About the date of the thirteenth century various technical names were given to the different kinds of embroidery, such as “_opus plumarium_,” or, as it is now called, “feather-stitch,” a kind of needlework where the stitches are laid lengthwise, and not across, overlapping each other like the feathers in a bird’s plumage; “_opus pulvinarium_,” or “cushion” style, where the work is done in cross and tent stitch; “_opus pectineum_,” where the embroidery is made to represent or imitate weaving, and had the design carried through from front to back of the foundation material. The Opus Anglicum, so highly prized, seems to have been a kind of chain-stitch embroidery, giving a granulated surface. The workwoman would start, for instance, in the case of executing the face of a human figure, at a point in the centre of the cheek or chin, and work around it in a circular method, and where the hollows and dimples would occur, a heated metal rod with a small bulb at the end of it would be used to press down the cavities. [Illustration: Fig. 272.—Part of the Orphrey of the Syon Cope; in the South Kensington Museum.] In the well-known Syon Cope, an English embroidery of this period (Fig. 272), both the old feather-stitch and the chain-stitch are used as above described. [Illustration: Fig. 273.—Carpet from Persia, embroidered in Gold and Silver on Dark Blue Velvet; Early Eighteenth Century. (S.K.M.)] The _Crewel_ stitch is a combination of the long and short feather-stitches, and is adapted for shading effects. In the stitches known as chain, knotted, and button-hole stitch the thread is looped; but lies flat in satin-stitch, crewel, darning, tent, and cross stitches. Satin and darning stitches can be worked so that the design appears the same on both sides of the cloth, but chain and crewel stitch only produces the design on one side of the material. [Illustration: Fig. 274.—State Gloves, formerly belonging to Louis XIII. (S.K.M.)] Gold thread has been used very much in all ages in embroidery, and silver thread also, but unless the latter is varnished or lacquered it goes black by tarnishing. Gold “passing” is a silver-gilt thread wound around silk. In old embroideries and woven tissues a gold thread was made of thin parchment gilded and twisted around silk: the Japanese used gilded paper in the same way, and sometimes the pure gold was used in thin, flat, beaten-out strips for both embroideries and woven fabrics. In Persia and in the East generally an extensive use is made of cloths of gold and silver embroidery (Fig. 273) as well as closely-covered needlework in silk and wool, and another modern kind is white silk embroidery on white cambric or calico.