Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [81]
Embroidery I said is the other half & fine decorative needlework & knitting & crocheting. They belong to the finer things in life they are age-old arts & rich traditions from the domain of woman. Look at me I said because she was staring in front of her & pretended to be struck deaf. I want you to be knowledgeable & I want you to teach yourself & make it your own that will be proof that I haven’t wasted my time with you I said to her.
So I opened the book at my inscription in front & made her read out aloud what I had underlined in the Introduction. Embroidery creates an atmosphere of true values in a house & speaks of the personality of its creator it demonstrates the difference between a developed & an uncivilised nation.
Showed hr all the prettiest examples of drawn-fabric work & white-work & black-work & shadow-work & ravel-work & showed pictures how an embroidered table cloth makes all the difference to a full tea-table setting & how embroidered napkins can make any meal look like that of a king. Told her about the wall hangings of the tabernacle as described in Exod. richly embroidered by hand & about the first piece of embroidery from the 4th century B.C. & about the embroidered cloths in which the mummies of Egypt were wrapped for the long journey to the realm of the dead & of the pelicans & the jackals & all the figures of the gods & of how everything was embroidered with the greatest of care on fine woven cloth so that the deceased should not feel alone & would arrive in the kingdom of heaven completely wrapped up in his culture & history & faith. Also explained about the church embroidery at which thousands of nuns sat labouring day after day in poor light in their cells to the glory of God of the Opus Anglicanum & the great French tapestry of the walled garden in which a snow-white unicorn comes to rest with its head on the lap of the Virgin Mary.
The picture of the strange horse with the bump on the head where the single whorled horn emerges of course interested her mightily. Saw her sta-a-a-ring at this lot & wanting to ask something but the mouth remained drawn in a thin line. So I just said the horse is a symbol of the wander-weary soul & the Catholics believe that the Mother of God is also a mediator but it’s a superstition J C is the only way to the Father & the mother is secondary.
Did my best to impress upon A. all the possibilities & showed her examples of our embroidered National art & the representations of our History the ships of Van Riebeeck & the distribution of the first farms on the Liesbeeck & the fat-tailed sheep that the Free Burghers exchanged with the Hottentots for beads & cloths & the Voortrekkers & the Oxwagons & the Boer War & the History of Gold & Diamonds. She doesn’t yet realise how advanced such embroidery is but one day when she has learnt for herself how she will understand I said. It’s like that with every art form I explained. You start with the simple & then you practise faithfully every day until you’re ready one day to tackle the scenes from Hist. & then Heaven.
On the off-cut cloth I showed her the first drawn stitches with which the hems of embroidered cloths are finished. Punching hemstitching double hemstitching & Italian hemstitching & then the first basic stitches in the book dice-stitch & step-stitch & Algerian-eye wave-stitch & satin-stitch blanket-stitch & diagonal ripple-stitch prepared everything for her in practice strips on the length of off-cut cloth so that she could practise further on her own.
Explained nicely what a good discipline it is how it calms one after a day’s hard work. It keeps you