was discovered in Florence by Maso Finiguerra.
Engraving had long been used as a means of decorating armour, metal vessels, etc, the engravers generally securing duplicates of their works before laying in the niello (a species of metallic enamel) by filling the lines with dark colour, and taking casts of them in sulphur. The discovery of the practicability of taking impressions upon paper led to engraving upon copper plates for the purpose of printing from.
The date of the earliest known niello proof upon paper is 1452. The work of the Florentine engravers, however, was almost at once surpassed in Venice and elsewhere in North Italy by Andrea Mantegna, Girolamo Mocetto, Giovanni Batista del Porto, and others. In Marc Antonio Raimondi, who wrought under the guidance of Raphael, and reproduced many of his works, the art reached its highest point of the earlier period, and Rome became the centre of a new school, which included Marco da Ravenna, Giulio Bonasone, and Agostino de Musis.
In the meantime, in Germany the progress of the art had been not less rapid. Of the oldest school the most important engraver is Martin Schongauer. He was, however, surpassed a generation later by Albert Durer who excelled both in copper and wood engraving, especially in the latter. Among his most famous contemporaries and successors were Burgkmair and Lucas Cranach. The Dutch and Flemish schools, of which Durer's contemporary Lucas van Leyden was the head, did much to enlarge the scope of the art, either by paying increased attention to the rendering of light and shade, and the expression of local colour, as in the case of Cornelius Cort and Bloemart; or by developing freedom and expression of line, as in the case of Goltzius and his pupils.
Rubens influenced engraving through the two Bolswerts, Vorstermann, Pontius, and de Jode, who engraved many of his works on a large size. Towards the end of the 17th century etching, which had before been rarely used, became more common, and was practised with great success by Rembrandt and other painters of that period. In France Noel Garnier founded a school of engraving about the middle of the 16th century; but it produced no work of any high distinction until the reign of Louis XIV, when Nanteuil's pupil Gerard Edelinck and Gerard Audran flourished. The former was skilled in using his graver to produce colour effects, the latter is famed for his engravings from Nicolas Poussin and Le Brun. But these were all surpassed about the middle of the 18th century by Wille, a German resident in Paris.
Before the middle of the 17th century England produced little noteworthy work, availing herself principally of the work of foreign engravers, of whom many took up temporary and even permanent residence. The first English engraver of marked importance was William Hogarth, whose works are distinguished for character and expression. Vivares, a Frenchman by birth, laid the foundation of the English school of landscape-engraving, which was still further developed by William Woollet, who was also an excellent engraver of the human figure.
In historical engraving a not less remarkable advance was made by Sir Robert Strange, and Richard Earlom produced some admirable works in mezzotint. In succession to these came William Sharp, James Bazire, Bartolozzi, James Heath, Bromley, Raimbach, and others.
The substitution of steel for copper plates around 1820 to 1830 gave the power of producing a much larger number of fine impressions, and opened new possibilities for highly-finished work.
During the closing years of the 18th century line engraving attained a depth of colour and fulness of tone in which earlier works generally are deficient, and during the following century it reached a perfectness of finish which it had not previously attained. A picture, whether figure or Landscuape, may be translated by line engraving with all its depth of colour, delicacy of tone, and effect of light and shade; the various textures, whether of naked flesh, silk, satin, woollen, or velvet, all successfully rendered by ingenious modes of laying the lines and combinations of lines of varying strength, width, and depth. Among engraverswho have produced historical works of large size and in the line manner the names of Raphael Mrghen, Longhi, Anderloni, Garavaglia, and Toschi, in Italy; of Forster, Henriquel-Dupont, Bridoux, and Blanchard, in France; of John Burnet, J H Robinson, Doo, J H Watt, and Lumb Stocks, in England, stand pre-eminent.
Among historical and portrait engravers in the stipple or dotted manner the names of H T Ryall, Henry Robinson, William Holl and Francis Holl, may well be mentioned.
In the period 1820 to 1860 landscape engraving attained a perfection in Great Britain which it had not attained in any other country, or at any other time. Among landscape engravers the names of George Gooke, William Miller, E Goodall, J Cousen, K Brandard, and William Forrest hold the foremost places. In mezzotinto engraving Samuel Cousins is unrivalled.
In the period 1830 to 1845 various publications called Annuals, composed of light literature in prose and verse, and illustrated by highly-finished engravings in steel, were very popular. The engravings were necessarily of small size, and are generally of great excellence. A number of them both figure and landscape are executed with such finish and completeness as to be esteemed perfect works. The unrivalled illustrations of Rogers' Poems and Rogers' Italy after Turner and Stothard belong to this period. Many of the originals of the engravings in the Annuals were finished pictures of large size.
A great part of the difficulty in engraving on a small scale from a large picture, consists in determining what details can be left out, and still preserve the full effect and character of the original. The most noted engravers for work of small size are Charles Heath, Charles Bolls, W Finden, E Finden, E. Portbury, J Goodyear, F Engleheart, Henry Le Keux, E Goodall, and W Miller.
After 1870 many plates were produced by a combination of etching and dry point, a comparatively cheap and rapid process. Such works were fashionable and very popular with collectors. But while some of them have been excellent of their kind, the process is of limited resource, and the best works in this manner will not stand comparison with the masterpieces of line engraving. Through lack of encouragement, change of fashion, and the adoption of other methods of reproduction such as photography, line engraving rapidly becoming a lost art in Great Britain. The men who made line engraving famous died, and there was no sufficient inducement for younger men to pursue that art. In France and in Germany some able line engravers were still in practice at the start of the 20th century.
Line Engraving, as implied by the term, is executed entirely in lines. The tools are few and simple. They consist of the graver or burin, the point, the scraper, and the burnisher; an oil-stone or hone, dividers, a parallel square, a magnifying lens; a bridge on which to rest the hand; a blind or shade of tissue paper, to make the light fall equally on the plate, callipers for levelling important erasures, a small steelanvil, a small pointed hammer, and punches. In etching, the following articles are required: a resinous mixture called etching-ground, capable, when spread very thinly over the plate, of resisting the action of the acids used; a dauber for laying the ground equally; a hand-vice; some hair-pencils of different sizes, and bordering wax, made of burgundy-pitch, bees'-wax, and a little oil.
In engraving, the plate, which is highly polished and must be free from all scratches, is first prepared by spreading over it a thin layer of ground. The surface is then smoked, and the outline of the picture transferred to it by pressure from the paper on which it has been drawn in fine outlines by a black-lead pencil. The picture is then drawn on the ground with the etching-needle, which removes the ground in every form produced by it, and leaves the bright metal exposed. A bank of wax is then put round the plate and diluted acid poured on it, which eats out the metal from the lines from which the ground has been removed, but leaves the rest of the plate untouched. The plate is then gone over with the graver, the etched lines clearly defuned, broken lines connected, new lines added, etc. Sometimes the plate is rebitten more than once, those parts which are sufficiently bitten in the first treatment being stopped with varnish, and only the selected parts exposed to after-biting. Finally the burnisher is brought into play alternately with the graver and point to give perfectness and finish.
Such is the process for landscape engraving. In historical and portrait engraving of the highest class, the lines are first drawn on the metal with a fine point and then cut in by the graver, first making a fine line and afterwards entering and re-entering till the desired width and depth of lines is attained. Much of the excellence of such engravings depends on the mode in which the lines are laid, their relative thickness, and the manner in which they cross each other. In historical engraving etching is but little used, and then only for accessories and the less important parts.
In Soft-ground Etching the ground, made by mixing lard with common etching-ground, is laid on the plate and smoked as before, but its extreme softness renders it very liable to injury. The outline of the subject is drawn on a piece of rough paper larger than the plate. The paper is then damped, and laid gently over the ground face upwards, and the margins folded over and pasted down on the back of the plate. When the paper is dry and tightly stretched the bridge is laid across, and with a hardish pencil and firm pressure the drawing is completed in the usual manner. The pressure makes the ground adhere to the back of the paper at all parts touched by the pencil, and on. the paper being lifted carefully off, these parts of the ground are lifted with it, and the corresponding parts of the plate thus left bare are exposed to the subsequent action of the acid. The granulated surface of the paper, causing similar granulations in the touches on the ground, gives the character of a chalk-drawing. The biting-in is effected in the same manner as already described, and the subject is finished by re-biting and dotting with the graver.
Stipple, or Chalk Engraving, in its pure state, is exclusively composed of dots, varying in size and form as the nature of the subject demands, but few stipple plates are now produced without a large admixture of line in all parts, flesh excepted. A great advance, however, was made in stipple engraving by the introduction of large and varied forms of dotting in the draperies, the results almost rivalling line engraving in richness and power.
The Mixed Style is based on mezzotinto, which, still forming the great mass of shading, is in this method combined with etching in the darker, and stipple in the more delicate parts. By this combination a plate will produce a larger number of good impressions than were it done entirely in mezzotinto.
The wood best adapted for engraving is box. It is cut across the grain in thicknesses equal to the height of type, these slices being subjected to a lengthened process of seasoning, and then smoothed for use. Every wood engraving is the representative of a finished drawing previously made on the block; the unshaded parts being cut away, and the lines giving form, shading, texture, etc, left standing in relief by excavations of varied size and character, made between them by gravers of different forms. Drawings on wood are made either with black-lead pencil alone or with pencil and indian ink, the latter being employed for the broader and darker masses. It is now much the practice to photograph drawings made in black and white upon the wood instead of making the drawing on the wood block. When the drawing is put on the wood by washes or by photography instead of being entirely done by pencil lines, the engraver has to devise the width and style of lines to be employed instead of cutting in facsimile, as is the case when the drawing is made entirely in lines. The tools required for wood engraving are similar but more numerous than those of the engraver on copper or steel. Research Engraving
An herbarium, or Hortus Siccus is , a collection of dried plants systematically arranged. Herbariums were popular among the Victorians, and a Victorian text describes the process for collecting specimens thus:
'The specimens should be collected in dry weather, and carried home in a japanned tin-box or vasculum, a small pocket-box being desirable, however, for mosses and small plants. Very delicate specimens should be at once placed in a small field-book of unsized blotting-paper carried tightly strapped between suitable boards, At home they are carefully arranged upon bibulous paper, and pressed between smoothly planed deal boards either by putting weights upon the boards or by using a screw-press. The paper is changed every day or two, as they are found to part with their moisture more or less freely.
Succulent plants (such as stone-crops) should be killed by immersion in boiling water, and left for some time to drain, before pressing. If the stem be thick and woody, or if the flower be thick and globular, as in the thistle, one half may be cut away without depriving it of its character. When the process of desiccation has been completed specimens are fastened upon stiff paper with a mixture of gum-tragacanth and gum-arabic, or thin glue, or with slips of gummed paper, or a needle and thread. To preserve the specimens from the ravages of insects, camphor should be placed in the cabinet and frequently renewed.' Research Herbarium
During the 17th century it was claimed that witches possessed the
Mark of Satan on their body.
There were claimed to be two kinds of this mark: visible and invisible. Visible marks included moles, warts, birth-stains, supernumerary teats and spots of an unusual appearance. In an effort to find these visible marks, a woman suspected of witch craft was stripped naked and had all her hair shaved off. The witch finders claimed that the invisible kind of mark could be found because at that point the flesh of the victim was unsusceptible to pain, and would not bleed when punctured. If there existed on any part of the skin surface a spot that did not bleed when cut, then that was deemed evidence of a witch.
In searching for an invisible mark of Satan, a witch finder systematically pricked all parts of the victim's body so as to discover a spot that failed to yield blood, or until the accused woman ceased to cry out in pain. The test was usually successful because the torture was so severe that the woman would either pretend not to feel any pain so as to end the ordeal, or would become insensitive to pain and delirious. An account of such a trial appears in the 1785 edition of Beccaria's 'Essay on Crimes and Punishments':
'In the year 1652, a country woman, named Michelle Chaudron, of the little territory of Geneva, met the Devil in her way from the city. The Devil gave her a kiss, received her homage, and imprinted on her upper lip, and on her right breast, the mark which he is wont to bestow upon his favourites. This seal of the Devil is a little sign upon the skin, which renders it insensible, as we are assumed by all the demonographical civilians of those times. The devil ordered Michelle Chaudron to bewitch two young girls. She obeyed her master punctually, the parents of the two girls accusing her of dealing with the devil. The girls being confronted with the criminal, declared that they felt a continual pricking in some parts of their bodies, and that they were possessed. Physicians were called, at least men that passed for physicians in those days. They visited the girls. They sought for the seal of the devil on the body of Michelle, which seal is called, in the verbal process, the Satanical mark. Into one of these marks they plunged a long needle, which was already no small torture. Blood issued from the wound and Michelle testified by her cries, that the part was not insensible.
The judges not finding sufficient proof that Michelle Chaudron was a witch, ordered her to be tortured, which infallibly produced the proof they wanted. The poor wretch overcome by torment, confessed, at last, everything they desired. The physicians sought again for the Satanical mark, and found it in a little black spot on one of her thighs. Into this they plunged the needle. the poor creature, exhausted and almost expiring with the pain of the torture, was insensible to the needle, and did not cry out. She was instantly condemned to be burnt, but the world beginning at this time to be a little more civilised, she was previously strangled.' Research Mark of Satan
Coniferae (the Conifers) are the pines, firs, and their allies, a natural order of gymnospermous exogens, the essential character of which consists in the manner in which the ovules, not inclosed in an ovary, receive directly the action of the pollen without the intervention of a stigma. The ovules in these plants are borne on scales or modified leaves, which are spread out, not folded, and generally grouped in such a manner as to form a cone composed of a greater or smaller number of these leaves, of which only a portion may be fertile and bear ovules. The disposition, of the ovules in relation to these scales permits of a division of the Coniferae into three distinct families or tribes.
In the Cupressineae, which include the juniper, cypress, etc, the cones are formed of simple scales, each of which bears towards the base of its superior surface the ovules erect and sessile.
The second family, Abietineae, has in place of simple scales, scales actually double or formed of two parts; the lower one usually designated the bract; the other bearing at its base the ovules reversed. This family includes the pines, firs, and larches, the araucarias, Wellingtonias, dammaras, etc. In these two families the ovules are completely covered by the scales which constitute the cones, which unite after fecun-dation, and inclose the seedtill their maturity.
In the Taxineae, which constitute the third family, the scales are short, imperfect, and partly sterile, and neither cover the ovules at the period of fecundation nor at that of maturation. The ovules are usually set in the same manner as in the Cupressineae. The yew, the gingko, etc, belong to this family.
The Conifers are found in large forests in the north of Europe and America, and are of great importance as timber trees. They abound also in resinous juices and yield turpentine, pitch, tar, succinic acid, etc. The leaves are usually alternate, and awl or needle shaped, the naked flowers are monoecious or dioecious, the male flowers being in deciduous catkins, the female in cones. Research Coniferae
The gar-fish (Lepidosteus, bony pike, sea-pike, gar-pike, sea-needle) is a long and slender sea fish of the genus Belone, about 90cm long. The head projects forward into a very long sharp snout. The sides and belly are of a bright silvery colour and the back is green. They are found in North American lakes and rivers. Research Gar-Fish
The common juniper (Juniperus communis) is an evergreen shrub of the family Cupressaceae. Juniper has prickly needle-like blue-green leaves arranged in whorls of three on reddish-brown flexible twigs and dark purple berries of a pungent taste. The juice of the berries is extracted and used as a diuretic and flavouring in gin etc. Research Juniper
The larch (Larix) is a genus of trees of the pine (Pinaceae) family native to cool-temperate and subarctic parts of the northern hemisphere. The short, needle-like leaves are arranged spirally on new growth, in whorls at the tips of dwarf spurs on older twigs and are shed in autumn. Research Larch
Mosquito is a term applied to any fly of the family Culicidae. The female mosquito has needle-like mouth-parts and sucks blood before laying eggs. Males feed on plant juices. Some mosquitoes carry diseases such as malaria. Human odour in general is attractive to mosquitoes, also lactic acid in sweat and heat at close range. Peoples' varying reactions to mosquito bites depend on the general allergic reaction and not on the degree of the bite; the allergic reaction is caused by the saliva injected from the mosquito's salivary glands to prevent coagulation of the host's blood. Natural mosquito repellents include lavender oil, citronella (from lemongrass), thyme, and eucalyptus oils.
Mosquitoes are remarkable for their quick genetic development, new species develop in around 100 years, as was discovered when mosquitoes became trapped in the London Underground system when it was built, and in 1998 were discovered to have become distinct species developing to feed first on rats and then on humans rather than their usual sheep hosts. Research Mosquito
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Embroidery
