The characteristic patterns of Elizabethan
work survive her reign, but they gradually
degenerate into a stiffness and sameness
which at last finds expression in some of
the ugliest and most trivial work that ever
occupied the needle. We are obliged to take
the grotesque stump work, so popular in
its day, as the general expression of taste
among needlewomen of the seventeenth
century. It is a relief to turn from these to
the samplers which first found favour at this
period, and prove that better taste was not
altogether wanting. Many of the latter are
of excellent design and evince considerable
technical skill. Designs on a larger scale,
for curtains, hangings, etc., are sometimes
boldly drawn, and effective when put to their
proper use.
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