214 



HOME AND FLOW EES 



will not attract. In serving the com- 

 munity it will be realized that much has 

 interest and value which to the new-come 

 individual has little meaning. Thus the 

 history and traditions of the town will 

 be sought out and emphasized rather than 

 neglected, and there will be, not an effort 

 to remake the town, but to help it to grow 

 into loveliness and beauty, to develop ar- 

 tistically. The expert, in looking over the 

 town preparatory to his report, is pretty 



SOME of the beautiful hand work 

 which were the best part of the 

 education given a woman in the 

 Middle Ages is being revived in the new 

 Arts and Crafts movement. 



In the Irish Village at the World's Fair 

 in 1893, Lady Aberdeen introduced to 

 the women of America what seemed to 

 be a new kind of embroidery. It was 

 called Mount Mellick, and came from the 

 convent of that name in Ireland, where it 

 was generally supposed to have originated. 

 As a matter of fact, however, this beau- 

 tiful embroidery takes its name from the 

 little village of Mount Mellick, in Queen's 

 county, Ireland, but its origin antedates 

 even the foundation of that old village. 



The best evidence would indicate that 

 Mount Mellick embroidery was introduced 

 into Ireland by the French Huguenot 

 refugees toward the end of the seventeenth 

 century. According to Smiles, in "The 

 Huguenots," in the year 1693, King 

 William of England induced six hundred 

 French Huguenot families, which had 

 fled to Switzerland after the edict of 

 Nantes had been revoked, to go to Ireland 



sure to seek first the dominant natural 

 features — a clump of trees, a hill, a 

 stream, or cliff — with the view of making 

 this the ke3mote of the improvement plan. 

 In 'the town's history, intellectual and 

 social, not less than in its physical to- 

 pography, the natural dominant features 

 are to be sought and emphasized, l^o 

 accordance with "model" plans can atone 

 for a community's loss of personality. 

 (the end.) 



y 



and establish homes. These refugees were 

 almost exclusively gentlemen of distinc- 

 tion and ladies of gentle birth, and the 

 neatness and order of their homes were 

 in strange contrast with the homes of 

 the natives. But the Celt, ever ready to 

 learn, was greatly benefited by the ele- 

 gance and gracious manners of the ref- 

 ugees, and soon began to copy the more 

 artistic methods of the Huguenots. 

 Smiles tells us that the refugees did much 

 to improve what he calls "the roystering 

 Irish gentry of the times." 



For their own amusement the Huguenot 

 ladies made many designs of what we now 

 know as Mount Mellick, and some of those 

 pieces of fancy work are still in existence. 

 For years the embroidery seems to have 

 dropped almost out of existence, and it 

 was about to become extinct, when, about 

 seventy years ago, a poor Irish woman 

 with artistic tastes, one Johanna Carter, 

 revived it. This poor woman gathered 

 together all the stit<:-hes obtainable, and 

 made the work for the ladies of that day. 

 Much of Johanna's work is still in ex- 

 istence, and it shows unmistakably that 



Mt. Mellick Embroider 



A SURVIVAL FROM THE HANDICRAFT OF A 

 MEDIEVAL GENTLEWOMAN 



JENNIE BISSICKS 



