BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THB SAGE ENDOWNENT FUND THE GIFT OF Henrg W. Sage 1S91 AJfoor /6 f^ Cornell University Library arV18096 Nature in Ornament / 3 1924 031 243 763 olin.anx a Cornell University ''y Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 924031 243763 TEXT BOOKS OF ORNAMENTAL DESIGN. By lewis F. day. NATURE IN ORNAMENT. TEXT BOOKS OF ORNAMENTAL DESIGN. By lewis F. day. Each i2mo, bound in Cloth, $i'5o. Introductory Volume. SOME PRINCIPLES OF EVERY-DAY ART. With numerous Illustrations in the text. THE ANATOMY OF PATTERN. With Thirty-six full page Illustrations. THE PLANNING OF ORNAMENT. With Forty-one full page Illustrations. THE APPLICATION OF ORNAMENT. With Forty-two full page Illustrations. ORNAMENTAL DESIGN, Embracing "Anatomy of Pattern," "Planning of Ornament," " Application of Ornament." One Hundred and Sixteen full page Illus- trations. i2mo, cloth gilt. $4 '20. NATURE IN ORNAMENT. With One Hundred and Twenty-three Plates, and One Hundred and Ninety-two Illustra- tions in the text. i2mo, cloth gilt. $5 "00. J^eiman.Piioto-lit'h London. FlKur-de-Luce., TEXT BOOKS OF ORNAMENTAL D.ESIGN. NATURE IN ORNAMENT. BY LEWIS F. DAY, AUTHOR OF ' EVERY-DAY ART.' WITH ISS PLATES AND 192 ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT. LONDON: B. T. BATSFORD, 52, HIGH HOLBORN. NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, BROADWAY. 1892. 9 NOTE. I have to thank my friend Mr. Walter Crane for my frontispiece, Mr. William Morris for Plate 87, and Mr. Heywood Sumner for Plate 5 6 a7id illus- tration 49. T am further indebted to various gentle- men for permission to reproduce designs belonging to them ; to the proprietors of the ' Art Journal' for Plate 22 ; to Mr. Alfred Carpenter for Plate 58; to Messrs. Erskine Beveridge &= Co. for illustra- tion 1 1 1 ; to Mr. Edmund Evans for illustration 191; to Messrs. Heaton, Butler, cS^ Bayne for illustration 66 ; to Messrs. Jeffrey &> Co. for Plates 14, 23, 37, 38, 72, 86, and illustrations 132, 135, 142 ; to Messrs. Maw ei^ Co. for Plates 39 and 102; to Messrs. Turnbull 6^ Stockdale for Plates 48, 61, and 106; and to Mr. John Wilson for Plate 89 and illustrations 133 and 134. L.F.D. TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGE I. — Introductory i II. — Ornament in Nature 12 III. — Nature in Ornament 32 IV. — The Simplification of Natural Forms 52 V. — The Elaboration of Natural Forms .. 69 VI.— Consistency in the Modification of Nature .. 84 VII. — Parallel Renderings 103 VIII. — More Parallels .. 129 IX.— Tradition in Design 146 X.— Treatment 165 XI.— Animals in Ornament 177 XII. — The Element of the Grotesque .. 195 XIII. — Still Life in Ornament 213 XIV Symbolic Ornament 236 LIST OF PLATES. 1. FLEUR DE LUCE — treatment of the Iris by Walter Crane. 2. JAPANESE ROSES — from various Japanese printed books. 3. BUDDING BRANCHES— drawn from nature. 4. NATURAL LEAF-SHEATHS — from a Japanese botany book. 5. VARIOUS BERRIES — drawn from nature. 6. SOME SEED-VESSELS — from a Japanese botany book. 7. PODS — drawn from nature. 8. FLOWER AND LEAF BUDS — drawn from nature, g. OAK AND OAK GALLS— tile panel, L.F.D. 10. NATURAL GROWTH — from a Japanese botany book. 11. GREEK SCROLLS. 12. ROMAN SCROLLS. 13. ACANTHUS SCULPTURE AND BRUSH-WORK — illustra- tive diagram. 14. TWO VERSIONS OF THE SAME FRIEZE DESIGN — L.F.D. 15. DETAILS OF ROMAN MOSAIC— from Carthage, B.M. 16. TRANSITIONAL SCROLL— German, by D. Hopfer. 17. PAINTED WALL PANEL — from the Palazzo del T, by Giulio Romano. X List of Plates. 18. LUSTRE DISHES— of the sixteenth century — S.K.M. 19. GERMAN GOTHIC SCROLL — from tapestry in the museum at Nuremberg. 20. ARAB-ESQUE RENAISSANCE ORNAMENT — German. 21. ORNAMENTAL BOUQUET — of the seventeenth century — design for goldsmith's worlc. 22. BOOK-COVER — designed by Owen Jones. 23. SUNFLOWERS AND ROSES — wall-paper by B. J. Talbert. 24. DETAILS OF GREEK TERRA-COTTA — from VaseS at Naples and at the B.M. 25. DETAILS OF ANCIENT COPTIC EMBROIDERIES — S.K.M. 26. DETAIL FROM AN INDIAN KINKAUB — modern tradi- tional design. 27. DETAILS FROM POMPEII — wall painting and mosaic. 28. CARVED CABINET DOOR — from Cairo— S.K.M. 29. ENGLISH GOTHIC DETAILS — from various sources. 30. INDIAN RENDERINGS OF THE IRIS — painting and damascening. 31. INLAID FLOWER-PANELS — L.F.D. 32. LYONS SILK-WEAVING OF THE SEVENTEENTH OR EIGHTEENTH CENTURY — Dresden Mtiseum. 33. DETAILS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY FOLIAGE — from old English silks. 34. SILK DAMASK OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY — Italian. 35. OLD LACE — ivory point, Munich Museum. 36. DETAILS OF HAMMERED WORK — German Gothic. 37. WALL-PAPER — conventional growth — L.F.D. 38. WALL-PAPER FOUNDED UPON NATURE — L.F.D. List of Plates. xi 39. TILE PANEL BASED ON THE LILY — L.F.D. 40. CHRYSANTHEMUM PATTERN— Comparatively natural — L.F.D. 41. ARCHAIC GREEK FOLIAGE — from a bronze cup — B.M. 42. MODERN GOTHIC LILY PANEL — B. J. Talbert. 43. LILY ORNAMENT — Italian inlay, Siena. 44. EIGHTEENTH CENTURY FLOWER RENDERINGS — from old English silks. 45. A RENAISSANCE MEDLEY — S. Croce, Florence. 46. PEA-POD ORNAMENT — pilaster by Brunellesco. 47. DUTCH AND GERMAN CONVENTIONS— of the Seven- teenth century. 48. SCROLL AND FOLIAGE — L.F.D. 49. ANCIENT COPTIC EMBROIDERY — S.K.M. 50. VINE AND OLIVE PANEL — Lateran Museum, Rome. 51. ITALIAN GOTHIC VINE — from Giotto's Tower, Florence. 52. VINE AND APPLE-TREE FRIEZE — L.F.D. 53. CLASSIC RENDERINGS OF THE VINE — B.M. 54. ARAB VINE PANEL — showing one-half of the design. 55. VINE SCULPTURE — Lateran Museum. 56. STENCILLED VINE DECORATION — Heywood Sumner. 57. COPTIC VINE ORNAMENT — from ancient embroideries — S.K.M. 58. ENGLISH GOTHIC VINE — stall-end, from Christchurch Priory. 59. VINE IN STAINED GLASS — L.F.D. 60. VINE BY DtiRER — from a woodcut. 61. CONVENTIONAL VINE-LEAF PATTERN — L.F.D. xii List of Plates. 62. ARTIFICIAL RENDERINGS OF THE ROSE — from English silks of the eighteenth century. 63. TUDOR ROSE — from the bronze doors to Henry VII. s chapel. 64. TUDOR ROSE — from a Stall-arm, Henry VII.'s chapel. 65. ITALIAN VERSION OF A PERSIAN CARPET — rOSe and tulip— S.K.M. 66. MARBLE INLAY — from the Taj Mahal, India. 67. INDIAN LOTUS PANEL — stone-carving, from the Buddhist Tope at Amarivati. 68. DETAILS OF BUDDHIST STONE-CARVING— lotus flowerS, &c., from Amarivati. 69. THE PINK — various renderings of the flower. 70. EIGHTEENTH CENTURY VERSIONS OF THE PINK — English. 71. POPPY BY GHIBERTI — from the bronze doors of the Baptistery at Florence. 72. POPPY PATTERN — wall-paper, L.F.D. 73. POMEGRANATES — Chinese colour-printing and German incising. 74. GOTHIC OAK ORNAMENT^after Pugin. 75. COMPARATIVELY NATURAL LILY PANEL — L.F.D. 76. ORCHID AND FUNGUS PATTERN — old Chinese em- broidery. 77. CONVENTIONAL TREE WORK — Indian Stone carving. 78. PERSIAN FOLIAGE — silk-weaving of the sixteenth cen- tury, Lyons Museum. • 79. DETAILS OF EGYPTIAN SCULPTURE — B.M. 80. DETAILS OF NINEVITE SCULPTURE — B.M. List of Plates. xiii 81. DETAILS OF GREEK VASE-PAINTING — B.M. . 82. ROMAN SCULPTURE— lemon and apple trees — Lateran Museum. 83. SIXTEENTH CENTURY GERMAN DESIGN — Peter Quentel. 84. LATE GOTHIC "PINe" ORNAMENTS — from various textiles. 85. CONVENTIONAL TULIP FRIEZE — L.F.D. 86. PEONY FRIEZE — by W. J. Muckley. 87. FRUIT PATTERN — wall-paper by Wm. Morris. 88. CHINESE LOTUS — porcelain painting. 89. COBCEA SCANDENS — linen damask — L.F.D. 90. CONVENTIONAL DANDELION — L.F.D. 91. GERMAN GOTHIC THISTLE-SCROLL — WOod-Carving, S.K.M. 92. JAPANESE CRANES — from a printed book. 93. JAPANESE TORTOISES — from a printed book. 94. PERUVIAN ECCENTRICITIES — from fragments of stuffs. 95. SICILIAN SILK PATTERNS — of about the thirteenth century. 96. SIXTEENTH CENTURY WOOD-CARVING — S. Pietro, Perugia. 97. CONVENTIONAL BUTTERFLIES — Chinese and Japanese. 98. MODERN GERMAN RENAISSANCE — by Anton Seder. 99. SEVENTEENTH CENTURY SCROLL-WORK — from a book of designs, published 1682, by S. Gribelin. 100. SIXTEENTH CENTURY ARABESQUE — Italian. loi. LATE GOTHIC ILLUMINATION— The Annunciation. xiv List of Plates. 102. LUSTRE PLAQUES — L.F.D. 103. STUDIES IN ORNAMENTAL FIGURE-WORK — by Holbein. 104. GROTESQUE PANEL — by Sansovino. 105. GROTESQUE FIGURE — by Marco Dente da Ravenna. 106. GROTESQUE SCROLL — cretonne, L.F.D. 107. KELTIC INTERLACED ORNAMENT— from a MS. in the B.M. 108. CONVENTIONAL WING FORMS — sixteenth century Italian carving. 109. DIAPERS WITH A MEANING — Japanese. no. EARLY GREEK WAVE AND LOTUS DIAPER — twelfth or thirteenth century B.C. 111. SEAWEED BORDERS — L.F.D. 112. SEAWEED PATTERN — L.F.D. 113. PEACOCK-FEATHER PATTERN — Japanese. 114. PEACOCK- FEATHER DIAPERS — from various sources. 1 15. PEACOCK-FEATHER PATTERN — Turkish embroidery. II 5. ROCOCO SCROLL-WORK — by Philippo Passarini. 117. SEVENTEENTH CENTURY SCROLL-WORK — German, by Nicolaus Drusse. H8. POMPEIAN WALL PAINTING. 119. INDIAN NAJA — stone-carving from the Amarivati Tope. 120. CONVENTIONAL TREES— from various sources. 121. LATE GOTHIC FLEUR-DE-LIS TRACERY — from Wood- carvings at S.K.M. 122. MARGUERITE PANELS — wood-carving. 123. SYMBOLIC ORNAMENT — book-cover — L.F.D. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT. PAGE 1. Various tendrils 14 2. Vine tendrils 15 3. Romanesque ornamentation of the stem — Ely .. 18 4. Part of a Pompeian candelabrum — B.M 19 5. Renaissance use of pea-pods (Prato Cathedral) .. 20 6. Unequally divided oak-leaf 22 7. Chinese rendering of Wistaria — old embroidery .. 29 8. Acanthus leaves reduced to brush-work .. .. 34 9. Simple acanthus leafage 3^ 10. Step between wave and acanthus scroll — Roman mosaic, B.M. 36 11. Olive-like leafage 37 12. Oak -Idie leafage 37 13. Vine-like . acanthus leafage, from the Jube at Limoges 38 14. Crocktt-like foliage, from Limoges 38 15. Modern modification of Classic leafage 39 16. Seventeenth century scroll — Boulle 41 17. Details of Romanesque ornament 42 18. Details of early Gothic ornament — stained glass .. 43 xvi List of Illustrations in the Text. PAGE ig. Spiral Persian scroll 44 20. Iris-like details of Persian ornament — sixteentli and seventeenth centuries 4S 21. Details of early Persian ornament — tenth to twelfth century 46 22. Sixteenth century arabesque details — German . . 47 23. Rosette in Rouen faience 47 24. Chinese foliage, not easy to identify 48 25. Bouquet of conventional ornament — Persian porce- lain, S.K.M ; 48 26. Abstract ornament, not free from foliation .. .. 49 27. Conventional Chinese flower forms 50 28. Conventional Chinese foliage 51 29. Rectangular acorn patterns — old German .. .. 53 30. Simplified thistle — by the late G. E. Street, R.A. 54 31. Gothic leaf border, wood-carving — Maidstone .. 55 32. Rosette or rose ? — German Gothic 55 33. Gothic leaf-and-flower border — wood-carving . . 55 34. Seed-vessels from nature .. .. 56 35. Conventional buds, or seed-vessels ? — marble inlay, Florence' ' ..'. ,. ,, jj 36. Conventional Greek ivy leaves and berries .. .. 5.7 37. Japanese border, buds or fruits ? rg 38. Conventional tree — from a Sicilian silk 58 39. Simple Roman tree — mosaic, B.M 59 40. Hawthorn crocket eg 41. Vine crocket eg 42. Late Gothic pomegranate — stencil pattern . . . . 60 43-4. Indian renderings of the poppy — niello .. .. 61 List of Illustrations in the Text, xvii PAGE 45- Greek border with lily buds 6i 46. Early Gothic foliated ornament — pavement tiles . . 62 47. Natural and ornamental foliage — Early French . . 63 48. Bud-like ornamental forms — Gothic wood-carving . . 63 49. Peony simplified to form a stencil — by H. Sumner 64 50. Indian wood-carving 65 5r. Gothic wood-carving 65 52. Greek that might be Gothic — stone-carving .. .. 65 S3- Persian details which might be Gothic — porcelain of the sixteenth or seventeenth century 66 54. Japanese treatment of the iris — embroidery .. .. 66 55. Wheat-ears, simplified or elaborated? — seventeenth century Italian silk 68 56. Floral forms within floral forms — Italian velvet, Persian design 73 57. Pomegranate berries arranged in bud-form Per- sian silk . . 74 58. Ornamental pomegranates — Italian velvet . ..75 59. Ornamental pomegranate-:— eighteenth century silk 76 60. Ornamental pomegranate — old German embroi- dery . .. 77 61. Foliated forms geometrically diapered — Japanese .. 78 62. Elaborated flower — from an embroidered Gothic altar frontal 79 63. Elaborated flower — from a table-cover of German embroidery, 1598 80 64. Bulbous hop-leaves — German Gothic wood-carving 81 65. Indian corn adapted to ornament — Italian wood- carving 88 b xviii List of Illustrations in the Text. PAGE 66. Rigid lines of the growth of corn turned to orna- mental account — by the late C. Heaton . . . . 89 67. Artificial grace of line — Italian 9° 68. Quasi-natural rendering of the lily — by Sammicheli 91 69. Quattro-cento lily — S.Bernardino, Perugia .. .. 92 70. Narcissus compelled into the way of ornament — L.F.D ' 93 71. Incongruous treatment of the oak — Roman .. .. 94 72. Characterless design — Albertolli 95 73. Inconsistency between flower and leaf — Japanese 96 74. Graceful artificiality — Lyons silk, about 1 700 .. 97 75. De-naturalised floral details — by Gribelin, 1682 .. 98 76. Confusion of effect without confusion of growth — Persian tiles, S.K.M loi 77. The vine in Assyrian sculpture — B.M 106 78. Vine from a Greek vase — B.M 108 79. Pompeian vine border — silver on bronze — Naples 109 80. Italian wood-carving — hop or vine? — S.K.M. .. no 81. Conventional Gothic vine and grapes — York . in 82. Gothic vine with mulberry-like grape-bunches — York 112 83. Conventional vine, from Toledo — more or less Moorish n^ 84. Moorish vine, from Toledo 114 85. Naive Byzantine vine — Ravenna iic 86. Early French Gothic vine — Notre Dame, Paris . . 116 87. Square-shaped vine-leaves — scratched earthen- ware, B.M iiy Diamond-shaped vine-leaves —Gothic II List of Ilhistrations in the Text, xix PAGE 89. Vesica-shaped vine-leaves —York 119 90. Diagram of Italian Gothic treatment — Padua .. 120 91. Transitional vine scroll — German linen damask . . 121 92. Italian quattro-cento vine scroll — Venice .. .. 123 93. German Renaissance foliage — by Aldegrever .. 124 94. Vine in Gothic glass-painting — Malvern .. .. 126 95. Quasi-Persian rose — Italian velvet, sixteenth century 130 96. Oriental rose border — embroidered in silk and gold on linen 131 97. Rhodian rose — from a faience dish 132 98. Roman lily forms — a candelabrum 133 99. Indian lotus — Buddhist stone-carving, B.M. .. 134 100. Seventeenth century iris — applique embroidery, Italian, S.K.M 135 loi. Renaissance pinks — needlework 136 102. Modern Gothic pomegranate — by the late B. J. Talbert 139 103. Pomegranate — Spanish brocatelle 140 104. Oak — from, the Cathedral of Toledo 141 loj. Assyrian tree of life 142 106. Oak — from a Sicilian silk 142 107. Romanesque tree of life — from a painted roof at Hildesheira 143 108. Renaissance silk — showing Persian influence . . 149 109. Egyptian symbolic papyrus 150 1 10. Assyrian symbolic ornament — glazed earthenware, B.M 151 111. Abstract Greek ornament — from a vase .. .. 152 XX List of Illustrations in the Text. PAGE 112. Later Greek ornament — from a vase 153 113. Assyrian rosette of lotus flowers and buds .. .. 155 114. Gothic ornament — from Notre Dame, Paris .. 156 115. Fifteenth century fir-cone ornaments 157 n6. Chinese flower forms 157 117* Etruscan and Greeli: anthemion shapes .. .. 158 118. Japanese diaper 159 119. Japanese diaper 159 1 20. Lily-hke Greek details — from various sources . . 1 60 121. Romanesque detail approaching to the fleur-de-lis 160 122. Gothic pattern — Early fleur-de-lis 160 123. Concentric forms— seaweed 162 124. Gothic — anthemion shape — from the nimbus of a figure in one of tlie stained-glass windows at Fairford .. 162 125. Gothic diaper — radiating — from a painted screen 162 ) Renaissance ornament — Italian wood-carving .. i63 128. Renaissance anthemion — by Mino da Fiesole, Florence 164 129. Abstract foliage — Persian inlay, S.K.M 169 130. Would-be ornamental celandine— AlbertoUi .. 170 131. Chinese rendering of "kiss-me-quick" — em- broidery 171 132. Comparatively natural treatment of poppy — L.F.D 172 133. Comparatively natural treatment of iig — L.F.D. .. 173 134. Ornamental treatment of strawberry — L.F.D. .. 174 135. Dolphins used as ornament — by George Fox .. 180 List of Illustrations in the Text, xxi PAGE 136. Circular bird (and flower) crest i8i 137. Circular bird crest 181 138. Ornamental indication of birds in flight .. 181 139. Diaper of stories and chrysanthemum flowers combined 182 140. Dragon-fly diaper — Japanese 183 141. Diaper of conventional bats 184 142. Bird diaper by the late Wm. Burgess, A.R.A. . 185 143. Repeating figure pattern 186 144. Conventional peacoclc border — Indian embroidery 187 145. Egyptian wing treatment — vultures 188 146. Egyptian wing treatment — hawk in cloisonne enamel 189 147. Bat diaper — old Japanese 191 148. Embroidered bat — Chinese 194 149. Pilaster by Signorelli—Orvieto 202 150. Grotesque iron grille — German 204 151. Wings reduced to ornament — Italian wood-carving 209 152. Ornamental dragon — Japanese 210 153. Arctic American grotesquerie — embroidered cloth 211 154. Spring blossoms on the stream — Japanese .. .. 213 155. Diaper of spiders' webs 214 156. Diaper of flames . 215 157. Cloud and bat pattern 2i6 158. Cloud pattern 216 159. Wave pattern 216 160. Water and water-lilies ., 217 161. Wave pattern and water-fowl 2l8 xxii List of Illustrations in the Text. PAGE 162. Wave pattern — Japanese porcelain -'° 163. Wave pattern — Japanese lacquer ^'9 164. Wave ornament 219 165. Wave ornament "219 166. Wave and spray pattern 220 167. Decorativerenderingof incoming wave — ^Japanese 221 168. Shell ornament 222 169. Seaweed ornament .. •• 222 170. Heraldic mantling — part of a painted frieze — L.F.D 223 171. Heraldic mantling — German Gothic wood- carving 224 172. Inlaid peacock-feather ornament— by B. J. Talbert 226 173. Coptic feather border— S.K.M 227 174. Coptic feather diaper— S.K.M 227 175. Persian peacock feather pattern — painted tiles, S.K.M 228 176. Trophy panel — Renaissance 229 177' Fran9ois I" skull ornament — wood-carving, Fon- tainebleau 230 178. Early Phoenician wreath 231 179. Swag of fruit-bunches 233 180. Egyptian sacred beetle 237 181. Diaper of waves, clouds, and sacred birds .. 238 182. Cross of fleurs-de-lis — thirteenth century .. .. 238 183. Assyrian sacred tree 239 184. Assyrian sacred tree — B.C. 885-860 239 185. Iris or fleur-de-lis ?— Seventeenth century Vene- tian velvet 240 List of Illustrations in the Text, xxiii PAGE 1 86. Egyptian symbols .. 240 187. Gothic fleurs-de-lis — from old glass, Lincoln .. 241 188. Heraldic badges — Sixteenth century, Mantua .. 242 1 89. Symbolic eye — Egyptian 243 190. Segment of Greek border of eyes — painted terra- cotta 243 191. Symbolic border of seed-vessels — L.F.D 245 192. Heraldic oak — Italian Renaissance 247 ABBREVIATIONS. B.M.— British Museum. S.K.M. — South Kensington Museum. L.F.D. —Lewis F. Day. NATURE IN ORNAMENT. INTRODUCTORY. The bias of the natural man is not un- naturally in the direction of nature. Almost alone in the history of art, the Greeks and the Moors appear to have been content with ornament which was ornament pure and simple. It is not too much to say, even in these days of supposed interest in things deco- rative, that the Englishman generally speaking neither knows nor cares anything about the subject. He is in most cases absolutely out of sympathy with it. Possibly he has even a sort of contempt for the "ornamental," as some- thing opposed to that utility which he so highly esteems — never so much as appre- hending the fact that ornamental art is art applied to some useful purpose. The forms of ornament he most admires are those most nearly resembling something B 2 Nature in Ornament. in nature, and it is because of that resemblance he admires them : abstract ornament is quite outside his sympathies and beyond his under- standing. He begins, for example, to take a feeble interest in Greek pattern-work only when he sees in it a likeness to the honey- suckle. Show him some purely ornamental form, and it is neither its beauty, nor its character, nor its fitness that strikes him ; he is perplexed only to know what it is meant to represent. To him every form of orna- ment must have its definite relation to some natural object, and therein lies all its interest. Relation to nature there must be indeed, and every one will acknowledge the interest with which we trace such relationship ; but no one who really cares for ornament at all will allow that it depends upon that for its charm. When ornament has gone astray, it has been more often in the direction of what I may call rusticity than of that artificiality which is at the other end of the scale. Art passes through periods of affectation, when it becomes before all things urgent that opinion should be led back again to the for- gotten, grass-grown paths of nature. That is not our urgency just now. If there was at one time within our memory some fear of artificiality in art, the danger now lies in the Introductory. 3 opposite direction of literalism ; a literalism which assumes a copy of nature to be not only art, but the highest form of art ; which ignores, if it does not in so many words deny, the necessity of anything like imagination or invention on the part of the artist, and accepts the imitative faculty for all in all. To venture upon the sweeping assertion that all art whatsoever is, and must be, con- ventional, would be very likely to lay oneself open to the rebuke of judging all art by the decorative standard ; but with regard to orna- ment, I have no hesitation in saying that more or less conventional it must be, or it would not be ornamental. Not, of course, that the ornamentist denies in the least the supreme beauty of natural form and colour, or thinks for a moment to improve upon it, as some seem to imagine, who insinu- ate that he proposes to surpass nature, pre- sumes to " paint the lily," and so on. On the contrary, he is modest enough to recognise the impossibility of even approximately copying anything without the sacrifice of something which is more immediately to his purpose than any fact of nature — consistency namely, fitness, breadth, repose ; and is content, there- fore, to take only so much of natural beauty as he can make use of. He regulates his B 2 4 Nature in Ornament. appetite, that is to say, according to his digestion. Such self-denial on his part is not by any means a shirking of the difficulties of the situa- tion. In art nothing is easy, except to such as have a natural faculty that way. It is not every one who finds it easy to make a striking study from nature ; but that comparatively elementary accomplishment does demand ability of a lesser kind than the production of a picture in which there is design, unity, style, and whatever else may distinguish a master- work of the Renaissance from a study of to-day. In like manner, the mere painting or carving of a sprig of foliage is within the reach of every amateur ; but to adapt such foliage to a given position and purpose, to design it into its place, to treat it after the manner of wood, stone, glass, metal, textile fabric, earthenware, or what not, demands not only intelligence and inborn aptitude, but training and experience too. It is the easiest thing in the world to ridicule such decorative treatment ; but it would puzzle the scoffer if he were asked to pause a moment in his merriment and point out a single instance of even moderately satisfactory de- coration in which a more or less non-natural Introductory. 5 treatment has not been adopted. The fact is, the artist has not yet arrived at a point where he is able to dispense altogether with art. It is his misfortune (more so nowadays than ever it was) that it is extremely difficult for him to make up his mind precisely as to the relation of art to nature. That it is dependent upon nature, more or less, is obvious. Only by way of paradox is it possible to contend, like Mr. Whistler, that " nature is very seldom right." Nature is our one and constant model. The question is as to how freely or how painfully, how broadly or how literally, how individually or how slavishly, we shall render the model before us, how much of it, and what of it, we shall depict. And this is a question which, if not quite beyond solution, must be solved by each man according to his idiosyncrasy, and that only after much anxiety and doubt and difficult self-questioning. It is the good fortune of the decorator, the ornamentist, the worker in any of the more dependent arts, to be comparatively free from such incubus of doubt. In his art there is much less room for hesitation. For him to adopt the realistic creed would be to deny his calling, and to cut himself off from the art of his adoption : for the very idea of 6 Nature in Ornament. ornament implies something to be ornamented, and accordingly to be taken into account. By the adoption of any one of the applied arts, a man is bound to draw the line at realism so soon as ever it is opposed to the application of his art. In other words, the purpose to which his art is put indicates to him the limits of possible realism. And so, while the dispute about realism is still at its height so far as literature, the drama, and even painting are concerned, the question as to the adaptation of natural forms to ornamental design has resolved itself, for all who know anything of the subject, into inquiry as to the degree and kind of modification calculated to render natural forms applicable to orna- ment and the various purposes to which it is put. This modification of natural form to orna- mental purpose we are accustomed to call conventional. In accepting this term, how- ever, we must be careful to distinguish con- vention from convention, and especially from that academic acceptation of the term which would give us to understand that the modi- fication of nature has been done for us, and that we have only to accept the Classic, Mediaeval, Renaissance, or other more or less obsolete rendering at hand. As though the Introductory. 7 tombs of buried peoples were heaven-sent habitations for live men ! The one thing to be insisted upon in refer- ence to convention is that it has not been done for us once and for all, that we have to do our own conventionalising ; and not only that, but that we have to do it again and again, each time afresh, according to the work in hand. It is only by this means that art in ornament subsists and grows : when it ceases to grow, decay sets in of course. To accept a convention ready-made is to compromise your own invention ; to go on copying the accepted types, be they never so beautiful, is just to stifle it. But one must be familiar with them : one must be aware of what has been already done in the way of art, as well as conversant with nature. Simply to study nature is not enough. We have to know how artists of all times have interpreted nature ; how the same artist, or artists of the same period, treated natural form differently, according to the material employed, conform- ably with the position of the work, in view of the use it was to serve. Knowing all this, and being perfectly at home in the world of nature, one may set to work to conventionalise on one's own account. There is some chance of success then, not otherwise. 8 Nahtre in Ornament. Those who most keenly feel the need in ornament of a quality which the modern nature-worshipper delights to disparage, will be inclined to pray that they may be pre- served from some of their allies. There is, or was not long ago, a class of ornament in vogue, which appears to have originated in the idea that you have only to flatten out any kind of natural detail, and arrange it symmetrically upon arbitrary lines, and the end of ornament is achieved. Decorative design is not so easy as all that. To emasculate a natural form is not to fit it for ornamental use, and to distribute detail according to diagram is not to design. The result may be conventional, but it is not the kind of convention I am upholding ; one touch of nature is worth all the mechanical and life- less stuff of that kind that ever was done. One hopes, and tries to think, that this sort of thing is dying out, if not quite dead already ; but then one flatters oneself so readily that what has been proved absurd must be e.xtinct, or moribund at least ; until, perhaps, an enforced stay among the Philis- tines brings us face to face with the evidence how very much it is alive. We have only weeded it out of our little garden plot ; about us is a wide world where it is rampant. There Introdtictory. g is no hiding it from ourselves, there is life in the old dogma yet ; and, alas, in many another. It is still as necessary as ever to deny the claim of merely geometric reconstruction to represent the due adaptation of natural forms to decorative needs. It is no more fair to take this ridiculously childish work to repre- sent conventional design than it would be to instance the immature studies of some raw student as examples of naturalistic treatment. Compare the best with the best. Compare the ceramic painting of Sevres with that of ancient Greece, China, or Japan ; compare the work of Palissy with that of the potters of Persia and Moresque Spain ; compare the finest Aubusson carpet with a Persian rug of the best period ; compare the earlier Arras (such as we have at Hampton Court) with the most illusive of modern Gobelins tapestry ; compare the traditional Swiss wood-carving on the chalet fronts at Meyringen and there- abouts with the most ingenious model pro- duced in the same district for the English and American tourist ; compare the peasant jewellery of almost any country except our own (we never seem to have had any) with the modern gewgaws which have taken its place ; and who would hesitate to choose the more conventional art ? lo Nature in Ornament. Conventional treatment, it will be seen, is no mere stopping short of perfect rendering, no bald excuse for incompetence. It will be my task to show that, if it does not on the one hand consist in the substitution of the diagram of a thing instead of its life and growth, neither does it mean the mere distor- tion of natural details, nor yet that mechanical repetition of ancient conventions which is a weariness to every one concerned in it. Our rendering of natural form must be our own, natural to us ; but without some sort of con- ventionality (if we must use the word) deco- ration is impossible. There is no art without convention ; and your most determined realist is in his way as conventional as the best, or worst, of us. It is not the word conventional for which I am contending, but that fit treatment of ornament which folk seem agreed to call by the title, more especially when they want to abuse it. By whatever name it is called, we cannot afford to let go our hold of that some- thing which distinguishes the decorative art of every country, period, and master, from the crude attempts of such as have not so much as grasped the idea that there is in art some- thing more than a dishing up of the raw facts of nature. Introductory. 1 1 Work as nearly natural as man can make it, though not in itself decorative, may be at times available in decoration. But forms de- naturalised by men alike ignorant of the principles and unskilled in the practice of ornament, and more than half contemptuous of design to boot, are of no interest to any one but their authors, if even to them. Nature and art are not on such bad terms that to be unnatural is to be ornamental. 12 Nature in Ornament. 11. ORNAMENT IN NATURE. Nature being admittedly the primal source of all our inspiration, it is rather curious to observe the limited range within which we have been content to seek ideas, how we have gone on reflecting reflections of reflections, as though we dared not face the naked light of nature. With all the wealth of suggestion in the world about us and the never-ending variety of natural detail, the types which have sufficed for the ancient and medieval world, and for that matter for ourselves too, are, compara- tively speaking, very few indeed. How largely the ornament of Egypt and Assyria is based upon the lotus, the papyrus, and the palm ! The vine, the ivy, and the olive, the fir-tree and the oak, together with the merest remin- iscence of the acanthus, went far to satisfy not only the Greeks but their Roman and Renaissance imitators as well. Gothic art went further afield, and gathered n^late 2. 'Photo -Tint, i./ J amaa A«*nDinLWan W.r Japanese. Koses. Ornament in Nature. 1 3 into its posy the lily and the rose, the pome- granate and the passion flower, the maple and the trefoil, but still only a comparatively small selection of the plants a-growing and a-blowing within sight of the village church. Oriental art is more conservative still ; in it a very few types recur continually, with a monotony which becomes at last tedious. One wonders what Chinese art would have been without the aster and the peony, or Japanese without the almond blossom and bamboo, what' Arab ornament would be but for the un-leaf-like leaf peculiar to it. One is struck sometimes by the degree of variety in the treatment which a single type may undergo in different hands ; more often it is the sameness of the renderings which strikes us. Probably in the case of no single plant have the possibles in the way of ornamental adapta- tion been exhausted, and in many instances the very plainest hints in the way of design have not been taken. The rose, for example, has been very variously treated ; but comparatively little use has been made of the fruit, or of the thorns, or of the broad stipules at the base of the leaves. We have to be grateful when the buds, with their boldly pronounced sepals, are. H Nature in Ornament. I. Various tendrils, from nature. once in a way, turned to ornamental account (Plate 65 and pp. 1 31, 132). The Japanese roses on Plate 2 are more directly inspired by nature, but then they are not very ornamentally treated. They might almost have been drawn directly from nature. It is mainly the simplicity and directness with which they are rendered which gives them some decorative quality. Take the conventional vine again, with its stereotyped leaves and prim grapes. And its tendrils, how seldom they have suggested more than a rather meaningless wriggle, useful, no doubt, to fill an awkward gap in the composi- tion, but without either character or beauty. Probably no feature of flower growth has been rhore badly treated than the tendril. Artists have thought themselves free to add a tendril to any plant whatsoever, and whereso- Ornament in Nature. 15 2. vine tendrils, from nature. ever it pleased them. The clinging character of the bindweed, the hop, and plants of that kind, has suggested to artists who look with- out their eyes the necessity of support of some kind, and they have accordingly provided the tendrils nature has denied, neglecting all the while the peculiarly decorative character of the twining stem. Designers have seldom taken much account of the essentially orna- mental way in which plants like the nasturtium and the clematis attach themselves to what- ever they can lay hold on by their leaf-stalks ; nor have they rendered in design the suckers by which the ivy and the Virginia creeper adhere to the wall. It is so much simpler to provide convenient tendrils than to study nature. And what tendrils they have provided ! All of one pattern ; whereas in nature they are 1 6 Nature in Ornament. delightfully diverse. How vigorously the mature and woody tendril contrasts with the silky growth of the young shoots groping for something to support them ! How different the branched tendril of the pea from the simple bryony tendril, and both from that of the vine ! Certain poets of a past generation thought fit to compare the tresses of their lady-loves to this last ; and there was, perhaps, a certain suggestion of the corkscrew in both to warrant the comparison ; but what a lively corkscrew the tendril is, how friskily it twists and twirls about, and how gaily it starts off, as it were, on a fresh lease of life ! It is too exclusively in the leaf, the flower, and the fruit, that the ornamentist seems to have sought his model. The leaf-bud, for ex- ample, whether as giving character to the bare twigs (Plates 3 and 8) or conveniently softening the angle between the leaf-stalk and the stem, has been comparatively neglected : one type of bud at all events has usually done duty for all. The thickening of the leaf-stalk, again, at the joint with the stem, has rarely been made use of ; nor yet the quite young shoot, which not only fills the empty space about the stalk, but gives an opportunity, most invaluable in design, of contrasting smaller detail with the larger forms of the general design. ^late 3. ■pHOTO-TtMr:!^^™*. Ak«ia.n London VC Budding brancbKs.from Nature. Ornament in Nature. 1 7 The stipules of the leaves, which also enrich the meagre joint, have been equally left out of ornament, characteristically ornamental as they are in the pea, for example, the sow thistle, and the passion flower. But even in the less marked form in which they appear in the hop, the medlar, the common nettle, and numberless wayside plants, they are worth an attention which they have not often received. Nature seems to neglect no opportunity ; the very scars left on the stems of certain trees, such as the horse-chestnut, form a kind of decoration. Even in the scarred stalk of an old cabbage you may see pattern. In the case of the palm, the remains of the leaves of years past resolve themselves still more plainly into ornament ; and for once the Roman sculptors, who saw palm-trees growing about them, adopted the idea in the decoration of their columns. ' The Indian rendering of the same notion, on Plate' jy, is yet more conven- tional ; but there is no doubt as to the origin of that zigzag. Was it so, perhaps, that the idea of decorating columns in zigzag, common enough in Norman architecture, originated ? In Greek ornament and its derivatives (Plates II, 12, &c.), use is made of the sheath to clothe the branching of the spiral stems, but C Nature in Ornament. 3. Romanesque ornamentation of the stem. there is still much to be learnt from the way in which nature wraps round a stalk with leaves, sheaths it, hides it, discreetly discloses it (Plate 4). The leaf seems sometimes to close round the stem so that that has almost the appearance of growing through ; so much so that the " thorough-wax " (same plate), owes its name to that appearance. Still more plainly does the stem seem to grow through where the leaves are opposite and grow together round it, as in the teasel and the honeysuckle. The arbitrary ornamentation of the stem in the Romanesque details above, indicates a feeling on the part of the artist that some- thing is needed to relieve the baldness of a stem. That something Nature is very ready to suggest, as the Pompeian bronze-worker Tkte 4. J..Alrenna3i,Hic]to-lith London Natural leaf sheaths. Ornament in Nature. 19 realised when he went to the river- side for a reed as " motif" for the ornamentation of his candelabrum. Certain fruits have, as I said, been made use of in design, either as affording convenient masses in the composition or, like the grape and the pomegranate, for reasons of symbolism. The smaller fruits have seldom had justice done to them. Bunches of berries are com- mon enough in ornament, but they are just berries, without as a rule the character of any particular plant. Yet how various they are in nature, and how differently they grow ! This is indicated, however inadequately, on Plate 5. Space will not permit me to illustrate this part of my subject at all fully; but only compare the bryony with the spindle-berry, the snow- berry with the privet, the solanum with the laurel, the aucuba-berry with the barberry, and you will see that neither are berries all of one shape, nor do they grow always in one way — in nature, that is to say. c 4. Part of a Pompeian candelabrum. 20 Nature in Ornament. ■ In the seed-vessel there is yet greater variety of natural design, in many cases rnost ornamental. The pea-pod has been slightly used in Renaissance Ornament, in the anthe- mion for example below, and on Plates 45 And 46, where it is most effectively and characteristically treated. ; On Plate 6 are a variety of cressworts in seed, indicating how in a single and un- pretending family of plants there may yet be considerable va- riety and character in the seed-vessels. Again, on Plate 7 are some studies of the open pods of the common broom curling up as they dry in the sun, strictly copied from nature, but almost ready-made, as it seems to me, to the hand of the ornamentist. The dried husks out of which flowers and seeds alike have fallen are often delightfully ornamental, as for example in the salvias, where they form at intervals a sort of crown round the stalk just above the starting point 5. Renaissance nse of pea-pods i ornament. ■ n^kte 5 7 -' ' * •// ■ / V' Various Lerries froin Nature. Ornament in Nature. 2 1 of the leaves. In certain thistles and kindred plants, the balls of seed-down are scarcely more beautiful than the silver-lined calices, from which the feathery seed has flown ; they shine in the sun like stars. Very considerable ornamental use has been made of the bursting of the full pomegranate fruit (Plates -j^ and 87 and pp. 74, 75, y6, TJ, 139, 140). It is strange that the effective treatment of this symbol has not suggested the availability of other opening seed-vessels, the horse-chestnut for example and other nuts, the pod of the iris, and so on. In the representation of fruits it is usually the ripe fruit that is given ; but there is often quite as much if not more character in the unripe ; and some variety of form and size is very desirable. The leaf in ornament is usually attached in a rather arbitrary way to the stalk, without sufficient heed to the twist and turn of the natural leaf, or to the angle at which it leaves the stem, to the length and thickness of its stalk, and to the way alternate leaves, say those of the lime, pull the stem out of the straight and give a zigzag line^n all of which there is character, and possibly a hint in design. Look at the poppies in the corn. Scarce 22 Nature in Ornament. one of them ever gets over the crick in the neck, which comes of hanging down its heavy head so long when it is a bud (see p. 172). There is always a tell-tale nick in the stalk of the full-blown flower, hidden it may be by drooping petals, but plain enough when they have dropped off and the seed-urn is left naked. It does not stand up straight and stiff like a barrel on a pole, but is poised with a subtlety characteristic always of the natural line as distinguished from the mechanical. Notice how the apple-tree blossoms (Plate 8). In each bunch a single topmost flower always opens first, so that it is quite a common thing to see a white flower nestling among its five pink buds. In the case of the oak again, the empty cup (see Plates 9 and 74) is a characteristic variation on the acorn shape, and there is usually at the end of the fruit-stalk a withered button or two, never to arrive at due development, which may be turned to account in design (Plate 9). 6. Unequally divided oak-leaf, from nature. 1^1 ate G. J Akerinaii, Jhoto-liili.LondoR Some seed Vessels froiD Nature. Ornament in Nature. 23 The gall-fly, again (same plates), comes to the help of the artist, and furnishes him with a further variety of forms more or less fruit- like in appearance, growing often in places where fruits would never be, on the unequal leaf for example. 1 have counted rosy clusters of a dozen and more on a single leaf. Besides the soft oak-apple, associated in our boyish minds with King Charles, and the hard ink- gall which decorates the bare boughs in winter, there is a canker which attacks the leaf-bud and results in something rather like a small fir-cone. Every one is familiar with the beautiful feathery burr of the rose : there are other rose- galls peculiar to the leaves, and looking like little beads of coral on their surface. In the poplar too, the prominent gall-knob at the base of the leaf-stalk is distinctly characteristic. Almost every plant, in short, is attacked by its hereditary enemy, that seldom fails to leave his mark behind him, suggestive, it may very likely be, of orna- ment. And so with great part of the vicissi- tudes to which vegetation of all kinds is subject — the ceasing of the sap to flow, the drying of the leaves, the spread of some parasitic growth, and so on. Historian and poet find in the misfortunes 24 Nature in Ornament. and death of their characters a pathetic interest : the omamentist may discover in the very decay of vegetation, apart from any sentimental interest, at least incident, character, and colour. The vicissitudes of plant life, it may be said, are accidental, and what has accident to do with design ? The very word implies, no doubt, the total absence of design. For all that, it is in some measure owing to the elimination of whatever is accidental in nature, that conventional ornament is apt to be so tame, and that the orthodox seems doomed to be dreary. There is nothing, strictly speaking, acci- dental in design ; but the designer is bound, nevertheless, to take every possible advantage of accident, not of course in order to incorpo- rate into his work, after the manner of the realist as he calls himself, the awkward or ugly traits of nature which others have for obvious reasons left out of account, but that he may seize upon every freak of nature suggestive of characteristic and beautiful design. Strict attention to botanic accuracy has resulted too frequently in ornament much more mechanically exact than anything in nature. If natural leaves grow at ordered intervals, they do grow, vigorously and vari- q^late? Pods from Nature. Ornament in Nature. 25 ously, as if they had something like a will of their own. The ideal of the horticulturist is a flower- head as even as if it had been struck geometri- cally, a spike of blossoms as trim as a clipped yew-tree or a French poodle. That is not Nature's way. Regularly as a natural flower- spike may be planned, the actual blossoms have a way of shooting out in the most casual manner. You see this very plainly in the salvias, for all the gardener's pains with them ; and everywhere, in the woods and in the meadows, by the wayside and the river bank, Nature never wearies of playing variations upon the symmetric plan of plant growth. Certain plants, says the gardener, have a bad habit of " sporting." Truly there is nothing at all sportive in his reduction of all nature to one dead level of sameness. Ornament might fairly be compared to the growth of a garden, not of a wilderness. But if, on the one hand, nature cannot be allowed to run wild over this garden, neither, on the other, should it be clipped and trimmed and formalised until there is no character of its own left in it. I have alluded to the method of the florist because it affords a perfect example of what not to do in the way of modifying natural 26 Nahi,re in Ornament. form. His plan is to eliminate whatever is wayward, occasional, uncommon, character- istic. Look at his hyacinth, and compare it with the wild bluebells. Look at his double dahlia : the flower was prim enough in the simple single form, with its obviously even- numbered petals insisting upon your count- ing them ; but what a bunch of ribbons it has become in his hands ! To reduce a flower to the likeness of a rosette, is not to make it the more ornamental ; and every accident indica- tive of a return to nature is a welcome relief from such unmeaning evenness of form. Those who would limit us to a hard and fast rule of growth, betray perhaps their own ignorance of the latitude Nature allows her- self We have to acquaint ourselves with the anatomy of plants, and especially with their growth ; and where it comes to anything like natural treatment, we have further to take into account the habits of a plant, its manners and customs, so to speak — for which there is, of course, if we enquire into the matter, good structural reason always. It is, how- ever, with the outward form of things that the art of the ornamentist has to do, and for the most part it will be sufficient for him to confine his studies to the visible side of nature. Very slight observation will show (plate 8. 'PmoTO-Timt'; tyJ^mea Ak«rm»n LonJon W C T]ovl(zr & leaf buds. Ornameiit in Nature. 2 7 him that Nature is not so careful always to emphasise botanical points as are some of us, and that she appears often to break her own laws : or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, she breaks the laws we have been bold to make for her. At all events plants very often seem to grow differently from what science has taught us to expect. Against a wall, for example, where leaves cannot grow in the orthodox spiral fashion, they will arrange themselves quite contentedly on two sides of the stem or on one side of it. If that may be so in nature, why not also in art ? There is only one caution necessary against it : that the designer must not let it seem as though he were ignorant of the normal way in which a thing grows. To do full justice to a plant it is not enough for the designer to make a drawing of it. One has to watch it through the year, perhaps through several years, in order to seize the moment when it reveals all the possi- bilities that are in it. Certain seasons are peculiarly favourable to the development of certain plants in the direction of ornament. In a wet summer, for example, when things grow quickly, the apparently confused way some plants have of growing is made clear. 28 Nature in Ornament. The stalks are so much longer than usual, and the leaves so much further apart, that they disclose for once the way the plant grows ; and this opening-out of natural growth goes some way towards fitting it for the purposes of ornament. Again, it depends in some cases very much upon the season whether the sepals of the withered flower remain intact on the ripened fruit, and whether the stipules at the base of the leaf-stalk and the bracts at the axes of the. flower-stalks adhere or not. In excep- tional seasons, also, fruit-trees begin to bloom again whilst the ripe fruit is on the tree. And what a vast difference all that makes to the designer who would found himself always upon nature ! Many a happy inspiration of design is no more than the turning to account some fortu- nate accident in nature. You notice, as you walk through a clearing in the woods, where an oak-tree has been cut down close to the root ; and it has sent out a ring of young shoots all round it, so as to form a perfect garland of oak-leaves on the ground. A few days later and you would seek in vain a living, growing model for your oak wreath. The conventions of artists are not so far removed from nature as we are apt to think. f?late 9 'Pkoto Tint o^ Jnnco Akornian I oadim.V-C Tile paDel,Oak Galls, Ornament in Nature. 29 Trees do grow in Umbria as Perugino, and Raf- faelle after him, painted them. The artist did not altogether imagine those graceful sprays of leafage, any , more than Ve- ronese evolved his lovely green- blue skies from his imagina- tion. You see just such skies in Italy ; as you see also in Titian's country the purple hills and quasi-con- ventional land- scapes he put in- to his pictures. Apropos of colour, we are too much dis- posed to take it for granted that red, blue, purple, and yellow are colours nature has reserved for flowers, and that only leaves, stalks, and so on are green. But as a matter 7. Chinese rendering of wistaria — old embroidery. 30 Nature in Ornament. of fact, the flower-stalk is often more in harmony with the flowers than with the leaves, as in the begonia, salvia, sea holly, and other plants. The leaf-stalk, also, is sometimes bright crimson, as in the little wild cranesbill and in the sycamore ; or vivid yellow, as in the case of some poplar- leaves. Leaves themselves, again, are often any- thing but green. I do" not mean that they are merely greyish, as they often are, in the corn-flower for example, or olive, which they seldom are, or that they merely change colour in the autumn, but that they are of a delicate brown, as in the young growth of the wistaria (which the Chinese embroiderer (see p. 29) has metamorphosed into something more like tendrils), or madder-coloured, as in the late shoots of the oak, briar, hornbeam, and other trees. And then what variety of tint there is in the backs of leaves : purple as in the wild lettuce, rich red-brown as in some magnolias and rhododendrons, silver grey as in the alder, the poplar, the willow, and some garden plants. Admirable use has been made of the con- trast in colour between the back and front of leaves by the Japanese. They will make the leaf solid black with white veins, and sketch ^la-te 10. AspaTaQt.t'5 JAkeTma]i,Photo-lith.Lo&dou INatural Growth. Ornament in Nature. 3 i. its reverse only in outline with black veins, counter-changing the colour as frankly as a mediaeval herald did in his treatment of the mantling about a shield. Whether, then, it is form that we seek or colour, everywhere in nature there is material for the ornamentist, often, as it seems, almost ready made to his hand (Plate 10) ; but, promising as it may be, it is not yet orna- ment — it lacks always adaptation to our especial purpose. It is by our treatment of nature that we justify our use of its forms. Nature in Ornament. III. NATURE IN ORNAMENT. It is not at first sight obvious how much all ornament owes to nature. There is even a still surviving superstition that it is designed by the aid of the kaleidoscope. True it is that the " itch to make patterrjs " was one of the very earliest symptoms of that artistic fever to which the human race has from the first been liable. Man may or may not have begun by scratching animals on bones of other animals, he very soon began to scratch ornamental devices. The English race scarcely suffers from the malady nowa- days. When it does break out in us it may be traced probably to some Welsh or other Celtic ancestor. But to certain of us, however few, it is every bit as natural to trace patterns as to draw animals — or to kill them. For all that, even the born pattern-designer is necessarily, as man, and more especially as artist, so intimately acquainted with nature that his work is inevitably imbued with it. (plate 11. ITHO, a.FUBMVAL S"' HOIOORNjC Q Greek Scrolls. Nature in Ornament. 33 In almost every detail of design there is, whether he be conscious of it or no, a re- miniscence of nature. In the most abstract design he is accustomed to obey instinctively the natural laws of construction and growth, so much so that we resent his departure from them, and take exception, for example, to the scroll, even the most arbitrary, which violates the rule and presumes to grow, so to speak, both ways at once. I have explained at length elsewhere how the Greek honeysuckle ornament, as it is called, originated in no attempt to imitate natural bud forms, but grew, as one may say, out of the use of the brush. The fact remains, notwithstanding, that the brush-strokes came to range themselves very much on the lines of natural growth — all the more readily, of course, because of the memories or impressions of plant form stored away in men's brains. The fact is those memories, vague as they may be, prompt the ornamentist at every turn in design. What we call the acanthus scroll grew, I suppose, simply out of the desire to clothe with some sort of leafage the mere spiral lines with which archaic ornament, whether in Greece, or Northern Europe, or the Fiji Islands, invariably set out ; which spiral line D 34 Nature in Ornament. not only occurs in many shells and in the horns of animals, but results inevitably from a certain natural action of the draughtsman's wrist. The Greek scrolls on Plate ii consist practically of little more than branching spirals, with just a husk of something like foliage to mask the dividing of the stem : the lilies and the like are minor features obviously put in to fill up ; they form no integral part of the main purpose. The Roman scroll (Plate 12) is plainly more full of sap ; it seems to be bursting out into leafage ; but it remains only a de- velopment of the Greek idea : it is simply a spiral clothed in conventional leafage, devised primarily to disguise its lines, and especially the branching of the lines. That is the root and origin of the acanthus scroll — not any attempt to reduce the acanthus to ornament, but a desire to clothe the lines of the scroll. Archaic Greek orna- ment is made up mainly of spiral lines and groups of brush-strokes. On Plate 13 I have re- duced two typical acan- thus leaves to brush- 8. Acanthus leaves reduced . . i j i tobrushwork. work, m Order to show o o CO o or q^latslS. Acanthus Sculpture X: brushwork. (?]aXe 14. 'Photo -Timt" 1^ Jamaa AlcamnD.LaiiJmi.V.C 2' Versions of the saroe prieje design. Nature in Ornament. how, starting with the idea of deco- rating bald lines with brushwork, a painter, haunted as we all must be by the ghosts of natu- ral growth, might have arrived at something uncom- monly like the con- ventional Classic leafage, v And again, on Plate 14, I have translated a Renaissance scroll of my own into the same language of the brush. It is not, of course, meant to imply that that is, as a matter of fact, how the acanthus scroll came about, but that it might have been deve- loped in that way. The fable about Callimachus and [_ the Corinthian 9. Simple acanihus leafage. 36 Nature in Ornament. lo. Step between wave and acanthus scroll — Roman mosaic. capital is the invention of a poet, not of a practical ornamentist. Again, on the Roman pedestal on p. 35, where there is no scroll and no branching and no great variety of foliation, one may see, I think, very plainly how the familiar type of foliation may have grown out of the verj- simplest idea of clothing a straight line. It is one step, just one step, beyond the Greek bay-leaf pattern (Plate 81) : instead of simple bay-leaves in pairs we have opposite groups ?late 1^; 'Phbto-Tiht" 1j^ Junes A^rman.Lo&Jon.'W.C "Petails of /Mosaic from Carthage. Nature in Ornament. n of five, not separate leaves, but massed together sculpturesquely, forming at the junction of the groups the " pipes " so conspicuous in the full-grown Classic scroll. In the Roman mosaic border on p. 36 is an indication of the growth of a very similar idea ; a simple wave stem is supplied with offshoot, and both are clothed with of the very simplest description. a spiral leaflets Serrate or subdivide IT. Olive-like leafage. such leaflets, and we should not be far from the familiar arabesque. Something of the kind does in fact occur in the mosaic detail from Carthage on Plate 15, which looks almost like the next step forward in the development of the scroll. Such a system of foli- ation once invented, it was easy and natu- ral enough to make the detail more or less like some natural leaf. It has been made to resemble the acanthus and the olive ; and it is clear, by the acorns accom- 12. Oak-like leafage. ;8 Nature in Ornament. panying it, that it was used also to represent the oak. The quasi -Classic scroll of the Renaissance assumes at times also a distinct re- semblance to the vine. This is very plainly seen in the leafage from the famous Jub6 at Limoges (above). Judging by this particular instance, one might pretend that the stock pattern of conventional foliage was suggested by the vine. The vine-leaf is here as unmistakeable as the relation of the ornament to the An- tique. The detail in question belongs of course to a transition period. It halts be- tween two opinions. ^4. Crocke.liWohage. from 13. Vine-like acanthus leafage, from the Jubd at Limoges. ^late 16. Cy.I^y\rltil^^,SSumii-Bl %E.lkiK.I Transitional Scroll , V. Hopfer. Nature in Ornament. 39 15. Modern modification of Classic leafage. You see the hesitation, perhaps, more plainly still in the bracket from the same source (No. 14). That was plainly inspired by Classic art ; but the sculptor was more accustomed to carve Gothic crockets than Roman scrolls. The result is ornament which, but for associ- ation of ideas, would never suggest the notion of the acanthus. A very characteristic and individual modern rendering of the old theme is given above, the design, I imagine, of the late Godfrey Sykes. Had the Classic scroll really been only a conventional treatment of the acanthus, it would have been difficult to understand how the sculptors stopped short at that one type, and did not attempt to manipulate other forms of leafage in the same way. That merely abstract leafage should, on the other hand, eventually remind us of olive, oak, or acanthus leaves, is readily understood. The Gothic scrollery of Hopfer (Plate 16) is very remote indeed from the acanthus. The spirit of the Renaissance was already in 40 Nature in Ornament. the air in the time of Hopfer, and probably- influenced his work. If it did so to any extent, it shows how differently men could interpret the same notion. If it did not, it shows how from different directions they arrived at some- thing of the same kind. There is nothing ©f the acanthus here — the foliation is more sug- gestive of the thistle — but yet there is in the design a family likeness to Classic and Re- naissance types. The more naturalistic flowers introduced to fill up remind one distantly of the lily-ljke additions to the Greek scroll (Plate ii) and even the too natural birds have their counterparts in Roman and Renais- sance arabesque. In the typical Renaissance arabesque the idea is still to clothe lines in themselves merely ornamental ; and in the best work these lines remain always apparent through the clothing (Plates 96 and 105). But that the Italians of the Cinque Cento did not allow themselves to be hampered by any consideration of natural possibility, still less of probability, is shown by their indulgence in the absurdities which deface many of their most graceful compo- sitions — such for example as da Udine's in the Loggie of the Vatican, and those of Giulio Romano at the Palazzo del T at Mantua, one of which is given on Plate 17. (Pkte 17. Photo Tint Irjr Jaaaa Alc^rmin UkIod W C Painted "Wall Panel, by Gitilio Koma-no. Nature in Ornament, 41 The Italian of the sixteenth century was seldom very particular how he arrived at his effect, so he arrived at it — the end justified the means with him ; but, little as he cared for natural growth, he could not do without it, and his most un- natural bristles details. The round dishes ornament with natural ornament the faience on Plate 1 8 (a class of ornament commonly distin- guished as Raffael- lesque) begins plainly with the idea of purely ornamental lines. It is another develop- ment of the foliated line. Both lines and masses are here ob- viously quite arbi- trary, suggested by ornamental considerations ; but, almost in spite of the artist, they take the form of winged head, dolphin, leaf, flower. That fault already re- ferred to of growing two ways at once, which 16. Seventeenth century scroll — > Boulle. 42 Nature in Ornament. 17. Details of Romanesque ornament. may be here observed, is a very common de- fect of Italian arabesque (as of Arab art also, although in the latter case the detail is so much farther removed from life that the defect is less apparent). Even in its degradation however, the Renaissance arabesque never quite let go the thread of nature ; and in the hands of BouUe (p. 41) it blossomed out into something more distinctly floral than the purer scroll of the Cinque Cento. In Romanesque ornament, which is in the first instance only a rude rendering of Roman detail, there is, towards the twelfth century, some return to nature. The details above, for example, are not to be traced to any natural type, but they are alive with remi- niscences of nature. It is plain, nevertheless, always, from the freedom of the rendering, that the primitive idea was not to reproduce n^late 18. Photo-Tiht, t)-J.me« Ak.m.nIoiidon WC L-u st re Dishes, 16 . Cent-ury Nature in Ornament. 43 i8. Details of Early Gothic ornament. nature, still less to represent it naturally, but only to find a starting-point for design. The same may be said with regard to Early Gothic ornament, originally little more than a carrying on of the Romanesque idea, and reminding us at times, even in the thirteenth century, unmistakeably of Classic detail. In some of the details at the head of the page may be seen how, eventually, the artist went more directly to nature ; but though you might trace these home, they are as yet very arbitrary renderings. And for my part I think the earlier and more arbitrary Gothic forms by far the more ornamental : the stone budding into crockets or other sculp- turesque foliation, is to me far more beautiful than the would-be natural leaves and flowers spread over the architecture of the fourteenth century. In other words, the more strict Nature in Ornament P^S}^>Si^^^^ zg. Spiral Persian Fcroll. adherence to the natural type has resulted in the less satisfactory ornament. The artists of the latest Gothic period seem to have realised that themselves. In the German tapestry on Plate 19 there is, properly speaking, neither leaf nor flower, but only ornamental features corresponding to both. The lines are in a way ornamental ; but the growth is of more account with the designer than the line of his ornament. In this respect it is interesting to compare it with more deliberately ornamental arabesque. In its vigorous Gothic way it too is a model of the usethat may be made of nature in ornament. ^lale 13. Gothic Scrol Nature in Ornament. 45 20, Iris-like details of Persian ornament. In the Persian pattern on p. 44, the spiral line is decorated in a quite different manner from the Classical : it is not so much clothed in leafage as relieved by leaf-like touches and broken by daisy-like rosettes. It is quite certain that no natural type ever suggested the design ; it was in seeking ornamental forms that the painter happened upon some- thing which suggests, but only suggests, nature. On the other hand, there are forms above, which, though scarcely recognisable at first, are distinctly formed upon the flower of the iris. Still more remote from actuality are the details of Arab and older Persian ornament. And yet the most frequent feature in it is 46 Nature in Ornament. 21. Details of early Persian ornament. not altogether unlike a folded leaf in profile ; and in other shapes (above) a likeness has been traced to the unfolding fronds of the young fern. If these forms are indeed founded upon nature, it only goes to show how far one may, perhaps unconsciously, stray from one's starting-point. If they are not, it indicates how impossible it is to invent forms which shall not in some degree recall the life and growth about us. Mohammedan design, we know, purposed deliberately to avoid the natural ; but, for all that, the forms it borrowed from nature are perpetually betraying themselves, reminding us, if not of leaf or stalk, then of flower and bud. It looks as though, try as they might to ?1ate 20. Arab-esque Renaissance ornament. Nature in Ornament. 47 22. Sixteenth century arabesque details. evolve ornament out of their inner conscious- ness, the Arabs could not altogether silence their memories, even though conscience for- bade them to represent anything " on the earth beneath." Doubtless they sinned often un- consciously ; but they were foredoomed to sin. And so with their Renaissance imitators, German or Italian. Whenever they strayed from the source of Eastern inspira- tion, it was in- variably in the direction of na- ture. There is sometimes growth enough in the abs- tract Orientalism of Flotner and 23. Rosette in Rouen faience. Holbeiu tO make 48 Nature in Ornament. 24. Chinese foliage, not easy to identify. US wish it were more thoroughly consistent. One feels the lack of some controlling con- science in the growth. It is curious to note how, on Plate 20, the deliberately ornamental lines of strapwork break out into something like foliation — as 25. Bouquet of conventional ornament. ^late 21 CrnameDtal bouquet 17"^ CeDlur>' Nature in Ornament. 49 26, Abstract ornament, not free from foliation. for the undergrowth of filigree it does grow. Even Nicho- laus Drusse (Plate 1 1 7) does not man- age to get clear of natural influence, though it must be admitted that he treated nature with '^ery scant respect. So in the arbitrary- inlay pattern above, the abstract lines of ornament must needs break out incontinently into something Hke foliation. And again, in the faience pattern on p. 47, the painter, working on radiating lines in- dicated by the shape of his dish, seems to • have arrived as a matter of course at a rosette suggesting a flower, and calling for something like a leaf in connection with it. It is not by any means in the scroll alone that we trace the influence of nature in orna- ment. It is quite a common thing in Oriental art to find bouquets of quite conventional flower forms. There is an ingenious example of this in the Persian plaque on p. 48, in which the ornament consists almost entirely E •50 Nature in Ornament 27. Conventional Chinese flower forms- of flower forms, evenly diapered over the dish^ and yet conforming to the idea of growth. The Oriental influence is seen again in Plate 21, where the ornament, far removed as it is from nature, conveys quite clearly the idea of a nosegay. Forms only remotely resembling flowers are arranged, with due regard to balance, I will not say in imitation, but in recollection, of a bunch of flowers, and lines are found to connect and support them, and give them a sort of artistic coherence. . The artificiality of the design is obvious, but it is the artifice of an artist, and a very accomplished one too. It represents a type of ornament suggested by a wealth of flowers; where the stalks and especially the leaves go for very little. There is a considerable amount of tradi- tional ornament which was founded, no doubt, originally upon natural types lost in the mists. flate 22. J Akenna3i,H)oto-lith. London Book Cover by O-Wen jories. Nature in Ornament. 51 28. Conventional Chinese foliage. of long ago ; artists have repeated the form so often, and at last so perfunctorily, that in the end it is as difficult to decipher as a man's signature. One has almost to take it on faith that the flowers on p. ■ 50 are asters, peonies, and so on. So with the border above, the flower is, I suppose, an aster, but what goes for leafage belongs to no flower that ever grew. Even Owen Jones, who laid it down as an axiom that the recurrence to a natural type was by so much a degradation of design, could not do without foliation and growth, more or less according to nature. This is very plainly shown in the typical example of his work on Plate 22. He had the strictest views as to the lines on which orna- ment should grow, but he insisted that it should grow ; and his theory led him in ■practice to something always more or legs suggestive of nature — because the logical way in which he went to work was indeed the way of nature. E 2 52 Nature in Ornament. IV. THE SIMPLIFICATION OF NATURAL FORMS. To conventionalise is in some cases scarcely more than to simplify. So plainly is this so that the frequent occurrence of certain floral forms in decorative design is in part at least accounted for by the fact that they could be very considerably simplified without losing their clear identity. The sunflower, for ex- ample (Plate 23) came into fashion not entirely because of the whimsical folly of a few so-called aesthetes, but because its hand- some and massive head was such an unmis- takably ornamental feature. Foliage and flower alike lent themselves to, and indeed almost compelled, a broad and simple treat- ment ; whilst the character of the plant was so well defined, that it was difficult by any kind of rendering or any degree of conven- tionality of expression to eliminate it. It was never in danger of being reduced to the mere abstraction of a flower, that might have been suggested equally by any one of a dozen different natural types. ate 23. Sunflowers ^ F\oses by 1^. J. Talbcrt. Simplification of Natural Forms. 53 WtfW r^^^^/s 29. Rectangular acorn patterns. So also the acorn asserts its identity even in the rudimentary form in which it occurs in the old German stitching above. You may see again in the late George Edmund Street's cleverly contrived panel overleaf how a really characteristic and en- ergetic shape will hold its own. Shorn altogether of its leaves, its prickles, the very featheriness of its flower-heads, it leaves not the least doubt that it is a thistle. Less emphatic forms lose, when simpli- fied, all individual character ; and indeed you have only to carry such simplification far enough, to reduce the greater part of natural forms to one level — I might say perhaps one dead level — of convention. It is remarkable how slight a modification will remove a flower from recognition. An alteration of scale is sometimes enough to puzzle us. To magnify a flower is in most cases to disguise its identity. Draw the pimpernel the size of a flax blossom, or the flax blossom the size of a mallow, and who 54" Nature in Ornament. is to recognise it, especially when the subtler qharacteristics of texture and the individual turn of the petals are conventionalised away ?- One can never be quite certain that any con- ventional five-petalled flower, such as the German Gothic rosette on p. 55 for example, is not meant - for a rose. Even in the case of more characteristic blossoms, like the speedwell, with its pe- tals three and one, we are put off the scent at first by unaccus- tomed pro- portions in the flower. And so with leaves. Failing anything like strict accuracy as to their growth — very rarely indeed observed in ornament — it is more than difficult to distinguish between one lanceolate leaf and another : the same shape may stand just as well for willow as for bay or olive. The heart-shaped leaves in the 30. Simplified thistle. G. E. Street, R.A. ^?kte 24. iv y CONV€NTIONAL FLORAL ORMA/ACNT FRO/A &R€€K VASeS details of Greel< Terra Cotta pamiin6 Simplification of Natural Forms. 55 31. Gothic leaf border — wood carving. border above may indicate the poplar or the lilac : possibly the carver had in his mind no leaf in particular. It cannot be said that the danger of mis- take in their identity has deterred the de- signer from simplifying natural forms. We find in every period of art floral or foliated forms which may be meant for this or that, but which it is quite im- 3z. Rosette or rose ? posslblc to identify with any degree of certainty. The Gothic border below may stand for a rose, for all we know ; the Greek border A on Plate 24 may stand for a convolvulus ; and B, I feel pretty certain, con- sists of birch-leaves and catkins. The strange leaf in border C on the same plate used to puzzle me until I discovered its source in 33. Gothic leaf and flower border — wood carving. 56 Nahire in Ornament. 9ra "... f '• ■ 'A ;#f 1 m. V ■■:■ J' . 1^' f #.;: ^^BHti.-'C^mw^^^^Bm, ^^HnRiLVfr^^^^H 4'" 1 34. Seed-vessels from nature. nature. It proves, as you will see at a glance on this page, to be no leaf, but a seed- vessel : soften the angularity of the stem, pulled out of the straight by the pods, and you have the starting- point of the Greek design. There is sometimes in this Greek pattern an indication of the way the seed - vessels split asunder and shed the seeds. The identification of this peculiar two-lobed feature was all the n^late 25. "P«ttTo-7mT';VJ"""'"***™"'^'™^'"'^*' Details of f^na/r>s?i?r 'Photo -Tint" Ir^JimesAJcansiD London .W.C English Gothic "Details , Simplification of Natural Forms. 6- How far the primitive Gothic sculptor could, if he had been so minded, have rendered nature in the coarse stone in which he worked, is doubt- ful ; happily he seized that in nature which he could express, and expressed it like an 'artist. It is of the very- quality of an ornamentist, that he should be w- ^ ■ ^ -♦ *' ^'' ^ ^1 s " ^ "^ • 'V 1 , i ^ 1 ^' li / ',N) J ^ \ ! \ ' '%. 5 \. \ u ^■^^ 50. Indian wood-carving. 52. Greek that might be Gothic- Si. Gothic wood-carving. willing to omit much that he could have put into his work had it been to the purpose. In the peony pat- tern on p. 64 Mr. Sumner has had the courage to leave out whatever could not conveniently be ren- dered in stencilling. It is curious how dif- F 66 Nature in Ornament. 53. Persian that might be Gothic. JL^ ferent artists, working at different V^ times in different countries, have arrived sometimes at results not so very different. There seems to me a curious correspondence between -'- the detail of the Indian scroll *TOt and the late Gothic rosette on -^•^ p. 65, the result, presumably, in each case, of a sympathetic use of the tools the carver had. So, again, the fragment of archaic-Greek sculpture on the same page is so like certain rude stone carving of the Gothic period that one would have taken it almost for Mediaeval work. That bulging midrib is characteristic of a certain form of Perpendicular carving, derived no doubt from beaten metalwork. Did Greek and Gothic work- man alike refer for inspiration to goldsmiths' work, and so arrive at some- thing like the same form ? Once more, in the Persian details above, 54. Japanese treatment of the iris. "^ I ale 30. crKdAm<-. 'y»rco.r..L»n 61, &c. The arrangement of wave or other scroll ^1 ate 41. [Hunin8HB«Ma»wg MaiBain» anm i (utiisgiaRBSH ■iBKBiinaiioi »fll«B«m KM MB ■■■»■»««« Archaic Foliage. Consistency in Modification of Nature. 89 with leaves alternately on either side of it (or leaves and flowers, or leaves and berries) is objectionable (Plates 24, 25, 41, 68, 81) just in proportion to the natural- istic rendering of leaf, flower, berry, or what- ever it may be. There are two separate start- ing-points in ornamental de- sign. Natural form, once mo- dified, may re- solve itself into ornament pure and simple ; and, on the other hand, ornament has always a tendency to as- sume familiar natural shapes. 66. Rigid lines of growth turned to ornamental 90 Nature in Ornament. But, though somewhat similar results may be arrived at from such different directions, nature modified by considerations of ornamental pro- priety is one thing, ornament modified by memories of nature is quite another. If you start with nature, the difficulty is in making natural forms subserve to decora- tion without elimi- nating too entirely the natural element. When the lines of growth peculiar to a plant are not in the direction of orna- ment, what is to be done? The better plan is not, if you can help it, to go against nature, but to per- suade, if possible, the natural and charac- teristic growth into lines more in accordance with the purpose of ornament. Even the Greeks, as I have said, when they resorted to arbitrary lines in connection with natural forms, did not succeed. It must not too readily be taken for granted that a certain rigidity of growth may 67. Artificial grace of line. Oblate 42 Mfliininnn m ■BHaKiBBffi!^K«!uMI i''^ffi| ^^H ^^M H^^P^ ^^ MiP^^Siiw W^^^^^H W^ijjillw^/ KKwrn^mi .KaSLBMffl n ps^ 9 H^^^^B m /^odem Gothic Liiy panel. Consistency in Modification of Nature. 91 not possibly be turned to account in orna- ment. There is evidence of the availability 68. Quasi-natural rendering of lily. 9^2 Nature in Ornament. of rigid lines of growth in the in- genious composi- tion of the late Clement Heaton on p. 89, com- pared with which the : admittedly more graceful Italian version of the bearded wheat on p. 90 is not without a sug- gestion of sick- liness. What is fanciful in this last design makes for ornament, no doubt ; but there is something al- most discordant in the association of lines so sweet with the , growth of corn. Sanmicheli's quasi-natural lily (p. 91), with its five impossible 69. Quattro-cento lily. (Plate 43. r r vs 11 blaid Lily Ornamenl Consistency in Modification of Nature. 9^ petals, has not half the character of Talbert's manlier lily on Plate 42. The earlier Quattro- cento example on p. 92 is equally guilty of five petals ; although in the very rigidity and dignified simplicity of the composition there is some- thing that re- calls the natu- ral flower. One may ad- mit, however, a certain charac- ter and beauty in the stiff growth of ■ the lily, and even allow > that it may be made use of in de- sign, without denying for a moment that it is stiff. The ornamentist may quite fairly seek lines more graceful. Still, unless he looks upon the lily merely as a motif of ornament (as shown on Plate 39) he is hardly at liberty to make it branch like a 70. Narcissus compelled into the way of ornament. 94 Nature in Ornament. 71* Incongruous treatment of the oak. bush or twine like a creeper ; nor need he wish it. It is quite possible, to one suf- ficiently at home in nature and in design, to indue any such refractory plant with a grace of line and a general suavity of form which, though by no means characteristic of the natural growth, do not, at all events, bluntly contradict it. The graceful character of the growth on Plate 43 is not precisely that of the Illy ; but one is hardly disposed to quarrel with a com- position in itself so satisfactory. The detail is not so natural that you miss the natural growth. As a: rendering of the lily, the design may not be all that one could wish ; as ornament there is not much fault to find with it : the deviation from nature is all in the direction of design.- It is evident, too. I^late 44. 'pHoTa'TiNT* I17 J.Al»Tmui,G,lhu*n Sipura.W.C. 18 Century flower rendering. Consistency in Modification of Nature, 95 that the artist looked at the lily for himself, and conventionalised it according to his needs. It almost seems as though the plant might have been trained to grow so. This is the natural evolution of ornament, and not the mere distortion of nature which is sometimes mistaken for ornamental treat- ment. In the panel on p. 93 it has been at- tempted to subject the narcissus to somewhat similar ornamental treatment. In the eighteenth century version of the wild flag on Plate 44 there is a certain ap- pearance of naturalness, or, more properly speaking, of picturesqueness ; but it grows with a grace and elegance absolutely arti- ficial. That same affectation belonged indeed to the period (see Plates 32, 33, 62, 70) ; but it is at least a graceful affectation, and con- sistent with itself That can hardly be said for the rendering of the oak on p. 94, which has the unfor- tunate appearance of being either too natu- ral or not natural enough. And even 72 Characterless design. were the Hncs more 96 Nature in Ornament. ;*;;•;> 73. Inconsistency between flower and leaf. satisfactory than they are, one would still feel that there was something incongruous in the combination of lines so suave and slender with the oak. And so again in the case of the still more timid treatment of the leaves by Albertolli on p. 95. This par- ticular tree is, more than all others, associated always in our minds with the idea of sturdy angularity. The rendering of a plant may be by no means very natural, and yet by far too much so. In the ornament above, the flower is too distinctly an orchid to go with foliage dis- tinctly belonging to another family. This is a fault rather exceptional in Japanese design, where the rendering of nature is usually either frankly natural or deliberately and uncompro- misingly conventional. In the art of the Renaissance the fault of inconsistency is of the commonest occur- (Plate 45. 1 o CO P Consistency in Modification of Nature. 97 rence : the nuts, the pods, and the five-petalled flowers on Plate 45, are not espe- cially life-like, but that forms so im- mediately recog- nisable as nuts and pea pods should grow from the same stalk as a flower of five petals, to say no- thing of their con- junction with -ab- solutely artificial lines, and with foliage of the usual Renaissance type, is enough very con- siderably to dis- count the charm of an exceptionally graceful and well- balanced composi- tion. A more co- herent, and indeed an altogether ad- mirable, version of the pea-pod is given on Plate 46. II 74. Graceful artificiality 98 Nature in Ornament. In the example on p. 97 the offence of incoherence is somewhat mitigated, inasmuch as the detail is not very real. All sorts of different flowers grow from a single stem indeed, but the stem is not very obvious. There is a kind of natural confusion in the foliage, and the types are not strongly pro- nounced. Everything is uniformly graceful 75. De-naturalised floral details. and artificial, and the unreality of the detail ■ prepares one for the violation of natural growth. Even then it is hard to forgive it. Much the same criticism might be passed on the less graceful panel in the centre of Plate 47. The manner in which flowers of various kinds grow from a common stem is ^late 46 y:n X ^.IH awa i^^i f IM ^ \ Photo Tiht By ioe« Ak^rm.n Lo_(}ot A ?ea-pod OrnaTnent.l^eDaissance. Consistency in Modification of Nature. 99 of the eighteenth century, not of nature. In the panel at' the top of the plate there is less shock to us, inasmuch as the details are more distinctly ornamental : the danger, in design of this kind is in proportion as the details assert their natural identity. Better de- naturalise them altogether, as in the orna- ment on p. 98, than jumble up all manner of detail into a quite heterogeneous whole. It is easily understood why eighteenth century designers mixed their types so reck- lessly. They aimed at effect, at any price ; and consistency was, in their eyes, a very small price to pay for it. By making lilies and roses and daisies and pomegranates all branch from one stem, it was easy to get variety and contrast. The more consistent way would have been, of course, to intertwine one stem with another, and so account for the variety in detail logically. It would be comparatively easy for us to get the qualities of eighteenth century orna- ment, if we were wiUing to pay the same price for it. Art and puritanism have not much in common, but even the artist may well be puritan enough to sacrifice some- thing of effect for the sake, I will not say of honesty, but of consistency. He is quite free to efface, as I . said, the natural type ; H 2 loo Nature in Ornament. but, once it asserts itself, it binds him to a certain adherence to natural growth and de- tail. He is not justified in pocketing his conscience. His details may bear, if it so please him, but the vaguest resemblance to leaves and flowers and fruits ; but if they are recognisable as such, they must grow as such : a stem, for example, has no business to grow two ways at once. Moreover, the artist will instinctively select his types : he will not associate compound leaves with lily flowers, or simple leaves with pea blossoms. If the growth of his ornament suggest a forest tree he will not fill-up with tendrils. If the fruit suggest an acorn he will not decorate the stalk with thorns. Where the flowers occur singly he will not make berries in clusters ; or if the flowers form a spike he will not make the fruits droop. He will not make apple blossoms develope into acacia pods or daisies into gooseberries. According to his acquaintance with nature, and to his artistic sense of fitness, he will abstain instinctively from incongruity, and conform at least so far to the law of order, that there shall be no suggestion in his design of conglomeration ; it shall be one growth, reminding you of nature or not, but in any case consistent with itself If several flowers are used in combination, (Plate 47 IDutcb E: GertDan Cowenlions of the 17^ Ceniury. Consistency in Modification of Nature, i oi 76. Confusion of effect without confusion of growth. each should have its identity. The orna- mentist chooses naturally, where he can, the types in nature most amenable to ornament. But, apart from the fact that many of the most accommodating have been long since, as one may say, appropriated, there are cases in which he is bound to use such or such a plant, which may possibly be very awkward to deal with in the way of ornament ; and one very obvious and convenient way out of the difficulty is, to associate with it some other plant or plants complementary to it, bj- help of which the qualities lacking in the original plant are supplied. Yet there is no necessity that the various flowers, fruits, and what not, should all grow from one stem. In the side borders on Plate 47, mere disjointed sprays of flowers are fitted together, without producing any very unpleasant effect of disjointedness, which of two evils would certainly be the lesser. In the detail of Damascus tilework above, I02 Nature in Ornament. the separate flowers have separate stalks. It may not be easy always to get rid of so many stalks in the composition, but in the intertwining of them there arise fresh pos- sibilities in design — if you are man. enough to seize the opportunity. Another way out of the difficulty of com- bining various floral forms is to introduce the one only as the undergrowth to the other, as shown on Plate 48. By this means it is pos- sible to contrast bold with delicate detail, broad masses with broken surface, without doing violence to natural laws. How far one is bound to adhere strictly to the lines on which a plant grows, and to the character of its detail, depends to some extent always upon the purpose of the artist ; only in strict fidelity to that purpose lie the possibilities of perfect art. What if even great artists have been guilty of all manner of inconsequence in design ? They are so much the less to be trusted as safe guides in the matter of taste. One may find authority for any kind of ill-doing. The accepted precedents are not all of them sound by any means. I would have every precedent stripped of its prestige, and scrutinised as carefully as the newest of recruits ; and the ricketty among them I would dismiss once and for all. (Plate 48. Photo -Timt" ij- J»m«s Aktrmmlaaiml/.C. Scroll di fblia^^e lO' VII. PARALLEL RENDERINGS. TilE study of ornament should proceed, I think, pari passu with the study of vegetable forms^not botany necessarily. The scientific study of. botany is quite a thing apart. The ornamentist has no more occasion for exact scientific knowledge than the painter has need to know surgically about anatomy, no more occasion and no less. We want, in either case, just science enough to enable us to see the surface of things, and no more. The classification of a plant according to its hidden organs is as nothing to us com- pared with its character, its beauty, the hint in it of ornament. Its order and its family concern us only as they affect its outward development and growth. We need not greatly concern ourselves in pulling flowers to pieces. An artist can do with comparatively little science, if only he make full use of his eyes. Suppose the student in ornamental design I04 Nature in Ornament. to have begun by being thoroughly well grounded in practical geometry ; soon he might proceed to put together, somewhat on the kinder-garten system, geometric patterns, simpler or more complex according to. the degree of his ingenuity. Then, as he grew beyond this elementary stage, he might exer- cise himself in drawing freer and more flow- ing forms — say, until he acquired the facility of sketching off (with the brush) ornament of the kind the Greek pot-painters drew with such freedom (p. 152). Simultaneously with this he should be making intelligent studies of leaves, flowers, fruits, and all manner of details of plant-form and plant-growth. With equal diligence he should be studying the masterpieces of applied design, especially noting the way the masters treated those same natural forms, and always choosing his model, whether of plant form or of ornament, for the definite reason that it meant something to him. His studies should be carried just so far as their purpose warranted : there should be no attempt to make pictures of them, or show- drawings, or to make them even presentable. What the student has to do is to make notes serviceable to himself, sufficient in every case to impress upon his memory what the original ^late 49. /\nciGr)t Coptic Gmbroider'y . Parallel Renderings. 1 05 conveyed to him, records of what he wanted to record, that is all. The urgent need of choosing each example needs the more to be insisted upon, because the designer cannot too early begin to culti- vate the selective faculty. Judgment is one- half the battle in decoration. The closer the relation between a man's, studies from nature and his studies from old work the better. Take, for instance, any flower you like and study it from nature carefully — its form, its structure, its growth, its colour, its character ; then see how it is rendered in Classic art, in Gothic, in Renaissance, in Japanese, in Persian, and so on. Observe again its treatment in sculpture, in inlay, in metalwork, in textile fabrics, and what not. A series of such exercises conscientiously and thoroughly done, would be an education in itself, and would in some degree fit one to conventionalise on his own account — ■ all " without the aid of a master." The already mentioned partiality of each particular period and country for a certain few, usually symbolic, types (p. 12), makes it impossible to trace any one single natural form through all history ; but you can trace most forms through a variety of historical developments. io6 Nature in Ornament. 77. The vine in Assyrian sculpture — B.C. 705-626. The type of most universal occurrence in ornament is probably the vine, symbol of philosophies as wide apart as the poles. We find it in the bas-reliefs of Nineveh, and the painted decoration of Egypt ; on Etruscan vases, and Greek and Roman altars ; on Byzantine sarcophagi, in Coptic embroideries, and in early Sicilian silks ; it recurs in every form of Gothic art, and throughout all phases of the Renaissance. In the Assyrian treatment of the vine above one finds, of course, the archaic formality of the age of Sennacherib, but at the same time a certain , adherence to the natural type which has not varied from that day to this. If the leaves are all spread flat against the wall, they are quite unmistakable in shape. If the branches are symmetrically displayed. n^late 50. I) ii c O Parallel Renderings. 107 there is a suggestion in that of the way fruit- trees are still trained in modern orchard houses, Again, there is a sort of natural spring in the lines themselves ; and in the arrangement of the five branches (which is not according to nature) I seem to see a reference to the veining of the vine-leaf At all events, this arbitrary grouping is so characteristic of the Ninevite sculptures that it can scarcely be accidental, and must almost certainly have some symbolic meaning. The irregular shape of the Assyrian grape bunches is a curious concession to nature, seeing that some of them stand up on end, and that the grapes are just square. It will be noticed that leaves and fruits do not occur in the order in which a botanist would place them, and that the tendrils are made use of only as a convenient means of ending off the branches. On Plate 49 is a Coptic rendering from a tomb in Upper Egypt, which is equally archaic, but infinitely more ornamental. Ob- serve the reticent use of grapes, their syste- matic arrangement, and the fact that they also stand on end. The vine-leaf on the same plate, veined, as it were, with a growth of vine, is also extremely curious. The way in which the tendrils ornament the stem is worth noticing. io8 Nature in Ornament. The Greek treatment above is, if not more natural, at least more florid. The stem indeed diminishes in thickness towards its extremity, and is clothed at the same time with smaller leaves ; but the stem itself is a mere wave-line, and the leaves, though founded on a more graceful natural variety than the Assyrian, are less unmistakably vine- leaves. It is a rather curious thing in the decorative treatment of the vine in early art, that although there is no plant growing which varies more as to the shape of its leaves — heart-shaped, round, angular in outline, divided into three or five, the divisions deeply cut or scarcely noticeable, sometimes not seen at all — it is yet the rarest thing in the world to find in any ornamental version of the plant more than a single type of leaf. That is one point at least in which there is opportunity for a new departure in design, and to considerably ornamental purpose. n^kte 51. Parallel Renderings. 109 79. Pompeian vine border. The tendrils in the Greek vase painting are, for the most part, more obviously twirls of the brush than transcripts from nature ; even when they are branched they take the lines of our old friend the spiral scroll, and are graceful where in nature they would be vigorous ; there is never anything like clutch in them. The artist seems sometimes just to have realised that leaf and tendril grew from some- where about the same point on the stem, but no more. If he had any definite idea at all of the relation between leaf and tendril, it would appear to have been the erroneous notion that the leaf grew from a point of junction between the tendril and the stalk. Perhaps the most natural thing in the design is the way in which it is composed, very much in the way of the trellis — another method of training that has survived without change from the beginning of vine culture. The bunches, besides, do hang down, obedient to the law of gravity. A more formal Greek rendering occurs in the disc on Plate 24, but in both cases the 1 1 o Nature in Ornament. ao. Italian wood-carving — hop or vine ? grape bunches are much the same in out- Hne. In later Classic sculpture, especially in Roman work, the vine-leaf is often 'repre- sented naturally, only again without the variety of nature, one shape doing duty throughout. And here also we find the ten- drils always deliberately made softer than in the living plant. They have no inclination to twine themselves round anything ; they are not much more than graceful scroll lines. What growth there may be in them is certainly not studied from the particular plant. Leaves, tendrils, fruits, occur wherever the artist has occasion for them. There is a touch of nature in the thickening of the leaf-stalk at its base, but this feature also is softened down to gracefulness ; it is rather suggested than ex- pressed. The very grapes are frequently reduced to bunches of five or seven. They are rather fuller on Plate 50. The Parallel Renderings. 1 1 r / H/Afl^o/^u 8i. Conventional Gothic vine and grapes. disregard of natural scale in this design is as frank as in the Assyrian treatment. It is strange to find, in connection with such an arbitrary rendering, anything so realistic as the nobbly bowls of the olive trunks, which are as cavernous as you see them in nature. Again, in the vine from Giotto's Tower, at Florence (Plate 51), the artist, contrary to the usual Gothic practice, has thought fit to sup- port the vine, perhaps because the leafage, distinctly ornamental as it is, is intended to represent a vineyard. It forms a sort of canopy over the subject of Noah's drunken- ness. In the more natural frieze of my own, on Plate 52, the vine is supported by apple- boughs : the upright trunks of the trees, cor- responding in position to the beams in the ceiling, form a marked feature in the design. Among the Grseco-Roman details on Plate 53, the grapes- are rather more natural than the leaves, which are in one case just the reverse of natural. The leaf cut in cameo I 12 Nature in Ornament. 82. Gothic vine, with mulberry-like grape-bunches. is, however, at once natural and ornamental. In fhe embossed silverwork a distinctly orna- mental character results from the employment of the stems, tendrils, and fruits only : the same thing occurs in later Classic sculpture. In the border from a Pompeian bronze in the museum at Naples, on p. 109, the thick- ening of the leaf-stalk is indicated ; but the growth is again absolutely arbitrary. The leaf, though like enough to nature, could not be identified with any degree of certainty, were it not for the accompanying grapes and ten- drils : but for that evidence it might just as well pass for maple, or cranesbill, or hibiscus leaf. Such corroborative evidence of identity is often needed. In the process of adaptation to ornamental conditions the unmistakable cha- racter of a plant is not uncommonly eliminated. One is perplexed, for example, by the Italian wood-carving on p. no. According to its tendrils it should be a vine, but its fruits are more like hops. In Gothic ornament one has, as I said, frequently to take the vine-leaf on fplate 53. 'Photo-T>nt" K^Jama* Akirman L^Jon WC. Clasical rendering of the Vine. Parallel Renderings. 113 faith, failing grapes, and more particularly tendrils (p. 59 and Plate 29). The grapes are sometimes as remote from nature as the leaves, and the scale to which the bunches are reduced often removes them 83, Conventional vine, from Toledo. still further from recognition. It is possible that the mulberry is sometimes mistaken for the vine. The leaf of the white mulberry of Lombardy is much more like a certain con- r 114 Nature in Ornament. ventional vine-leaf, as on p. in, than any vine-leaf; whilst the compact little bunches of diminutive berries look occasionally much more like mulberries than any grapes one has seen. In the border on p. 112 they might almost be blackberries. It is possible also in Gothic work to confound them with the berry- spike of the wild arum. It is only our famili- arity with similar con- ven ti on s which en- ables us to understand that the Go t hico- M oresque foliage on p. 1 1 3 stands for the vine. For growth the Moorish sculptor has simply branched a spiral line. His vinet leaves would answer at least as well for bry- ony leaves, and his berries would do as well for bryony berries. His reason for bunches of 84. Moorish vine. (plale 54 Arab Vine par>d Parallel Renderings. 1 1 5 three was doubt- less symbolic. He has not bo- thered himself about tendrils at all. Probably he was happiest over his diaper behind the foliage, which, though the draw- ing does not show it, is Moorish or- nament pure and simple. An equally arbitrary Moorish rendering is given on p. 114. It is clear the sculptor was more at home in Saracenic or- nament than in nature. The more reso- lutely ornamental vine, of pure Arab carving, on Plate 54, is, curi- ously enough, far more suggestive of 85. Naive Byzantine vine. ii6. Nature in Ornament. nature, whilst . professedly avoiding it. The treatment of the tendrils is a peculiarly- happy feature in a most satis- factory design. As a repre- sentation of the vine it may not be alto- gether ade- quate — it pre- tends to no- thing of the kind — but as a piece of sur- face ornament suggested by a natural type, it is in its way about perfect. The Byzan- tine vine from Ravenna, on p. 115, is not without a cer- tain grace, rudely as it is carved. Its growth is distinctly ornamental; and the way in 86. Early French Gothic. ^late 55. 'pHOTO-TiMT':iryJini«B AVerm.n.LoaJon.'WC vine Sculpt-ure. Parallel Renderings. 117 which the tendrils are used to fill the side spaces is a most ingenious adstptation of familiar Classic lines to a quite new purpose ; the objection to it is that it suggests the growth of the tendrils in two contrary direc- tions. The charm of work like this lies to a great extent in its naivety. The triangular grouping of the grapes, at once symbolic and ornamental, foreshadows a treatment very common indeed in Gothic work. Compared to this the Romanesque vine, on Plate 55, is natural. Conventional as the leaves may be in form, they grow from the stem, which has some of the cha- racter of the vine- stock. You see even just a hint of that twist in its growth of which Mr. Heywood Sumner has made such admirable use in his stencilled decoration on Plate 56. The way in which the twisting 87. Square-ahaped vine-leaves. 1 1 8 Nahire in Ornament. 88. Diamond-shaped vine-leaves — Gothic. lines form the necessary ties in his stencil- plate is most artful. The berries may be taken as evidence that the thirteenth century Gothic scroll from Notre Dame at Paris, on p. Ii6, is. meant for the vine ; and there is some likeness in the leaves, when one looks for it. " We may' take it also, I suppose, that the still more conventional scrollwork of the early Gothic period did symbolic duty for the vine. In the pre-Gothic circular design on Plate 57, one sees the five-pointed vine-leaf dwindling away to quite a conventional trefoil. It is only in the comparatively uninteresting middle period of Gothic art that we have leaves as much as possible in imitation of nature. In later Gothic we get design again. The Mediaeval sculptors deliberately designed their leaves, as it were, into set spaces — taking a square, a diamond, a circle, a vesica,' and so on, as its general outline. The Assy- rians did so before them (p. 106), and the Italians after them, as may be seen in the ^late 56. JAkermuLFbotoliTli Londtui Stencilled Vine Pecoration, H. Sumner. Parallel Renderings. 119 89. Vesica-shaped vine-leaves, York. vine border on p. 117, with tiie odd shell-like tendrils. This would come about in a very simple way. They would begin by blocking out the leaf mass, then they would hollow out the main divisions, and finally they would notch the edges. In roughing out their design it would occasionally happen that some other mass — square, diamond-shaped, or what not — came more happily ; they would accordingly adopt it, and the leaf needs must follow suit Hence such treatment of the leaf as we find on pp. Ill, 112, 118, and above, where it is designed to conform to an outline of diamond or vesica shape, or made, together with the berries, to fit the spaces formed by the waved stem and the margins of the border. In Plate 58 also it is plain how the leaves are designed, so to speak, into the corners of the panel. It is curious to see just such a system of composi- tion in the Coptic borders of centuries before (Plate 57). The Gothic sculptor sometimes went so far as to rough out the foliations of his scroll in I20 Nature in Ornament. 'G, 90. Diagram of Italian Gothic treatment. the form of trefoils (A, above), leaving it ap- parently to the inspiration of the moment to determine afterwards which of these should be finished as leaves (B), and which as grape- bunches (C). In a certain case at Padua he went much farther than that, and even turned over here and there a part of the leaf (D and E), without in any way altering its general outline. It came more naturally to him to do obvious violence to possibility than to modify his predetermined outline. This is not mentioned as a thing worthy of imitation, but as an instance of simple-mindedness not without its charm in old work. In Plate 59, part of the design for a Gothic window, I have endeavoured to follow, more strictly than I have ever seen it followed in old Gothic work, the actual growth of the vine, whilst at the same time very scrupu- lously fulfilling the conditions of stained glass. Much as there is to be learnt from the breadth and simplicity of the Gothic treat- ment of the vine (as of other foliage), it by no means solves for us the problem of treatment. ^late 57. j^^-ni^iiiiiiimiiirMiiinniin-ni Lmmumiu uaaitiiUiiJ 4 per ^SYP^" 'PHOTO-TlKTllyJiraBsMiniiio J.ojiJon'WC Coptic Vine Or-na-ment. Parallel Renderings. 121 It is seldom that it shows much appreciation of the essentially characteristic vine forms. One wearies of the regularity of the " ecclesi- astical " grape-clusters, and resents their stand- ing up like bunches of privet-berries. Why should we be content with the continual recur- 91. Transitional vine scroll. rence of one stereotyped pattern, when nature is so varied and that variety is so ornamental ? In later Gothic ornament, and especially as it began to be influenced by the spirit of the Renaissance, it is no uncommon thing to see a scroll that halts between two opinions, 12 2 Nature in Ornament. clearly showing that the artist did not quite see how to reconcile the one with the other. In the instance of this given on p. 121, the rather loosely drawn leaves contrast curiously with the purely conventional foliation pro- ceeding from the same stem ; and yet, for all the hesitation of the artist, the general effect is that of direct and accomplished workman- ship. Here the main lines of the stem remind one more of fifteenth century Gothic window tracery than of growth. The ornamental arrangement of the tendrils is ingenious, and so is the way the grapes form a sort of diaper on the background. This is a device riot uncommon in late Gothic work, especially German work — that, for example, of Albrecht Diirer. Diirer, to tell the truth, had but a poor invention in ornament — his facile pen is con- tinually running away with him ; his flourishes remind one too much of the writing-master of a more recent generation. The vine scroll on Plate 60 is an exceptionally good specimen of the great draughtsman's ornament, but it misses at once the grace of nature and the dignity of ornament. Only in respect to the variety in the size of the grapes, and the looseness of the bunches, does it approach more nearly to nature than the earlier fPkte 58. Photo Timt 1^ Jamas A]c*rmiD Luadon W C Cn^lish Gothic Vine. Parallel Renderings. 1 2 3 92. Italian Quattro-cento vine scroll, work. It is, indeed, picturesque rather than decorative ; and the picturesqueness seems almost like a foreshadowing of the then still distant Rococo. The artists of the Renaissance followed pretty closely in the footsteps of ancient precedent, and when they departed from the scroll and branched out into something more like natural growth, adopted by preference a form of leaf plainly recalling the vine. It was less a rendering of nature than an ornamental leaf more or less in its likeness. Italian, French, or German rendering was modified always in some degree by national character. In the Francois premier foliage (p. 38), there is always a certain severity, showing that the carver had not quite thrown off the Gothic yoke, under which Italian ornament (above) never passed. The German version was still more determinedly national — indeed it was always more clearly Teutonic than Renaissance — witness the ornament of 124 Nature in Ornament. 93. German Renaissance. Aldegrever on this page. Before our days of archaeological pre- tence, there was in all ornament an under- tone of national feel- ing, telling of the country to which it belonged. There was no need then of a Trade-marks Act to identify it as carved in France or Ger- many. At the risk of trenching upon a subject discussed at length in a previ- ous text-book ('The Application of Orna- ment') it is necessary to allude briefly to the influence exercised by material and manner of workman- ship on the modifica- tion of natural form. ^ This is really half the secret of convention- (?late 59. 'Photo-Tikt; V*^*™"" Ai»mi.ii.Limion.'W C. Vine, Stained Glass. Parallel Renderings. 1 25 alism, the other, half being in the fitness of the form to its place and purpose. The sculptor has thus been a powerful factor in the development of the ornamental vine. You can see, as I said, in the Assyrian example (p. io6) how he blocked out his five- pointed shapes, scooped out the main divisions, and notched the serrations round the edges, much as the Gothic carvers did, and how he just chiselled two series of lines across his bunches to suggest the grapes. In the Greek vine (p. 108) the leaves are similarly serrated by brush touches : in designing his tendrils the painter just played with the brush ; whilst in the case of the grapes, he first washed in the mass of his cluster in two shades of colour, and then, with little blots of white, indicated the grapes upon it. The Graepo-Roman border (p. 109) is inlaid in silver on bronze, and the serrations of the leaves are produced by so many digs of the graver. The stiffness of the zigzag stem, I should mention, is modified, in the actual bronze, by the fact that it is on a curved moulding. The severe simplicity of the Byzantine design (p. 1 1 5) fits it for its intended purpose of a pilaster. 126 Nature in Ornament. The breadth of the leaves in the example, from Toledo (p. 113) is calculated to contrast well with the broken background. On a smooth ground it would have been desirable 94. Vine in Gothic g'.ass-painting. to mark the subdivisions of the leaves more emphatically. In the Arab leaf (Plate 54) the need of something like veins was felt by the sculptor ; (plate 60. E 1 1 H 1 1 1 9 ^^^^ ^H ^ ^Bi^Si ■j^^ K^k ^ ^^^^H ^m H S^^ g ^S m^^B^Sk HI^S So' j^k^t^pi)^^^ I^M ^P y ^^^^ ^wW^wMI w^^^ fa3 ^^^!^^^^^s i^^^jK m^ ^^^^m^ ^^ K^^^^P Wk g ^^ '^'^'^ ■^■* Vine by ^Ibrecb'l Diirer. Parallel Renderings. 1 2 7 and the ingeniously ornameatal tracery by which he has supplied their place is a lesson in design. In Plate 61 I have taken a hint from some sixteenth century damascening, and diapered the leaves with arabesque in the place of veining. The idea was to break the surface of the leaf whilst preserving an effect of flatness. Durer's leaves (p. 60) are pen-work, and had they been drawn with any other imple- ment they would never have been just so. The resolute avoidance of modelling in the German damask napkin (p. 121) is in order to show off the quality of the linen. In the various Gothic renderings of the leaf the tool is plainly to be traced. There is considerable difference between the convention of the wood-carver and that of the carver in stone. In the wood-carving on p. 1 10, the veining is indicated and a certain effect of modelling obtained by leaving the gouge marks — but then the gouging was done to that end, and with intelligence. The greater delicacy of the Quattro-cento leaves (p. 123) shows how the finer marble led to altogether more delicate workmanship. The coarser stone employed in English Gothic buildings made it absolutely necessary to mass the tendrils together, if only for the sake 128 Nature in Ornament. of strength. The tendrils in the fragment of old glass on p. 126 owe their scratchy ap- pearance to the circumstance that they were actually scratched out of the solid pigment with the stick end of the brush ; the serrations of the leaves are as the brush made them — and so on. In short, conventional form proves to be the net result of comparing the supply of natural shapes with the demands of ornament, and choosing the line of least resistance between them. opiate 61 Conventional Vine leaf pattern. 129 VIII. MORE PARALLELS. Not to depend too entirely upon a single illustration, it will be as well to compare, as briefly as possible, the various renderings of certain other plants which occur by way of illustration throughout this volume, and which have been chosen partly with a view to such comparison. The Japanese treatment of the rose, on Plate 2, is only in so far decorative as the detail and the point of view are carefully chosen, and as the execution is simple and direct. Compare the energy of its growth with the sweeter lines on Plate 62. This last expression of the decadent Renaissance is not nearly so accurate as it somehow pretends to be. The stipules of the leaves, for example, are very inadequately acknowledged ; and what at first sight looks like picturesque shading of the leaves, turns out to be quite arbitrary. Indeed, it is only as ornament that K i;o Nature iii -Ornament 0M\ 95. Quasi-Persian rose — Italian velvet. this quasi-natural treatment has claim at all to our respect ; as nature it has none. As a model of conventional treatment, the Tudor rose must always hold a very high place. What could be better in its way than the dignified simplicity of the Gothic rose and crown on Plate 63 ? How good the lines are, and how well the panel is occupied ! A certain breadth is gained by the reduction of the compound leaf to the simple form, and a certain character is given by the exaggeration of the stipules, unlike as they are in form to the natural type. In the other Tudor rose from the stalls of Henry VH.'s chapel (Plate 64), the treat- ment is at once traditional and distinctly individual. It was something of an inspira- tion to twist the leaves and stalks encircling ^late 62. Artificial rer)d&rm^ of Ibe Rose. n^1a,te G3. 'pHOTO-TiNT'lVyi.'imcaAJorciiiiLc^don 'iV Tudor, "Rose 13ron3e. ^late 64 'pHCto-Tin/ ky J.Al»Tinttn.6.(>u..ii S(iu«r.,W.C Tudor "Rose, "Wood CarVm^ fplate 65. Italian version of a Persian Carpel. /V\arble inlay frorD the Taj /^ahal. usf m' u m sm m > ^late b7 Photo Timt tyJ.me.Ak* ni.n London V C Indian Lotus Panel . ^kte 68 'Photo-Tiht'; tyJ^iBM Ak«nn»n.LDiidDn.W.C. details of Stone. Car\)iD^, (Buddhist.) More Parallels. 131 ^^ ^^^""ISS the rose into a further suggestion of the five- petalled flower. The monster roses at King's College, Cambridge, are other splendid examples of Gothic treatment. B. J. Talbert's modern rose on Plate 23 owes something, but by no means everything, to Gothic influence. The rose-buds on p. 1 30 are from a velvet of Italian manufacture, but so distinctly Persian in design that it may be presumed to have been copied almost literally from an Oriental original. The eye or jewel of light colour in the centre of the leaf, in place of veining, is essentially Persian. In Plate 65, from the same source, the rose-buds are at once more elegant and more typi- cal. The exaggerated sepals in particular are ornamentally of extreme value. In the ruder Oriental embroidery on this page, the buds and sepals are again very character- istically emphasised. The angularity of the stalks comes of follow- 96. Onental rose border. K 2 132. Nature in Ornament. ing the square web of the linen on which it is worked. The Rhodian example below would hardly be taken for a rose, but for the un- mistakable bud once more : the open flower is more like a marigold. The broken stem is a convenient, and in Rho- dian pottery not an un- common, means of bend- ing the lines in the way it is desirable they should go. Once in a way that may pass, but it is not a device upon which it would be well to rely in design. Comparison has already been drawn (p. 93) be- tween the Quattro-cento lily on p. 92, the Cinque- 97. Rhodian rose. cento lilics on p. Qi and on Plate 43, my own lily ornament on Plate 39, Talbert's Gothic lily panel on Plate 42 (something like, and yet unlike, the panel from the Taj Mahal at Agra, on Plate 66), and the more natural growth on Plate 75. These may further be compared with the more or less lily- shaped flowers occurring in Greek scroll-work More Parallels. (Plate 1 1 and p. 1 60), with the Greek pattern on p. 61, and with the Roman cande- labrum opposite, a characteristically clumsy way not so much of designing as of compiling ornament. In the Greek lilies already re- ferred to, and still more in those on p. 158, the relation to the anthemion is obvious, and to the lotus, that other form of lily so conspicuous in Egyptian and As- syrian art (Plates 79 and 80 and pp. ISO, 151, IS 5. 240). The Hindoo ren- dering of the water- lily on Plate 6^ is very much like the ^ g8. Roman lily forms. 134 Nature in Ornament. 99- Indian lotus — Buddhist. Egyptian, but it is sometimes looser, as on Plate 68. A very characteristic treatment is shown above. The Chinese rendering on Plate 88 is yet freer, but still essentially ornamental. Referring once more to the Greek shapes on p. 158, one may see in some of them a resemblance to the young growth of the lily as it bursts from the ground in spring. That is seen still more plainly in the Assyrian ornament on the lower part of Plate 80. More Parallels. 135 There is something most natural in that very stiff conventional upright growth — reminding one rather of the young iris shoots. The iris flower is, as I have already said, the origin of the fleur-de-lis. Compare the flamboyant fleurs-de-lis on Plate 121 with the earlier Gothic renderings on pp. 238 and 241, with the renderings on p. 160, and with the Romanesque ornament on p. 1 8. The flowers in the central ornament are remarkably like the iris. In the Renaissance ornament on p. 240, the characteristics of the iris are reconciled somewhat to the shape of the fleur- de-lis. In the Indian damas- cened pattern on Plate 30, there is something that recalls the fleur-de- lis. The painted version above it, whilst pre- tending to be more pictorial, is altogether less characteristic of nature. In the Persian examples on p. 45, the flower is reduced to ornament, as it is also in the ingenious border of the frontispiece which Mr. Crane has designed for me. The figure of Iris in the centre is designed in a vein 100. Seventeenth century iris. (Plate 69. -' crnhrordery 1 rrriotis S^rea tm en t^ of the ^rjtttTT^tff^ttU ^tfe^ot n ff^^ B,FUnNiv;(i. ST HOLianN.E.c The Pink. (plate 70. Photo -TiMTlir)rJ*m«aA!Hrm>Ti LanJan W.C 18 CenturV, Versions oftbefio'k. More Parallels. 1 3 7 but such affectedly graceful growth is not quite in keeping with the quasi-natural ren- dering of the flowers. Further parallels between the iris and the fleur-de-lis are drawn in the chapter on Tradi- tion, pp. 161, &c., and in that on Symbolism, p. 241. The pink or picotee occurs frequently in Oriental ornament, whence probably the Italians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries borrowed it. In the Italo-Persian brocade on p. 149 the indebtedness of the weaver is obvious. Among the comparatively late Renaissance flowers on p. 136, interesting as showing a variety of modifications all more or less ac- cording to the scheme of the embroiderer, only one instance occurs in which the curled horns of the pistil are made use of In the examples on Plate 69 the horns, more or less modified, are a prominent feature. The modi- fication of nature in the various renderings there given is according to the material and mode of work, embroidery, incised work, inlay, carving, and so on. As in the case of other plants alluded to, the late Renaissance renderings on Plate 70 are ultra-elegant and graceful. In the very excellent panel from the Taj rsB Nature in Ornament. Mahal (Plate 66) the poppy is trained de- liberately in the way it should go — a delicate and graceful way, for all its formality ; and, for all its symmetry, varied. The damascened patterns on p. 6i are more distinctly Indian. In one of these, the occurrence of sepals, which the bud naturally sheds as it bursts, has already been pointed out ; in the other the severe lines within which the growth is compactly grouped, result in distinct dignity of design. Ghiberti's poppy on Plate 71 is one of the most satisfactory of the flower-groups bordering the celebrated doors at Florence. The leaves are just conventional enough, and the seed-vessel or poppy-head tells for what it is, at once a characteristic and an admirably ornamental feature. In my own poppy-pattern on Plate 72, the brush touches are such as could most conve- niently be reproduced in block printing. It is meant for pattern first and poppy after- wards. In the border on p. 172, the growth is comparatively natural. The flowers are arranged in the order indicated by the necessities of composition, and the growth is made to accommodate itself, with as little violation of nature as possible, to them. ^late 71. "Photo -Ti ht; ^v J .me. At.rm.r London "W C Poppies by Gbiberli, Bronze ^late 72. -Tint" "hyJamcm Ajcii Yoppy patter-D. More Parallels. 139 Wheat ears are a favourite symbol in Gothic work, but the rather intractable growth of corn seems to be against any great variety in its treatment. The stiffness of the design CT^ "v.>^->"' '"•• M LflSfew^*J i'' ■■ -■ -- : '-1' t\ 9 ^ -m^'^ n 9 ^^m m ^ !i(g^* D i ^^^^^v ^ ^p^i N % ^ ^ % w i m 1 ♦>W|S^ ^ '^t 0r %^ w.^ fe l^H 102. Modern Gothic pomegranate. B. J. Talbert. on p. 89, which belongs to the period- of the Gothic revival, is likely to be more noticed than its ingenuity, which is all the artist's own. In the Italian silk on p. 68, the wheat ear 140 Nature in Ornament. is reduced to a pattern ; in the carving on p. 90, it is the leaf-blades that are manipu- lated. To adapt the rather rank growth of the Indian corn to the purpose of a simple and satisfactory border, as on p. 88, is some- thing like a triumph of ornamental modifica- tion. It is mainly in Gothic art that the thistle has been taken as a motif ; but there is a wide difference between Hopfer's scroll on Plate 16, and that on Plates 83 and 91, and between any of these and the late G. E. Street's bold experiment in modern Gothic on p. 54. My own pattern on Plate 38 is thistle-like (it was in fact suggested by the artichoke, the king of thistles), but the natural characteristics of the plant are deliberately sacrificed to the purposes of pattern. In the representation of the pomegranate^ the bursting of the fruit (as already mentioned on p. 74), has been very variously rendered. The late B. J. Talbert, too (p. 139), turned the seeds to ornamental account. Mr. Morris's fruits on Plate 87 burst natu- rally. In the Chinese pattern 103. Pomegranate. on Plate 73 the bursting (Plate 73. Old Cmbroideiy ■ChingsgToinegTa.natelJtt^fi? Pomegranates, More Parallels. 141 of the fruit is indicated only by a change of colour : no seeds are revealed. The sixteenth century German treatment (same plate) is again more arbitrary. X04. Oak irom the cathedral of Toledo. Persian influence is seen again in the Italian rendering on p. 149. One assumes that the pear-shaped fruit on p. 140 is meant for a pomegranate. The Gothic ornament on p. 60 142 Nature in Ornament. 105. Assyrian Tree of Life. stands also, no doubt, for the pomegranate ; but it is quite a traditional rendering, by a man who probably never saw the fruit. Com- pare this also with the pine patterns on Plate 84 and on P- 157- The various renderings of the oak, Classic on p. 94; Gothic on Plates 29 and 74, Italian on p. 247, Sicilian below, and other examples on p. 53 and on Plates 9 and 83, have none of them any resemblance to the characteristic Hispano-Mauresque oak scroll on p. 141, which is akin rather to the vines on pp. 113 and 114. Reference is made elsewhere (p. 246) to the daisies on Plates 122 and 123, and (p. 88) to the examples of the ivy, occurring on Plates 106. Oak — from a Sicilian silk. (plate 74. jMliv^l =>^« '^^ u-at-/j!C [ji^gSjUJiiljE] PHOTO-TiMTlIi^JuDaa AkBrmni.I.oDd(m.TX. Gothic Oak OrnaiDent . More Parallels. ^A3 24 and 81 and on p. 57. The ver- sions of the oHve on Plates 50 and 81 need only just be alluded to. There is some- thing to be learnt from a comparison of the various con- ventional trees, As- syrian on pp. 142 and 239 and Plate 80, Greek on Plates 24 and 81, Roman on p. 59, Indian on Plate y^, Coptic on Plates 49 and 57, Sicilian and Italian on Plate 1 20 and p. 58, Romanesque opposite. It is wonderful with what unani- mity ornamentists have everywhere, and from the be- ginning of time, resolved the growth of the 107. Romanesque Tree of Life. 144 Nature in Ornament. tree into its elements and made it into orna- ment, reducing its outline in many cases to the shape of a single leaf, and its branches to something like smaller leaves. Those to whom such rendering of natural form does not come easily, by instinct as it were, were not born for ornamentists ; let them turn their attention to work for which nature has fitted them. Comparison may further be made between the works of modern men (Plates i, 22, 23, 42, s6, 86, 87, and 98, and pp. 39, 54, 64, 89, 139, 180, 185, and 226) ; and, lastly, reference to my own design (Plates 9, 14, 31, 38, 39, 40, 48, 52, 59, 61, 72, 75, 85, 89, 90, 102, 106, III, 112, and 123, and pp. 93, 172, I73> I74. 223, and 245) will help to explain more clearly than words, not what I think necessarily good, but the degree of naturalism on the one hand, and of convention on the other, which seem to me personally permissiblein ornament. To any one in the least susceptible to natural beauty, it is not difficult to under- stand the resentment which some persons feel towards any interference with nature. To disturb it is to deform it, no doubt ; but in the interest of cultivation it has to be done. Brier, and bracken, and yellow gorse must give ..place to rose gardens, apple orchards, ^Iate75- KEU, rHOTO-LrTHO.B.rUHtllVAI. 5^ HOLIOtlN.E Comparatively natural Lily Panel. More Parallels. 145 and fields of corn. They too are beautiful ; not the less so that they owe something to the hand of man. It is, after all, a false and rather a Cowardly sentiment which makes us afraid of disturbing what is beautiful, when the end is a beauty better worth having. Those who profess to follow nature seem sometimes rather to be dragging her in the dust. There is a wider view of nature, which includes human nature and that selective and idealising instinct which is natural to man. It is a long way from being yet proved that the naturalistic designer is more "true to nature " than another. It is one thing to study nature, and another to pretend that studies are works of art. In no branch of design has it ever been held by the masters (least of all could it be held by the masters of orna- ment) that nature was enough. It is only the very callow student who opens his mouth to swallow all nature whole ; the older bird knows better. " Lor, how natural ! " bursts out the admiring rustic : the artist in like case thinks to himself, " What perfect art ! " 146 Nature in Ornament. IX. TRADITION IN DESIGN. There have been times, perhaps, when art ran too much in the ruts of tradition : there is no danger of that just now — more likeli- hood of our wandering so far frbm any beaten track as to lose our bearings altogether. Whatever the danger of merely traditional treatment in design (and I am the last to deny that danger), it is time we bethought ourselves that traditions are not inherently pernicious. They represent, when all is said, thp sum of past experience. The past masters of the crafts must be presumed to have known sornething. The course of art ran, at all events,' more evenly along the broad smooth ruts aforesaid. Whatever " the traditions of his art, and whether he mean to follow them or not, the student must acquaint himself with them. It is not until he is acquainted with the traditional ways of doing a thing that he is in a position to form an opinion as to the relative merits fkte 76 Photo Tint li^ i^imea Alccrman LcmdaD.VC Orchid & Rjr)6us paltern - Chinese . Tradition in Design. 147 of the divers ways of doing it : to presume to rely upon his unaided insight is sheer self- satisfied conceit — worse than the pedantry of the typical purist (mock-mediffivalist, or what- ever he may be) who is always so terribly afraid of doing anything for which there is no precedent in old work, that he is invariably and inevitably dull. Whether for his guidance or his warning, then, the student needs to know the various ways in which natural forms have so far been manipulated by the ornamentist. There is the graceful Greek manner and the energetic Japanese, the rigid Gothic way and the much more strict Egyptian, the fanciful Chinese and the suave Persian, and again the manners of the Renaissance from the fifteenth century to the eighteenth. The most naturalistic type is afforded by the Japanese.. They start quite frankly from nature, and indeed seem to copy natural forms as nearly as their tools and the conditions under which they are working allow ; but they seldom lose sight of the fact that they are decorating something ; and so careful are they of the conditions of design (as they understand it) that one is frequently at a loss to determine which is uppermost in their minds — nature or ornament. L 2 1 48 Nature in Ornament. It is not meant to suggest for a moment *"hat Japanese ornament is in every way- perfect : it lacks qualities indispensible to any really dignified and noble style of design ; but in the mere treatment of natural form as naturally as possible and yet ornamentally, there is probably more to be learnt from Japan than from any other source. Although the traditions of the Japanese are inherited directly from the Chinese, the work of the younger race is characterised by a vigour and spontaneity of design, with which we are not accustomed to credit the elder. But the floral element of design is character- istic of Mongolian art from the first, so much so that its prevalence in Persian and Indian art betrays, one may say, the Mongolian conqueror. If at its best Chinese ornament is less characteristically natural than Japanese, it is more characteristically ornamental. Whatever modification there may be of natural form is all in the direction of design. Orchis, fungus, and butterfly (Plate 76), each is designed into its place, and is, moreover, made to conform to the necessity of ornament. Musicians have no very high opinion of what they call " tuney " music. Chinese ornament may be " tuney " perhaps, but at least it is in tune. IM 5%Le77 Cor'venlional Tree work Tradition in Design. 149 That is even more true of the kindred art of India (Plate 'jy'). There also everything is doubtless inspired by nature, but every- thing is compelled into ornament. The very luxuriance of the design is suggestive of tropical vegetation, but the ornament never runs wild. The date-palm is there with its S^f -^' 108. Renaissance silk showing Persian influence. scarred trunk, but the scars are made into a pattern. So with the branched stem contrast- ing with it, it branches into distinctly orna- mental lines, and breaks out into equally ornamental foliation. The man who carved the lattice, part of which is given on Plate JT, loved nature, no doubt, but he was an ornamentist to the tips 150 Nature in Ornament. of his fingers ; and the superiority of Oriental art in respect to rhythm, harmony, sweetness, is the immediate result of working on the lines of tradition, of devoting trained faculties to the perfection of an accepted method, of refining upon refinement until the acme of easy grace is reached. The Persian rendering of natural forms is more free ; there is more of the variety of nature in it, but its starting point is always nature, whatever liberties the artist may take with it : it must be confessed he does not stand upon ceremony. One favourite freak of his (Plate 78) was to break the surface of a leaf by diapering it over with other foliated or floral detail. He was enabled thus to introduce amidst the smaller forms bolder shapes, contrasting most usefully with them, and yet not forming unbroken patches in the design. The artists of the Renaissance bor- rowed this idea and made considerable use of it. The way in which the big pomegranate shape on the piece of six- teenth century silk, icg. Egyptian symbolic papyrus. (plate ys'. Persian foliage. Tradition in Design. 151 no. Assyrian symbolic ornament. shown on p. 149, is enlivened by the introduc- tion of smaller floral details, betrays distinctly the influence of stuffs imported from Persia (compare it with the velvet on p. 73) ; the design is Renaissance, but with a difference. A similar influence is apparent in the damask design on Plate 34 ; indeed, there was a period when European silk designers worked habitually on those lines. Tracing tradition back to its beginnings, we find that the art of ancient Egypt was con- fined within very narrow lines ; but within those lines it fulfilled admirably what it pur- posed to do. It is worth study, if only to see how the symbolism which was at the root of it was made to subserve to ornament, how orderly arrangement and restraint in treat- ment went far towards decoration, and how the most severe simplicity resulted in in- variable dignity (p. 1 50 and Plate 79). Much the same may be said of Assyrian design. It does not afford, it need scarcely be said, any more than Egyptian, a fit model for- 152 Nattire in Ornament. nineteenth century ornament; and the re- straint which we observe in either (p. 151 and Plate 80) was, perhaps, if we inquire into it, not so much a matter of restraint as of neces- sity ; but none the less it shows us what may be done by self-control ; and, working as we do under conditions which make it almost necessary for us to assert ourselves, it is as well that we should be remind- e d f ro m time to time that, if the world went on the whole no better then, at least it III. Abstract Greek ornament. permitted a na'i've and simple-hearted kind of art, from which the most advanced of us have much to learn. Greek ornament is in the first instance quite abstract in character (above), consisting of curling lines and touches of the brush ; but, such abstract forms assuming by chance (or as I should say of necessity) some resem- blance to floral forms, it occurred to the artist ^1ate 79. W4 .f\f\^\/^ii^A^'' snif 1* / H« 1 ' I Li If 711 s.i ti,L>i Li y 4^ *t*ii«TO-TliiT, li^ Junes AknrmmJ.cDJaii.'WX. Details of G^yptian Sculpture. Tradition in Design. 153 112. Later Greek ornament, to develop the naturalistic idea — much, as it proved, at the expense of beauty and design. This is plainly to be seen in the ornament of the later period (above), in which the spirals in perspective and the scrolls which look like wood-shavings, mark a very distinct step downwards in design. When it came to the rendering of the natural shapes of leaves, berries, and so on, the Greek continued to arrange such details arbitrarily, with a view to composition and without regard to natural growth. There is no objection to that so long as the leaves are not so natural as to call for something like natural connection ; but in Greek ornament the growth was not always consistent with the detail. In the lower border of ivy on Plate 81, leaves, berries, and growth are alike conven- 154 Nature in Ornamenf. tional ; in the upper border the three-pointed leaves are more natural than the berries, and the stalks are too natural for the arbitrary order in which they are arranged. Again, in the borders of olive, there is a sort of naturalism about the fruits inconsis- tent with their arrangement two and two along the stem. Moreover, the flower intro- duced into the lower example is a quite incon- gruous feature; The altogether abstract rendering of the bay at the bottom of the plate — so abstract that one cannot be quite certain it is meant for the bay— is more absolutely satisfactory. The earlier Greek traditions were the best. Eventually, in Classic sculpture, bay, olive, ivy, and other plants were rendered almost naturally. In the fragment of Roman carving on Plate 82 we have something of a new de- parture : natural growth, that is to say, is twisted into ornamental lines, the tree is made to grow as the ornamentist would have it. There is a certain decorative treatment in that (as there was almost invariably in ancient art), but it is not ornament, and it is orna- mental only to the extent that all sculpture was, until in recent times it broke loose alto- gether from tradition. cPlate 80, ''Details of NineVite Sculpture. Tradition in Design. 155 That idea of making natural things grow unnaturally is continually cropping up in ornament. It is illustrated again in Plate 83. There is no mistaking Master Peter QuenteFs types. The nightshade, the columbine, the pea, the oak, the thistle, are natural enough — too natural alhiost for the impossible lines on which they grow, when, for example, the oak branches are shown to have each two separate starting-points. However much we may prefer the vigour of the Gothic work- man to the somewhat effeminate grace of the Oriental, in that one respect Eastern art is more consistent by far : detail and its distribu- tion go together, and are one growth, however artificial it may be. The difficulty in adapting anything like natural forms to artificial growth is very great ; only a master ever quite gets over it. I have already explained (p. 33) the de- velopment of the Classic scroll. The tradi- tion was taken up again by the Italians of the Renaissance. The arabesques of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are Classic 113. Assyrian rosette. 1.6 Nature in Ornament. with a difference ; and down to the period of the French Revolution, if not indeed of the Exhibition of 1851, through all the changes which it underwent, we can trace in the scroll the development, or it may be the degradation, of Classic tradition. Examples in point occur in Plates 96, 99, 105; and whether the deviation from the ori- ginal idea be in the direction of nature (Plates 17, 45, and 46)) or of abs- tract orna- ment (Pis. 18, 116, and 1 17), the descent of the design is always easily to be traced. For better or for worse, one style grew, that is to say, out of the other. As certainly as the Assyrian rosette on p. 155 was influenced by Egyptian tradition, so certainly did the tradition of such work influence the Greeks. 114. Gothic ornament from Notre Dame, Paris. f?late 81. JAkerinaii,Pliotolnh London. Details of Greek Vase paintin^^. Tradition in Design. 157 And so it was with Gothic art. We can trace it through its various phases back to the Romanesque, and so find a connection with the Classic. Indeed, in some details of early 115. Fifteenth century fir-cone ornaments. Gothic ornament one can trace a distinct resemblance to Greek art, from which in important particulars it is most remote. In the detail from Notre Dame at Paris, on p. 1 56, there is a distinct reminiscence of the painted ornament on Greek vases, and the typical " Early English " detail assumes at times in the hands of the glass painter some- thing of the same character. Not only may one historic style of ornament be traced from another, but the very details of ornament are in many instances traditional, and survive long after they have lost any significance they may originally have had ; so much so, that what is J i i_ 1 ix6> Chinese flower strange and unaccountable forms. Nature in Ornament. 117. Etruscan. Greek. Greek. Greek. in ornamental design, proves often to be only the survival of some long lost tradition. The fir-cone, or, as the French call it, the pine-apple, which figures in nearly all fifteenth century pattern-work (see Plate 84 and p. 157), figures not only on the thyrsus of the Greek god, but in Assyrian ornament (p. 151), and in still earlier Egyptian sculpture (Plate 79). On Plate 80 the Assyrian fir-trees are regu- larly cone-shaped. It is possible, no doubt, to work oneself into a state of mind in which it seems plausible enough, if not quite proven, that all ornament is derived from a single source, the " hom " or date-palm, to wit. But without going quite so far as Sir George Birdwood in his ingenious theory as to the development of the knop-and-flower pattern, one cannot but admit that the unanimity with which, from the days of the Pharaohs to the days of Eliza- beth, ornamentists have put together similar forms, on sirnilar lines, leaves no possible ^late 82. s- % P o CO e o Tradition in Design. 159 Z18. Japanese diaper. doubt as to the lingering influence of tradition upon design through all that time. It is especially curious, also, to notice how oxi- very similar lines very different and yet clearly related forms are developed. Whatever may have been the origin of the characteristic form popularly known as the Honeysuckle ornament of the Greeks,* there is no mistaking the Egyptian lotus p\U//y uii// M^ M///3 the Assyrian palm XlTM ^}. \ ///^ ^1///M \\i ornament, p. 151. p^i f /^S\ ; {P^f^s f^S flower forms, also gT; "i llf^ ^Z\\ = /7Su \ liFS to see very much — ''^ = = -=°=-^ = ""^ = = -==^ the same lines; 119. Japanese diaper. ' Some Principles of Every-day Art,' pp. 104-107. i6o Nature in Ornament. 120. Lily-like Greek details. and in the Indian naya, or many-headed snake, the resemblance is so striking as to suggest that serpent-worship may possibly have been after all the starting-point of the idea. The Etruscan anthemion on p. 158 is very like the Indian naya (Plate 119) ; the Greek details on the same page might have been suggested by the young leaves of the irisi which seem to me clearly to have suggested the Assyrian pattern on Plate 80. 121. Romanesque detaiL 122. Gothic pattern. 9late g3. 'MOTO-LITHO.B.Fl, 16"' Cenlury German design. Tradition in Design. i6i. The resemblance of the Japanese diapers on p. 159 to Greek brushwork is explained somewhat by the fact that they also are brushwork. Other Greek details, especially some of those on p. 160, take, as I said before, dis- tinctly the form of lilies. In the Romanesque development of the idea (p. 160) we have, indeed, leaves of the most conventional, but there is no mistake about its source ; and, strangely enough, the leaves spring from a semicircular feature resembling that from which the separate serpents' heads issue in Plate 119. Here, too, as in the Early Gothic tile pattern on p. 160, is foreshadowed the fleur-de-lis, which assumes a more distinctive shape in the Gothic cross on p. 238. Fully developed instances of the fleur-de-lis occur on p. 241. The fleur-de-lis, says Voltaire, was obvi- ously derived from the top of a halberd ; but whence, then, the form of the halberd ? There is not much room for doubt that the actual form of the fleur-de-lis was suggested by the iris ; but for all that the ornamental Sihape is only a development of the old idea in a somewhat new direction. It seems as though, whether because of the perpetual recurrence in nature of radiating and M l62 Nature in Ornament. 123. Concentric forms, seaweed. concentric forms, or whether because of the inherently orna- mental disposition of the old lines, the ornamentist could never get quite away from them for long at a time ; their influence appears even in the comparatively natural design on Plate 85. Certainly the glass painter in designing a cruciform nimbus, the detail of which is here given, had no idea that he was following Clas- sic precedent at all ; nor he who stencilled the diaper of rays on the screen of a Norfolk church (below). The rays of light arrange themselves more or less in the familiar order ; as do the lines of a cockle- shell (p. 222), — so much so that it has been contended that the Renaissance shell ornament is only a varia- tion of the anthemion. 125. Gothic diaper. In the Renaissancc or- 124. Gothic. ^ ^kfe 84, Mi V^ K" ^g?a Late Gothic Pme OmaiDeots. Tradition in Design. 163 126. Renaissance ornament. naments below, distinctly founded upon the ancient lines, the introduction of the oak-leaf and of the pods is not altogether happy ; the design is too plainly made up ; on the other hand, the serrating of the leaves (p. 164), and the substitution of pods (p. 20) in their stead, are new departures, quite justi- fied by success. It is only by such departure that success is possible. What has been done is done with, so far as design is concerned. Its teach- ing is what is valuable, if only we would learn from it the way it was done. We waste our time in copying the forms of ancient art in- stead of trying to pene- trate its secret. It is by virtue of its eclecticism, not of its archaeological accuracy, that the work of such a man as the late William Burgess has any hold upon us. He founded himself, indeed, upon M 2 127. Renaissance ornament. 164 Nature tn Ornament. Early French Gothic, and he was inclined to like anything answering to that title, but he did not scruple to borrow from Oriental or Classic art what suited his purpose. And although his manner was archaic, his ideas were his own. He found room in his deco- ration even for a joke now and then, the very surest sign that he was quite at his ease in the habit of mediaevalism he chose to assume. Such assump- tion may not be altogether affecta- tion in some men. Yet our art must be ours, whatever else it / may be. You may confine yourself to the lines of tradition and follow them, if you will, or if you must ; but don't follow traditional forms — there is no good tradition for that. 128. Renaissance anthemion. (?1ate 85 i65 X. TREATMENT. The obvious fitness of certain natural forms to certain purposes of ornament, and to cer- tain processes of work, needs no pointing out. Some simple leaves suggest of themselves how easily they could be rendered in painting. One stroke of the brush is enough to indicate a blade of grass or a willow-leaf; a series of such touches express at once the compound leaves of the acacia, tare, or other pod-bearing plants — or such leaves are used indefinitely (Plate 1 1 8), to suggest indeterminate foliage. Again, the petals of many flowers may be painted with so many dabs of the brush. With the finger-tip one can indicate a bunch of berries, a berry at each touch. And not only in painting is this so ; each particular craftsman sees in nature the chance for his particular craft, and, if he is worth his salt, seizes it. It is clearly the business of the ornamentist to select the natural types which lend them- 1 66 Nature in Ornament. selves to his purpose ; not to take things as they come, but to choose for painting, forms which are paintable ; for carving, what is carvable ; for metal, malleable shapes ; and so on. It would be absurd to adopt for any process of conventionalism a model of which the character is inevitably lost in such a process. You would not choose for rendering in coarse material a type characteristically delicate, for a colourless substance one depending altogether on its tint, for a dull material forms characteristically crisp, or for one diffi- cult to work in forms full of intricate and subtle detail. That would be at best only bravado. Ordinarily it comes of sheer ignor- ance. In design, as elsewhere, brains count for something. We have then to seek in nature, not only beautiful types, but types amenable to our artistic purpose and the means by which we intend to carry it out. The very mention of a material is often enough to suggest avail- able types in nature. Indeed, it would be time well spent by the student if he were to ask himself from time to time a question or two of this kind : — To what decorative purpose are such and such plants fit ? or, what plants are adapted to such and ^la.te 86. o CD O Treatment. 1 6 7 such materials, to such and such treatment ? — and so on. And it should be noted that, just as it is not in the most romantic, or what is called picturesque, scenery that the landscape painter finds subject-matter for his pictures, so it is not in the most obviously elegant and grace- ful forms of growth that the designer seeks his inspiration. The convolvulus, the passion- flower, and the birch tree, do not lend them- selves especially to ornament. The experienced designer gets to know how useful some forms are, and how hopeless others. He knows, too, that nature, kind as she is to those who approach her in the spirit of conciliation, never does his work for him. Natural form is resolved into ornament, that is to say, only by treatment. This is a point on which dogmatism is peculiarly dangerous, and advice of practi- cally no value. An artist must settle for himself what he shall render, and how he shall render it. No one but himself can determine for the individual what he can do. He may take by assault the position we pronounced impregnable. The conditions of success are that he should form a just estimate of his own powers, and regulate his ambition accordingly. His treatment of a natural type is his 1 68 Nature in Ornament. justification for choosing it. Having selected a type, he should have no great difficulty in treating it. Technical difficulties suggest to him fresh expedients in design. And if he really belongs to the " natural order " of designers, he works with perfect ease under all manner of limitations as to space, line, colour, and so on. The weight of conditions only steadies him. Between the treatment which consists in merely composing natural forms with such regard to decorative needs as may constitute what by a stretch of terms is called orna- mental arrangement, and the reduction of such forms to ornament pure and simple, there is the widest possible range, the whole range of design in fact. The merely pictorial treatment, on the one hand, seems as remote from ornament as the absolutely abstract invention, on the other, is removed from nature. And yet it is impossible to deny that a painter, for example, may combine with a very natural rendering such regard to the conditions of design as will constitute a decidedly decorative, if not precisely orna- mental treatment. Such a treatment is exemplified in Plate 86, part of a frieze by Mr. Muckley. This is fliower-painting, if you like, and not orna- (Plate 87. 'PHl)TD-TlHT"}>>'JinccA3[«ri>in.LaDd.<>n.'WX. fruit pattern, 'William /Horns, Treatment. 169 ment; but it is sDmething more than mere flower painting : there is design in it. As a printed fabric in which the same flowers must perforce recur at regular and very short inter- vals, the artist himself and the producer o the wall paper would probably be the firs to admit that it was open to reproach ; bu 129. Abstract foliage— Persian inlay. as a painted frieze, such a rendering has its raison ditre. I need not say that my own sympathies lean towards something more severe in design. The delightfully restrained foliage above, so absolutely ornamental that it might have 170 Nature in Ornament. 130. Would-be ornamental celandine. been derived from any one of a hundred dif- ferent plants, designed by a man, probably who could not have painted a natural flower to save his life, fulfils almost per- fectly the conditions of ornament. Albertolli's feeble celandine opposite fails, on the other hand, precisely for lack of treat- ment. One great charm in more conventional treatment is that it reveals the individuality of the artistT Mr. William Morris is very plainly recognised in the design of the wall-paper on Plate 87. It is not often that one sees in design the considerations of nature and of ornament so evenly balanced as they are here. The straight lines of the stems, for instance, are characteristically natural ; but by the direction they are made to take in the design they give diagonal bands, which fulfil a dis- tinct decorative purpose, preventing the eye from wandering away in the direction of other lines which would be less pleasing. The rendering of the fruits again, whilst it is dis- tinctly like nature, is emphatically ornamental. (Plate 88. 'pMOTe-tDtV! lr}r Junaa AkaRniB.lendoD.'W.C. Chi-oese Lotus "Porcelait) Pai-Dtin^. Treatment. 171 The balance between natural form and ornamental design is sometimes very evenly adjusted in Chinese art. In Plate 88, for ex- ample, forms of leaf and flower are given with considerable fidelity to nature. The art has consisted mainly in their systematic distri- bution. Light-coloured water-lilies occur at regular intervals, backed each by a leaf in middle tint, with leaves in reverse of still darker tint connecting them, the light ground being diapered over with wave lines (appro- priate enough to the water-lily), so as to give value to the whiteness of the flowers. The scheme is here very simple, but it results in extremely beautiful colour, and nature is not outraged. There is a wonderful look of nature, too, in the quite ornamental render- ing of the " kiss-me- quick " below. Compare it with the more artificial flower on Plate 44. Other instances of Chinese treatment occur on Plate 76, and on p. 29. 131. Chinese rendering of _,. "kiss-me-quick." 1 hc ornaiTientist arrives 172 Nature in Ornament. 132. Comparatively natural treatment 01 poppy. very soon at the conviction that it is of no use entering into any kind of competition with nature. He is not impressed by the antiquity of the old, old theory that what is fittest in nature is without more ado most fit for ornament. In the design on Plate 89, the form goes about as far in the direction of nature as I am personally inclined to go. The growth is strictly according to nature. A cobcea scandens might grow so. All that has been done is to make it take lines which conform to the very arbitrary demands of the Jacquard loom, and to choose details which were not merely graceful and characteristic, but capable of being rendered in two flat tints, or I should say textures, upon the ground. The border of field poppies above, con- forms in an equal degree to nature. The flowers are not only chosen and composed, they are made to grow as they were wanted. (plate B9 Coboea Scandens - Lmeo Damask. Treatment. 1 73 133. Comparatively natural treatment of fig. , And again, in the fig border, above, the growth is as natural as I could bring myself to make it for the purpose for which it was designed. My next example illustrates, on the other hand, how far I think it fit to go in departing from nature when it is desired to retain something of the character of the plant. The dandelion on Plate 90 is systematically re- duced to ornament. The lines it takes are, if not actually systematical, very carefully balanced. The jagged edge of the leaf assumes almost the form of a Greek wave- line. The bracts develop into radiating hnes of ornament. But though the growth is thus made formal, the serration of the leaves thus simplified, the bracts thus exaggerated — the idea is yet to suggest the dandelion, and no other thing in nature. 174 Nature, in Ornament. 134. Ornamental treatment of strawberry. Ornamental treatment consists largely in the deliberate disregard of pictorial considera- tion. There is nature still in the strawberry- border above, although nature is not very strictly followed. The leaves in particular have been subjected to a process of orna- mental treatment, similar to that employed on Plates 13 and 14, and suggested by the forms of Greek brushwork. The treatment of the thistle in the German wood-carving shown on Plate 91, is so essen- tially ornamental that one scarcely knows whether to describe it as a rendering of the thistle or a development of the scroll. It shows in either case the strong influence of tradition. Ghiberti's poppy on Plate 71, although the influence of the Classic scroll is very apparent in it, is not so much a departure from the acanthus scroll as a treatment of the poppy somewhat in the manner of the scroll. (?hie 90. I ID P e o 1 > o O Treatment. \ 75 That is really the spirit in which to accept tradition. It is not something to be religiously preserved, but handed on. We are too much in the habit of adopting traditional forms, as though all necessary modification had been done for us. That is not how the good old work was done. It was the result of constant reference, if not to nature, at least to the conditions of the case ; and our modern essays in what is called " style " prove us often more Gothic than the Goth, more Classic than ever Greek was. The result of our adopting a ready-made selection of types and details, the very signifi- cance of which has perhaps no meaning for us nowadays, is inevitable common-place and dreariness. Our treatment should be not only modern but individual. The only pardonable grounds for the adop- tion of the old lines is on the assumption that the perfect rendering has been found and cannot be bettered. That may be so occa- sionally. And one readily admits there are renderings so perfect in their way that they must always influence us ; but even though the old rendering were perfect, what was perfect then is rarely quite what is wanted now ; and so it cannot fairly be contended that tradition, powerful as it is, has any right 1 76 Nature in Ornament. to say "thus far" to our invention. If we halt it is of our own innate weakness. Whoever is not quite without initiative will believe always in the possibility, if not of some new and better tunes than the old, at least of some happy variation upon them. Only in that belief, in the consciousness of the vitality of art, can he put himself into his work. Designer, he must believe that there is yet possible such a thing as design ; artist, he must recognise that art is not such an artless thing as, on the one hand the devotees of nature, and on the other the slaves of the past, would have him suppose. loLte 91. Photo Tiht ii^Junaa AkamanJjondan WC German Gothic Thistle Scroll. .Wood Car-Vm^ 177 XL ANIMALS IN ORNAMENT. No doubt the most amenable model for orna- ment is to be found in vegetable growth- This is not because it is without order — the anatomy of plants needs, indeed, as careful study as that of bones and muscles — but because in vegetation the proportions of the parts are naturally subject to such infinite variety, that, so long as one obeys the general law of growth, there is no great fear of over- stepping the bounds of verisimilitude ; and verisimilitude, not " truth to nature," is the law to which ornament owes obedience. The forms of birds and beasts lend them- selves less kindly, but still more kindly than the human form, to ornamental manipulation. The less, that is to say, one is apt to resent any liberty with the normal proportions of a thing th© more readily it can be turned to account. It is not surprising, then, that the orna- mentist has sought his inspiration mainly in N lyS Nature in Ornament. vegetable growth ; but it would have been amazing if he had found it nowhere else ; since the summer noon-day landscape is buzzing with insect life, and the flowers themselves are ornamented more or less with living creatures which the artist would be blind to ignore in his design. Bird, butterfly, and moth are indeed so obviously useful in any scheme of composition that they have very frequently been made use of merely to stop gaps in the designer's ornament — or in his invention. One danger in the use of living creatures in ornament is lest they should start out of the picture, a danger not altogether avoided in Plate 1 6, where the birds, though not pre- cisely natural, are too picturesquely treated to harmonise with the scroll. Indeed, in Grseco-Roman, or what we com- monly call Pompeian, decoration the beasts are for the most part mere blots on otherwise very likely graceful ornament. And it was just so in the Renaissance ornament immediately founded upon it — in much of Da Udine's design, for example, and in that of Giulio Romano. To have taken the trouble to set out his design in delicate and graceful lines, as on Plate 17, and then to perch upon them ostriches and donkeys and the like, seems H'late 92 > t^^^M •MjiSl! |/'tfe„,..--^~^^Zt'''^ dSt^— —-^^i*' >i^jk\ J /^ ^j^ '^ ^^^^^^p M "4^^^"^^ te^ ^^i .•^ ^^^^ID ^^^^^i^S- ' ^«4^ v'"' {^^3^ w~ — '^^-s^^fT^-^r' -^j^tK € ^^"^^^ ^^ ^^'f^^^^^^S ^ v^^^vi^ ' r>^&^ ^^^^ ^^ s ^^^^^^- ••^^ ''"'^A ' tMl^^^^^Az^^i^l^^ rlE (/ ^. ™^-^^^7^^ Japanese Cranes, Animals in Ornament. 1 79 something like sheer perversity on the part of the artist. Whatever may be the temptation to intro- duce into a design anything which will occupy an empty space and complete the composi- tion, without regard to natural fitness at all, it is really as absurd, when you think of it, to put together night moths and daisies, or butterflies and evening primroses, as it would be to paint peacocks strutting about on our northern shores, or polar bears prowling in the jungle. It is not meant to say, of course, that in ornament only the particular creature which preys upon a plant should ever be associated with it. But it is an additional source of interest when such creatures have some ex- cuse over and above that of filling a vacant space. Here, as everywhere, nature herself will often furnish the designer with a valuable hint. Notice the bronze-green beetles forag- ing in the full-blown rose. See the bees on the sunflower : I have found them diapering its plain disc in the most interesting manner ; but I never remember to have seen that inci- dent made use of in ornament, not even when the sunflower reigned for a brief moment of fashion over all English ornament. You may have noticed also how the common N 2 i8o Nature in Ornament. 135. Dolphins used as ornament. George Fox. broom, of which the foliage is so insignificant as to go for little, is sometimes dotted over after a shower of rain with the daintiest little snails, whose delicately-marked shells form quite a feature in the pattern of the shrub. It is a very common fault in modern orna- ment to introduce into it animals or human figures for the sake of bringing them in — as though merely by their introduction the design gained an additional artistic value. It is only when such figure or animal serves some distinctly ornamental purpose that it does so, only then that it ceases to detract from the value of the design. Figures or animals in ornament should themselves be part of the ornament — as they are in the designs of Signorelli and Holbein (p. 202 and Plate 103), and as they are in the frieze above. The dolphins there are not mere porpoises but ?late 93. Japanese Tortoises Animals in Ornament. i»r ornament, as much so as the scrolls themselves. The dolphin is, of course, a familiar feature in Classic and Renaissance design, but it is not often, even in Greek art, that it is so gracefully treated as in Mr. George Fox's design 136. Circular bird and flower crest. 137. Circular bird crest. though the of the creatures — birds, as on Plate 92, tortoises, as on Plate 93, or whatever they be — is characteristic to a very remarkable degree, the sim- plicity and direct- ness with which the natural form and He has studied the antique to some purpose. The Japanese have a most ingenious way of disposing creatures over a given sur- face in a manner which, un- symmetric though it be, is distinctly decorative ; and action 138. Ornamental indication of birds in flight. l82 Nature in Ornament. 139. Diaper of storks and chrysanthemum flowers combined. natural action are rendered, is such as to make us feel that the graphic power of the artist was well under the control of his decorative sense or instinct. Their remarkable appreciation of what is characteristic in natural form enabled the Japanese the more effectively to reduce such natural form to absolute ornament. To adapt a bird shape to the circular shape, as on p. 181, or to express the action of flight in a few strokes of the brush, as on the same page, appears to be as easy to a Japanese as it would be difficult to us. His ornamental faculty is still more plainly shown in a diaper such as that above. Are they storks or chrysanthemums of which it is made up ? He has so successfully combined the character- istics alike of bird and flower that you are left in wonder as to iwhich it was he adapted to ^late 94. pHoTO~TiMTi ^ 'Jamas AkcnBva.London.VC. Fer-uVian GjxcenlncitJes. Animals in Ornamejit. 183 ^^^ ^# Y^f^f 140. Dragon-fly diaper — Japanese. the likeness of the other. It is so essentially and so simply a diaper, that it seems not so much to have been designed, as to have grown out of a natural likeness between the flower in profile and the bird in flight — which likeness would, however, never by any chance have occurred to us but for the designer. Similarly, the diaper of insects, above, is so obvious, when we see it done, that we scarcely appreciate the ingenuity with which the dragon-flies range themselves in hexagonal order. The crested bird, by the way, on p. 181, forms once again something very like a flower. Absolutely archaic or non-natural creatures lend themselves very readily to diaper work. This is illustrated in the diaper of bats over- leaf and in the primitive patterns from Peru on Plate 94. The Peruvian attempts at human or semi-human form strike us only by their comicality ; but the nondescript creatures in i84 Nature in Ornament. 141. Diaper of conventional bats. the border at the top of the plate, and par- ticularly the fledgelings and the cocks, are not only comical but essentially ornamental in treatment. , The exaggeration of the cock's comb is delightfully imagined. The late William Burges, in the pattern on p. 185, has cleverly adapted his birds to the severe strap-work associated with them. One is a little disappointed to find that the inter- lacings do not actually form (as they seem at first sight to do) the tails of the birds ; but the design is ingenious and effective ; it is' designed obviously upon Byzantine lines. The Sicilian silk designers and their Sicilian Silk patterns. Animals in Ornament. 18 = 142. Bird diaper by Wm. Surges. imitators of Lucca and elsewhere in Italy, made considerable use of animal form in their patterns — carrying it, indeed, to the extremest . limit in actual pattern-work. There was usually, one may presume, some heraldic significance in the creatures they introduced (Plate 95) ; but there is a lesson in the way they are introduced, and in their treatment, especially in the way their broad masses contrast with the smaller foliage and other such detail associated with them. Fan- tastic they often are, but still they are quite natural enough. The continual recurrence of creatures more like life would be intolerable. The fault in the otherwise amusing pattern overleaf is that one cannot put up with the same little twins ad infiniticm. i86 Nature in Ornament. Birds are very frequently to be found amidst the arabesques of the Renaissance, with which they are not, it must be confessed, always in keeping. The introduction of a bird is rather a cheap solution of the difficulty there may be in occupying any awkward interval in the scroll itself without in any way interfering with the grace of its lines or the ease of its curves. It was quite a common practice to terminate a pilaster or other tall panel with an eagle taken bodily from the Imperial Roman standard, its feet planted firmly on the rim of a vase, its wings amply and very conveniently filling those topmost angles of the panel so diffi- fi^^TW© cult in many instances satis- factorily to oc- cupy. This is well • enough, once in a way, and if the eagle is not too much of an eagle for its place. Or- dinarily the birds pecking MS- Repeating figure pattern. (plate 96. 16'^ Century Wood CarVm^, Animals in Ornament. 1-87 144. Conventional peacock border— Indian. at berries or what not in Renaissance ara- besque, as on Plate 96 (and in the Roman work from which they are borrowed), are comparatively too real. They would be more admissible had they been modified in con- formity with the ornament about them. The Oriental, ornamentists were invariably more careful in this respect. The peacocks, for example, at the head of the page, whilst like enough to nature to be recognised at a glance, are quite conventional enough to correspond with the foliage ; and their value as masses of solid colour amidst the smaller and more broken detail is none the less on that account. As a rendering of the bird, and especially of the bird's wing, the Indian exafnple leaves much to be desired — how much will be seen if you compare it with the ancient Egyptian renderings. The vultures over- leaf, and the hawk on p. 189, afford types of i88 Nature in Ornament. 145. Egyptian wing treatment — vultures, simple dignified and decorative wing-treat- ment. But it is not only in birds that wings occur in ornament. They are appended (more especially in Renaissance art) to every con- ceivable thing, to sphinxes and chimeras, men and animals, griffins and all manner of gro- tesques, cherubs' heads, globes, hour-glasses, and symbols of every sort. In adapting wings to the human form the great danger is that of disproportion. To make them of sufficient size to support the body is out of the question ; the design would appear all wings. All that is to be done is to propor- tion them decoratively to the figure, without any attempt to make them mechanically adequate. One may suppose them to be features which through . disuse have dwindled to proportions artistically adequate. The Animals in Ornament. 185 tiny cupid's wing, for example, just budding from his chubby shoulders, the mere germ of a wing, seems to belong more intimately to his body than any other form of wing yet invented. Still more difficult is it satisfactorily to arrange the wings about a cherub's head. One remembers in certain old windows a glory of colour resolving itself, as you look, into a mystery of mingled wings and angel faces ; but the attachment of the wings is best not too closely inquired into. Neither is it well to consider too accurately the mechanique of the wings in which Delia Robbia embeds his sweetest of child faces. One is too thankful for their beauty to blame him for not having accomplished what is after all impossible. 146. Egyptian wing treatment — hawk. ago Nature in Ornament. The idea of wings in the place of arms (a common occurrence enough) or in the place of ears (as may be seen in the beautiful bronze head of Hypnos, in the British Museum), seems more anatomically possible, and may be most ornamentally rendered. In dealing with quadrupeds a single device has for the most part sufficed : alike in the winged bull of Assyria, in the Greek gryphon, and in the Evangelistic symbols of early Christian art, the wing is made usually to grow from the shoulder so as to form, as it were, one member with the fore leg — remov- ing the creature, indeed, by so much from nature, but not bringing it anywhere near to the ideal winged creature. The mechanism of the trick is too apparent. There is none of that mystery by which alone we might pos- sibly be impressed. In Sansovino's griffins, on Plate 104, one misses the fore legs no doubt, but the wings which take their place seem on that very account to be anatomically more possible. The outspread bird's wing has always been considered a most valuable " property " in ornament ; but although it is usually the bird's wing that one meets with in design, the bat's wing occurs also, more or less in associa- tion with devils and dragons, as the bird's CPlate9 /■ ^l^uitcrHlcb D-LlTHO.B.rUHNIVAL Sr HOLtOHN.C.O Conventional 13utterflies Animals in Ornament. 191 147. Bat diaper. wing with angels and cherubim. The bat itself is a symbol very frequent in Chinese art and its derivative Japanese (pp. 184, 194, and above). It is represented, however, in the gayest of gay colours, and in shape so turned to ornament that it is difficult at first to identify it. Were either form or colour more naturally rendered the effect would cer- tainly be less distinctly decorative. The wing of the butterfly is so obviously ornamental that one wonders how it is that only the Celestials have turned it to any good account. I n their embroideries especially the Chinese have made admirable use of it (Plate 76) — ornamentalising it sometimes in the most extravagant manner, as, for example, in the most important instance on Plate 97, where the under-wings are fringed somewhat in the manner of the tail of their sacred bird, which itself is a sight to see. That the anatomy of the creatures found in 192 Nature in Ornament. ornament is so seldom all that a naturalist might desire (the creatures on Plate 98 are more realistic than an ornamentist could wish), is sometimes, and to some extent, owing to the exigences of ornamental design ; but it is more often the fault of insuiificient acquaint- ance on the part of the designer with the facts of zoology. Few men have even nowadays the chance of studying nature from end to end ; and in the middle-ages the " Zoo '' was not within a shilling cab-fare of the church. The Medi- aeval sculptor, however, was, according to his possibilities, more studious of nature than we are accustomed to suppose : there is abundant evidence of that in his work. His compara- tive ignorance saved him at all events from too directly I'ecalling this or that zoological type in the demon or dragon of his invention — ^and presumably of his belief Of the decorative, as distinguished from the ornamental rendering of animal form, this is not the occasion to speak at length. The Egyptian lion statues and the Assyrian bas- reliefs show what may be done in adapting it to decoration ; and these abstract renderings come very near to perfection^ — nearer, at all events, than any modern has come with his zoological realism. (plaLe 98. Phots Timt ityL^Bmaa Aurmn Landon WC /Modern Germat) Renaisance- A.Seder. Animals in Ornament. 193 The sculptors of these master-works had no occasion very likely — happy mortals ! — to concern themselves about treatment ; their manner was traditional, and art had not yet " emancipated " itself from the control of fit- ness. Possibly the sculptor exercised no sort of conscious restraint over himself He was a slave, perhaps, and did as he was bid, or a member of a caste content to work patiently on in the accustomed way. It matters little to us why he did thus and thus so long as he did it. The moral of his work is the same. It is a plea (even though the artist thought of no such thing) for self-restraint on our part. Where he stopped short instinctively, never dreaming of realism, we may stay our hands deliberately, knowing the value of restraint. This we should do in decoration. In orna- ment, the modification of all natural form being inherently essential to it, even the human form divine must step down from its pedestal and submit itself to the lowly use to which it is put. I have mentioned at least two old masters who could, without offence to nature, bend the human shape to ornamental purposes. In our own day the late Alfred Stevens and Walter Crane have shown them- selves equal to the task. If others cannot modify the human figure without degrading O 194 Nature in Ornament. it, that may be an argument for omitting it from their scheme of ornament, it is no excuse for the introduction of raw nature in the place of art. It is one of the ill effects of compelling every student of design to acquire a certain acquaintance with the figure, that he is tempted to introduce it in season and out of season into his compositions, at the cost very often of consistency and ornamental effect. One is inclined to ask what the little Love on Plate 99 is doing amongst the scrollery. It would be at least as satisfactory without him. 148- Embroidered bat— Chinese. J German. Photo-lith. London 17* Century Scroll "Work , S .Gribelin . 195 XII. THE ELEMENT OF THE GROTESQUE. That the element of the grotesque has been abundantly abused in ornamental design is no argument against the discreet use of it in design. But if we would reconcile reasonable persons to its use we must ourselves keep within the bounds of reason — not of fact, indeed, but of sober fancy. One has a right to expect of creatures, how- ever remote from natural possibility, a greater degree of consistency than the artists of the Renaissance appear to have thought necessary. We are not satisfied, for example, that a substantial beast should suddenly taper off into wiry lines obviously and absurdly out of relation to it, or that its neck should be so inordinately lengthened that when one comes upon the head at last it is with something of a surprise : our dissatisfaction is aggravated if that head should not after all tally with the body, as when a human head is joined to the trunk of a quadruped. O 2 196 NMure in Ornament. It is a peculiarly unpleasant shock to us to find that a creature has not only two heads, but one at each extremity of its body : even of a myth we expect a beginning and an end. A scroll may, so to speak, blossom into creatures, just as a creature may develope into foliage ; but it should be that — development ; it is not enough that the tail of a beast breaks out into vegetation. We don't expect a creature so far developed as to have what can be called a tail, to make quite a new departure in the direction of foliage or scrollery ; and we resent such freaks as evincing a want of taste in the artist. It would be mere pedantry to pretend to define in so many words the precise limits within which one may take liberties with animal forms ; but one may safely say that the more familiar they are to us, and the more realistically they are rendered, the more dangerous it is to do so. The grotesque which reminds us too obviously of some par- ticular animal, is apt to strike one as if it changed into ornament instead of developing into it ; and wherever a creature has the appearance of having been put together the limits have been passed. Those creations are happiest which seem to belong entirely to the imagination of the artist, '?laLte 100. The Element of the Grotesque. 197 to have been conceived in the spirit of grace. We cease to judge them then by any standard but that of fitness of design and beauty. There is a pecuHar difficulty in harmoniously combining in one creature the characteristics of various anirnals. The acceptable grotesque must be less a combination of creatures than their hybrid offspring in the artist's brain — a dream, a remembrance, a fancy — any- thing but a patchwork. There exist, no doubt, in nature, impossible-looking animals like the giraffe, with its preposterous neck and absurd little misfit in the way of a head at the end of it ; but that is no excuse for dispropor- tion in design. It is not as with plant form, where we are at perfect liberty to shorten or elongate the stalks and branches, seeing that under certain conditions nature will do much the same, modi- fying them, indeed, almost out of our knowing. She seldom takes such liberties with the limbs of animals, and when she does we take excep- tion to it, and find in the abnormal proportion deformity. The artist may, in short, only do what he can make seem right. The romancer who can imagine, like Dumas, impossible persons involved in impossible adventures, and yet interest you in them, make you for the igS Nature in Ornament. moment believe while you read — or at least forget to doubt — has, so far as you are con- cerned, created them. The ornamentist may equally be permitted to invent what never was or could be, if he can but persuade you, while you look, I will not say to believe in the impossible, but to accept it. The taste of the artist and the prejudices of the critic will not always go together. There will always be risk of offending susceptibilities in introducing the grotesque element into design. On the other hand, to repudiate the grotesque is to give up a valuable element in design, one difficult to secure by means of pure ornament — and worth having, as it seems to me, even at some risk of ofYence. Recognising the temptation to its abuse, and the remarkable unanimity with which artists of the Renaissance succumbed to it, I am bold to . assert the possibility, and the existence too, of tasteful and altogether artistic use of the grotesque, which only a purist could find it in his uncomfortable conscience to reject. To persons of a somewhat rigid way of thinking, and they are not a few, the impossi- bility of grotesque creatures is the one thing that strikes them ; they see only, as they would say, the absurdity of it all ; they would pass over the grotesque as a mere blot upon (Plate 101. Late Gothic lUuminatior). The Element of the Grotesque. 1 99 Italian arabesque, of which it is so essential a characteristic. I would maintain on the con- trary, that something at least of the variety and pregnancy of Quattro- and Cinque-cento design is due to it, and accept it for what it is, a most convenient and effective means of counteracting the dangerous tendency of mere ornament to lapse into monotony and all-overishness. Moreover, whatever we may think of it indi- vidually, it would seem as though not only the Cinque- centists, but artists before and after them, came to the unanimous conclusion that they could not well get on without something of the sort — and he must be a marvellously clever fellow who can do without it all that the craftsmen of the Renaissance did with its help. An artist must obey his conscience. I should be sorry if mine cut off from me a resource so helpful in design, so near at hand, so needful. The fact is, a mere scrollwork of something like vegetable form scarcely suffices. The designer wants here and there certain masses, or weight, which it is difficult to get in the form of flowers, fruits, and such like. The difficulty has been solved sometimes, or rather shirked, by the introduction of actual figures. 200 Nature in Ornament. human or animal, among the foliage, excusable only when they are reduced, whether by their size or treatment, to strict conformity with the surrounding foliage. The nearer such creatures approach to reality, the more incongruous they appear in the midst of non-natural foliage. You feel that in the Italian decoration on Plate lOO, the masks and griffins seem to belong fairly well there ; and the goat-legged figures are not so much amiss ; but the life-studies below are entirely out of place. So are the little birds in the corners. As for the disproportionate duck, it beats the record of absurdity. Dispro- portion of this kind is a very common failing in design. For, to tell the truth, the difficulty of keeping figures, human or animal, at all in scale with the surrounding ornament is very considerable. In the Persian panel on p. 169, the ducks are disproportionately small. And again, in Plate 10 1, the figures are for once overpowered by the ornament. The artist was no doubt naively pious : to us such an " Annunciation " is simply grotesque. In the case of creatures frankly ornamental, with no claim to possibility, the danger of disproportion is in great part avoided. You are enabled by means of them not only to get just the weight and mass you require, but to (plate 102. Lustre Flaqties. The Element of the Grotesque. 201 get it just where you want it ; whereas, in the case of natural objects, there should be some sort of dramatic reason for their occupying this or that position. The creature in the centre of the upper plaque on Plate 102 gave me weight just where I wanted it. In the case of the less absolutely ornamental fishes in the lower design, the worm supplied the necessary centre of attraction. The mere grouping together of creatures, human, animal, or monstrous, though it may form a kind of grotesque enrichment, seldom results in anything .which can properly be called ornament. It is the resource of the figure draughtsman, who relies naturally upon forms with which he is familiar, and which come more easily to his hand than any severer type of ornament. But he seldom succeeds in producing ornament : when he does, he justifies himself by success. One may have a personal opinion as to the straight and narrow path in design, without insisting that all the world should be driven along it. And in the presence of masterly work one recognises the master, and allows that one's theorising does not apply to him. In the work of Holbein and Luca Signorelli one sees that the artist has digested his know- ledge of the human figure. In seeking orna- 202 Nature in Ornament. 149. Pilaster by SignorelH. mental lines, those of the human figure came natu- rally to him, and he was so familiar with every turn of it that it was easy to him to bend it , absolutely to his purpose - — which purpose was orna- ment. It is sel- dom indeed that a master of the figure cares enough about ornament to submit himself to its conditions. When he does, it is probable that he was well grounded in it before ever he took to the figure. That was certainly so in Holbein's case. You can see in Holbein's work (Plate 103), how (?1ate 103. ■TiMT. uy -Jimer Ab., Studies in OrnanteDtal Fi^ure'Work. The Element of the Grotesque. 203 every line and every pose was dictated by considerations of ornament, for all the dra- matic intention he managed often to combine with it. It is pretty plain to the designer that such dramatic quality grew out of the lines of his ornament, and did not suggest it. It is that extra something which the consummate artist always throws in — it was not bargained for in the ornament. Signorelli's pilaster (p. 202), is more entirely made up of the figure — and the upper portion of the design illustrates to some extent the dangers of such proceeding. The lower half illustrates how much can be done in figure- work almost alone. Only a designer, per- haps, can realise how studiously the lines of the figures, actively engaged as these may be, have been not merely controlled by decorative requirements but suggested by them. The figures were designed, not worked into orna- ment ; they are conceived or remembered, not taken from his sketch-book. Like Holbein, Signorelli too delights to find a reason for the form dictated by ornament. The work of these men does not go to show that the figure is peculiarly amenable to orna- mental use ; but it shows at least to what good ornamental purpose it may be put in the hands of those who have mastered both the 204 Nature in Ornament. 150- Grotesque iron grille — German. figure and ornament. They are not many — and never were. Sansovino's monsters on Plate 104 are ex- travagant, but still ornamental. The lines are so cleverly schemed, and the effect is so satis- factorily decorative, that the strongest objec- tion to such detail as that of the two-legged quadrupeds at the top of the panel is swal- lowed up in admiration of the composition as a whole. But Sansovino's design is by no means a model of what arabesque ornament should be. It is an instance, rather, of what a consummate artist may be excused for doing. The artist begins by blotting in his design, intent at first mainly upon the lines of his composition and the distribution of its masses. I take it that it was in order to get the requisite weight of form, that he roughed out certain bolder masses, half accidental perhaps, which suggested animals, much as one sees faces in the fire. Once he has resolved upon such masses in his composition, the designer is bound to give them an interest worthy of - ■'^-''■''^'•T^ft''-'^''*-"'"'"- 167. Decorative rendering of incoming wave. In Celtic ornament one sees something of the same kind. It is certain that the spiral patterns on Plate 107 are suggested by water ; as are also some of the carved ornaments of the South Sea islanders. In the archaic Greek diaper on Plate 1 10 (in which, by the way, there is a strong family likeness to familiar Egyptian diapers), the lotus is put there as if to prove that it is not only taken from, but meant to represent, water. Compare it with the wave and lotus pattern on p. 217. There are certain arrangements of waved and zigzag lines which are so universally employed in ornament that one can scarcely describe them as Egyptian, Greek, Gothic, or what not ; they are simply ornamental sym- bols of water, as, for example, in zodiacal sign of Aquarius. The Japanese patterns on p. 218 might almost pass for Gothic ; but the distinctive 2 22 Nature in Ornament. thing about the Jap- anese renderings, and they are very various, is that there is more movement in the water (p. 219); and that the artist turned to account the crest of the wave x68. Shell ornament. ^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^ (pp_ ^jg and 220). Take away from the circular wave ornament 164, on p. 219, the outer frilling of conventional froth, and you have a familiar Greek form. On pp. 219 and 220 the spray is represented by round dots. The rendering of the in-coming waves on p. 221 is more pictorial in intention, |but' in effect is ornamental too. It is only one more sign of the way in which we borrow, and have always bor- rowed, our orna- ment, that island- ers like ourselves should not have gone more often to the sea shore for suggestions in de- sign. Shells of all kinds are in them- 169. seaweed omament. (plate 112, HOTO-LITHO. B.FURNIVAI. S' HOL-SOM Seaweed Pattern . Still Life in Ornament. 223 X70 Heraldic mantling. selves so beautiful in line and colour, that they are quite sufficient to form the motif of ornamental design. It is, howevjer, mainly the scallop shell which has been turned to account in orna- ment — for symbolic reasons, originally, no doubt, but also because it is so obviously ornamental. It falls, indeed, very nearly into the lines of the anthemion, of which it has been contended the Renaissance shell orna- ment is only a variation. But, as in the days of the Renaissance, and of the Roman Empire before that, it was quite a common thing to supplement decoration in mosaic or stucco with actual cockle-shells embedded in the walls and pillars, it is natural to conclude that 224 Nature in Ornament. 171. Heraldic mantling — wood carving. it was thence the sculptor or painter derived his inspiration. The shell is used in connection with a flow- ing seaweed pattern on Plate in, on which are also other varieties of seaweed borders. But I ought to have used some other form of shell. Toujours cockle-shell palls upon one at last : one would prefer a limpet, or a mussely anything for a change. A more distinctly ornamental rendering of seaweed is given on Plate 112, in which the scroll, conventional as it is, does not branch either accidentally or after the manner of any flower, but is forked as seaweeds and lichens are. That is shown also in the Japanese ornament on p. 222. It is strange how we are inclined to branch our scrolls always in the way suggested by vegetable growth. Even in the heraldic mant- ling of the Middle Ages, where the idea was to represent a scarf slashed about and cut into J 'lar'-iiiai: r'bTrt liia London "Peacock "peatber Palter-o-Japarxzse. Still Life in Ornament. 225 ribbons, the ribbons develop into something so very much Hke conventional foliage, that the idea of drapery is often altogether lost. It is so in my frieze on p. 223 ; and in the old German work on p. 224, where it takes almost the form of strapwork, the strapwork is un- commonly like what in Mediaeval work of the same period does duty for foliation. Birds, natural and conventional, are of such common occurrence in ornament, that it seems strange their feathers have not been put to more use in design — more especially as feather ornaments were always largely used, not only among savage tribes, but in civilised countries from China to the British Isles — the very bedsteads of our ancestors were tricked out in plumes, in a way which speaks volumes as to their entire unconcern about hygiene and even cleanliness : there are rooms of state in many a noble mansion which can never have been kept wholesome for long, and are some- thing to shudder at now. Feathers, too, were used as emblems of sovereignty — those on which the vultures perch on p. 188 have some such significance of course. For all that, with one exception, they have not been adequately adapted to design. That exception is the peacock's feather. It is interesting to compare the not too Q 226 Nature in Ornament. naturalistic rendering of it on Plate 1 1 3, with the more strictly ornamental modifications on Plate 1 14, and with Talbert's modern Gothic inlay pattern below. It is clear that the Itahan versions owe some- thing to Oriental inspira- tion. In the least natural of them there is always some character of the original. The majolica patterns, in particular, are in their unlikeness yet so like. The Coptic patterns (p. 227) and the Persian tile (p. 228) are further removed than ever from actuality, but still the peacock's feather is un- mistakable. In all of these cases the feather of itself suf- fices for its ornamental purpose. In Plate 115 a new principle comes in : there is a sort of connecting stalk with tendrils, an element of scroll-work not quite in keeping with the feathers. But the way they are rendered is in- teresting, and the effect is decorative enough. 172. Inlaid feather oriiament< B. J. Talbert. (plate 114. Peacock feather diapers. Still Life in Ornament. 227 It is a far cry from work of this kind to the Rococo ; but one can hardly look at Plate 116 without seeing i-n this more than usually graceful example of ultra-florid late Renais- sance scrollery, a distinct resemblance to the ostrich feather. And, knowing how State carriages were bedecked with plumes (the custom comes down to us in the conventional hearse), one can easily imagine how it occurred to the coach- I- ■. ||' ,^«®* builder to carve :' ||.; ^iWtaK. , IV feathers some- — ' '«' lWPIrefei»_-HJ what less flimsy, which, moreover, he could gild. The very notable thing is that this feathery scroll-work is not so unlike all other Rococo scrollery. A not unusual form of ornament, or sub- stitute for it, is the grouping together of inanimate things, trophies, &c., as in the pilaster panel on p. 229. In connection with certain commemorative monuments, there is a sort of reason in the introduction of emblems ; and on occasion, as Q 2 i73~4' Coptic feather border and diaper. 228 Nature in Ornament. 175. Persian peacock feather pattern. for example in the Doria Chapel at Ge- noa, shields, helmets, breastplates, swords, and other insignia of war can scarcely be called out of place ; but the conditions of ornament are not fulfilled by stringing such things together down the length of a pilaster. The composition on p. 229 may or may not be ornamental— ^but it is not orna- ment. Whatever excuse there may be in Ancient art for the sacrificial emblem which occurs at the top of the pilaster, it has no significance, and no excuse in work of the Renaissance. In work of our own day, the bull's head reminds one too much of the butcher's shop, and the Classic ox-skull is still more un- pleasantly suggestive. Artists of the Renais- sance, however, seem to have seen no reason why they should not treat the skull orna- mentally. To me the rather graceful detail on p. 230 loses all its charm when one realises that the cartouche is really a skull. It is possible, of course, to dispose almost any series of objects, natural or artifi'cial, in (plate 115. Jj4erHian,Ilioto-lith Londnr "Peacock "peatber paltern, Turkish. Still Life in Ornament. 229 such order as to present what passes for an orna- mental appearance ; repeat a shape several times over, and it forms a sort of pat- tern ; but that is not ex- actly ornamental design. The occasional introduc- tion of such a thing as a cor- nucopia (Plate 99), or a vase (Plates I s, 57, 96, &c.), is not only useful sometimes as affording a convenient start- ing point for growth, but it may be the means of in- troducing a mass which is very valuable in the com- position. In that respect the recurring vases in the centre plaque on Plate 18, and in the border on Plate 25, are useful, casually as they occur in the design. The most satisfactory of such vases are the least re- alistic. In Persian art in particular we see the thing reduced to the mere outline of a vase filled in with orna- ment, which by its treat- 176. Trophy panel. 230 Nature in Orname^it. ment contrasts with the floral ornament springing from it. An equally arbitrary rendering of the vase occurs on Plate 28, the pattern on which must be taken to represent the water in it. The shield, the tablet, and the cartouche are so conspicuously useful in ornamental composition, that at certain periods of design, artists seem with one accord to have relied 277. Renaissance skull ornament. upon them, to the exclusion of other and more fitting devices. Used for its own sake, or merely for the convenience of composition, shield, tablet, or cartouche, becomes a mere stock property, a shift or stop-gap in design. Its introduc- tion is quite happy only when it is called for to bear a coat-of-arms, an inscription, a cypher, an emblem, or whatever may form (plate 116. KELL, PHOTO-UTHO.e.FUMtlVAL 5-^ HOutdnH.E.O l^ococo Scroll work. Passarini. Still Life in Ornament. 23 1 llllllllllllllllllUlll 178. Early jPhoenici an wreath. part (and a prominent part) of the decorative scheme. Lifeless things have thus their place in ornament ; but they need to be used with great discretion. This applies also to what is more generally called still life. Bunches of cut flowers are not in themselves ornament, and the abundant use of them argues little faculty of design. The garlands of fruits and flowers which trail over the later French Renaissance art, are at best a makeshift, fit only for a frivolous French boudoir. But that a wreath may be used in a manly way is shown in the early Phoenician ornament above, which is dignified enough in design even for the decoration of a sarcophagus. Nor do I see any fault to find with Mr. Fox's swags on p. 180. There is nothing to wonder at that in countries where vines and roses and all manner of flowers are trained to grow in 232 Nature in Ornament. garlands, and where it is the custom, as in Italy to this day, to hang strings of fruit and maize on the walls of the houses to dry in the sun (where they form a delightful decoration), the idea of something of the kind should have found its way into ornament. It was not altogether a bad idea, and it had this to recommend it, that it afforded lines not otherwise to be got, and lines, too, very valuable in decoration. That the device has been very much abused is only too obvious. We cannot afford lightly to give up the quality of vitality in ornament ; and the festoon or swag is open to the objec- tion that it is at best " still life," and as such • inferior in interest to living, growing forrri. The inherent sinfulness of the device is an invention of the purist. The offence is, once more, mainly in proportion to the realism. The rnore a swag looks like weight, the more it, wants suspending ribbons to hold it up and nail-heads to attach it to, the less endurable it is. There is no occasion to waste one's wrath over wreaths so absolutely ornamental in intention as those of Nicolaus Drusse in Plate 117. The mere suggestion of a garland, such as you see in quite early Renaissance work, can offend no evenly balanced mind. It" is often (Pkte 117 17. Ce-nt-urv ScroH-Work. Still Life in Ornament. 233 179. Swag of fruit bunches. little more than a border of leaves and fruit, strictly confined, it may be, within the lines of parallel mouldings. It looks as though the sculptor had felt the need of a break in this border, and so had crossed it by a ribbon at intervals. Perhaps he felt there should be some beginning and some end to his border, and so he finished it with bows and loose ends. You cannot help seeing that his starting point was not so much the idea of a wreath as the idea of due enrichment. That his design resolved itself into a wreath was something in the nature of an accident. It happened so. In later Renaissance swags you are often painfully aware how proud the artist was of his fruit bunches, and especially of the masterly way in, which he could carve them. There is, it must be owned, a certain dandified self- sufficiency in the not ungraceful swag above, 234 Nature in Ornament. with its flying ribbons occupying the vacant space. Admitting the trivial purpose to which they have been put during the last century or two, I would like to say a word even in favour of ribbons. Nothing could well be worse than millinery in stone, in wood, or in seriou§ painted decoration ; but the frippery of the later Renaissance is no reason why we should not avail ourselves, within limits, of the grace of line suggested by a strip of ribbon floating in the air : that too is nature. Only, as I said, preserve us from actual millinery. The Gothic variation of the ribbon or label is dignified enough and admirably decorative. It is pride of execution, and especially of realistic execution, which is the' real pit- fall in the path of ornament. Even what pretends to be no more than a memory of something done before, should appear to be always the outcome of the architectural or other conditions, designed to go just there, and introduced because just such enrichment was wanted. I must not be understood, however, to advocate the reproduction of merely architec- tural features by way, of ornament. The Pompeian decoration on Plate Ii8 is indeed graceful and delicate, more especially as com- ^late 118. Fompeian Wall painting. Still Life in Ornament. 235 pared with the " canopies/' which were the stock in trade of so many Gothic craftsmen ; but it seems to me that, whether in true or (what was more usual) false perspective, such constructions are a very poor substitute for design. They have been employed pretty freely, and will be so again no doubt. But the unprejudiced taste is so little likely to be led astray by their attractions, it is hardly necessary to point out that the device is really banal beyond endurance. 236 Nature in Ornament. XIV. SYMBOLIC ORNAMENT. Ornament has primarily nothing to do with story, poetry, or other purpose than that which it sets itself— the purpose, that is to say, of ornamenting some given space or thing. It may be quite true that ornament which does no more than this deserves no very high place in our esteem. The artist very naturally magnifies art ; and to the crafts- man craftsmanship is of the first impor- tance ; but to him only. To mankind in general it is the man behind the art that interests them ; and the Philistine is not such a fool, after all,' in asking of the artist who claims his attention that he shall have something to say for himself. When the ever- lasting burden of his song is only, " See what an artist am I ! " we soon weary of that mono- tonous brag, even though it be warranted by some degree of achievement. The craftsman very rightly insists upon ^late 119. "Photo-Tint" 'iyJaava Akar Indiat) Na^a, Store carViT)6, Symbolic Ornament. 237 180. Egyptian Eacred beetle. adequate craftsmanship. The rest of the world finds craftsmanship inadequate, and asks for something more. We find accordingly that in ancient and mediaeval ornament there is usually an under- current of symbolism. Indeed, one might safely say it is always there, and that when we do not see it, it is only the distance that dims its meaning to us. There is probably no single detail of ancient ornament to which a sym- bolic origin could not plausibly be assigned by those who give themselves up to the inter- pretation of such mysteries. Eastern ornament, in particular, alway em- bodies some sentiment or meaning. Egyptian art was, practically speaking, hieroglyphic picture-writing (Plate 79) of the same kind (only much more nobly developed) as the totems of the North American Indians. 'Persian ornament, again, is always inspired by some poetic notion — it is, in fact, a sort of 238 Nature in Ornament. i3 language of flowers. The ornamentist has in his mind a bed of roses and tulips (Plate 65), a garden, anc so on, and combines his flowers, unless I am much mistaken, so as to convey to Persian eyes a distinct sentiment. In the ornament of other Eastern countries there is a kindred spirit of sugges- tion. The Indian^ lattice of which part is given on Plate TJ, is plainly intended to convey the notion of a forest. In a very different way of his own the Japanese, again, loves to put some meaning into his pattern (Plate 109), and in a mere diaper (as above) will manage to convey the suggestion of fire, air, and water. Everywhere, more- over, the symbols of re- ligion have been turned to account, from the naja or many-headed serpent of Buddhistic worship 182. Cross of fleurs-de-lis. 181. Diaper of waves, clouds, and sacred birds. ^laie 120 ,.S}\.«.^ A'