Singing a Praise to the Woman

Blessed be the women, they braid and weave celestial roses for a terrestrial life.

Schiller in "If women"

The Petit Point is their art! Since the Antiquity and in all the classes of the society this art is maintened by the Tell me more artists of them. As of the time of the Pharaons the needlepoint art appeared with the first work using the needle. One embroidered there already the folds of clothing of Pharaons. Excavations in the Crimea, on the peninsula of kertsch, carried at the ligth some tapestries stitched out with threads and flat gold of a smoothness which testify to the quality of the Greek art of the textile ornament. At the Christian era one finds a tapestry embroidered with the needle to the palate of Khosrô-II (590-628), king of Sassanides. This work is known by the inventory of the plundering of this palate by the Byzantine emperor Héraclius. One says that this tapestry was embroidered by the Princess Chirine, "the Clay Princess", a Christian woman of Byzance which got married Khosrô-II and this one who, to thank for this marvellous work build for her a splendid palate, Kasr-e-Chirin. But what other proof of attachment that this Bayeux tapestry stitched in the XIth century by the Queen Mathilde and recalling the Great Britain Conquest's exploits by her King Guillaume of Normandie?
The saint-Cyr stitch (basketweave), as impregnated of the spirit of the school where it was born, is a lesson of modesty. It is not essential by an extravagant appearance. One would believe to see it having to deal only with one simple half cross stitch (a tent stitch). It is timidly that it is presented at us as must do it the girls of well education. It is only gradually and after long preliminaries that this small stitch reveals not only its hidden face but also its complexity which, let us note it, does not have to be confused here with difficulty.
Madam de Maintenon was to know well all the interest which her girls could learn.us.m the training of this stitch of tapestry. All in this simple stitch meets natural female qualities. It is initially a make up which embellishes what it discovers. It seems complex as first access but by an attention and constant consideration it is nevertheless easily under control. Its structure is solid and resists tirednesses of the fashionable and family life. The patience which is necessary for its realization and its achievement is like the reflection of that necessary to the education of the children. Finally in all its appearances which they are of prestige or domestic its presence cannot never be ignored.