There is another embroidered book belonging to the old royal collection in
the British Museum that seems to have been bound for Queen Elizabeth. It
is a copy of _The Common Places of Dr. Peter Martyr_, translated by
Anthonie Marten, printed in London in 1583, and dedicated to the queen. It
is covered in blue purple velvet, and ornamented with silver wire and
guimp. There is an outer border formed of double lines, made easily and
effectively by means of a spiral wire flattened down, giving the
appearance of small overlaid rings. This border encloses a series of
clusters, formed with stitches of silver guimp, arranged in a basket-work
pattern. In the centre is an ornament of diamond shape, outlined with the
same silver-wire edge and enclosing again the basket-work design, and the
four inner corners are filled up with quarter circles of the same work.
The book has been rebacked, and it is not in very good condition; but the
effect of the silver on the deep purple ground still has a very admirable
effect. The broad gilt edges are very handsomely and elaborately decorated
with gauffred work of Elizabethan character.
A Bible, printed in London in 1583, was embroidered and bound for Queen
Elizabeth, and presented to her in 1584, and is now in the Bodleian
Library at Oxford. It is a folio book, measuring almost 17 × 12 inches,
and is bound in crimson velvet. Upon each board is a very graceful design
of rose-branches, intertwined. There are four large roses and two smaller
ones, all embroidered in silver and gold braid and coloured threads, with
here and there a few small pearls. A narrow border runs round the edge,
embroidered in gold thread and coloured silk.
[Illustration: FIG. 11.--_Orationis Dominicæ Explicatio, per L. Danaeum.
Genevae, 1583. Queen Elizabeth._]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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