The Needles Excellency

Gotta love it when favorite things converge. This time it's needlework and rare books. The most recent post on BibliOdyssey features several illustrations from early lace modelbuchs. Along with this quotation from from The Needles Excellency: A New Booke wherin are diuers Admirable Workes wrought with the Needle, [1631] by John Taylor:

The Praise of the Needle

"To all dispersed sorts of ARTS and TRADES,
I writ the Needles praise (that never fades)
So long as Children shall be got or borne,
So long as Garments shall be made, or worne,
So long as Hemp or Flax or Sheepe shall beare
Their linnen-woolen fleeces yeare by yeare;
So long as Silk-wormes, with exhausted spoyle,
Of their own Entrailes, for mans gaine shall toyle:
Yea, till the world be quite dissolv'd and past;
So long at least, the Needles use shall last"

NOTE: You can see the entire Needles Excellency, but mind you, it's a 5.8 MB PDF file.