Mediaeval embroiderers in England got into certain habits of work, so that there are some designs which are almost as hall-marks to English work; the Cherubim over the wheel is especially characteristic, as is also the vase of lilies, and various heraldic devices which are less frequently found in the embroidered work of European peoples.

The Syon Cope is perhaps the most conspicuous example of the mediaeval embroiderer’s art.  It was made by nuns about the end of the thirteenth century, in a convent near Coventry.  It is solid stitchery on a canvas ground, “wrought about with divers colours” on green.  The design is laid out in a series of interlacing square forms, with rounded and barbed sides and corners.  In each of these is a figure or a scriptural scene.  The orphreys, or straight borders which go down both fronts of the cope, are decorated with heraldic charges.  Much of the embroidery is raised, and wrought in the stitch known as Opus Anglicanum.  The effect was produced by pressing a heated metal knob into the work at such points as were to be raised.  The real embroidery was executed on a flat surface, and then bossed up by this means until it looked like bas-relief.  The stitches in every part run in zig-zags, the vestments, and even the nimbi about the heads, are all executed with the stitches slanting in one direction, from the centre of the cope outward, without consideration of the positions of the figures.  Each face is worked in circular progression outward from the centre, as well.  The interlaces are of crimson, and look well on the green ground.  The wheeled Cherubim is well developed in the design of this famous cope, and is a pleasing decorative bit of archaic ecclesiasticism.  In the central design of the Crucifixion, the figure of the Lord is rendered in silver on a gold ground.  The anatomy is according to the rules laid down by an old sermonizer, in a book entitled “The Festival,” wherein it is stated that the body of Christ was “drawn on the cross as a skin of parchment on a harrow, so that all his bones might be told.”  With such instruction, there was nothing left for the mediaeval embroiderers but to render the figure with as much realistic emaciation as possible.

The heraldic ornaments on the Syon Cope are especially interesting to all students of this graceful art.  It is not our purpose here to make much allusion to this aspect of the work, but it is of general interest to know that on the orphreys, the devices of most of the noble families of that day appear.

[Illustration:  DETAIL OF THE SYON COPE]

English embroidery fell off greatly in excellence during the Wars of the Roses.  In the later somewhat degenerate raised embroidery, it was customary to represent the hair of angels by little tufted curls of auburn silk!

Many of the most important examples of ancient ecclesiastical embroidery are in South Kensington Museum.  A pair of orphreys of the fifteenth century, of German work (probably made at Cologne), shows a little choir of angels playing on musical instruments.  These figures are cut out and applied on crimson silk, in what was called “cut work.”  This differed entirely from what modern embroiderers mean by cut work, as has been explained.