Charles of Orleans had a coat, on the sleeves of which were
embroidered the verses of a song beginning 'Madame, je suis tout joyeux,'
the musical accompaniment of the words being wrought in gold thread, and
each note, of square shape in those days, formed with four pearls. {334b}
The room prepared in the palace at Rheims for the use of Queen Joan of
Burgundy was decorated with 'thirteen hundred and twenty-one papegauts
(parrots) made in broidery and blazoned with the King's arms, and five
hundred and sixty-one butterflies, whose wings were similarly ornamented
with the Queen's arms--the whole worked in fine gold.' Catherine de
Medicis had a mourning-bed made for her 'of black velvet embroidered with
pearls and powdered with crescents and suns.' Its curtains were of
damask, 'with leafy wreaths and garlands figured upon a gold and silver
ground, and fringed along the edges with broideries of pearls,' and it
stood in a room hung with rows of the Queen's devices in cut black velvet
on cloth of silver. Louis XIV. had gold-embroidered caryatides fifteen
feet high in his apartment. The state-bed of Sobieski, King of Poland,
was made of Smyrna gold brocade embroidered in turquoises and pearls,
with verses from the Koran; its supports were of silver-gilt, beautifully
chased and profusely set with enamelled and jewelled medallions. He had
taken it from the Turkish camp before Vienna, and the standard of Mahomet
had stood under it. The Duchess de la Ferte wore a dress of
reddish-brown velvet, the skirt of which, adjusted in graceful folds, was
held up by big butterflies made of Dresden china; the front was a tablier
of cloth of silver, upon which was embroidered an orchestra of musicians
arranged in a pyramidal group, consisting of a series of six ranks of
performers, with beautiful instruments wrought in raised needle-work.
'Into the night go one and all,' as Mr. Henley sings in his charming
Ballade of Dead Actors.

Many of the facts related by M. Lefebure about the embroiderers' guilds
are also extremely interesting. Etienne Boileau, in his book of crafts,
to which I have already alluded, tells us that a member of the guild was
prohibited from using gold of less value than 'eight sous (about 6s.) the
skein; he was bound to use the best silk, and never to mix thread with
silk, because that made the work false and bad.' The test or trial piece
prescribed for a worker who was the son of a master-embroiderer was 'a
single figure, a sixth of the natural size, to be shaded in gold'; whilst
one not the son of a master was required to produce 'a complete incident
with many figures.' The book of crafts also mentions 'cutters-out and
stencillers and illuminators' amongst those employed in the industry of
embroidery. In 1551 the Parisian Corporation of Embroiderers issued a
notice that 'for the future, the colouring in representations of nude
figures and faces should be done in three or four gradations of carnation-
dyed silk, and not, as formerly, in white silks.' During the fifteenth
century every household of any position retained the services of an
embroiderer by the year.