CHAINWORK, this head may very properly be ranged some of the most extensive and useful manufactures of this coun try. The term Chainwork is used for those substances, whether lineal or superficial, in which any kind of cord age or thread is linked together in the form of a chain, for any purpose of useful or ornamental manufacture. The variety of these is considerable, and their utility renders all of the branches very extensive.
Of the lineal kind, the ornamental manufacture known by the name of Tambouring, and now very extensively practised in this part of Great Britain, is the principal.
Under the superficial, every class or branch of ho siery may be included, whether plain or ornamental; and all the varieties of the lace manufacture, as practised both upon the continent and in Great Britain. It also may be considered as including every species of net work, whether of that flimsy ancl light kind, which is manufactured either in the weaving loom or stocking frame; or the more substantial kinds, employed in the varicus fisheries, for lining the sides of ships of war, and many other purposes. These manufactures, being strict ly little more than varieties of the same class, it is pro posed, in the present article, to give some account of them, in the following order.
lst, Lineal chaining, or tambour' work, as executed both by the hand and by the recently invented machinery.
2d, The various leading branches of the hosiery or stocking manufacture.
3d, Reticulation, or net-work of various kinds, espe cially that which, by promoting and extending the Bri tish fisheries, is of the most essential importance to eve ry branch of the community.
It can hardly be expected, that, in a field so unbound edly extensive, every detail should be included ; but if a general view of the whole, combined into one focus, can be effected, the object will be in a great degree at tained. The first, then, to which attention is to be paid, ?1/2plication of the principle of Chainwork to Tambouring, or the production of ornamental Flowers and Figures upon Cloth.
The close and compact form which the linking of any kind of thread or yarn, into the form of a chain, assumes when tacked upon the superficies of the lighter fabrics of cloth, has been very successfully and extensively ap plied to many species of ornamental manufactures of this description. Of the origin of these manufactures, if any
record has at all been preserved, it has never reached the public view ; and as it seems highly probable that most of them either originated, or were first noticed, in those recesses of monastic seclusion, to which it became the policy of the Roman Catholic priesthood, during the plenitude 'of the papal power, to devote even a very great proportion of the female population of Europe, it was hardly to be expected that arts, which were deemed at least childish and nugatory by the men, whose chief trade was war', and whose ambition and interest alike were gratified by the profession or arms, should form objects of curiosity or attention. The priesthood alone, unenured, and probably but little inclined to exercise in their own persons those military talents to which they were too often sufficiently anxious to prompt the laity, were almost the only depositories or every art, as well as every science; and their obvious policy dictated the concealment, more than the propagation, of every art and science, by the knowledge of which either celebrity or wealth might be attained. If this general principle be studied with candour and patience, we shall be at very little loss to account for the almost universal ignorance of what arc termed the dark ages ; and it is at least a matter of some curiosity to trace the same principle which directed the most powerful empires and monar chies, even so low as to regulate the casual employment of the meanest female. In the exercise of most of those manufactures we have derived from our inter course with our continental neighbours, we have, very naturally' and very wisely, been at more pains to adapt them to suit our own purposes, than to conceal their origin ; and the original ntunes remaining generally serve us to trace their origin.