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Cornell University 
 Library 
 
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 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 276540 
 
SOME PRINCIPLES OF 
 
 Every -DAY Art. 
 
LEWIS F. DAY'S 
 TEXT BOOKS OF ORNAMENTAL DESIGN. 
 Price Three-and-Sixpence each, Crown 8vo, bound in Cloth. 
 
 SOME PRINCIPLES OF EVERY-DAY ART: 
 Introductory Chapters on the Arts not Fine. 
 
 Second Edition. In great part re-written from 
 ' Every-day Art,' containing nearly all the 
 original Illustrations and some new ones ; 
 forming a Prefatory Volume to the Series. 
 
 THE ANATOMY OF PATTERN. 
 
 Fourth Edition and Eighth thousand, 
 revised. With Forty-one full-page 
 
 Illustrations, and Diagrams, in the text. 
 
 THE PLANNING OF ORNAMENT. 
 Third Edition and Sixth thousand, revised. 
 With Forty-one full-page Illustrations. 
 
 THE APPLICATION OF ORNAMENT. 
 
 Fourth Edition and Fifth thousand, revised. 
 With Forty-eight full-page Illustrations, 
 and smaller Illustrations in the text. 
 
 Thick Crown 8vo, Cloth Gilt. Price 12s. (>d. 
 
 NATURE IN ORNAMENT. 
 
 Third Edition and Fifth thousand, revised. 
 With a- Hundred and Twenty-three 
 full-page Illustrations, and a Hundred and 
 Ninety-two smaller Illustrations in the text. 
 
DESIGN FOR INLAY. 
 
SOME PRINCIPLES OF 
 
 EvERY-DAY Art 
 
 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTERS ON THE ARTS NOT FINE 
 
 LEWIS FOREMAN DAY, 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'text BOOKS OF ORNAMENTAL DESIGN. 
 
 ' ' De gustibus EST disputandum.^' 
 
 SECOND EDITION (FOURTH THOUSAND), REVISED, 
 WITH FURTHER ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 LONDON: 
 B. T. BATSFORD, 94 HIGH HOLBORN. 
 
 1898. 
 
TO THE READER. 
 
 The original edition of " Every-day Art " being 
 out of print, it occurred to me to issue the first 
 (and, as I think, the only permanently interesting) 
 part of it, in the form of an introductory volume to 
 the " Text Books of Ornamental Design," without, 
 however, substantially reducing the number of 
 illustrations. 
 
 When it came to revising the text for the press, 
 I found on every page something which I thought 
 might be better said. And so it has resolved itself 
 into my writing the greater part of it anew. 
 
 Lewis F. Day. 
 
 13 Mecklenburg Square, London, 1890. 
 
 Note to the Second Edition. 
 
 In further revising the second edition, I have 
 taken the opportunity of amending the illustrations 
 and of including some additional ones. 
 
 L. F. D. 
 
 1893- 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 On Ornament i 
 
 " Orno, Ornas, Ornat, Ofnamus, Ornads, Ornant." 
 
 Taste lo 
 
 '* I know what 1 like ! " 
 
 Past and Present 20 
 
 " New lamps for old ! " 
 
 The Nature of Art 3^ 
 
 '* Art is man's nature." 
 
 The Use in Ornament 70 
 
 " Surely uae alone 
 Makes money not a contemptible stone." 
 
 The Workman and His Tools 86 
 
 " If you do not use the tools they use you." 
 
 The Rights and Wrongs of Imitation 113 
 
 •'Nothing concealed that is done, but all things done to adornment." 
 
 Leading-strings 128 
 
 '* The eagle never lost so much time as when he consented to learn of the crow." 
 
 Form and Colour .. .. 134 
 
 ** No man can serve two masters." 
 
EVERY-DAY ART. 
 
 ON ORNAMENT. 
 
 "Omo, Ornas, Ornat, Ornamus, Ornatis, Ornant.' 
 
 RNAMENT is the art of 
 eveiy-day. The great 
 picture galleries may 
 be likened to temples 
 of art, whither devout 
 worshippers, and others 
 less devout but no less 
 anxious to pass for 
 pious, resort only at 
 intervals. \ In the same 
 way a treasured paint- 
 ing may be the shrine at which a man offers up in 
 private the incense of his admiration. But every 
 day and all day long we breathe the atmosphere of 
 ornament. There is no escape from its influence. 
 Good or bad, it pervades every object with which 
 our daily doings bring us in contact. We may, 
 if we choose, keep away from picture galleries 
 and not look at pictures ; but, our attention' once 
 turned to ornament, we can no longer shut our 
 
 B 
 
2 E very-day Art. 
 
 eyes and decline to take heed of it, though there 
 be all about us forms of' it which every cultivated 
 man would evade at any cost if he could. It 
 may be to us a dream of beauty or a nightmare, 
 but we cannot shake it off. At every turn in 
 life we come face to face with some fresh phase 
 of it. 
 
 The question of ornament is, therefore, neither 
 insignificant nor one that has significance only for 
 the Wealthy few. Neither is it a matter which 
 concerns only those who take some interest in art, 
 since we are all of us, however little inclined 
 towards the arts, alike compelled to ornament our 
 dwellings, our belongings, and our persons. 
 ( Imagine for a moment how a man would set 
 about furnishing a house without ornament. In the 
 first place the house itself would need to be built for 
 him, and not a door, or window-frame, or chimney- 
 piece, not so much as a fire-grate, door-knocker, or 
 area-railing, but would have to be made to his 
 express order. The furniture, from the door- 
 scraper to his easy chair, would in like manner 
 have to be designed for him ; and it is doubtful 
 whether the markets of the known world would 
 suffice to supply the necessary utensils, imple- 
 ments, and household vessels, all innocent of orna- 
 ment. Were this at last accomplished, the first 
 time he entered it he himself would introduce 
 within its walls the inevitable decoration — unless 
 indeed, he put off on the door-step the clothes that 
 
On Ornament. 3 
 
 society has determined to be necessary appendages 
 to the natural man. The cut of his coat, or the rib 
 of the cloth, the polish of his boots, the curve of 
 his hat-brim, the knot of his necktie, the pattern of 
 his watch-chain, the umbrella in his hand, even the 
 all-necessary money in his pocket, any one of these 
 would be enough to destroy the artless simplicity 
 at which he vainly aimed. A lady in every-day 
 walking costume would introduce a small museum 
 of ornamental detail. 
 
 2. Top of Eivas plum-box. 
 
 At bed and board we are pursued by ornament 
 -the dinner-table is an " exposition " of art — such 
 
 B 2 
 
4 E very-day Art. 
 
 as it may be ; the very box of plums on the 
 dessert-table is food for thought on design. The 
 box is covered on the outside with a pattern in red 
 and green (2), suggesting at once the , lingering of 
 traditional design, the satisfactory effect that may 
 be got out of the very na'fvest form of colour- 
 
 s' Cut paper ornEfment. 
 
 printing, and the quaint result of contradicting the 
 circular shape by straight stripes of colour. Inside 
 the box we find a disc of perforated paper (3), so 
 curiously indicative of the scissors as to set one 
 thinking about the adaptation of design to the 
 method of its execution. We are led, further, by 
 the barbaric decoration of the plums themselves to 
 
On Ornament. 5 
 
 Ihe consideration of the fitness of ornament ; those 
 gay shreds of tinsel are distinctly more pleasant to 
 the eye than to the palate.} 
 
 Love of decoration is peculiar to no period. 
 Ornament dates back to the rudimentary stage of 
 the human race. If we were to trace it to its 
 beginnings we should find ourselves in Eden — or 
 wherever else the scientists will allow the human 
 race to have had its origin. To-day it is omni- 
 present among us ; and we can scarcely conceive a 
 " coming race " without ornament. 
 
 The association of art with every common ob- 
 ject of daily use seems to be in the natural order 
 of things. It was so in Ancient Greece and Rome, 
 and during the Renaissance. The ruder Gothic 
 craftsmen and the earlier Egyptians and Assyrians 
 were no exceptions to the rule. In the East the 
 cunning artificer delighted to find in every branch 
 of handiwork excuse for the elaboration of 
 ingenious ornament. Even among the aborigines 
 of Mexico, New Zealand, and the South Sea 
 Islands (4), we find that every opportunity for orna- 
 ment was seized, necessity guiding it into the way 
 it should go. It was only during a time of almost 
 utter dearth of art amongst us (in the eighteenth 
 and first half of the present centuries) that the idea 
 was ever entertained that use and ornament must be 
 in some sense antagonistic. The result of attempt- 
 ing to draw the line between use and ornament, as 
 though the two \\ ere not to be reconciled, was that 
 
6 Every -day Art. 
 
 ornament, which is irrepressible, struck out on its 
 own account, and, unrestrained by sober use, 
 indulged in all the extravagance and excess which 
 the better taste of recent years has, we cannot yet 
 say ended, but at all events interrupted. 
 
 Perhaps we may assume, since there is usually 
 some ground in fact for every fiction, that it was 
 the perversion of ornamental art among civilised 
 nations, subsequent to the degradation of Renais- 
 sance design, which led to the idea that use and 
 ornament are incompatible. It rests with us. by 
 thg_aQbri£ty arKLfi£ness_pf_our^esign, to overturn 
 this fallacy, so that not even the most practical 
 and prosaic person shall be able to rest in the belief 
 that use and ornament are independent one of the 
 other. For decoration is, or should be, art con- 
 tr olled by common sens e. 
 
 Our every-day surroundings affect us always 
 more or less ; possibly they influence us much more 
 than we are accustomed to suspect. That some 
 among us should be doomed to live without beayty 
 is one of the curses of our civilisation ; such unfor- 
 tunates may find relief in deadening the sense of 
 beauty within them ; even then' it can never be quite 
 the same thing to them whether they live in the 
 midst of beauty or of ugliness. 
 
 .(Esthetic culture is not the high-road to all the 
 virtues, and, indeed, certain of the vices have been 
 known to infest it. I doubt very much whether it 
 " emoliit mores, nee sinit esse feros" Neither, on the 
 
On Ornament. 
 
 X^'^N^^^^^^^^^^^Si'JSJ'^;;^^^^ 
 
 r^/yyyz^>'///'/r//'/z^yy'^j'yf////'f^^^^ 
 
 ^^'^^^^^i^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
 
 ''4^//yfy/y/j'///'^//'yf/'/'^//'M/'y^/'y^^yr'' 
 
 
 4. Savage ornament. 
 
8 E very-day Art. 
 
 other hand, te there any special grace in ugliness, 
 as puritanisnvl would have had us believe. Art is 
 only utterance. It must express something ; and 
 the vital question is, what does it express ? The 
 dailyassociation with honest, manly, real work, 
 with art which, whether or not it be of the utmost 
 refinement, is at least sincere and individual, must 
 exert on us an influence less demoralising than the 
 continual contact with falsity, pretence, and affecta- 
 tion. The fact that we may be wholly unconscious 
 of the influence to which we are subject does not 
 destroy its effect. The fresh air is tonic, whether 
 we feel it to be so or not ; and the germs of disease 
 bred in a foul atmosphere are none the less fatal, 
 though our nostrils be not sufficiently delicate to 
 detect the poison we breathe. 
 
 The low condition to which ornament had fallen 
 during the first half of the century, accounts fully 
 for the slight esteem in which it has come to be 
 held ; and nothing short of reform in design will 
 ever restore to decoration the prestige that attached 
 to it as a matter of course in days when art and 
 handicraft were scarcely distinguishable, when no 
 artist disdained to do work which is now left to 
 the mechanic — when it was in such work, very 
 likely, that he first made his mark. Of late years 
 something like a reaction has set in towards 
 the due appreciation of the accessory arts ; and, 
 inasmuch as this interest is no new thing, but a 
 recurrence to that catholic appreciation of the 
 
On Ornament. g 
 
 arts which has characterised all periods when art 
 has thriven, one is encouraged to hope that better 
 times really have come again. To-day's interest 
 in decorative art may be just a fashion. It is 
 more encouraging to believe that yesterday's 
 apathy was only an episode in the history of 
 popular opinion. 
 
lO 
 
 E very-day Art. 
 
 TASTE. 
 
 "I know what I like." 
 
 i'T is characteristic 
 of decorative 
 art that it de- 
 pends almost 
 as much upon 
 the critical as 
 upcn the crea- 
 ti ve facu lty of 
 the artist. More 
 than any other 
 art it depends 
 upon taste ; and 
 by that test it 
 stands or falls. 
 It is taste that 
 determines — 
 what is it that 
 it does not de- 
 termine in de- 
 coration ? ^ It 
 settles in the first place whether there shall" be 
 decoration at all, how much of it, of what kind, 
 where it shall be introduced, and how executed. 
 
Taste. 1 1 
 
 It prescribes what is wanted, what is admissible, 
 and what is becoming. Not one of these questions 
 can be solved without reference to it. Every work 
 of applied art is a problem, and the most im- 
 portant factor in its solution is taste. 
 ^ This, too, is worthy to be remembered, that 
 whilst we judge of a man's power by the high 
 water-mark of his achievement, we measure his 
 taste less generously, not even according to the 
 average of his work, but by the record of its lowest 
 ebb. When once an artist has succeeded in pro- 
 ducing a powerful impression, it survives many 
 failures. We point to his great work and say : 
 that shows what he can do ! But a single false 
 step in taste may be fatal ; it is difficult to believe 
 any more in the certainty of a judgment that has 
 once been flagrantly at fault ; we think always of 
 the man's failure, and wonder : how can he be a 
 man of taste who let that pass ? 
 
 In the tacit assumption of taste on the part of 
 every educated person there is unconscious recogni- 
 tion of the supremacy of the faculty. So firmly is 
 this infatuation rooted in men's minds that to 
 question their authority in this respect is taken as 
 an insult. Is not every Alderman a man of taste "i 
 We have all of us met ere now the worthy gentle- 
 man who " knows what he likes " ; he announces 
 that incontrovertible fact with a self-satisfaction 
 which seems to imply that really it is no slight 
 merit in him that he knows no more. It would be, 
 
12 Every-day Art. 
 
 of course, the height of rudeness to suggest that 
 his preference did not of necessity argue excellence. 
 But why is it that in this matter of art a man, even 
 while admitting that he knows nothing of the sub- 
 ject, will protest that he is none the less competent 
 to give judgment ? He would hesitate with regai'd 
 to any other subject to pit his ignorance against 
 the special knowledge of an expert. 
 
 The confusion in men's minds is owing in part to 
 a confusion of the different senses in which the 
 word is used. Bad taste may mean bad breeding, 
 and no one cares to be accused of that. Again, 
 taste may be understood to signify liking, and in 
 respect to liking every man must be a law to him- 
 self. There is no disputing on that point. Even 
 though it be raw spirit that we prefer to mellow 
 wine, or crude combinations of red, blue, and yellow 
 that we like better than any subtle harmony of 
 colour, we have a perfect right to our preference. 
 Whether by announcing it we show discrimina- 
 tion or expose our ignorance is another matter.) 
 
 In reference to art there should be no mistake 
 about the meaning of the word. Liking is cne 
 thing, and taste quite another. One may thoroughly 
 dislike whatever it may be, and yet acknowledge 
 that it is good ; and the faculty that enables us to 
 recognise its merits, apart from our own likes and 
 dislikes, is closely akin to taste. 
 
 The more competent the critic, the more readily 
 he will acknowledge that he is not unerring. (His 
 
Taste. 1 3 
 
 judgment must, ha knows, be to some extent 
 biassed by personal predilection. It is reserved for 
 the average ignoramus to assume calmly that his 
 likes and dislikes constitute good and bad in art — 
 only in art: in other respects he is sane enough. 
 He does not argue with his solicitor or pretend to 
 prescribe to his physician. He goes to them for 
 advice, and whether he act upon it or not, the fact 
 that he is prepared to pay for it implies that he 
 attaches some value to it. It is true that society 
 does not insist that a man should be versed in the 
 law or in medicine, and that it does demand that 
 he should be able to converse about art. Society, 
 by the way, appears to be quite unconscious of the 
 nonsense he talks when he begins. If for a moment 
 he could but see himself as artists see him !^ 
 
 The unaffected expression of a man's preference 
 is valuable in proportion to his experience and 
 character ; and there is no particular reason why 
 he should keep it to himself ; but the way in which 
 those who never held a brush since the days of 
 their childhood venture to determine what is good 
 and bad, " well painted," or " out of drawing," shows 
 not only that they are unaware of the depth of 
 their own ignorance, but that they are quite incap- 
 able of learning. Lookers-on see the best of the 
 game, it is true, but not unless they know its rules. 
 For every fault that the mere dilettante really dis- 
 covers in a work of art, there are possibly a dozen 
 merits that he fails to detect ; and, on the other 
 
14 E very-day Art. 
 
 hand, if certain works in which he finds great merits 
 are not highly esteemed by the expert, professional 
 opinion is probably warranted by faults of execu- 
 tion he has not the experience to see. It would be 
 only decently modest in him to assume that, when- 
 ever he differs from an artist as to a matter of art, 
 which he has himself not particularly studied, he 
 is in the wrong ; for the artist probably has studied 
 it. To go beyond the expression of personal 
 opinion, and say what is good or bad, is to assume 
 the function of critic, an assumption only justified 
 by knowledge.J 
 
 There is no more common pretence than to 
 arrogate to oneself a knowledge of art. It deceives 
 only the ignorant, but those whom it does deceive 
 are not easily brought to see the truth. The 
 best in art can only be demonstrated by appealing 
 to faculties which comparatively few persons 
 possess, and fewer still have cultivated. Igno- 
 rance mostly pays a penalty of some sort : it is 
 that way we buy our experience. The man whose 
 palate is not so delicate but that he enjoyed the 
 liquor he drank last night, may be convinced, if 
 only by the logic of this morning's headache, that 
 it was not of the best, and begin to mistrust his 
 judgment accordingly ; but the indulgence in cheap 
 art pays no such obvious toll — there is no headache 
 afterwards. A man's natural vanity, the want of 
 discernment that permitted the purchase of a poor 
 work of art, and the ungraciousness of the task of 
 
Taste. 1 5 
 
 pointing out to him the worthlessness of his bargain, 
 together, make his enlightenment all but impossible. 
 The thing remains before his eyes, still further to 
 vitiate his sense of what is beautiful, " After all," 
 says the popular fallacy, "it is a matter of taste 1" 
 But taste is not a personal matter. It is no more 
 mere preference than judgment is mere opinion. 
 It is as rare as it is supposed to be common. It 
 imphes not only artistic feeling and critical power, 
 but their cultivation too. Failing artistic sympathy, 
 we miss the very aroma of the art we profess to 
 judge ; without critical faculty we are inevitably 
 led away by our feelings ; and without experience 
 we are in danger of mistaking molehills for moun- 
 tains, never perhaps having seen such a thing as a 
 mountain. ^ 
 
 The artist always shows something of himself in 
 his work. The cloak of art does not altogether dis- 
 guise the individual under it ; and, though a man 
 should pose as the personification of impersonalit)', 
 his very pose, the mere fact of his posing, tells tales. 
 Silence sometimes betrays as much as speech. But if 
 this be true of the artist's personality, it is still more 
 true with regard to his culture ; and it is the evidence 
 in a man's work of natural artistic tact, plus cultiva- 
 tion and experience, that we distinguish as taste. 
 
 It might well be supposed that taste, the con- 
 trolling as distinct from either the creative or the 
 manipulative faculty, might be a common attribute 
 of the more refined and cultivated class ; and it is 
 
1 6 E very-day Art. 
 
 so far true that a man of mere culture is far more 
 likely to 'err on the side of harmless commonplace 
 than to break out into outrageous extravagance. 
 But the fact remains that the mere looker-on does 
 not educate himself in anything like the degree that 
 the worker does. You may look at a thing fifty 
 times, and carefully too ; yet when you come to 
 copy it you find that you had not seen half that was 
 there. With rare exceptions, a man who has not 
 been himself a practical workman does not really 
 get to know much about workmanship ; he has 
 neither experience nor training ; his theories are at 
 second hand ; his judgment is no more than opinion. 
 Howastonishingly crude is the criticism of persons 
 who are, except in art, cultivated I They do not 
 even know what an artist means when he talks of 
 vulgarity in art. A loud manner or coarse expres- 
 sion will offend them, just as mincing affectation or 
 pretence may do ; but they would be startled to 
 be told that the brutal workmanship, the crude 
 colours, the m.echanical affectation of finish, and 
 the cheap pretentious ornament, which are to be 
 found broadcast in their drawing rooms, are simply 
 vulgar. They have perhaps a general idea that 
 anything rather strong in effect approaches vul- 
 garity, and scarcely dare to like it till it has 
 received' the stamp of general approval. Their 
 estimate is very much ' according to the cata- 
 logue : a picture is of more account than a 
 panel, and a panel of more account than a pattern 
 
Taste. 1 7 
 
 — much as the grammarian defines the masculine 
 to be more worthy than the feminine, and the 
 feminine more worthy than the neuter, apart alto- 
 gether from the merits of man, woman, or thing. 
 
 How many (or how few) can appreciate the self- 
 restraint a craftsman shows in his work ? It is just 
 this self-restraint, this holding always a strict balance 
 between facility and fitness, that constittrtes the 
 crowning difficulty of design. Power is proverbially 
 impatient of restraint, and taste, in its turn, is 
 always half afraid of force ; yet it is on the recon- 
 ciliation of this impatience with this fear that ad- 
 mirable decoration must depend. Some ornament 
 is too feeble to provoke hostility ; none is so 
 powerful as to be independent of taste, i 
 
 Nor can we confidently depend either on the 
 teaching of nature or of ancient ornament to direct 
 us, for it is taste that first enables us to turn their 
 teaching to account. What is admirable in nature 
 is not always equally to be admired in ait, and the 
 affectation of what was once in taste ceases to 
 be tasteful. The modern attempts to reproduce 
 what was beautiful in old work are for the most 
 part coarse or meaningless, or both at once. There 
 is feeling in the saints Filippo Lippi painted— the 
 saints of modern manufacture are merely insipid. 
 There is an invariable earnestness about old Gothic 
 carving — our modern parodies of it are quite heart- 
 less. No matter how grotesque the old gurgoyles 
 and stall-seats, we delight in the quaintness, though 
 
 C 
 
1 8 ' Every-day Art. 
 
 there be nothing else to admire in them ; we are not 
 easily shocked by the inconsistencies of the simple 
 mason, who believed in something very like the 
 hobgoblins he introduced into his work. We accept 
 even the angels of" the Gothic carver, because 
 we believe in his sincerity ; but it is his faith rather 
 than his art that is sacred to us. On the other 
 hand, the nineteenth century affectation of such 
 naiveti is doubly hateful to us, in that we look back 
 tenderly on the past, in that we look hopefully 
 forward to the future. Such archaism would not 
 be tolerated for a moment in literature. We are 
 content to enjoy the curiously homely and prosaic 
 imagery of the religious poetry of the seventeenth 
 century without travestying it. Fancy a modern 
 imitation of George Herbert ! 
 
 It is curious to observe how little correspondence 
 there is between the progress of civilisation and of 
 taste. Each appears to have gone its own way 
 quite independently of the other. 
 
 Much of the reticence of archaic ornament 
 is due to a kind of intuitive tact, which reveals, 
 however, rather the simplicity of the workman and 
 the rudimentary nature of his appliances, than any 
 self-restraint in him. His sense of fitness is undis- 
 turbed by any idea of even the possibility of imi- 
 tating natural effects. He is quite unconscious of 
 the excellence of his ornament. Aboriginal man 
 prefers when he once sees it, the most tawdry of 
 European importations to anything that is pro- 
 
Taste. 1 9 
 
 duced by his tribe. His sense of what is beautiful, 
 moreover, stops abruptly short at what is absolutely 
 subordinate to use. The battle-clubs and paddles 
 of savages, their basket-work and mats, are 
 admirable ; but their idols are, without exception, 
 monstrously ugly, and their ideal of personal 
 adornment culminates in the distortion and mutila- 
 tion of their natural bodies. 
 
 The more cultivated art of the Mohammedan 
 nations is proportionately more refined and beau- 
 tiful. Enforced obedience to the law of the Prophet 
 was in itself a restraining influence. Religion 
 served as a bridle to Asiatic extravagance, and 
 made Moresque art almost too evenly excellent. 
 
 In the art of the ancient Greeks, the most exqui- 
 site taste of all is shown ; and in their case it must 
 be ascribed mainly to the degree of culture to which 
 they had attained. 
 
 It would seem that the quality of taste, as revealed 
 in the art of the past, may be the outcome either 
 of simplicity, of submission, or of culture. Seeing 
 that the times on which we have fallen are out of 
 tune with simplicity, and since the sceptic spirit of 
 the age has determined that obedience in us shall 
 notbe blind, it would seem as if modern taste must 
 be rooted in culture. 
 
 C 2 
 
20 
 
 E very-day Art. 
 
 PAST AND PRESENT, 
 
 " New lamps for old ! 
 
 HE opinion a man 
 may hold concern- 
 ing old work is by 
 no means a fixed 
 quantity : it pro- 
 gresses, in a some- 
 what curious order. 
 We begin in our 
 ignorance by con- 
 demning it, very 
 likely, as barbarous 
 or old-fashioned ; on further acquaintance, we find 
 ourselves attracted to it ; then by degrees we are 
 taken captive by the charms of antiquity, and are 
 even liable to be smitten at last with a blind pedantry 
 that can see no beauty in anything that is new. To 
 recover from this stage of love-sickness argues a 
 degree of native energy and independence which 
 not all of us appear to possess. 
 
 There is no knowing how the art of the past may 
 affect a man, or what lesson he will draw from it. 
 Very often he is mastered by some phase of art 
 which most men thought was long since dead, but 
 
Past and Present. 2 1 
 
 with life enough in it, at all events, to allure and 
 fascinate him, and take, perhaps, entire possession 
 of him, until he is no more himself but the exponent 
 of a style gone by. One artist finds in the very 
 idea of style a hindrance ; it stands in his way, and 
 he cannot get over it. Another masters a style and 
 bends it to his own will, compelling it to conform 
 to his individuality and express his thought. Others 
 there are, again, who make use of it only as foothold 
 for some fresh venture in art. 
 
 Something is to be said for the devotee who 
 kneels before the past and worships. But retrospect 
 is not art ; and it is more in the spirit of the nine- 
 teenth century to take a given style as a starting- 
 point than to accept it as an end. Those who went 
 before have left tracks which will be helpful to us. 
 We should be wasting time, were we to insist on 
 finding out always a way for ourselves, where others 
 have trodden for us a sure path ; but there is no 
 occasion to follow them into regions which we don't 
 want to explore, or to confine ourselves entirely to 
 the beaten way. It is well to have always a pretty 
 clear idea as to the direction in which the high road 
 lies ; we can wander, then, widely from it without 
 losing our bearings ; but if we are in search of 
 something that is not quite commonplace, it will 
 serve us perhaps more often as a line to depart 
 from and to return to than strictly to follow. Old 
 work should be not much more than a starting- 
 point for the art of any but a student. In a certain 
 
2 2 Every-day Art. 
 
 sense we are all of us students, and always ; but 
 we need not, for all that, suppress what little of 
 originality there may be in us. There is great 
 danger lest the antiquarian interest in what is old 
 overgrow in our mind the appreciation of what is 
 beautiful. 
 
 One may know a good piece of smith's work 
 when it occurs, without having traced the progress 
 of the art from Tubal Cain downwards ; one may 
 appreciate the glory of colour in stained glass, with- 
 out being familiar with all that has been done from 
 the twelfth century to the present day ; and, in truth 
 ■ — we may whisper it lowly — the men who most 
 truly appreciate are not the antiquaries, pedants, 
 and compilers of catalogues, but the actual artists 
 whom art encourages and inspires, the possible 
 artists whom art delights and satisfies. Imagine the 
 dead looking down in spirit on their work — would 
 any one of them feel profoundly grateful to the 
 critic who had assigned to him, with whatever 
 accuracy, his precise position in the ranks of art ? 
 Yet, if that spirit had any of the artist left in 
 him, every thrill of genuine pleasure that his work 
 gave to an on-looker would vibrate in him again. 
 Still, it is always those who know best who best 
 appreciate ; and in proportion to their knowledge 
 would their appreciation be grateful to the artist's 
 ghost. 
 
 The historic " styles " of ornament might perhaps 
 be called only so many fashions of the past (5) ; but, 
 
Past and Present. 
 
 23, 
 
 at all events, they were not merely of a day or of 
 a "season." The fashion of a century ceases to be a 
 fashion — or, if a fashion, is no longer contemptible. 
 The ancient styles were not pushed and puffed into 
 ephemeral existence ; they had time to grow, 
 
 S- Style or Fashion of Francois iw. 
 
 develop, culminate, and die at last a natural death : 
 the birth of each new style was as natural as the 
 germination of a buried seed. 
 
 Each succeeding phase of ancient ornament em- 
 bodied in some degree the ideas of the people 
 among whom it arose, although the ideas, like the 
 forms of ornament, may have been by no means 
 original, and the people themselves may have had 
 
24 E very-day Art. 
 
 no consciousness of any particular idea at all in the 
 art about them. From the evidence of pots and 
 pans alone, it would be quite safe to declare a 
 remote people simple or sophisticated, unrefined or 
 cultivated, sensuous or ascetic. In every case their 
 ornament would betray them, and all the more 
 surely that they did not for a moment suspect that, 
 in the manufacture of ordinary objects of every-day 
 use, they were writing their own history for posterity. 
 The testimony of decorative art is, again, the more 
 valuable in that it represents, not a single class 
 of wealthy and perhaps cultivated purchasers of 
 pictures, sculpture, and objects of luxury, but the 
 whole people. Everybody had need of pots and 
 pans, and all the multitude of common things, the 
 decoration of which was so much a matter of course 
 that the artist was scarcely aware he had left his 
 mark upon them. 
 
 Whatever we may think of the styles of orna- 
 ment that have come down to us, it is impossible 
 for us to leave them altogether out of account. 
 They are the various languages in which the past 
 has expressed itself; and unless in our foolishness 
 we fancy we can evolve from inner consciousness 
 .something at once independent of and superior 
 to all that has been done before our time, we must 
 begin by some study of the ancient principles and 
 practice. It will save time in the end. You may 
 flatter yourself that you have only to take one 
 bound into originality ; but you are much more 
 
Past and Present. 
 
 25 
 
 likely to land safely there by stepping back a pace 
 or two, and gathering yourself together for the 
 spring, than by " toeing the line." 
 
 If there were no other reason why we should 
 know something of past styles, it would be sufficient 
 that, in the absence of any 
 marked national style among 
 us at present, we have taken 
 to "reviving" in succession 
 all manner of bygone styles. 
 The ornament of to-day is to 
 so great an extent a reflection, 
 in some instances a distor- 
 tion, of old work, that one 
 cannot well discuss it without 
 reference to its origin. These 
 " revivals," irrational as they 
 are in themselves, may not 
 be without good results. 
 There is such a wealth of old 
 work accessible to us nowa- 
 days ! What modern facilities 
 of travel do not enable us 
 actually to see, modern pro- 
 cesses of reproduction bring 
 home to us, and modern 
 
 methods of publication press upon our attention. 
 There is no possibility of escape from its influence. 
 We are compelled to such study of the various 
 styles that, when we shall have arrived at reason 
 
 6. Modern outcome of 
 Greek ornament. 
 
26 E very-day Art. 
 
 and begin to express ourselves naturally in the 
 language of our own day, it must tell to some 
 purpose in our work. 
 
 It IS only by the widest stretch of courtesy that 
 the greater part of modern ornament can be called 
 design at all. There is very little but what is 
 borrowed, Some few of the more prominent deco- 
 rative artists of our time have, indeed, established 
 what is to be recognised as a style of their 
 own ; but their respective manners are probably as 
 much the result of the study of Mediaeval, Japanese, 
 Moresque, or Renaissance art as of their own 
 personality. It seems as if our only opportunities 
 for the exercise of individuality were, first, in the 
 selection of a model, and, next, in the use we made 
 of it. The days are past in which men worked in the 
 manner traditional to their craft, knowing no other. 
 We have no traditions, excepting perhaps those of 
 the particular workshop in which our apprentice- 
 ship was served ; and we soon learn that these are 
 not as the laws of the Medes and Persians. 
 
 We are perplexed from the very beginning by 
 the thought of what style we shall adopt. One 
 authority decla-res with confidence that the true 
 and living style is the Gothic, another is equally 
 certain that the only worthy aim in art is Classic 
 perfection ; one suggests that we should put our 
 trust in Eastern art, another deifies the Cinque- 
 cento ; and there are equally fervent apostles of the 
 1 8th century and the later French schools. 
 
Past and Present. 
 
 27. 
 
 The very multitude of voices indicates that not 
 one of these ancient styles is quite suited to our 
 time. Some of them are worn threadbare, and of 
 those that are still serviceable, it is not possible 
 that any one will fit our every modern want and 
 fancy The assertion 
 of any universal fit- 
 ness reminds us rather 
 too forcibly of those 
 all-potent medicines 
 advertised to cure 
 anything, from an 
 ache to apoplexy. It 
 is strange that men 
 who would be the last 
 to put faith in any 
 patent pill and believe 
 in its efificacy against 
 all the ills that flesh 
 is heir to, should be 
 so eager to swallow 
 the nostrum that this 
 or that particular style 
 of bygone art is bound to suit their case whoever 
 they may be. 
 
 Nearly all old work has something to teach us 
 (6, 7, 8, 9, 10), but the more deeply we study it the 
 more thoroughly we realise that side by side with 
 the special merits of each style lie its inherent 
 defects. The grace we find wanting in one style is 
 
 Showing Gothic and Japanese 
 influence. 
 
28 
 
 Every -day Art. 
 
 atoned for by a strength and character absent from 
 the other. One excels in form, another in colour, a 
 third is symbolic, and a fouith sensuous; each is 
 best in some particular, even though its individual 
 excellence be of no very high order. 
 
 Modern Renaissance 
 
 It woiild be beyond the truth to say that the 
 principles which underlie all old work are the same. 
 Those principles are as diverse as the temperaments 
 and characters of the races among whom they were 
 developed. The Egyptians showed what could be 
 
Past and Present. 
 
 29 
 
 done within the bounds of severe convention ; the 
 Greeks carried refinement of form to perfection ; 
 the Romans revelled in richness; the Byzantines 
 indulged in a brilliance of colour that is yet always 
 barbaric ; the Arabs gave themselves up to the 
 
 based on Fran9ois ler- 
 
 subtle interweaving of intricate detail ; the artists of 
 the Gothic period wrought out their thought with 
 characteristic energy of expression ; and those of 
 the Renaissance returned to the worship Df beauty 
 for its own sake. We should seek in vain elsewhere 
 
30 
 
 E very-day Art. 
 
 for the all-pervading symbolism that runs through 
 Egyptian ornament, the purity of line that apper- 
 tains to Greek detail, or the sumptuousness that 
 belongs to Roman scrollery. Inasmuch as all 
 nations and all ages differ, their expression in orna- 
 ment differs ; and inas- 
 much as all nations and 
 all ages are alike, they ex- 
 press themselves alike in 
 their every-day art. 
 
 Though one race of men 
 may be naturally disposed 
 to remain, in the grooves 
 of tradition, and another 
 always eager to start off 
 on a new track, there is no 
 race' of men among whom 
 all/ are precisely alike ; 
 everywhere there have 
 been skilful and clumsy, 
 conscientious and dis- 
 honest workmen, and in 
 every period of art there 
 has been good work and 
 bad. 
 
 Fortunately for us, the latter has most of it 
 ^one the way of bad work and perished; so 
 that, although in ancient art collectively we have 
 not an unerring guide, it is mainly the good 
 tha,t- remains^ .to us. The winnowing of old 
 
 9. Modern KenaiSbance. 
 
Past and Present. 
 
 31 
 
 work has been done for us by the sure hand of 
 Time. 
 
 The art of design does not consist in the slavish 
 reproduction of classic, mediaeval, or other detail. 
 It is not enough that we are familiar with antique 
 
 forms, we must make our- 
 
 selves masters of the old 
 methods, that we too may 
 go and do, not likewise, 
 but as good or better, if 
 we can. Our success is 
 more than uncertain, and, 
 to speak frankly, we must 
 admit that few of us are 
 likely to approach the 
 perfection of the best old 
 work ; but if we rely 
 wholly upon our imitative 
 faculty, failure is a fore- 
 gone conclusion. Anyone 
 with a spark of invention 
 in him will prefer even a 
 chance of pre-eminence to 
 the certainty of a second 
 place. Slavish work is 
 always lifeless work, and a copy is after all only a 
 copy. " Not to Contradict and Confute ; Nor to Be- 
 ieeve and Take for granted ; Nor to Finde Talke and 
 Discourse ; but to weigh and Consider '' — that is the 
 spirit in which the artist should approach old work. 
 
 Modern Renaissance. 
 
32 E very-day Art.~ 
 
 By all means let us study it, and that earnestly ; 
 but do not let us be greedy over it : as Bacon said 
 again of books, it should "be Ghewed and Digested." 
 Many an archaeologically-minded designer (if re- 
 production may be called design) has before now 
 suffered from a surfeit of old instances which it was 
 hopelessly impossible for him to digest. What 
 wonder if the productions of such a one have all the 
 inconsistency of a nightmare ? 
 
 Archaeology is a study in itself, and one that is 
 of considerable assistance to the artist ; but it is not 
 art, nor will it serve as a substitute for it. Indi- 
 viduals may affect a particular period of ancient 
 art, but most men feel the absurdity of attempting 
 to resuscitate among us to-day the ornament of 
 any other time or people. What if it be the art 
 of Egypt, in its rigid stateliness ; of Greece, in its 
 monotonous perfection ; of Rome, with its danger- 
 ous richness ? What if it be Byzantine or Gothic 
 ornament, earnest but bigoted ; Mohammedan de- 
 sign, as exquisite as it is limited ? What if it be of 
 old Japan, with its facility not always restrained by 
 taste ; of the Renaissance, that is I'esponsible for the 
 most beautiful and the most degraded in decorative 
 art ? In no case is it possible that such art can be 
 sufficiently in sympathy with us to serve our needs 
 of every day. 
 
 Reaction against the pedantry of modern 
 Gothicism was but natural. Men were so sick 
 of trying to build nineteenth-century dwelling 
 
Past and Present. 33 
 
 houses according to the precedent of thirteenth' 
 century churches and abbeys, that even the affecta- 
 tion of what is called " Queen Anne " architecture 
 was welcotne, because, being really a sort of no- 
 style-in-particular, it allowed some freedom to the 
 artist. The promptitude with which that liberty has 1 
 been used is an indication, perhaps, of a temper to 
 which a fusion of past styles into something like 
 really characteristic modern work may not be 
 altogether impossible. 
 
 Each and every style of ancient art has its 
 intrinsic merit ; but the value of any particular ■ 
 style is relative, and depends upon our immediate 
 object in study. We should not expect to find in 
 an Egyptian mummy-case any very marvellous 
 degree of airy grace or elegance, nor look for 
 quaintness and piquancy in the sculptures of the 
 Parthenon; we should not go back to ancient Rome 
 for purity of style, nor to Byzantium for beauty of 
 figure-drawing ; we do not expect to find freedom 
 in Moorish art, or restraint in Japanese. If the 
 experience of time past is to serve our turn, accord- 
 ing to the nature of the work in hand we must refer 
 to the art of the particular period or people that 
 afforded the most perfect examples of that kind ; 
 according to our particular difficulty we should 
 refer to the particular style of art in which it had 
 been most satisfactorily solved (li). 
 
 Notwithstanding the beauty of a great deal of 
 old work (and some of it is so perfect that the 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 Every -day Art. 
 
 1 1 1 ' *'" 1 1 I' 
 
 I III. ' 'l< I „ III 1^1 
 I 1,1 ll 11 Jl 
 
 I nip ,1 .. k/ i 
 
 I < >' , I 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 I' 
 
 
 I ,"i" .ii'.ii',<ii'ii ,'..|i!i;{!5if^'i|! 
 ", ' 'I" ,1 JS^^i 
 
 I » - ' I b> ^ / N. 
 
 ii If' '--^^ . ; 
 
 mere study of its 
 details is a sort of 
 education in itself) 
 there is infinitely 
 more to be learnt 
 from the study of 
 ancient processes 
 than from the wor- 
 ship of antique 
 forms. Half the 
 charm of a design 
 vanishes at once 
 when we discover 
 that it is only a 
 reflection of some- 
 thing better that is 
 past and dead. We 
 grow tired of the 
 continual, repetition 
 of the same beau- 
 tiful but long-since 
 lifeless forms. On 
 the other hand, our 
 respect for the con- 
 summate art, the 
 admirable tact, the 
 masterly treatment 
 of material, that we 
 find in the best old 
 work, can but in- 
 
Past and Present. 3 5 
 
 crease with closer familiarity ; here indeed we have 
 something that is not only worthy of study, but 
 capable of impregnating our work with no little of 
 its own reality and manliness. 
 
 It must be confessed that we have made no very 
 wise use of the abundant wealth of old work now 
 so easily accessible to us all. For the most part we 
 have abused our opportunities of study : we have 
 been content to copy the handwriting of the past 
 without attempting to decipher the meaning of the 
 message conveyed in it. For all our boasted en- 
 lightenment, its real significance remains dark to 
 us. Not that we are so dull and stupid as would 
 seem, nor that we are simply lazy, but that we are 
 in such haste — haste to outstrip our fellows, haste 
 to reach notoriety, haste to make money, — that we 
 snatch at what is obvious, and have no time to seek 
 beneath the surface for what is best worth having. 
 
 The good that modern decoration has derived 
 from the accumulation of examples of ancient art 
 around us in this generation is relatively small ; it 
 is out of all proportion to what it should and would 
 have been, if we had made intelligent use of our 
 opportunities. Manufacturers reproduce, at pre- 
 posterous prices, laborious copies of inexpensive 
 oriental pottery which is chiefly admirable for the 
 ease and directness with which the artist potter 
 produced so satisfactory a result, whilst they 
 remain in contented ignorance of the secrets of the 
 superiority, so far as art is concerned, of Eastern 
 
 D 2 
 
36 Every -day Art. 
 
 ware to the products of Staffordshire. In spite of 
 old work, in spite of common-sense almost, they 
 still hold, in all the sincerity of ignorance, to the 
 faith of the amateur — that finish is only so much 
 smoothness, that the highest art consists in the most 
 minute elaboration. They think to imitate ancient 
 terra-cotta by copying antique vase shapes, and 
 printing upon them mechanical travesties of the bold 
 and beautiful forms which flowed from the brush of 
 the Greek so freely, that it is difficult to say exactly 
 how much of the credit is due to the artist and 
 how much to the brush. So again with our even- 
 tinted imitations of old Persian carpets, which miss 
 all the charm of the originals. And so in all our 
 manufactures. 
 
 There is perplexity in the wonderful variety of 
 the styles of art with which we are familiar, but 
 there is something more than perplexity: each 
 reflects some light upon the other. With all the 
 diff'erence between the various styles of ancient 
 ornament, there are certain characteristics common 
 to the best, of whatever race or period. A critical 
 examination of old work will go far to show that 
 the best in each style is akin to what is best in all 
 others ; even as its authors, though they differ in 
 type and feature as Chinaman differs from Greek, 
 are built, every man of them, upon the skeleton 
 common to humanity. And as all races go to make 
 mankind, all styles go to make ornament. The un- 
 written laws of decorative design embodied in such 
 
12. Modern traditional Ornament. 
 
38 Every -day Art. 
 
 ornament, were never, perhaps, consciously followed 
 The grammar is compiled from the language; the 
 language is not constructed on the lines of the gram- 
 mar. Nevertheless, what is to be gathered from the 
 practice of the masters of design may conveni- 
 ently be formulated for the guidance of beginners. 
 All arbitrary rules and dogmas are in the nature of 
 leading-strings, irritating to a degree when once we 
 can do without them ; but babies cannot run alone, 
 and every one is an infant in art to begin with. 
 
 Of modern ornament the most perfect is that which 
 is not modern, that is to say, such Indian, Persian, 
 Japanese or other Eastern art (12), as is traditional, 
 and has changed little or not at all for centuries. 
 
 All that we know about the ornament of the 
 future is that it must be the outgrowth of what has 
 gone before. The shape it may take is matter 
 for speculation. When we think of the diversity 
 between ancient and modern modes of life and 
 thought, we cannot but feel that the expression 
 of ancient and modern art must of necessity be 
 different. Yet, when we come to reflect how near we 
 are to the most remote of our race, and how little 
 of novelty there is in art, we are more disposed to 
 believe that the elements of all possible art lie 
 buried in the ruins of what has been. 
 
 The past is there to teach us, the present is here 
 to work in. What may be the due relation of 
 ancient precedent to modern practice is a question 
 not easily to be solved ; the designer in his work 
 solves it as best he may. 
 
39 
 
 THE NATURE OF ART. 
 
 " Art is man's nature.' 
 
 VERY day fresh 
 ink is shed in the 
 war perpetually- 
 waging between 
 the adherents of 
 Nature on the 
 one side and of 
 Art on the other. 
 May-be thewords 
 are only so much 
 waste of energy, 
 — there have been 
 graver battles to 
 as little purpose 
 since the world began — may-be the combatants, 
 like other and more deadly adversaries, are warring 
 under the universal banner of misapprehension, the 
 two factions fighting for much the same idea, only 
 under different names. 
 
 The real difference of opinion is as to the use or 
 abuse of nature, as to the lesson to be learnt 
 from her, the one school maintaining that the 
 whole secret of art lies in strict fidelity to fact, the 
 
40 
 
 E very-day Art. 
 
 13. Panel of an ebony cabinet. 
 
 other seeking to subject all art to the bondage of a 
 narrow conventionality. The obstinacy of each 
 party is encouraged by the adherence of the other 
 to its own dogma ; and both fallacies are the more 
 invincible through the alloy of truth that is in each. 
 
 The relation of art to nature depends very 
 materially upon the nature of the art in question, 
 fainter and decorator represent the two extremes 
 of art, and there is no more prolific source of 
 confusion than to identify one with the other. 
 
 The art of Michel-Angelo and his great prede- 
 cessors was all more or less decorative ; painter 
 and decorator may be said to meet in them ; but it 
 is only on the summit of art that the pictorial and 
 the decorative join hands. One may start with the 
 idea of painting a picture, and end by making it 
 conform to all that is necessary to decoration. Or 
 one may begin with a decorative scheme, and carry 
 
The Nature of Art, 
 
 41 
 
 
 f 
 
 ^2&.-_^ 
 
 Z^^^jk 
 
 
 ■'■ ■'[:2:<Z?B^Jii&^SiS^mi^... ' 
 
 L 1*1 
 
 ^f^iife^ 
 
 iP^^^^^^^^^Kp^ 
 
 sB^flHBdHiki 
 
 ^^^^^^K 
 
 ^^^mlll^^SiM^S^'^^ZT*9^,,„'S^S2^;T 
 
 14. Panel of an ebony cabinet. 
 
 it to the furthest point of pictorial perfection. 
 Parnassus, that is to say, may be climbed from two 
 opposite sides ; and a man is classed as painter or 
 decorator, not according to the height he may have 
 reached, but according to the side from which he 
 set out. Instances of the deliberate adaptation of 
 the human figure to some definitely decorative 
 purpose are given above and in illustrations 15, 
 16, 17, 19, 21, 22. The "poster" by Fred Walker 
 • shows how a painter of the right sort can on 
 occasion march to the tune of decoration. The 
 famous Colleoni statue (20) takes us back to the 
 period referred to, when sculpture no less than 
 painting owned allegiance to design. 
 
 In ornament the question is not whether it 
 should be natural or artificial, but : what is the 
 natura:l way of treating ornament ? what is the 
 artistic way of rendering nature ? It may be 
 
42 
 
 E very-day Art. 
 
 15. Part of a frieze. 
 
 assumed that no one seriously believes that art is 
 nature, and that nature is art. However dependent 
 the one may be upon the other, they are always 
 distinctly two. Nature is before all art, and above 
 it, and beyond. All that gives us satisfaction in 
 ornament existed first of all in nature, though not 
 of necessity in the animal or vegetable kingdom. 
 Human nature counts for something. But we have 
 long since ceased to be the unsophisticated chil- 
 dren of nature. Art, though it be only second 
 nature, is now at least quite natural to us; and 
 the discussion of human affairs from the point of 
 view of primeval simplicity, interesting though it 
 may be, does not go far towards the solution of any 
 real difficulty. 
 
 The world has determined that it cannot do 
 without ornament. If it be contrary to nature, and 
 nature to it, nature, in so far as she is refractory, 
 
The Nature of Art. 
 
 43 
 
 must be brought into subjec- 
 tion. Is not our whole life 
 artificial ? Whosoever takes 
 service under art must keep 
 in the ranks. To say that it 
 is art which should serve 
 under nature, is to say that 
 ornament has no business to 
 exist ; for ornament very 
 clearly insists upon the precedence of art. 
 
 It is not here a question of easel pictures. The 
 painter is restrained only within the limits of his 
 own ability and the four sides of his picture-frame. 
 The decorator has comparatively little liberty jof 
 invention, and yet no excuse for the lack of it. He 
 can put in no plea for unreasoning realism. His 
 business is to add the grace of ornament to sonje- 
 thing predetermined, if not already in existence ; 
 and the opportunity for naturalism is of tjie 
 rarest occurrence. He may not say all that he 
 could say. He has not even the privilege of 
 silence. His art is, .so to 
 speak, in submission to one 
 continual cross-examination. 
 Whatever he does is more 
 or less in answer to the 
 question ; how in this in- 
 stance can art and beauty 
 best be reconciled? Upon 
 17. TUe panel. his habitual success in the 
 
 jpf 
 
 ix^^^gAiiaji^iH 
 
 i 
 
 
 T 
 
 
 s 
 
 
 
 
 K^^ 
 
 s 
 
 =v 
 
 "^^SC-s'- HI 
 
 ? 
 
 m 
 
 S^i ;j;<^u^^:>7.^iMHB| 
 
 
 
 1^ 
 
 ^^^^•^J! 
 
44 
 
 Every -day Art. 
 
 i8. Poster, by Fred Walker. 
 
ig. Figure panel by E. F. Erewtnall. 
 
46 
 
 Every -day Art. 
 
 solution of that 
 problem will de- 
 pend his rank as 
 a decorator. 
 
 The copying 
 of natural forms 
 is no solution, 
 but an evasion, 
 of the difficulty. 
 If we really de- 
 sired to imitate 
 nature, surely 
 our only plan 
 would be to be- 
 gin by adapting 
 to our purpose 
 every form we 
 borrowed from 
 her just as she 
 adapts every- 
 thing to her 
 ends. That so- 
 called ornament 
 which is only a 
 
 r „ J. „ ao. Statue of Colleoni, by Veirocchio. 
 
 copy oi nature 
 
 is no more natural than it is workmanlike or intel- 
 ligent. Ornament is in its nature an accessory 
 art, and must, in common sense, be reduced to 
 harmony with the architecture, craft, or industry 
 with which it is associated. 
 
 ^ jii^ioi/^ 
 
The Nature of Art. 
 
 47 
 
 21. Tobacco jar, designed by Godfrey Sykes. 
 
 To compare a 
 picture with 
 nature, or de- 
 coration with a 
 picture, is in 
 either case, to 
 judge it by a 
 false, standard, 
 that is to say to 
 misjudge it. 
 
 Judge orna- 
 ment after its 
 kind, consider it 
 as ornament, and 
 you cannot fail 
 to see that its 
 most essential 
 characteristic is 
 fitness. 
 
 There are 
 some to whom 
 the necessary 
 adaptation of 
 natural forms to 
 ornamental con- 
 ditions (26) ap- 
 pears to be a 
 
 mere stopping short of nature. Tn a sense that may 
 be so. Painting is no doubt, a stopping short of 
 relief, sculpture a stopping short of colour, music a 
 
48' 
 
 Every -day Art. 
 
 ^Tjr- 
 
 22. Figure panel by Walter Crane. 
 
The Nature of Art. 49 
 
 stopping short of words ; and like them, decora- 
 tive art stops discreetly short. But this apparent 
 " stopping short " is really selection, a deliberate 
 and wise rejection of this or that for the moment 
 unimportant fact, in favour of the all-important 
 impression at which the artist is aiming. 
 
 23. Medlar tile— the characteristic sepals, &c., essentially ornamental. 
 
 Ornament may be called, if you will, a stopping 
 short of imitation, as breadth a stopping short of 
 detail. All art stops short of nature, and that inten- 
 tionally ; else we should have no drawings in black 
 
 E 
 
50 
 
 E very-day Art. 
 
 and white, no sculpture without colour, no painting 
 without actual modelling ; we might realise the 
 ideal of the bar- 
 ber's block and 
 the tailor's dum- 
 my — and, with 
 the aid of clock- 
 work, no need 
 even to stop short 
 of motion. The 
 coupling, in short, 
 of science and art 
 need be confined 
 no longer to the 
 newspaper head- 
 ing, but might be- 
 come at last an 
 accomplishedfact. 
 What a picture 
 rises before the 
 imagination — Art 
 yielding to the 
 fond embrace of 
 Mechanism ! 
 / Art is compro- 
 mise. The most 
 literal of painters 
 reject many truths for the sake of the one truth 
 they desire to enforce. Only children^ and amateurs 
 attempt to represent all that is before them. A 
 
 24. Characteristically ornamental growth 
 of strawberry. 
 
The Nature of Art. 
 
 51 
 
 .painter makes up his mind what effect it is that he 
 wishes to produce, and sacrifices all else to that. 
 So' does the decorator. But the sacrifices due from 
 him to purpose, place, material, and fitness are 
 greater. He has not merely to choose between 
 beauty and truth, or between one truth and another ; 
 but it is his bounden duty to suppress whatever 
 
 25. Part of painted frieze. 
 
 is in any way contrary to his decorative pur- 
 pose. Half the art of the decorator is in the 
 faculty of selection. It is not so easy to strike 
 a balance between beauty and use. Let any one 
 attempt, by the process of " stopping short," to 
 produce a decorative work ; and he will discover, 
 after inevitable failure, that to reach the success 
 which seemed so easy he must retrace his steps, and 
 
 E 2 
 
52 Every -day Art. 
 
 25. Oak adapted to form a border. 
 
 travel quite a different path — all the more difficult 
 to him, that he does not know his bearings. 
 
 Decorative treatment consists neither in the 
 violation nor in the disregard of natural forms, but 
 in their selection and adaptation ; not in ignorant 
 omission of anything, but in the deliberate rejec- 
 tion of all that is irrelevant. Neither does it 
 consist in the grouping of any number of copies 
 of the same prim sprig of foliage round a central 
 point, like so many spokes of a floral wheel. To 
 dissect a plant and arrange its members on a 
 geometric basis, is a quite childish idea of orna- 
 ment. Dissection is useful enough in its way, but 
 it is only a preparatory study. 
 
 In studying nature the ornamentist will naturally 
 be on the look out for forms which are in them- 
 selves suggestive of ornament. And there is in the 
 world such infinite variety, that he who needs must 
 cling always to nature has scarce occasion to let 
 go her skirts. 
 
 Not seldom it will be found that the characteristic 
 features of a plant, for example, are at the same 
 time the most ornamental ; so that, in adapting it 
 
The Nature of Art. 
 
 37. Katural form adapted beyond recognition. 
 
 to ornamental design, he may emphasise instead of 
 obliterating its individuality (23, 24). 
 
54 E very-day Art. 
 
 So essentially ornamental is the growth of some 
 plants, that a closer study of nature shows how many 
 a decorative detail which we have been in the habit 
 of looking upon as evidence of consummate skill 
 in design, is in reality borrowed from nature. 
 
 In the same way, when we -come to adapt a study 
 from nature to the purposes of design, we often 
 find that we have, all unconsciously, reproduced 
 some quite familiar form of ornament. Not only 
 is every particular part of plant-growth suggestive 
 of decoration, but each different plant reveals 
 fresh decorative possibilities. There is in certain 
 growths a crispness and vigour inviting the smith 
 to hammer his metal like that 1 Some leaves are 
 as broad and large in style as if they were already 
 carved in stone ; some grow in such symmetrical 
 and simple lines, that they all but say to the 
 decorator, in so many words, " Come, copy us ! " * 
 
 With regard to the question as to how far one 
 may go with .safety in the direction of imitative 
 ornament, the Japanese (28) if they have not 
 actually solved it, have shown us, at all events, the 
 futility of confining ourselves within the narrow 
 range of predetermined convention. The limit of 
 natural treatment in design is not marked by a 
 hard .line separating ornament from all that is 
 pictorial in art : there is no fixed boundary any- 
 where, only, as it were, a belt of shifting convention, 
 beyond which the tide of nature seldom dares to 
 rise. 
 
 * See " Nature in Ornament,'' chapter ii. 
 
The Nature of Art. 
 
 55 
 
 There are cases in which imitation may be carried 
 as far as you please, so long as it neither obtrude 
 itself nor bring into obtrusive prominence the 
 object ornamented (25). The thing to be decorated 
 
 
 *'^ -*;«' t^^ 4> ■ ^t-;--' 
 
 z8. Japanese rendering of almond blossom, &c. 
 
 must always be in the artist's thoughts. If for 
 a moment he be perverted from his decorative 
 purpose by delight in the power of copying 
 nature, the probability is that his work will dis- 
 
56 
 
 E very-day Art. 
 
 tract attention from the object it professes to orna- 
 ment to itself, or perhaps draw to it more notice 
 than is becoming. The nearer the approach to 
 naturalness in ornament, the greater the danger 
 of obtrusiveness. One must be sparing of imitative 
 ornament, and the closer the imitation comes to 
 nature the more sparing we must be of it. 
 
 Whenever a detail is ^^ 
 
 to be repeated, it is 
 essential the natural ele- 
 ment in it should be 
 toned down and made 
 subsidiary to ornament- 
 If this be a kind of 
 treason against nature, it 
 is a treason of which we 
 are all guilty when we 
 cook our food before "" 
 
 eating it. The degree of 
 
 cooking which may be desirable necessarily varies 
 with the circumstances ; but it may safely be said 
 that the more frequently a pattern is repeated, the 
 more important it is that it should be thoroughly 
 " well done." The best carpets, for instance, are 
 the Persian, Indian, and Turkey — and all the 
 nature has been pretty well cooked out of their 
 design. 
 
 Good ornament is modest. It is the kind of 
 design which most prides itself upon being natural, 
 which is most apt to " o'erstep the modesty of 
 
 2t5rrtMy*f p^^^i-fi o/^ p/A/vo fT^ONr 
 
The Nature of Art. 
 
 57 
 
 nature." One would have fancied that the neces- 
 sity for some adaptation of natural forms to 
 ornamental purposes needed no pointing out to the 
 average intelligence. But there seems something 
 almost like a wilful misunderstanding of the 
 question. Objection is continually made to this or 
 that in ornament (29) that it is not so in nature. 
 
 \VAy 
 
 29. Symbolic ornament. 
 
 Natural forms every one can understand ; but what- 
 ever is not recognisable as bird, beast, fish, or flower, 
 appears to some persons absurd. That you should 
 not care to see the lifelike representation of a tiger 
 on your hearthrug, they will admit, indeed, to be 
 reasonable ; but a lap dog ! what could be more 
 appropriate ? They will not understand that it is 
 not merely the representation of things which would 
 themselves be out of place that is objectionable ; 
 but that it is the imitation that is out of place, 
 no matter what it is that is imitated. 
 
Every -day Art. 
 
 -ADAPTED TO SURFA(2E"DEeORATIONl 
 
The Nature of Art. 
 
 59 
 
 Now, the objection to the flowers that oversprawl 
 the lodging-house carpet is, that they obtrude 
 themselves upon us, that they show so little purpose 
 or intelligence on the part of the designer, and 
 that they travesty coarsely and clumsily all the 
 subtleties of form and colour that are in nature. 
 
 31. Daisy diaper. 
 
 Even though they embodied the beauty of nature, 
 they would still suggest a surface by no means 
 pleasant to walk upon. They belie, in short, the 
 purpose to which they are put, deny the subordinate 
 position they occupy, and start, so to speak, right 
 out of the picture. 
 
 Again, the notion of a china flower-vase in imita- 
 tion of wicker-work is scarcely less trivial than that 
 of a dessert-dish representing vine-leaves modelled 
 
6o Every-day Art. 
 
 in majolica. The fact that the basket would not hold 
 water, and that the natural vine-leaves might serve 
 very well for an impromptu dish, does not alter the 
 case. It is necessary to distinguish clearly what is 
 amiss in these imitative tricks, and why it is amies. 
 The examples mentioned above are doubly in fault. 
 In the first place, it is but a poverty-stricken idea 
 to make a vase after the model of a basket, or to 
 fashion a dish in the likeness of a leaf In the 
 second, it is an unworkmanlike proceeding to mani- 
 pulate clay as if it were osiers, or to neglect the 
 beautiful and altogether appropriate forms natural 
 to the lathe and the potter's wheel, in favour of the 
 less convenient shape of any natural leaf. For it is 
 an inflexible law of design that in every work of 
 decorative art the artist should be influenced by 
 two primary considerations, namely, by the purpose 
 of the thing to be decorated, and by the charac- 
 teristic qualities of the material in which he is 
 working. To design, as in the two instances 
 supposed, without regard to either consideration, 
 is to confess one's incapacity, and to confess it 
 twice over. 
 
 The least reference to the laws of nature would 
 suggest a very different procedure. Every tree 
 that grows adapts itself to its place, or dies in the 
 attempt. When the circumstances of an individual 
 plant are changed, nature modifies that plant to 
 suit its altered state. If, for example, a flower 
 that is naturally short in the stalk, with its leaves 
 
The Nature of Art. 
 
 6i 
 
 clustered closely round it, chance to grow in a dry 
 ditch, it will shoot up so quickly, in haste to get 
 its share of the sunlight, that it will leave long 
 
 32. Daisy-like floral ornament. 
 
 lengths of stalk between the leaves, quite contrary 
 to its habitual growth. Ivy-leaves, again, grow in 
 spiral order round the stem, but against a wall 
 
62 Every -day Art. 
 
 they appear alternately on each side of the stalk ; 
 and the rooty fibres by which the ivy attaches itself, 
 do not occur on the loose, berry-bearing branches 
 which hold their own among the trees. 
 
 Nature brings forth herbs and flowers answering 
 to all manner of human needs ; but her scope 
 does not include the art of domestic decoration. 
 Had she produced a species of plants whose 
 province in the world was to serve as models for 
 painter, carver, or weaver, she would doubtless 
 have modified her accustomed forms and colours 
 to meet this novel purpose. Since she has 
 neglected to do this, it devolves, obviously, upon 
 us to adapt whatever we may take from nature 
 to the purpose of our art. 
 
 Not even the painter can afford to transcribe too 
 literally from nature. The grass in spring is never 
 too green for us ; soft cloud-shadows creep over 
 it continually, and its most vivid colour is only 
 revealed in momentary gleams of light too bright 
 to last. Yet there is always a danger that in the 
 transcript the colours of nature may be too start- 
 lingly bright, even though they be less intense 
 than in the reality. " Why is it that you have made 
 me so perishable ? " asked Beauty of Jupiter, and 
 the god answered : " Nay, but it is only the Perish- 
 able that I have endowed with beauty ! " Certainly 
 the most beautiful effects are those which are most 
 .fleeting. To fix them before us in naked isolation, 
 is to rob them of their loveliness. They decline to 
 
The Nature of Art. 
 
 63 
 
64 
 
 E very-day Art. 
 
 be transplanted bodily. It 
 takes a poet to translate 
 them. 
 
 " True to nature " is the 
 catch phrase of a party ; 
 the allegiance of the artist 
 is to art. In ornament we 
 have rather to consider the 
 nature of the work to be 
 done, than the nature of 
 any object from which we 
 may gather an idea. If 
 our intention be purely 
 decorative, the mere fact 
 that nature has suggested 
 a certain form, need not 
 trammel us in the use of it. 
 We are perfectly at liberty 
 to depart from the sug- 
 gestive type if we see fit, 
 or even to engraft upon 
 it a character derived from 
 quite another source, so 
 long as we can persuade 
 all into harmony, and pro- 
 duce consistent and satis- 
 factory ornament (27). 
 Where, however, some 
 natural type has been selected for the sake of 
 symbolism or suggestion, one is less at liberty to 
 
 34. Persian rendering of the rose. 
 
The Nature of Art. 
 
 E^^fflEF' 
 
 r&»,«^-^., 
 
 ^ 
 
 {(^L 
 
 CHICAGO 
 1)PCHII)IT10N. 
 
 orncciAVi 
 
 !3RITri5Hi|SECTION 
 
 
 W&^ ^FI^C£25 C£nT$, 
 
 «Jg^'^ 
 
 ^LJ^eS^£Q2^^ 
 
 35 . Modern rendering of Tudor roses. 
 
66 Every -day Art. 
 
 alter any of its characteristics. Certainly nothing 
 should be added arbitrarily to it. What is omitted 
 may be regarded as a sacrifice to the necessities of 
 material, position, or purpose. For example, if in a 
 decorative panel we wished to symbolise Morning, 
 we should not be justified in disregarding any of 
 the characteristics of the " Day's-eye," we might 
 choose for that purpose. It would be desirable to 
 consider the growth as well as the form of the 
 flower, and, indeed, due modification would consist 
 in little more than in fitting it to the space it 
 occupied, and in treating it according to the nature 
 of wood-carving, modelling, painting, or whatever 
 process we might adopt for its execution. In 
 adapting the same plant to surface decoration (30), 
 the necessity for repetition, and for a somewhat 
 uniform distribution of design, would necessitate 
 less strict adherence to natural growth ; and the 
 consideration of the secondarj' nature of all mere 
 surface decoration would suggest a flatter treat- 
 ment. One might content oneself with the flowers 
 alone (31) without any indication of growth. 
 
 If it were only the shape of the flower that led 
 to its use, and no value were attached to its mean- 
 ing, it might be modified out of all recognition ; 
 and every departure from nature would be justified 
 by the production of satisfactory ornament (32). 
 There is a wide difference between ornament 
 suggested by a natural type, and natural form 
 used for its own sake, but reduced to harmony 
 with some ornamental scheme or purpose. 
 
The Nature of Art. 
 
 67 
 
 36. Heraldic Dragon. 
 
 The fittest representation of any plant in orna- 
 ment will be attained by comparing the thing itself 
 in nature with its various representations in the 
 art of the past, having always special reference to 
 the immediate purpose in hand. Compare the 
 roiie in your garden with the Japanese and Persian 
 renderings of it (33, 34), and with the Tudor 
 version which I have paraphrased in my design 
 
 (35). 
 
 The keynote of a design may be struck by some- 
 thing in the flower itself, or by something in any 
 one of its past representations, or by the material 
 and tools in use : but the one thing of importance 
 is that all should be in tune.* 
 
 Nowhere is the discrepancy between idea and 
 execution more obvious than in the heraldry of the 
 nineteenth century. Heraldic art is apt to look 
 in these days rather puny. It is, to all intents and 
 purposes, more dead than alive. The " sign of the 
 
 * This point is discussed at length in " Nature in Ornament," 
 chapter vi. 
 
 F 2 
 
68 E very-day Art. 
 
 red lion" will not bear comparison with "a lion 
 gules " of four or five hundred years ago. No 
 mediaeval herald was ever guilty of the absurdity 
 of representing a zoological beast dyed red. He 
 concerned himself little about the anatomy of a 
 natural lion ; he just meant to symbolise the 
 bravery, the lion-like nature, as he conceived it, of 
 some fierce combatant ; and he managed to com- 
 bine symbolism with ornament. The forms he 
 drew were sufficiently intelligible for their pur- 
 pose — more so, perhaps, than if they had been more 
 literal : there would be no fear of mistaking his 
 device in the field. Such heraldry as this was 
 heraldic, thorough-bred. It remained for a more 
 cultivated age than his to generate a mongrel some- 
 thing between heraldry and the illustrations in a 
 natural history book — not, perhaps, altogether un- 
 worthy to figure on the coach panels of the family 
 whose pedigree dates from the Herald's Office. 
 " But,'' says the Philistine, " if you want a lion 
 paint a lion, and not a nondescript creature that 
 might with quite as much propriety be called a 
 leopard or a cat !" Yes, if that is what you want. 
 But heraldry has to do with symbols, not pictures. 
 Then paint the symbol (36, 37). A zoological lion 
 is as mucli out of place on a shield of arms as an 
 heraldic beast would be in the wilds of Africa. 
 
 It is in a little art like this of heraldry that the 
 reasonableness of apt expression is most obvious ; 
 but ill-adapted ornament is always unreasonable^ 
 
The Nature of Art. 
 
 69 
 
 In all art that has any claim to be decorative the 
 natural must needs be translated into the lan- 
 guage of that art. Decorative presentment is only 
 the vernacular. Though our art be but the ex- 
 pression of nature, it is " conscious utterance," 
 something more than a parrot cry. The artist's 
 whole strength is in his loyalty to nature ; not in 
 mere verbal fidelity, but in truth — truth to himself, 
 and to his own highest aims. To the expression of 
 this deeper truthfulness various names have been 
 given. The artist is content to call it art. 
 
 37. Heraldic lion. 
 
70 
 
 Every-day Art. 
 
 THE USE IN ORNAMENT. 
 
 " Surely use alone 
 Makes money not a contemptible stone." 
 
 HE arts may ber 
 likened to so 
 many languages, 
 more or less 
 akin but never 
 identical, and all 
 of them differing 
 from the utter- 
 ance of nature. 
 Each of these 
 languages may 
 be said to em- 
 brace a variety of dialects ; and each of the various 
 crafts which go to make decorative art, expresses 
 itself most readily in its own peculiar dialect. If 
 the same idea be expressed in several arts, in each 
 case the form of expression will be different ; and 
 if an artist borrow a notion from some neighbouring 
 craft, he will translate it (as he would if he had 
 borrowed it from nature) into his own tongue. Art, 
 inasmuch as it implies something more than literal 
 transcript, depends upon expression. All that is 
 
The Use in Ornament. 71 
 
 asked of the decorative artist is, that he shall 
 express himself idiomatically. 
 
 This idiomatic expression in ornament has been 
 called conventionality (38). But the term "conven- 
 tional " is not altogether a happy one. For one 
 thing- it is associated in our thoughts with what is 
 commonplace and insincere ; and it is not desirable 
 that the art of ornament should be bracketed in 
 men's minds with the pretence that keeps society 
 going. Then again, the word, even as applied to 
 ornament, serves to express that which is traditional ; 
 and, if we trace it back to its root, it does mean 
 literally that which has been agreed upon by mutual 
 consent. It happens that a large proportion of 
 ornament in any degree idiomatic is at the same 
 time traditional, and more or less stereotyped in 
 character ; and, as a consequence, the idea of fixed- 
 ness or familiarity has come to be popularly associ- 
 ated with the word conventional. Yet it is quite 
 possible to have apt expression in ornament not in 
 the least according to tradition. 
 
 In the very earliest instances of ornament, 
 obedience to the law of use was a matter of course. 
 If a savage carved the handle of his tomahawk, the 
 carving was just sufficient to give him a tighter 
 grip on the weapon ; he would take very good care 
 not to cut so deep as to weaken it. There was no 
 danger of his indulging in ornament which at a 
 critical moment might cost him his life. And to 
 this day we find that among ourselves the only 
 
72 Every -day Art. 
 
 objects never oveflaid with misplaced ornamentation 
 are weapons, tools, and things of actual use, in the 
 fashioning of which we cannot afford to play the 
 fool and sacrifice consistency to effect. 
 
 It is strange that the preference for fit ornament 
 which comes so naturally to savages, is among 
 Europeans of the present day a sure sign of culture 
 in art. 
 
 Between the simplicity of form suggested by 
 utility, and the degree of elaboration which begins 
 seriously to interfere with the first purpose of a 
 thing, there is a very wide range of ornament. 
 No one, it is to be presumed, will deny that all 
 ornament which does so interfere oversteps its 
 limit. It is in hitting the exact mean between bald 
 simplicity and undue enrichment that the difficulty 
 of decoration consists ; and there are obvious reasons 
 why the art of knowing where to stop is rarer among 
 us to-day than it was among the artists of Classic, 
 Mediaival, and Renaissance times, rarer than it is 
 even now among contemporary nations of the East. 
 We live in an ambitious, or rather a pretentious, 
 age. The accessory arts are all hot to start iu 
 business on their own account. What wonder that 
 they come to grief? 
 
 The consideration of use, wherever it occurs in 
 decoration, over-rules all. The tyranny of the main 
 purpose is absolute. There is no excuse for the 
 house that is picturesque at the expense of conve- 
 nience, or the room that is made beautiful at the 
 
The Use in Ornament. 
 
 11 
 
 cost of homeliness ; for the table that is unsteady, 
 for the chair that is uneasy, for the fender which 
 affords no footrest. Every breach of the simple 
 law of common sense condemns itself If the 
 
 38. Conventional oak bough. 
 
 quaint teapot dribble, if the slender-necked flower- 
 vase hold too few flowers, if the rich pillow be harsh 
 with embroidery, if the graceful handle hurt the 
 fingers, — the thing is a nuisance, and a joy never. 
 
74 Every-day Art. 
 
 Ornament can be convicted of no graver fault 
 than that of interfering with the use of the thing 
 ornamented ; that is an offence no merit of exe- 
 cution can condone. 
 
 The most successful enrichment is frequently- 
 suggested by some useful purpose, and so falls into 
 its place as a matter of course. Ornament has uses, 
 too, quite independent of art. It is not only that 
 plain surfaces are tiresomely monotonous ; they are 
 often very inconvenient as well. The slightest soil 
 or scratch, sooner or later inevitable, betrays itself at 
 once upon an even ground ; and to dapple such 
 spaces with a pattern, or to ^cratch them with orna- 
 ment, to figure the delicate silk, to carve the surface 
 of the wood, is only to take Time by his proverbial 
 forelock. 
 
 That ornament should be beautiful is under- 
 stood ; it is no less essential that it should be apt. 
 This is no fantastic theory or arbitrary dogma. 
 It is the plain teaching of nature, of old work, and 
 of common sense. Nature works in no simply utili- 
 tarian spirit. Most things natural are also beauti- 
 ful ; and the beauty is perhaps as much another 
 use as the usefulness is, in a sense, a fresh source of 
 beauty. The practical purpose of nature's orna- 
 ment may not always be apparent to us ; but we 
 never find in nature ornament that is contrary to 
 use. The harvest may not be in direct relation to 
 the golden glow of the cornfield, nor the vintage 
 quite according to the mottled crimson of the vine 
 
The Use in Ornament. 
 
 75 
 
 30. Oinament in cross bands. 
 
76 Every -day Art. 
 
 leaves ; but the bread is not the less sustaining nor 
 the wine the less refreshing, because of the beauty 
 of field or vineyard. In many instances we find 
 on investigation that beauty is subservient to some 
 useful purpose ; as in the case of flowers and berries 
 which by the brightness of their colour attract the 
 bees and birds. It is only " Nature's journeyman " 
 who is proud of a progeny of monstrous flowers 
 that bear no fruit, arid of which not one is to be 
 compared, for beauty, with the simple almond 
 blossom or the wild briar-rose. 
 
 One of the first functions of ornament is to com- 
 pensate, correct, or qualify the simplicity or ungain- 
 iine^s of form dictated by necessity. It is a common 
 mistkke to suppose that this is to be done by over- 
 laying it with enrichment, and hiding it under a 
 heap of ornament. The simplest and most obvious 
 lines on which to build a house, the inevitable con- 
 struction of a machine, the comfortable proportions 
 of a piece of furniture, the convenient forni of a 
 gas-pipe — each and all of these may be far from 
 beautiful ; but that is scarcely an argument why 
 they should be smothered with scrollery. If the fit 
 and proper form be indeed beyond redemption, 
 there are two courses open to us — either to do 
 without it, or to put up with it as it is. 
 
 Happily it is not often so hopeless as that. In 
 most cases a little consideration will show that 
 some of the objectionable features may be omitted 
 or supplanted by others more presentable,, and that 
 
The Use in Ornament. 
 
 n 
 
 if the actual lines of an object cannot be made in 
 themselves harmonious, their awkwardness may be 
 to some extent relieved by decorative features which 
 in no way interfere with its use or character. It is 
 
 40. Card-back design. 
 
 not quantity of ornament that tells, but ornament 
 in the right place ; a cross band here and there to 
 break any disproportionate length (39), a few parallel 
 stripes to counteract the appearance of thickness, 
 
7 8 E very-day Art. 
 
 an occasional rosette or flower to withdraw attention 
 from the less interesting parts of the construction — 
 simple devices like these are often quite enough to 
 redeem a thing from ugliness. 
 
 The defect of the thing to be ornamented is the 
 starting point of the decorator. If it be already 
 perfect, why, that is enough. It is because the 
 proportion of a room is defective that we desire to 
 give the appearance of greater height or length to 
 it ; because it is bare that we seek to enrich it ; 
 because it is dull that we wish to enliven it ; because 
 it is glaring that we do our best to subdue it ; 
 because it is cold that we want to give it warmth ; 
 because in short it is unsatisfactory that we propose 
 to do anything at all to the room. 
 
 The motives which prompt the undertaking of 
 decoration should also by rights suggest the nature 
 and extent of the ornament. We could do very 
 well, for example, with perfectly plain playing cards 
 but for the fact that every speck on the enamel 
 would tell tales. It is convenient, therefore, to 
 cover the back of a card pretty evenly with orna- 
 ment (40) ; and a design which left bare spaces of 
 ground would fail of its purpose. 
 
 Ornament may be in itself perfectly satisfactory 
 and even charming, and yet so inadequate to the 
 purpose to which it is put that it is obviously out of 
 place. It is scarcely necessary to say that how- 
 ever beautiful such work may be, it is bad decora- 
 tion. Whenever the conditions of ornament are 
 
The Use in Ornament. 79 
 
 impossible of fulfilment, ornament is better left 
 alone ; and the conditions proper to design are, 
 that it should be fit — for its purpose, for its place, 
 and for the material in which, and the process by 
 which, it is executed. 
 
 Intelligent decoration has always some definite 
 intention in it ; and that intention or idea rules 
 everything absolutely, even to the least significaht 
 detail. Whether the motive be unpretending 
 or ambitious, every stroke of work properly 
 leads up to it. Every stroke that does not do 
 so is ill done. The first step in design is to 
 determine which shall be the culminating point 
 of the decoration ; and however lavishly the artist 
 may distribute enrichment, he I'eserves for that his 
 crowning effort, making all else converge towards 
 it. Without such emphasis of treatment ornament 
 sinks into monotony. The point or points of em- 
 phasis being determined, all else is subordinate : 
 it is background, to be decorated, if at all, with 
 ornament apt to a position comparatively unpre- 
 tending and subdued. 
 
 But there are backgrounds and backgrounds. A 
 wall surface, for example, is a background (41); so is 
 a floor ; yet the enrichment befitting the one would 
 be offensive in the other. 
 
 If you are content with simple monochrome, or 
 with minute pattern-work in tints which, however 
 bright, lose themselves at some little distance in a 
 haze of soft colour, only revealing the design that 
 
8o 
 
 E very-day Art. 
 
 may be there when you come closer and look for it, 
 it is not difficult to keep a background in its place. 
 The difficulty is in inventing a pattern that shall not 
 be insignificant, nor yet beckon your attention. The 
 
 4z. Background pattern. 
 
 unpardonable sin in ornament is the attempt to 
 usurp the first place. It should simply fit its pur- 
 
The Use in Ornament. 8 r 
 
 pose, neither more nor less. It is equally at fault 
 when it is too rich or too poor for its place. 
 
 We see frequently, set in fairly good cabinet work, 
 panels of so trivial a character as to cast suspicion 
 over the whole work, and make it hard to believe 
 that the workmanship has been conscientious and 
 careful up to that point, and has failed only just 
 where it should have culminated. Economy is 
 pleaded in excuse for this paltriness. True eco- 
 nomy would suggest rather that trumpery ornament 
 should be left out. 
 
 The opposite fault of degrading good work to a 
 position unworthy of it is less common. Yet it is 
 committed whenever anything in the nature of a 
 picture is used by way of background. This is no 
 more to be condoned than uninteresting diaper or 
 coarse ornament usurping a place of honour, say 
 in a framework of delicate mouldings. 
 
 Certain objects, such as things purely ornamental, 
 and certain portions of objects, such as the doors 
 and panels of furniture and the like, deserve pro- 
 minence ; and in these posts of distinction the artist 
 is justified in adopting a freedom of treatment not 
 warranted elsewhere. 
 
 The panel occupies a position that may be either 
 insignificant, or of the very highest importance. 
 In the latter case there is little restraint as to the 
 extent to which elaboration and realisation may be 
 carried. The law of fitness decrees that it shall 
 always remain a panel — however admirable in itself, 
 
 G 
 
82 
 
 Every -day Art. 
 
 still more admirable as 
 part of the whole. The 
 danger with pictorial 
 work is that it may 
 forget its dependent 
 position, and attract too 
 much attention, either 
 to itself, or to the 
 object which it pretends 
 to honour. But if only 
 the artist bear in mind 
 the condition of fitness 
 or decorative unity, for 
 the rest he is free to per- 
 fect his work to his 
 heart's content; and it 
 is neither more nor less 
 than pedantry thatwould 
 hinder the competent 
 man from doing his 
 utmost. 
 
 There are many ways 
 in which a decorative 
 painting, artistically on 
 a level with pictures on 
 the walls, may acknow- 
 ledge that it is part of 
 the wall or cabinet in 
 
 4.. Clematis designed to fit a space. ^j^j^j^ j^ j^ framed. The 
 
 evidence that it was designed to occupy the space 
 
The Use in Ornament. 83 
 
 it fills (42), its unobtrusive neutrality, or the fact 
 that it forms as it were a high note of the prevailing 
 colour scheme, may suffice to show that it has no 
 desire whatever to step forward and assert itself 
 at the expense of oneness. 
 
 Another question of fitness arises in reference to 
 the position in which a design will be presented to 
 view. It is generally recognised that the pattern 
 of a carpet or any other floor covering should be 
 designed with a view to its effect from all sides — 
 that it should be what is called " all round " ; but 
 the Moslem, whose prayer-mat was always placed 
 facing the east, was quite justified in designing 
 it for that one position in which only it was likely 
 to be seen ; and we might with equal consistency 
 design a stair-carpet (which is noticed chiefly as we 
 ascend) on the principle of an upward-growing 
 pattern. 
 
 With regard to the actual shapes of things there 
 is not often much room for question as to their 
 appropriateness. If the consideration of use has 
 been overlooked in their design, we very soon find 
 out their inconvenience. 
 
 However calmly we may tolerate existing incon- 
 sistencies, there is in most of us a native prefer- 
 ence for what is practical ; and the suitability or 
 unsuitability of a form to its purpose is a thing 
 that can be proved. 
 
 The fitness of applied ornament is not easily to 
 be defined. Its appreciation depends to some 
 
 G 2 
 
84 Every-day Art. 
 
 extent upon that very intangible quality called 
 feeling, and to some extent upon knowledge. If a 
 man cannot see the incongruity of incongruous 
 ornament, it is difficult to explain it to him. He 
 lacks perhaps the sense of what is becoming, or the 
 necessary knowledge of the subject : one might have 
 to begin by educating him. 
 
 There are many to whom the most elaborate and 
 most ambitious work will always seem to be the 
 best. Such men will sum up your objection to 
 • work that is finished too minutely for its position, 
 or too delicately for its purpose, by asserting that 
 what you find fault with is that it is "too well 
 done." On the contrary, the contention is that the 
 expenditure of labour not justified by the result 
 is ill spent. That which is misplaced or ill-timed 
 is done amiss, however thoroughly done. Fitness is 
 essential to well-doing ; and what is unfit falls far 
 short of the height at which there would be any 
 danger of overstepping the boundary of well-doing 
 and doing too well. Any discrepancy of work- 
 manship takes away from our enjoyment of it, even 
 where the discrepancy consists in a part of the work 
 being carried to a point of finish inconsistent with 
 its surroundings. In admiration of the absolute 
 excellence of the work itself, we may occasionally 
 be inclined to condone this offence against taste ; 
 but, all the same, it is an offence. 
 
 Many a time, too, there is a temptation to shrink 
 from the invidious task of fault-finding ; and, rather 
 
The. Use in Ornament. 85 
 
 than say outright that ornament is discordant and 
 tasteless, one is inclined to wrap up the truth in soft 
 words, and say that it is " too well done.'' 
 
 In one sense only can any part of a work be done 
 too well, namely, as implying that all else is not 
 done well enough — the fault of discrepancy, that is 
 to say, may lie in the surrounding work. 
 
 Art can in truth no more be too well done than it 
 can be too beautiful. To do unwisely is not to do 
 too well — Shakespeare notwithstanding. Othello 
 did not love too well, but too blindly, too blunder- 
 ingly, and altogether too stupidly, after the manner 
 of his brutal kind. Much good work is suffocated 
 with false finish, the perpetrator possibly justifying 
 the deed to his conscience by the thought that he 
 loves his art too uell to exercise restraint upon 
 himself A far more certain sign of devotion to his 
 craft would be in the readiness to sacrifice to it 
 something of his not unpardonable pride of 
 execution. 
 
86 
 
 E very-day Art. 
 
 THE WORKMAN AND HIS TOOLS. 
 
 "If you do not use the tools they use you." 
 
 OTHING is more 
 striking to a stu- 
 dent of old work 
 than the tradi- 
 tional character 
 of the best orna- 
 ment. So much 
 is this so that 
 there is more than 
 a possibility of 
 forms intrinsically beautiful becoming at last weari- 
 some to us from perpetual repetition. We have 
 even to remind ourselves that, however appropriate 
 certain traditional forms may be to the purpose to 
 which they were put, their appropriateness has 
 only this much to do with tradition, that it was 
 owing to their fitness they were preserved ; and that 
 in passing down from hand to hand, whatever of in- 
 appropriateness there may once have been in them 
 has been worn away. They are often, in effect, 
 perfect, so perfect sometimes as to have lost some- 
 thing of their interest. Traditional forms and even 
 
The Workman and his Tools. 87 
 
 traditional methods, however, do not exhaust the 
 possible in ornament ; they are only the prelude to 
 what may yet be done in the way of decorative 
 treatment. 
 
 The gulf which commercial economy has found 
 it convenient to dig between the arts and crafts has 
 to be bridged by the ornamentist, though he pretend 
 to be no Colossus. The prospects of art are brightest 
 when the artificer is himself the designer and the 
 vendor of his wares ; for he cannot fail to have some 
 respect for the traditions which exist in all trades, 
 embodying as they do the accumulated knowledge 
 of all time. The best tools and the best ways of 
 using them may not yet all have been discovered ; 
 but we may be pretty sure that in current modes of 
 workmanship will be found the key to simpler and 
 more perfect processes. A good workman hits 
 upon a new manner, and good workmen following 
 him improve upon his discovery ; and so the tradi- 
 tional ways of working represent the sum of 
 technical experience. 
 
 Unhappily, intelligent and earnest workmen do 
 not largely preponderate in any art or trade. 
 Adam Bedes are as exceptional as they are worthy. 
 The lazy find out cheap and easy ways of shirking 
 honest work, and succeeding lazy ones carry these 
 tricks to the furthest possible point. One favourite 
 expedient of laziness i.s never to go out of the 
 beaten track, never to do anything new, which 
 exacts thought, but to reproduce the same old 
 
88 
 
 Every -day Art. 
 
 well-worn pattern, till a man can do it almost with 
 his eyes shut, certainly without consciously bringing 
 his brains into play. His handiwork has conse- 
 quently about as much feeling in it as if it had 
 
 43. Treatment adapted to simple inlay. 
 
 been cast in a machine. It has been cast in a 
 machine. And this stereotyped and lifeless detail 
 has come to be called " conventional ! " 
 
 The vice of laziness, however, is only incidental 
 
The Workman and his Tools. 89 
 
 and not peculiar to craftsmanship. " Scamping " 
 cannot fairly be identified with "that which has 
 bqen agreed upon by mutual consent." It woujd 
 be nearer the truth to say, that an art does not 
 crystallise into forms entirely conventional until 
 it has ceased altogether to grow. 
 
 That kind of conventionality which comes of 
 knowing how to use one's tools with effect, controls 
 to some extent the character of all good ornament, 
 but it does not impose the slightest restraint upon 
 variety, invention, or individuality. It will save 
 confusion, however, to describe such treatment by 
 a name which does not suggest any other mean- 
 ing and simply call it "apt." Clearly, art is 
 apt inasmuch as it is distinctly after its kind, 
 painting, carving, hammering, stitching, or whatever 
 that kind may be. 
 
 A workman fairly proficient in any of the 
 applied arts, and in the habit of thinking over 
 what he is about, imist produce work that is apt. 
 If he be a man of any individuality his work will be 
 characteristic of him also, but it will be none the 
 less apt because he has put himself into his work. 
 The least consideration will convince him that, 
 having undertaken to ornament a thing, whatever 
 else he may do, he is bound to make it ornamental. 
 
 One cannot properly begin to design ornament 
 until one has some knowledge of what it is to be 
 applied to ; and it is the test of all good ornament 
 that is applied judiciously, that it does not in the 
 
90 Every-day Art. 
 
 slightest degree interfere with the use of the object 
 decorated, and that it is strictly adapted to the 
 nature of the material in which it is carried out. 
 Misapply the most exquisite workmanship, and it 
 is worse than wasted ; add enrichment that unfits 
 an object for its prime purpose, and it becomes . 
 offensive ; work in antagonism to the material em- 
 ployed, and you produce, perhaps, at great pains, an 
 effect far inferior to what you might have gained 
 with ease by an intelligent use of the means at 
 hand. 
 
 The considerations of material, process of manu- 
 facture, and method of working, are of too tech- 
 nical a nature to be discussed here at any great 
 length. But it is necessary that even the amateur 
 should know something of the value of workman- 
 likeness in ornament ; and he has only to know 
 it in order to appreciate the unreasonableness of 
 neglecting it. Without some little training and 
 study, without some degree of familiarity with 
 the various crafts, it will be impossible to detect at 
 once whether a design is adapted to be wrought or 
 cast, printed or woven, carved or modelled, whether 
 it is fit to be executed in stone or plaster, silk 
 or paper, wood or metal. But it will take only a 
 moment's thought to convince even the least artistic, 
 that the processes of hammering and casting, 
 weaving and printing, modelling and carving, are 
 so different, and the nature of hard stone and soft 
 plaster, cross-grained wood and malleable iron, the 
 
The Workman and his Tools. 
 
 91 
 
 printer's block and the weaver's cards, are so 
 different, that they call each for different treatment 
 And more than 
 this, whoever in- 
 quires a little 
 more closely into 
 the matter will 
 see that each par- 
 ticular material, 
 and each particu- 
 lar process by 
 which it is mani- 
 pulated (43, 44, 
 45, 46), even each 
 particular tool 
 employed in its 
 manipulation (49), 
 has its own par- 
 ticular limitations 
 as well as its faci- 
 lities. The surest 
 way to success is 
 to bear these in 
 mind, to keep 
 well within the 
 limits prescribed 
 
 44. Treatment adapted to painting. 
 
 by the circum- 
 stances, and to 
 make the most of the advantages peculiar to them. 
 It is only too possible to work in opposition to 
 
92 E very-day Art. 
 
 natural conditions. But this is at best boasting. 
 Exhibition work is, for example, most of it brag, 
 the exhibitor being aware that delicate and reticent 
 art would stand no chance of recognition in the 
 bustle of an international bazaar. In every-day 
 design such boasting is fatal ; it leads straight away 
 from that modest workmanship which is the ideal 
 of craftsmanship. In the first place it is very 
 doubtful whether the conditions will be overcome 
 by the ambitious craftsman — his , presumption is 
 very likely to be in excess of his power — and in the 
 second, supposing the result to be satisfactory, it 
 will have been reached by an expenditure of time, 
 energy, and material, which, wisely directed, would 
 have gone very much further. It is difficult to 
 speak in moderate terms of such blundering wrong- 
 headedness. 
 
 Just as the general character of ornament is 
 properly suggested by its position and purpose, so 
 also must material and method of production deter- 
 mine to some extent its detail. There is no reason 
 why wood-work should protest that it is joinery, 
 why stained glass (46, 47) should proclaim that it 
 is glazing, or a wall paper shout at you that it is 
 printed. The simple reasonableness of the matter 
 is that each should be, and be content with 
 being, what it naturally is ; and for the plain 
 reason that disobedience to inevitable conditions is, 
 so to speak, resented by them, and leads to labour 
 lost ; while to those who work in sympathy with 
 
The Workman and his Tools. 93 
 
 them they unfold resources the artist had not 
 dreamt of, yielding to gentle persuasion what was 
 not by any means to be forced from them. 
 
 When workmanlike treatment leads to such 
 direct results, the wastefulness of ignoring it is, 
 artistically speaking, criminal. It may not appear 
 to others than artists a matter of much moment 
 
 45. Treatment adapted to appliqu^ embroidery. 
 
 whether a material be treated after its kind or con- 
 trary to it, but all will admit that it is worth 
 considering whether the cost of decoration be 
 increased or diminished; and it may be worth 
 while to remind them that nothing is more costly 
 than unpractical work, whereas apt treatment mini- 
 mises expense. Those who begin by encouraging 
 
94 
 
 E very-day Art. 
 
 judicious workmanship for merely practical reasons' 
 will soon learn to appreciate it for its individuality. 
 It was not until all character had been smoothed 
 out of things by unthinking mechanism, that folk 
 became apathetic about every-day art. No wonder 
 that such lifeless stuff ceased to interest any one. 
 
 — Ft^^~~ 
 
 ■ 
 
 M WJ \ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 "^~ 
 
 ■*~[ 
 
 
 
 
 Pv ■ 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 -^^^ 
 
 L' 
 
 -J 
 
 
 ¥-. 
 
 
 ^^^M 
 
 i 
 
 'tP^^- 
 
 — 
 
 |V |L WfY^ 
 
 1 
 
 Tru^ 
 
 
 46. Stained glass for a music room. 
 
 The aptness of ornament to material, tools, and 
 mode of workmanship, is a virtue best appreciated 
 by the workman. Yet, in the eagerness to show 
 his skill, he is too much inclined to do just the kind 
 of thing he should not do, if only to show that he 
 can do it. In this he is encouraged by the public, 
 
The Workman and His Tools. 
 
 95 
 
 who, so far from appreciating the quality of 
 workmanlikeness, find more to admire in some 
 illogical tour de force than in any, even the most 
 masterly, grasp of technical resource You have 
 only to put into marble a subject that is worthy 
 of nothing mare enduring than a page in Punch, 
 
 
 
 A 
 
 
 ^^^'" 
 
 
 
 j^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 V 
 
 
 y 
 
 i Twck^k'^'si^ 
 
 
 \-m 
 
 mj 
 
 k 
 
 
 -p^^vf 
 
 iis^ll 
 
 ■ 
 
 m 
 
 W^^^^'^Al^^ Ml 11 
 
 . 
 
 n 
 
 ^5v / // / ItQ/JI 
 
 
 /Lilif\iu^'^ L 
 
 
 mj^ 
 
 
 '^c 
 
 ■" — 
 
 
 m 
 
 T 
 
 Aw '' 
 
 
 — ^ 
 
 f 
 
 J 
 
 k 
 
 w 
 
 u 
 
 \^ 
 
 47. Design adapted to simple glazing. 
 
 and it will attract greater attention than a master- 
 piece of Greek art. Possibly some enterprising 
 manufacturer will purchase it — for a trade-mark ! 
 
 It is hardly necessary to discriminate particularly 
 between the special aptitude of design to material, 
 to tools, and to the way of working ; the three are so 
 
g6 Every -day Art. 
 
 closely connected that the one implies the others. 
 They are all inter-dependent one upon the other ; 
 and the three together determine, or should deter- 
 mine, the character of ornamental detail. 
 
 In the most successful examples of ancieat orna- 
 ment, of whatever time or country, we find this 
 same aptness to be characteristic ; and the main 
 use of studying old work is, that we thereby learn 
 how others before us adapted design to its con- 
 ditions and purpose. 
 
 When we come to look at the way in which the 
 craftsmen of past times worked in sympathy with 
 their materials and means, we become aware that 
 the limits imposed by decorative necessity are not 
 mere hindrances : they act as safeguards too, com- 
 pelling us, almost whether we will or no, to refine-, 
 ment, breadth, repose. Who can say how much 
 of the superiority of old stained glass to Limoges 
 enamel is due to the absolute necessity of glazing 
 and the consequent breadth of style ? If the Greeks 
 had been familiar with all the secrets of ceramic 
 glazes, we might have had Greek vases as unsatis- 
 factory in colour as the ware of Delia Robbia or 
 Palissy ! Even the unwelcome restrictions of 
 economy and commerce have their value. The 
 necessary repeat of one unit in a design, as in sten- 
 cilling, block-printing, stamping, weaving, and the 
 like, tends towards simplicity ; and the value of 
 such repetition is attested- by the fact that it has 
 come to be commonly adopted (48) for the sake of 
 
The Workman and his Tools. 
 
 97 
 
 48, Pattern repeated on formal lines. 
 
 II 
 
;,98 Every -day Art. 
 
 its effect, where there is no strict use in it : it is 
 enough that it gives scale to the design. 
 
 From the beginning the apt use of a particular 
 material has continually served, not only as a 
 wholesome restraining influence, but actually as 
 suggestion of most beautiful ornament. Something 
 at least of Egj'ptian dignity is due to the employ- 
 ment of granite ; something of Greek refinement to 
 the use of marbile ; while the peculiar character of 
 Swiss or Scandinavian wood-work comes more from 
 the fact that it is carpentry than that it is Scan- 
 dinavian or Swiss. In the more strictly decorative 
 arts, how much of the beauty oidoisoruie or champleve 
 enaiTiel depends upon the network of gold lines 
 that frames-in each separate colour ! yet the gold 
 outline is there as much a condition of manufac-. 
 ture as are the leads in stained glass. Think of the 
 infinite variety of beautiful geometric pattern- work 
 that has resulted from the need of simple forms 
 in mosaic-work and inlay ; and the graceful and 
 vigorous metal-work that has grown out of the 
 readiness with which a bar of iron can be hammered 
 ihto^shape. 
 
 It would seem almost as if every success in 
 decorative art depended to some extent upon 
 restricting circumstances, and every process of 
 manufacture were suggestive of some specific beauty 
 in design. The process of incising suggests its 
 own simplicity ; niello or damascening invites the 
 delicate intricacy of detail that we find in Persian 
 
The Workman and his Tools. 
 
 99 
 
 and Indian work ; the style of the beautiful book- 
 bindings of the sixteenth century results almost 
 entirely from the method of " tooling " ; the best 
 forms of early pottery were plainly due to the pro- 
 cess of "throwing," and the shape of the potter's 
 hand had more to do with fashioning them than his 
 brains ; much of what we most value in Venetian 
 glass is inseparable from the use of the blow-pipe. 
 
 The characteristic of nearly all early ornament is 
 its directness. The obvious ease with which the 
 
 work was done 
 gives it no little of 
 its charm (49, 50). 
 We take delight in 
 what was so evi- 
 dently a delight 
 to the workman, 
 and enjoy his 
 " happy thought " 
 almost as if it had 
 been our own. 
 Apt treatment of 
 ornament is only 
 another name for 
 He who runs his head 
 against a difficulty is not the man most likely 
 to master it, even though his skull be thick enough 
 to force its way through. Decorative exigencies 
 are not to be ignored, nor yet to be bullied. The 
 wisest plan is frankly to accept the conditions, 
 
 H 2 
 
 49. Example of (/iV^t/ brush-work. 
 
 intelligent treatment. 
 
loo Every -day Art. 
 
 pay toll to consistency, and so, instead of making 
 enemies of the means at hand, win them to our 
 side. It is they which will help us eventually to 
 the most sure success. And though sheer force 
 may sometimes prevail over everything, it is safer 
 by far to depend upon one's brains. A clear- 
 sighted craftsman takes in the situation at once, 
 and resolves what is best to be done. The 
 decorator is not yet master of the situation 
 when he is acquainted with the use of the thing to 
 be decorated, its position and purpose : he must 
 appreciate the nature of his material, in all its 
 strength and all its weakness ; he must be master 
 of his tools, knowing well what they can do, what 
 they can best do, and what they cannot hope to do 
 at all ; he must be at home in every process to 
 be employed. 
 
 What a catalogue the common sins against con- 
 sistency in ornariient would make ! China is 
 painted with realistic pictures that have not, and in 
 the nature of things cannot have, the colours true 
 to nature, whilst all the beautiful effects proper to 
 ceramic painting (semi-accidental but wholly deco- 
 rative) remain unsought. We see stucco bursting 
 in the attempt to look like stone, when it might 
 have been so easily enriched by scratching or 
 incising. Marble is worried out of all the dignity 
 of sculpture. Painting rivals the mechanical exact- 
 ness of manufacture, lacking all the charm of hand- 
 work. This chapter would not hold the illustra- 
 
The Workman, and his Tools. loi 
 
 tions that occur every day of the way in which we 
 ignorantly or rashly, in any case stupidly, neglect 
 the conspicuous aptitude of a material for character- 
 istically beautiful effects, and stultify ourselves in 
 the attempt to make it do, what in other materials 
 would be easy enough, but what it cannot do. 
 
 Architecture is to be considered not only as 
 architecture but as stone, brick, timber, iron, 
 concrete, or whatever its construction may be. 
 Lace should not only be lace-like in design, but 
 should leave no doubt as to whether it is " point," 
 "pillow," or "guipure." Joinery and cabinet-work 
 should not only be treated as wood, but as hard or 
 soft wood ; and if the design show that it was 
 either suggested by, or modified according to, the 
 character of the particular wood employed, so much 
 the better. 
 
 It stands to reason that the tools to be used 
 should influence the design. In simple and straight- 
 forward joinery we must be reminded continually 
 of the planks out of which it was framed, of the 
 plane, the chisel, or the gouge used in finishing it. 
 And though this is not necessary in the more 
 elaborate and costly examples of cabinet-work, at 
 least we ought never to be perplexed as to how an 
 effect was arrived at, still less to be allowed to 
 suspect that the workman went out of his way to 
 avoid the apt and natural treatment of his material : 
 by such false pride he proves himself not the more 
 an artist but the less a workman. 
 
102 Every-day Art. 
 
 The conventional forms common in any par- 
 ticular craft are part and parcel of a workmanlike 
 process. If a man who knew absolutely nothing 
 about pottery were set to design a pot upon 
 paper, he would probably imitate to the best of his 
 ability something else ; but if the art of " throwing " 
 were first made clear to him, and he were to begin 
 at once to work at the wheel, he would most likely, 
 as soon as he could achieve anything, produce 
 unawares a replica of some .rude Saxon, Roman, 
 or Mexican earthenware. To see a potter at his 
 wheel is to realise how the common forms of 
 pottery could not be different irom what they are. 
 Again, the painter ignorant of this branch of art 
 might very likely be betrayed by his box of water- 
 colours into something very much in the way of a 
 picture ; but if he had the vessel before him, and 
 the few fit materials for pot decoration at hand, he 
 would more probably proceed to stamp or scratch 
 on it patterns such as we find in the very earliest 
 ware, or to paint on it something related (however 
 distantly) to the ornament on Greek vases (51). 
 
 " We are rather tempted to believe," said Owen 
 Jones, " that the various forms of the leaves of 
 a Greek flower have been generated by the brush 
 of the painter." He need have had no hesitation 
 in asserting it as a fact. The idea of those forms 
 being founded upon the growth of the honeysuckle 
 is as obviously a fable as the popular legend con- 
 cerning the origin of the Corinthian capital. That 
 
The Wdrkman and his Tools. 
 
 i6' 
 
 the resemblance of the forms which grew under his' 
 hand to the honeysuckle may eventually- have struck 
 
 JO. Direct and workinaulike flat carving— Old German. 
 
 the painter (as it strikes us) is likely enough ; and, 
 having perceived that likeness, he may have empha- 
 
I04 Every-day Art. 
 
 sised it ; but in the majority of cases, more especially 
 in work of the archaic period, the resemblance is 
 of the faintest. On the other hand, it is impossible 
 for any one who has worked with a long-haired 
 Tsrush, or " tracer," to come away from the vase room 
 of the British Museum without feeling convinced 
 that the painted ornament is very emphatically 
 brush-work — that is to say produced, and in great 
 measure suggested, by the use of the brush. It is 
 difficult to produce it any other way, easy to draw 
 it freely with the brush. If you proceed to design 
 with a firm and springing "tracer," you will invol- 
 untarily produce some such forms as are to be 
 found on the Greek vases. And though, no doubt, 
 this would be due partly to familiarity with the 
 ancient forms, the unconscious exercise of memory, 
 it cannot be memory only ; for you will find similar, 
 and sometimes the same forms, in all ornament 
 that has been invented brush in hand. Compare 
 the Greek work with any other ancient ornamental 
 painted pottery, compare it with the detail of 
 Early-English glass-painting, and you will find 
 something more than casual resemblance. The 
 family likeness is unmistakable : the forms are alt 
 very certainly sprung from the brush. 
 
 Greek brush-work is a typical illustration of apt 
 ornament^ and deserves to be considered for a 
 moment. The scheme of ornament once deter- 
 mined, we can imagine the painter proceeding, 
 brush in hand, to put in the patterns, inventing or 
 adapting as he went on. Aiming at no great 
 
The Workman and his Tools. 
 
 105 
 
 originality, content to play variations upon the pri- 
 mitive brush patterns, he just put in the strokes 
 that occurred to him, or that he felt were wanted. 
 He had, no doubt, from the first a general notion 
 
 51. Suggested by Gr-'ck brush-work. 
 
 of the kind of thing he meant to do ; but he no 
 more knew the exact design he was going to paint 
 than we know beforehand the words our thoughts 
 will take in speaking. His words were so many 
 strokes of the bru.sh. 
 
io6 Every-day Art. 
 
 The spontaneity of this brush-speaking is remark- 
 able. The first natural ejaculation 
 of a long-haired sable brush is the 
 upward stroke A. The delicate gra- 
 dation in its Qutline is_ due entirely 
 to the play of the brush, thickening 
 as the pressure is increased, and 
 tapering off again as the stress is 
 relaxed. If you keep your hand in 
 the same position and proceed to 
 make a succession of thesfe brush 
 flicks (b) they range themselves as a 
 matter of course in the order shown 
 at c, becoming smaller and smaller 
 as they radiate at a less and less 
 distance from the axis of your wrist. 
 The Greek potter (with sonje more 
 D or less vague image of the date Horn 
 
 in his mind) had only to double over the series 
 of strokes, and there was the anthemion, li. The 
 other form of it, which has more 
 
 f 
 
 resemblance to the honeysuck'e, 
 
 is produced in a similar manner, " 
 
 only by commencing at the top with a blot or blob 
 
The Workman and his Tools. 107 
 
 of the brush, which must be full of colour, and 
 gently drawing the brush away to a point below. 
 The examples opposite show the stroke E, the suc- 
 cession of strokes 
 
 F, and the com- 
 plete figure G. A 
 less familiar variety 
 of the ornament is 
 shown in H. Some- 
 times the strokes 
 were less spring- 
 ing and still less 
 honeysuckle - like, 
 as in J. Similar pat- 
 terns were almost 
 
 ujujiuiiiuuiyiuu/uijiuiuLj 
 
 >f c3|G3fG?iB]fel 
 
 as easily produced by painting- 
 in the ground, and leaving the 
 pattern in the colour of the clay, 
 as in the border K given below. 
 The common fret or key 
 
 K. Example of pattern left in the natural colour of the ground. 
 
 patterns are equally characteristic of the brush — 
 almost incredible as this may seem to those who 
 
io8 Every-day Art. 
 
 I I jnTLnLrg-TEr 
 
 52. Diagraii showing con-truction of fret pattern. 
 
 are unacquainted with the use of the brush, and 
 who know these patterns only as they usually 
 appear in print, drawn with a mechanical correct- 
 ness (?) all the draughtsman's own. If they will 
 refer to the vases in the British Museum, they 
 will see at once that mechanical exactness is 
 the last quality that could be laid to the account 
 of the Greek potter. Next to the free brush- 
 flick nothing is so easy to draw with a brush as 
 straight lines of this character. It requires only 
 a blunt brush and a hand firm enough and light 
 enough to maintain always a delicate and even 
 pressure. The difficulty occurs at the angles, and 
 the ancient pot-painters scarcely attempted any 
 great accuracy there. The drawing of a simple 
 fret was done right off, in this manner : the 
 horizontal bounding lines were drawn first (pro- 
 bably by holding the brush steady and making 
 the vase revolve on a pivot) ; the painter then 
 drew a series of upright lines at regular intervals ; 
 from these he drew, at top and bottom, horizontal 
 line.5, to right and left respectively ; to each of 
 these again, were attached shorter vertical lines, 
 which were finally united by other short horizontal 
 strokes, and the pattern was complete. The accom- 
 
The Workman and his Tools. 109 
 
 panying diagram (52) will help to make this 
 clear. 
 
 With experience the most intricate frets may 
 be sketched in this manner, the eye learning to 
 measure the distances with almost absolute cer- 
 tainty. The Greeks saved themselves much trouble 
 in this respect by habitually interrupting the long 
 horizontal bands by means of square stops or paterae, 
 leaving themselves only short lengths to deal with. 
 
 The familiar wave scroll may be sketched in 
 two or three different ways. It is as easy to 
 sketch it in d, la grecque as it is difficult to put it 
 in with the mechanical exactness of modern 
 imitators. 
 
 We have instances of Greek ornament which is 
 nothing at all but brush-play (53). The painter just 
 amused himself 
 by letting the 
 brush go, almost 
 without guidance, 
 and watching the 
 curves that came 
 of it, much as a 
 smoker will watch 
 the wreaths of 
 smoke curling 
 upwards from his 
 lips. 
 
 The forms first 
 
 prompted by the 53. Example of Greek brush-play. 
 
no 
 
 E very-day Art, 
 
 use of the brush happened in the end to 
 gest natural forms, and so by 
 
 degrees 
 
 If 
 
 ^1^ 
 
 SUg' 
 
 some 
 imitation of nature became not un- 
 common. But for the most part, 
 and until a very late period, the 
 Greeks continued to let the brush 
 control the manner of rendering it. 
 Here is a pattern (54) of which you 
 may say with equal truth, that it con- 
 sists of brush strokes arranged in the 
 order of leaflets, or of leaf forms 
 modified by the brush. Certain bud 
 forms (55) also grew out of the brush. 
 Indeed, few if any of the forms 
 eventually borrowed 
 from nature appear to 
 have been selected with- 
 out due reference to the 
 facility with which they 
 could, be rendered. It 
 is self-evident how the 
 artist arrived through 
 brush-work at natural 
 form. 
 
 In this he differed 
 widely from the Japanese, whose art (absolutely 
 independent as it must have been of all Greek 
 influence, direct or indirect) came through nature 
 to much the same conventional conclusion. The 
 character of a great deal of Japanese foliage is 
 
 Greek bud-fonns. 
 
The Workman and his Tools. 
 
 Ill 
 
 % 
 
 the simple result of attemping to render nature as 
 directly as possible with the brush. 
 Working from nature; brush in 
 hand, the Japanese artist almost un- 
 consciously translated his original 
 into the vernacular of pot-painting 
 — into brush-work (157). 
 
 . ^■" ' 56. Greek. 
 
 It IS curious to notice, this point at 
 which, contrary to all expectation, Greek art and 
 Japanese for a moment join hands. The Japanese 
 renderings of the chrysan- 
 themum given below(s8) are 
 as much like honeysuckle as 
 any anthemion, and might 
 passforGreek almost. There 
 is some similarity also in 
 the Greek and Japanese 57. Japanese peony. 
 
 
 58. Japanese ciirysanthemum flowers- 
 rendering of the buds ; and there is something again 
 in the Japahese bird overleaf (59), and in that on 
 page 99, that reminds one of Greek brush-work. 
 
 The connection between all apt workmanship is 
 indicated by the circumstance that artists of two 
 such distinctly different types, working on such 
 
112 
 
 E very-day Art. 
 
 different principles and according to such different 
 traditions, should arrive (the one from brush-work to 
 nature, the other from nature to brush-work) at 
 forms of ornament which may be said to overlap 
 one another. The apt form seems to be almost 
 inevitable : good workmen in all times have been 
 agreed upon that one point. Hence it is that modern 
 progress is mainly in the direction whither the old 
 ways led. Design and workmanship have risen 
 to a higher point, not when materials and tools 
 have been despised, but when apter and more 
 sympathetic treatment has been adopted, more 
 idiomatic expression found. 
 
 59 Bird rendered in brush-strokes. 
 
II' 
 
 THE RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF 
 
 IMITATION. 
 
 ' Nothing concealed that is done, but all things done to adornment." 
 
 ORE than -enough has been 
 said concerning the heresy 
 of shams in decoration, and 
 yet not quite enough. The 
 reasons that have been 
 urged against shams have 
 not always been the most 
 reasonable. Rather too 
 much stress has been laid upon the immorality of 
 pretence, and not enough on its paltriness. Some- 
 thing remains to be said upon the flimsiness of the 
 shift of imitation, upon its futility, upon the lack 
 of feeling and fancy that it implies in the artist who 
 resorts to it. 
 
 Have we no invention that we complacently fall 
 back upon the poor device of making one material 
 look as nearly as possible like another ? 
 
 Judged on its own merits, apart from its insincerity, 
 there is really very little to be said in favour of 
 such expedients as graining or marbling. Once in a 
 way, as a kind of practical joke, the thing might be 
 amusing ; but no joke was ever so little able to bear 
 
 I 
 
114 Every-day Art. 
 
 repetition. From the economical point of view 
 it is contended, and fairly, that the imitation wears 
 better than plain paint or simple paper, and that the 
 varnish on it is a protection ; but plain paint and 
 simple paper are not the only alternatives to pre- 
 tence, and there is no law against the use of varnish 
 wherever it may be necessary. Besides, there is 
 the obvious alternative of mottling your colour 
 somewhat after the manner of certain Japanese 
 lacquer. This method lends itself to very rich and 
 varied effects of colour, without imitating anything ; 
 it wears quite as well as graining, and is quite as 
 easily "touched up." 
 
 The plea that effect is everything, never mind 
 how you arrive at it so you reach it, is none the, less 
 unscrupulous that this unscrupulousness is exercised 
 in the matter of art. That true artists have used 
 it proves, not that it is good, but that they were 
 fallible. The argument that it pays better to supply 
 the demand for graining, than to endeavour to 
 ' create a demand for something worthier, is only an 
 argument of the pocket, and does not touch the 
 question at issue. Whatever of beauty there may 
 be in sham wainscot or marble, or other such efforts 
 of prevarication (and they are sometimes satisfactory 
 enough as colour), is more than countei'-balanced 
 by the pretentiousness of it all. 
 
 A curious fact in connection with graining is that 
 really good imitation is almost as expensive as the 
 wood itself would be. But then polished wood- 
 
The Rights and Wrongs of Imitation. 1 1 5 
 
 work would need 
 to be of the best ; 
 every crack and 
 every clumsy joint 
 would be exposed 
 to view ; whereas 
 painting hides a 
 multitude of sins, 
 and men live in 
 happy ignorance 
 of the yawning 
 gaps in the joinery 
 when they have 
 been stopped with 
 putty and covered 
 over with paint. 
 The most elabo- 
 rate pattern-work 
 (60, 61) would 
 scarcely be more 
 costly than the 
 best graining. 
 
 It is true that 
 many so - called 
 imitations are 
 
 either so ill done, 
 or so misplaced, 
 that they must in 
 fairness be held 
 guiltless of any 
 
 60. Elaborately paiiiced door-panel. 
 I 2 
 
1 1 6 E very-day Art. 
 
 serious intention of misleading. No one. is led to 
 suppose that the hall and staircase of the villas in 
 the " Marine Parade " are of Siena marble, or the 
 folding doors of bird's-eye maple ; nevertheless the 
 fact that such work invariably imitates something 
 costlier than itself, leaves no room for doubt that it 
 originated in pretence. The first delinquents had 
 evidently got beyond the stage of copying, ape-like, 
 from pure delight in mimicry, and had begun, not 
 only to indulge in costly luxuries, but to put up, in 
 default of them, with the cheap counterfeit of what 
 they could not get. 
 
 We have grown so accustomed to certain of 
 these simulations that to some people there seems 
 a sort of homeliness about them, use being second 
 nature. Some simple folk, too, who would be the last 
 to affect palatial splendour, are condemned by cir- 
 cumstances to live in " marble halls." But it would 
 be as well for those who are their own masters not 
 to bear false witness against themselves, and, if they 
 have no sympathy with cheap splendour, to refrain 
 from following those who have. Why wear the 
 badge of a snobbishness of which you are guiltless ? 
 If we adopt the habit of pretenders we have no 
 right to complain that we are mistaken for them : 
 we accuse ourselves. 
 
 In proportion to the importance of a building, 
 private or public, is the offence of this simulation 
 grievous. It is worst where we might reasonably 
 expect that the doors would be of hard wood and 
 
6i. Elaborately patterned door. 
 
ii8 Every-day Art. 
 
 the columns of marble. The mock granite looks 
 peculiarly mean on the staircase of a national 
 museum ! Thoroughly to realise all the shabbiness 
 of sham marble, one should see it in process of 
 peeling off the walls of a ducal mansion. The more 
 appropriate the real thing would be, the more offen- 
 sive becomes its imitation, for the more obvious it 
 is that it was meant to deceive. One can look 
 leniently upon the marble " end-papers," so dear 
 to the bookbinder, because they could not be 
 marble, because they are not like marble, and 
 because they are the natural outcome of a work- 
 manlike process of making. Where there is really 
 intent to deceive, neither the transparency of the 
 cheat nor its success will justify it. 
 
 It is easier to denounce pretence than to draw 
 with certainty the line at which it begins. Where 
 we have a right to expect the actual thing 
 instead of the counterfeit, we resent the deception. 
 Where the thing counterfeited would itself have 
 been out of place, the inappropriateness of the 
 pretence jars upon us. Marbling and graining, for 
 example, must be guilty either of pretentiousness 
 or incongruity. The handsome oak door which 
 you discover to be only painted deal, stands con- 
 victed of fraud. The gorgeous marble door, which 
 you know can only be painted wood, is merely 
 ridiculous. 
 
 In many instances the right and wrong of imita- 
 tion is not so obvious. The use of veneer has been 
 
The Rights and Wrongs of Imitation. 119 
 
 most indiscriminately condemned ; but it is rather 
 the abuse of it that deserves to be denounced. There 
 can be no occasion to deny ourselves the luxury of 
 rich marble on our walls because we cannot possibly 
 construct them of it throughout. If we could do so it 
 would be a wanton burying of beautiful colour. No 
 sane person would expect the walls of S. Mark's to 
 be built of the precious material with which they are 
 lined. When there is a possibility of misapprehen- 
 sion it would certainly be advisable that the baser 
 stone or brickwork should come to the front occasion- 
 ally and confess itself There is not the slightest 
 difficulty in using thin slices of marble (in panels, 
 for example, with or without mosaic) in such a way 
 that no one could for a moment mistake the veneer 
 for solid blocks of stone. 
 
 In wood-work the abuse of veneer has been so 
 shameless, one is almost prejudiced against its use 
 at all. Yet it would be a pity that the beauty of 
 rare wood should be sacrificed to a theory ; and there 
 is, besides, this real use in veneer, that by laying it 
 with the grain crossing the grain of the panel some 
 danger of shrinkage and warping is met. Nothing 
 could be more objectionable than the use of veneer 
 on curved surfaces and in the framing of cabinet- 
 work, but it would be arbitrary to deny the just use 
 of veneered panels, if only the wood be rich enough to 
 deserve cutting into thin slices. No one, probably, 
 would be found to object on principle to veneer in the 
 form of marquetry. There is even a charm about the 
 
1 20 Every- day Art^ 
 
 very frankness with which it confesses its shallow- 
 ness : nothing is left to be found out about it. 
 
 Concerning the decorative use of gilding it has 
 been urged that it must logically be classed among 
 the shams. And so it must where it is u.sed to 
 simulate solid gold, as where surface gilding is 
 made to look like damascening. But gilding, as it 
 has been practised in architecture for centuries 
 past, is used simply as colour is. A gilt moulding 
 no more pretends to be of gold than a painted wall 
 pretends to be of solid pigment. It neither deceives 
 nor is meant to deceive. It is confessedly gold 
 leaf. Nevertheless, it is at once a frank and an 
 effective practice, to let the grain of oak or leather, 
 or the textui-e of canvas or plaster, reveal itself 
 beneath the gold. 
 
 The farce of Pretence is not a new and original 
 production of our day ; we have only adapted the 
 old idea to modern circumstances. But the imita- 
 tion in times past appears to have been of two 
 kinds, that which directly aimed at deception, and 
 that which was rather meant to symbolise the thing 
 it suggested. A familiar instance of the latter treat- 
 ment occurs in the curtains painted as decoration on 
 the walls of Gothic buildings. They are so conven- 
 tionally rendered, and with such obvious disregard 
 to realism, that they can never have been meant to 
 do more than suggest the real hangings, with which 
 it was the wont to furnish the walls of a room. The 
 first of these painted curtains may have merited. 
 
TJie Rights and Wrongs of Imitation. 121 
 
 the praise due to a " conceit," but the repetition of 
 the freak ceases to be amusing. Another favourite 
 fancy of Gothic artists was the so-called " brick " 
 or " masonry " pattern, a diaper formed on the lines 
 taken by the mortar joints of a building. There is 
 a considerable decorative use in the rigidity of 
 these lines, but the notion of rigidity is all that we 
 need borrow from ma- 
 sonry (62). There is 
 no occasion whatever to 
 adopt the forms and 
 proportions of the stones 
 used in construction. 
 
 The obvious appro- 
 priateness of tiles for the 
 walls of a bath-room 
 and the refreshing effect 
 of them, has led to the 
 common use of so-called 
 " tile-papers " by those 
 who cannot or will not 
 afford the luxury of the 
 real thing. Perhaps it 
 has not occurred to them 
 that this effect might just as well have been pro- 
 duced without resorting to the representation of 
 the jointing of the tiles. A pattern printed on the 
 white paper ground, or, still better, stencilled on 
 the white walls, may have much of the cool and 
 fresh appearance of tile-work; it may even with 
 
 Lines of pattern suggested 
 by masonry. 
 
12 2 E very-day A rt. 
 
 advantage be based on the square form of the ordi- 
 nary tiles, so as indefinitely to suggest them (63), 
 and thus through association afford additional satis- 
 faction, without for a moment pretending to imitate 
 tiling. The same may be said of other effects, that 
 have from the first been copied in wall-paper. 
 French wall-paper effaces itself in the endeavour 
 to look like tapestry, brocade, cretonne, damask 
 — apparently no matter what, so long as it do 
 not look like what it is. Yet the effect might in 
 all cases have been arrived at without simulation. 
 We may take it that the imitator knows this well 
 enough, but simply shirks the difficulty. Number- 
 less are the expedients, all of them more or less 
 pretentious, adopted in the name of ornament, to 
 save trouble and supply the place of skill. 
 
 Occasionally, a decorative device turns out to be 
 less guilty of pretence than would appear at first 
 sight — such for example as embossed " leather- 
 paper " which is to some extent discredited by its 
 very name. It is a perfectly straightforward step 
 towards the popularising of art, to reproduce by 
 simpler and less costly means effects of decoration 
 which were once beyond the means of all but the 
 very few. Because embossing and gilding have 
 been already applied to leather, that is no reason 
 why they should not be further applied to paper or 
 any other substance that may be adapted to the 
 process ; and the fact of that prior application of 
 the process does not justify the charge of pretence 
 
The Rights and Wrongs of Imitation. 123 
 
 63. Pattern based on square lines of t 
 
 lies. 
 
124 Every -day A rt. 
 
 against those who have the wit to discover a wider 
 field for its application. 
 
 The excuse for frank imitation lies sometimes in 
 its very frankness. The Japanese have a passion 
 for imitation ; they delight in it for its own sake 
 apparently ; they imitate anything and everything, 
 reproducing in the costliest material all the character 
 of a commoner substance. They will carve a tusk 
 of ivory into the semblance of a bit of common 
 bamboo — there is at least no suggestion of cheap 
 display in that. With regard to paper, they 
 employ it where we should never have dreamed 
 of using it — our difficulty would be to define the 
 purpose to which they have not put it. 
 
 It is a point not always easy to decide, but 
 certainly worth consideration, how far any rivalry 
 of one material by another may be considered a 
 workmanlike development of its capacities, and 
 how far it is a sham. Upon the solution of that 
 question depends the justification of the artist. It 
 is to be regretted that our earlier familiarity with 
 embossing as applied to leather should suggest 
 inevitably the idea of imitation when it comes to be 
 applied to any other substance. (When it is the 
 grain of the leather that is imitated, then the case is 
 quite different.) But there is no such natural connec- 
 tion between leather and embossing, as to preclude 
 the embossing of any and every other substance 
 that admits of it. Embossed leather is perhaps in 
 its origin only an imitation of repouss^ metal-work. 
 
The Rights and Wrongs of Imitation. 125 
 
 In connection with the subject of pretence, occurs 
 the question as to how far one is justified in suggest- 
 ing in painted decoration the appearance of relief. 
 The theory of flat decoration for flat surfaces is 
 logical enough, but it is possible to ride it too hard. 
 Certainly a surface that ought to look flat, such as 
 a floor, should not be enriched by the semblance of 
 objects in relief; but it does not follow that all 
 surfaces in which we are accustomed to flatness 
 must, in the nature of things, be treated flatly ; 
 though the effect of any marked deviation from 
 the accustomed treatment would probably not be 
 pleasing. 
 
 The walls of our dwelling rooms are flat for 
 the simple reason that it is the readiest way of 
 finishing them, the cheapest, the cleanliest, the 
 easiest on which to hang pictures or aught else. 
 Any attempt at the appearance of prominent relief 
 in a wall-pattern would be offensive, not simply on 
 account of its deceptiveness, but because it would 
 be sure to assert itself more than a background 
 should. If, however, not aiming at relief, the de- 
 signer should arrive at a satisfactory result, which 
 somehow suggested slight and delicate relief, such 
 as would not be otherwise than pleasing to the eye 
 were it actually modelled, it would be dogmatic 
 to declare that such an effect was not legiti- 
 mate. We have to beware of bigotry. " The truth, 
 the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," is a 
 fiction of the law. Morally it piay be desirable ; 
 
125 Every-day Art. 
 
 socially it is impossible. The man who, in season 
 and out of season, is perpetually parading his truth- 
 fulness, comes to be put down as a prig. Art, too, 
 may be priggish. What we esteem in men and in 
 their work is sincerity ; and that is quite possible 
 in every-day art as well as in every-day life. A 
 real man puts himself into his work. There will be 
 no falsity in his art so long as he is honest. 
 
 To speak without prejudice, we must admit that 
 it is very difficult to define the limits of what 
 is allowable. In some cases perhaps only the 
 intention determines whether an expedient is right 
 or wrong. 
 
 A certain degree of downright imitation might 
 not be altogether inexcusable if the motive were 
 merely the laudable desire to bridge over some 
 abrupt transition from ornament in bold relief to 
 flat painted-decoration. If the choice lie only 
 between two evils, one is not to be blamed for 
 choosing the lesser ; and incongruity is an evil, just 
 as imitation is : which is the greater of the two may, 
 in exceptional cases, be matter of dispute. 
 
 In mural decoration one is continually compelled 
 to go so far at least in the direction of imitation 
 as to give in painting the value, if not the effect, 
 of modelling or carving. If every builder were an 
 artist, it would not be so. But every decorator has 
 at times to balance constructed ornament by painted 
 decoration, for which there should have been no 
 occasion. In the- attempt to accomplish this he 
 
The Rights and Wrongs of Imitation. 127 
 
 may do something which is in danger of being mis- 
 taken for relief ; in which case the fault should in 
 justice be debited to the blunderer whose short- 
 comings he is endeavouring in all honesty to make 
 good. Even then the too ready resort to imitation 
 is a confession either of incompetence or laziness. 
 Whoever is artist enough will find some mean 
 between pretence and slovenliness. 
 
 We ask not only for honesty but for a certain 
 amount of frankness in the use of materials. The 
 degree to which such honesty and frankness should 
 be carried, each one must determine according to 
 his conscience and according to his temperament : 
 feeling will often anticipate reason in pointing out 
 the way that is right. Is it not always so ? The best 
 of us are scarcely fit to inhabit a " Palace of Truth." 
 Upright men who would scorn deliberately to lie, 
 make concessions to social convenience which are 
 not consistent with strict truth. They would vindi- 
 cate themselves, perhaps, by saying that in their 
 lives they are truthful, and that it is only the literal 
 truth which they appear to violate. And in art 
 also, it is not so essential that our work should be 
 true to the letter, as that it should be frank, honest, 
 unpretending, workmanlike, obedient to the spirit 
 of truth. 
 
128 
 
 Every-day Art. 
 
 LEADING-STRINGS. 
 
 "The eagle never lost so much time as when he consented to 
 learn of the crow." 
 
 M IGHT seem a simple 
 thing to state broadly 
 the principles that 
 
 W^Mr^fM^W^^ ^°^^'" ornament; 
 ^- i,''2yi.^-'»i:>^-H)Jlgii^-'Tr: and, indeed, it is easy 
 
 enough for an ex- 
 perienced workman to give some 
 simple working rules that may be 
 of use to the beginner ; but these 
 are not to. be confounded with 
 " principles" even though they be 
 put forth on authority. The prin- 
 ciples enunciated by Owen Jones 
 in his ' Grammar of Ornament ' 
 are, strictly speaking, only a de- 
 scription of the lines on which 
 that tasteful artist himself worked, 
 plus certain dogmas deduced from his own practice. 
 Now, the truths that appeal to us are not neces- 
 sarily the highest, nor yet the only truths ; not every 
 good working rule is to be accepted as a principle 
 of design. 
 
 Dogmas are two-edged tools to play with. One 
 
Leading Strings. 129 
 
 may go so far as to doubt if any good can come of 
 dogmatism. When once a student has passed that 
 first stage of art, where he has not to ask questions 
 but to do what he is told and believe what he is 
 taught, then the dicta of even the best of teachers are 
 useful only in proportion to their elasticity. They 
 must fit emergencies. Rigid dogma is more likely 
 to hinder than to help the impulse of imagination. 
 
 It is not difficult to lay down general rules, if they 
 are so general as to be of comparativelj' little 
 practical use. One might safely say, for example, 
 that ornament may be so schemed as either to fill 
 (64) or to occupy (65) the space it is designed to 
 decorate, instancing the Arabs and the Japanese as 
 expert each in their own direction. When, however, 
 we presume to lay down definite rules concerning 
 the lines on which all ornament should be based, we 
 are in danger of becoming ridiculous. It is one 
 thing to recognise the value of the lesson conveyed 
 to us in Moresque art, and another to deduce from 
 it unalterable principles on which, ever afterwards, 
 ornament must be designed. 
 
 Again, it will not be denied that the Moors made 
 admirable decorative use of the primary colours 
 qualified with much gold ; and it is open to us to 
 follow their precedent. But we are equally free to 
 work on the principles of Titian, if we so prefer. 
 There is, of course,no one road to success. We may 
 follow whom we like, or go our own way, so long 
 as we arrive at good colour. Obedience to rule 
 
 K 
 
Every -day Art. 
 
 64. A p:inel tilled — Reiiaissa-:.ce. 
 
 may save a man 
 from bad colour, 
 but will never 
 make a colourist 
 of him. 
 
 The energetic 
 advocacy of the 
 use of primary 
 colours in deco- 
 ration tempts 
 one to wish it 
 were possible, 
 once for all, to 
 wipe them from 
 the palette of all 
 but the most ex- 
 pert ; for it is 
 only the most 
 expert that can 
 safely be trusted 
 with anything so 
 poisonous as the 
 raw primaries. 
 
 The doctrine 
 of the use of 
 primary colours 
 must needs be 
 supplemented 
 by other doc- 
 trines equally 
 
L eading-strings, 
 
 131 
 
 arbitrary. "Colours 
 should never be 
 allowed to impinge 
 upon each other " ; 
 they must occupy 
 certain set posi- 
 tions ; they must be 
 doled out in cer- 
 tain "proportions"! 
 Certainly, if you 
 will take neat 
 primary tints, you 
 must take also sun- 
 dry precautions lest 
 those powerful irri- 
 tants should be too 
 much for you. But 
 if the primaries are 
 so dangerous why 
 take such pains to 
 employ them ? 
 
 A colourist finds 
 it necessary to hold 
 on to no thread of 
 theory for safety ; 
 he can do better- 
 than any theorist, 
 without it. He de- 
 lights to disturb the 
 monotony of a blue 
 
 65. A panel occupied — Japanese, 
 
 K 2 
 
/ 
 
 / 
 
 132 Every-dixy Arh 
 
 surface by touches of green and grey and purple ; 
 he brightens a red with dashes of orange, and blurs 
 it in places with brown ; a flat tint he accepts only 
 as a necessary compromise ; and he makes use of 
 the primaries, as the physician makes medicinal use 
 of poisons, knowing that any excess or indiscretion 
 in their employment may be fatal. 
 
 Most of the dogmas as to the proportions in 
 which the various colours should be used, are based 
 upon the fact, or fancy, that a ray of sunlight is 
 divisible into coloured rays in those proportions. 
 We were taught in childhood that the seven colours 
 of the rainbow went to make white light ; later, 
 we learnt that there were three primary colours, 
 although there was some doubt among scientists as 
 to what those three were ; we have since been asked 
 to believe that there are only two primaries. At all 
 events. Nature (who has on the whole not a bad 
 eye for colour) has very cai'efully concealed from us 
 the component parts of white light. It is of infinite 
 importance to the astronomer and the chemist to 
 resolve colourless light into its elements ; but the 
 spectroscope is not likely to revolutionise art, or 
 even greatly to help the artist. Dissect and analyse 
 as much as you like, you cannot draw up any formula 
 guaranteeing the production of fine colour. 
 
 There is just this fact in connection with the 
 theories of colour proportion, that the eye can bear 
 as a rule more of those colours which preponderate 
 in the spectrum. We can endure, that is to say, 
 
Leading-strings. 133 
 
 more of blue than of red, and more of red than 
 of yellow ; but any rule as to the ratio in which 
 colours should be used is as futile as it is arbitrary. 
 The very test of good colour is that it is too subtle 
 to be put into words. Only the coarser, cruder 
 tints, those which can be quite clearly defined, 
 come within the scope of the theorist. Some 
 trouble might doubtless be spared us, if we could 
 consent to shut our eyes, and swallow obediently 
 some such formula as this : — " Take three parts 
 of yellow pigment, five of red, and eight of blue ; 
 distribute evenly over a surface geometrically sub- 
 divided into small spaces, with care that no two 
 colours impinge ; sugar with orientalism, flavour 
 with conventionality at discretion, and serve up 
 boldly in the form of ornamental art ! " But how 
 is one to arrive at a pure primary colour ? Our 
 pigments do not approach the purity of the prism. 
 And how shall we measure them ? The eye must 
 be judge. Better by far trust to it altogether, and 
 dispense with the encumbrance of a theory. 
 
134 
 
 E very-day Art. 
 
 FORM AND COLOUR. 
 
 " No man can serve two masters." 
 
 THEORY that 
 colour should al- 
 ways emphasise 
 form will not 
 bear examination. 
 That that is one 
 use to which col- 
 our may be put is obvious. 
 To insist, however, that the 
 
 I liSBBi^SII^ S development of form is the 
 ^^^^ ^ il one and only function of colour, 
 
 is more than rash. One may 
 be permitted so to distribute colour as to emphasise 
 only the forms in need of emphasis. 
 
 Form is best appreciated in its naked purity ; it 
 needs certainly no "development" by means of 
 colour ; and, on the other hand, colour can afford 
 to dispense with some grace in forms which lend 
 themselves to rich and harmonious effects. This 
 is fully appreciated by painters, who habitually 
 sacrifice one to the other, according as their aim is 
 form or colour. Its appreciation by the decorator 
 has perhaps been hindered by authoritative dogma. 
 
Form and Colour. 
 
 135 
 
 Those consummate colourists, the Chinese, are not 
 particular about the forms they employ {6(>), so long 
 as they lend themselves to colour. All that can 
 
 66. Old Chinese embroidery, the form^ only a vehicle for colour. 
 
 safely be asserted is, that in any scheme of 
 colour there should be strict relation between its 
 quality, its quantity, and its place — that is to 
 say, the quality of colour will be determined by 
 
136 Every-day Art. 
 
 the area it covers and its situation ; the amount of 
 colour will depend upon whether the tone is light 
 or dark, whether the tints are rich or delicate, 
 whether they are seen in strong light or in shadow, 
 and so on. A form cut out against the background 
 like Capricornus {6']') would need either to occupy 
 a very dark position or to be executed in colours 
 only gently contrasting. 
 
 No need of much philosophy to tell us that the 
 cruder a colour the less we must use of it, and the 
 more it should be broken up and separated from 
 other crude colour ; or to teach us that low tones 
 are lost in dark places, where bright ones are only 
 subdued to due sobriety and softness. The slightest 
 feeling for colour will suggest that the larger the sur- 
 face to be covered with one flat tint the lower it must 
 be in tone (unless again it be in shadow), and that 
 the smaller the surface the brighter it may be. 
 /Every house-painter knows by experience that for a 
 ceiling he must mix his tint a shade or two lighter 
 and brighter than he wishes it to appear ; but to 
 insist upon the adoption of one colour for projections, 
 another for hollows, and a third for flat surfaces, is 
 to prove oneself a theorist beyond redemption. 
 
 One, need not _.even . have, studied Chevreul in 
 order to know that some colours appear to advance 
 and others to recede from the eye. Where .it was 
 desired to throw back one member of a moulding, 
 we should naturally paint it in some colour approach- 
 ing to greyness, and not bright orange; but it is by 
 
Form and Colour. 
 
 137 
 
 no means necessary in architectural decoration to 
 exaggerate every projection and deepen every 
 hollow, as if the architect had expressed himself 
 so timidly that it was necessary for the decorator 
 
 to underline his 
 
 words. When 
 architect and 
 decorator are 
 one, he wisely 
 leaves it to the 
 painting to 
 supplement the 
 modelling. He 
 relies, perhaps 
 upon colour to 
 deepen hollows 
 (as did the 
 ancient Greeks 
 when they 
 made their 
 curves so flat), 
 perhaps upon 
 the depth of 
 
 67. Strongly defined form. ^J^g holloW tO 
 
 tone down the crudity of available pigments. This 
 is more nearly the function of colour — to qualify 
 form, defining or subduing it as need may be. In 
 the design over-leaf (68), the darker tint behind the 
 boys is used to emphasise their forms, and, at the 
 same time, to confuse the form of the arabesque. 
 
138 Every-day Art. 
 
 It may even be said that, art being in its nature 
 experimental, and success by no means assured, 
 one great use of colour in architecture (wherein form 
 is of supreme importance) is often to correct and 
 supplement it, to give variety to what is mono- 
 tonous, emphasis to what is tame, and unity to 
 what would otherwise be disjointed. In many of 
 the plastic arts what is done is done, so far as they 
 are concerned, and no modification is possible. A 
 stroke of the chisel that has gone too far, cannot be 
 recalled ; but if the work is to be painted it is the 
 province of the painter to rectify the mistake that, 
 but for him, would be beyond remedy. 
 
 The practical decorator, who has mostly to accept 
 forms as they are and do the best he can with them, 
 would be sorry indeed to have to emphasise by 
 colour what is already only too aggressive. He is 
 grateful to the tones that will enable him to do 
 something towards setting things right. 
 
 The relation between the forms and colours he 
 adopts is always in the mind of the artist. If there 
 be not much difference between the shades of colour 
 used, he sees that his forms shall be strong enough 
 to take care of themselves ; unless, indeed, it be his 
 deliberate intention that the pattern shall just break 
 the monotony of a flat surface, without itself being 
 obvious. The pronounced shapes in the heraldic 
 curtain pattern (69), are calculated not to be alto- 
 gether lost even in one-coloured terry, where the 
 contrast is only between the warp and the weft of 
 
Form and Colour. 
 
 139 
 
 the same dye. On the other hand some patterns are 
 meant to be felt by their influence rather than seen. 
 The analysis of the best work will show that in it 
 perfect harmony has often resulted from the exclu- 
 sion of one of the primary colours ; and the timely 
 
 68. Colour used to modify form. 
 
 recollection of that circumstance may suggest to the 
 artist a way out of some immediate difficulty ; but 
 to formulate his experience into a rule for general 
 guidance, would be only less pernicious than to insist 
 upon the presence, always, of all the primaries. 
 
140 E very-day Art. 
 
 We know very well that any considerable volume 
 of one colour is kept in countenance by the support 
 of some kindred colour in the composition, and that 
 the occurrence of a solitary point of vivid colour is 
 an invaluable means of emphasis. We feel that in 
 the decoration of a room there should be some 
 gradation upwards both of form and colour. It 
 seems only natural that the deeper colour and the 
 more rigid form should be at the base of the wall, 
 and that the tones should grow lighter and the lines 
 freer as they ascend. There is no limit to the 
 suggestions of experience ; but who shall say that 
 there is one way, and only one, of balancing or 
 emphasising colour ; or that a delightful effect of 
 wall decoration may not be produced without 
 upward gradation of colour, and without any severity 
 of form whatever ? 
 
 Design is so difficult that every hint, however 
 slight, is valuable ; but all dogma is insupportable : 
 the old work, on which it pretends to be founded, 
 was inspired by nothing of the kind. The cultivated 
 instinct of the artist must be its own law. Let him 
 dare to be true to his artistic conscience, and he can 
 afford to despise the theorist and all his works. 
 
 It is impossible to reconcile all the claims of form 
 and colour. The two work often together to their 
 mutual gain. But, however friendly the rivalry 
 between them, it is always rivalry, and each claims 
 for itself something that the other would fain deny 
 to it. It is seldom that they are found together in 
 
Form and Colour. 
 
 14^ 
 
 69. Hard form to be softened by very subdued colour. 
 
142 Every -day Art. 
 
 equal perfection ; rather it would seem as if absolute 
 perfection of the one were only to be obtained by 
 some sacrifice of the other. There are, and have 
 been in all times, men who in their work aim at 
 combining the two qualities equally, and who have 
 attained in both a measure of success ; but they are 
 just the men who fail to satisfy, either colourists in 
 the matter of colour, or draughtsmen in the matter 
 of form. And with respect to decorative art, what 
 remains to us of ancient ornament goes to show that 
 the masters of form are often those from whom the 
 secret of colour is hidden, and that colourists are as 
 frequently half contemptuous of form, making use 
 of it merely to assist them in their effect of colour. 
 
 Perhaps the very pre-eminence of the Greeks in 
 form (70) was in some measure due to a defective 
 appreciation of the beauty of colour. Mr. Glad- 
 stone's theory of the colour-blindness of the ancient 
 Greeks may or may not be correct ; but at least it 
 seems certain that Homer did not describe colour 
 with the accuracy, nor yet with the appreciation 
 of its infinite variety, commonly to be found in 
 modern poetry. 
 
 Too much stress must not be laid upon the verbal 
 painting of colour by a poet, even though that poet 
 be Homer ; but it is at least corroborative of the more 
 direct testimony of archaic Greek art. We see in 
 that no vestiges of anything very beautiful or subtle 
 in colour ; nor in the work of centuries later, when 
 Greek art was in its prime, does the colour appear 
 
Form and Colour. 
 
 143 
 
 to have passed beyond tasteful tinting. Nothing 
 could well be more unpleasing (except to the imagi- 
 nation of a schoolboy) than certain Greek glassware, 
 
 70. Greek pot painting— form before colour. 
 
 " marbled " mixtures suggestive only of sweetstuff. 
 Nor is what we are told of the painting of their 
 
144 Every -day Art. 
 
 temples at all indicative of anything like tenderness 
 of tone. In their terra cotta they certainly reached 
 a stage of cultivated taste which, as far as it goes, 
 is perfectly satisfactory ; but it does not go much 
 beyond monotone. Failing all proof of that full 
 sense of colour which is so common among the 
 nations of the East, we may be allowed to suspect 
 tjiat taste was the highest point to which they 
 attained in this direction, a taste the more perfectly 
 under control because they had no passion for 
 colour. 
 
 It is scarcely logical to argue that, because the 
 Greeks were so eminent in many things, they must 
 have been pre-eminent in all. The fairer inference 
 is that success in one direction was attained by 
 a concentration of purpose that disregarded all 
 counter-attractions. Even in the poetry of the 
 Greeks, is it not mainly the form that is so ad- 
 mirable? Both evidence and presumption point to 
 the fact that in Greek art perfection of form was 
 not allied with equally splendid colour. Perhaps it 
 could not have been otherwise, and the perfect purity 
 of form was owing to perfect singleness of aim. 
 
 Colour, with its sensuous charm, did something 
 towards blinding the artists of ancient Rome to the 
 value and beauty of pure form. Though their work 
 may have been, in a sense, a debasement of Greek 
 art, we must admit at least that it was richer. The 
 purity of Greek art has sometimes the air of being 
 slightly cold-blooded ; and there are moods in which 
 
Form- and Colour. 145 
 
 one can sympathise with the Romans losing patience 
 with its calm faultlessness, and breaking out into 
 reckless excess. 
 
 In the Renaissance the culmination of colour 
 was accompanied by almost equal magnificence of 
 form ; but the latter had not the refinement of the 
 best Greek art ; and, certainly so far as ornament 
 was concerned, the purest form was always in 
 monochrome, carved in wood or marble, or wrought 
 in metal. 
 
 The ancient Egyptians pitched their chromatic 
 scale in a higher key than the Greeks, if we may 
 judge by the painting on the mummy cases ; but 
 it is not luxurious at its best, and it is more than 
 probable that it was originally much cruder than 
 it is now that the varnish which preserves it is 
 yellow with age. The quality which most impresses 
 us in Egyptian ornament is its dignified restraint. 
 
 Where colour is indeed superlatively fine, as in 
 the art of China, it reigns alone. The forms em- 
 ployed in Chinese ornament (66) fulfil their inten- 
 tion ; they afford scope for harmony which could 
 not be nearly so readily obtained by the use of 
 shapelier masses ; but in themselves they are not 
 remarkable for grace. Plainly draughtsmanship 
 was never the forte of the Chinese. 
 
 The superiority of the Japanese in this respect is 
 about in proportion to their inferiority in the colour 
 sense. Even the Japanese have rather an apprecia- 
 tion of what is essential and expressive than of what 
 
 L 
 
146 Every-day Art. 
 
 is graceful in form ; they select always those lines 
 which are characteristic in preference to those which 
 are beautiful. 
 
 Never was the balance between form and colour 
 held so evenly as in the hands of the artists, what- 
 ever their race, who are responsible for what is 
 called " Arab '' art. The forms in use among them 
 are, without doubt, far less pure than the Greek, 
 and the colour is wanting in what may be called 
 emphasis ; but it would be hard to find ornament in 
 which both qualities are at once so good in them- 
 selves and so harmoniously combined as in the 
 surface decoration of, for example, the Alhambra. 
 Neither is sacrificed to the other ; we are even left 
 in doubt as to which of the two was the predomi- 
 nating influence in designj 
 
 Gothic art comes more nearly home to us. But 
 with all our reverence for the grandeur of mediaeval 
 architecture, it must be confessed that even the 
 most beautiful forms of thirteenth century ornament 
 are rude in comparison with Greek or Renaissance 
 detail, whilst the finest colour of the period was 
 associated with forms the very reverse of beautiful . 
 The most ardent admirer of Early-English glass- 
 painting will not claim for the stiff-jointed, splay- 
 footed saints of the period any other merit of form 
 than that of embodying fine colour ; and any 
 colourist who has studied old glass must acknow- 
 ledge that many of its most magnificent effects are 
 due, in part at least, to time and accident. The 
 
Form and Colour. 147 
 
 action of the elements has corroded and roughened 
 the surface of the glass, in such a way as to refract 
 the light transmitted through it as a smooth surface 
 could not ; and the mellowness of old glass is in no 
 small measure due to this. To some extent it is 
 due also to the lichen that encrusts it on the out- 
 side, to the monster cobwebs that fall in dusky 
 curtains from the bars of windows out of reach, to 
 the thick setting of accumulated dust and dirt round 
 every lead, from which the colours shine out with 
 jewel-like brilliance: even the accident of capri- 
 cious mending, patching, and misplacement of glass, 
 by glaziers before the days of " restoration," has 
 something to do with it. Admitting all the beauty 
 of old glass we cannot take it as proof of the 
 universal excellence of Gothic colour. The illu- 
 minated manuscripts, preserved with a care that is 
 less than kind, tell a different tale, a tale for the 
 most part of a crudity that can only be described 
 as childish. Nor do the remains of mediaeval wall- 
 painting give us a very high idea of the colour sense 
 of the artists. Their safety lay in the discreet use 
 of ochre and other simple earths, with which they 
 could not go far wrong. 
 
 It is not here the purpose, however, to disparage 
 Gothic or any other art, but to show that the 
 perfections of form and colour are^ldom twin-born. 
 Nowadays, as always, an artist according to his 
 idiosyncrasy, looks upon form as a vehicle for 
 colour, or upon colour as it may influence form. 
 
148 Every -day Art. 
 
 His best chance of success in the one is in the 
 subordination of the other ; and it behoves him 
 to know clearly which it is that he desires to 
 attain, and to give his mind to that, not ignoring 
 the other, nor being content to do work that is in 
 any respect less than good, but doing always the 
 best that is compatible with his main purpose. 
 
 It is characteristic of strength not to believe in 
 the impossible. But much modern art fails because 
 it attempts too much— seeks to combine qualities 
 which are irreconcilable, the one, it may be, counter- 
 acting the other. In art, as elsewhere, singleness 
 of aim is essential to success. To spread yourself 
 in two directions is to run a double risk of failure. 
 The fate of those who would serve two masters was 
 long since foretold. 
 
 LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 
 STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING ^CROSS. 
 
A LIST OF STANDARD BOOKS 
 
 ON 
 
 ORNAMENT & DECORATION, 
 
 INCLUDING 
 
 FURNITURE, WOOD-CARVING, METAL WORK, &c., 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 B. r. BATSFORD, 
 
 94, HIGH HOLBORN, LONDON, W.C. 
 
 ^^* Books in this List are oifered at Net Discount Prices, and will be 
 forwarded POST THEE on receipt of remittance with order. 
 
 A HANDBOOK OF ORNAMENT.— With 300 Plates, contain- 
 ing about 3,000 Illustrations of the Elements and Application 
 of Decoration to Objects. By F. S. Meyer, Professor at the 
 School of Applied Art, Karlsruhe. Third English Edition, 
 revised by Hugh Stannus, Lecturer on Applied Art 
 at the Royal College of Art, South Kensington. Thick 8vo, 
 cloth gilt, gilt top, price 12s. 6d., net 10s. 
 
 *' A Library, a Museum, an Encyclopsedia and an Art School in one. To rival it as a 
 book of reference, one must fill a bookcase. The quality of the drawings is unusually high, 
 the choice of examples is singularly good. * . , The work is practically an epitome of a 
 hundred Work's on Design."— J^wofro. 
 
 " The author's acquaintance with ornament amazes, and his three thousand subjects are 
 gleaned from the finest which the world affords. As a treasury of ornament drawn to scale in 
 all styles, and derived from genuine concrete objects, we have nothing in England which will 
 not appear as poverty-stricken as compared with Professor Meyer's book." — Architect. 
 
 The book is a mine of wealth even to an ordinary reader, while to the Student of Art 
 and Archaeology it is simply indispensable as a reference book, We know of no one work of 
 its kind that approaches it for comprehensiveness and historical accuracy." — Science and Art. 
 
 A HANDBOOK OF ART SMITHING.— For the use of 
 Practical Smiths, Designers and others, and in Art and Tech- 
 nical Schools. By F. S. Meyer, Author of "A Handbook 
 of Ornament." Translated from the Second German Edition. 
 With an Introduction by J. Starkie Gardner. Containing 
 214 Illustrations. Demy 8vo, cloth, price 6s., net 5^'. 
 
 Both the Artistic and Practical Branches of the subject are dealt with, 
 and the Illustrations give selected Examples of Ancient and Modern 
 Ironwork. The Volume thus fills the long-existing want of a Manual 
 on Ornamental Ironwork, and it is hoped will prove of value to all 
 interested in the subject. 
 "Charmingly produced. . . . It is really a most excellent manual, crowded with 
 examples of ancient work, for the most part extremely well selected."— /"A* Studio. 
 
 " Professor Meyer's work is a useful historical manual on art smithing, based on a scientific 
 classification of the subject, that will be .of service to all smitns, designers, and students of 
 technical and art schools. The illustrations are well drawn aad numerous.' —Building NeiX'S. 
 " Mr. Batsford maintains in this manual the well earned reputation of his firm of publish- 
 ing good, sound, and highly practicable books on the decorative arts and handicrafts. 
 . . , . Replete with cuts of well-chosen specimens of the leading styles and applications 
 of the craft." — The Athenceuju. 
 
 *'A VOLUME WHICH SHOULD HE IN ALL THE ART AND TECHNICAL SCHOOLS IN THE 
 
 KINGDOM, and which will be found highly instructive by those artistic amateurs who may 
 feel inclined to become art workmen in iron." — The English Mechanic. 
 
MR. LEWIS F. DAY'S 
 TEXT BOOKS OF ORNAMENTAL DESIGN. 
 
 SOME PRINCIPLES OF EVERY-DAY ART.— Introduc- 
 tory Chapters on the Arts not Fine. Forming a 
 Prefatory Volume to the Series of Text Books. Second 
 Edition, revised, containing ,70 Illustrations (Third Thousand). 
 Crown 8vo, cloth, price sj'. (>d., net 2,s. ' • 
 
 " Authoritative as coming from a writer whose mastery of the subjects is not to be dis- 
 puted, and who is generous in imparting the knowledge he acquired with difficulty. Mr. Day 
 has taken much trouble with the new edition." — Architect. 
 
 ".A. good artist, and a sound thinker, Mr. Day has produced a book of sterling value." 
 
 Magazine of Art. 
 
 THE ANATOMY OF PATTERN.— Containing : I. Intro- 
 ductory. II. Pattern Dissections. III. Practical Pattern 
 Planning. IV. The "Drop" Pattern. V. Skeleton Plans. 
 VI. Appropriate Pattern. Fourth Edition (Seventh Thou- 
 sand), revised, with 41 full-page Illustrations. Crown 8vo, 
 cloth, price 3 J. dd., net y. 
 
 ". . . . Tllere are few men who know the science of their profession better or can 
 teach it as well as Mr. Lewis Day ; few also who are more gifted as practical decorators ; 
 and in anatomising pattern in the way he has done in this manual — a way beautiful as well 
 as useful — he has performed a service not only to the students of his profession, but also to 
 the public." — Academy. 
 
 THE PLANNING OF ORNAMENT.— Containing : I. Intro- 
 ductory. II. The Use of the Border. III. Within the 
 Border. IV. Some Alternatives in Design. V. On the 
 Filling of the Circle and other Shapes. VI. Order and 
 Accident. Third Edition (Fifth Thousand), further revised, 
 with 41 full-page Illustrations, many of which have been 
 re-drawn. Crown 8vo, cloth, price 3J-. dd., net y. 
 
 " Contains many apt and well-drawn illustrations ; it is a highly comprehensive, com- 
 pact, and intelligent treatise on a subject which is more difficult to treat than outsiders are 
 likely to think. It is a capital little book, from which no tyro (it is addressed to improvable 
 minds) can avoid gaining a good deal." — Athen^uin. 
 
 THE APPLICATION OF ORNAMENT.— Containing: I. 
 The Rationale of the Conventional. II. What is Implied by 
 Repetition. III. Where to Stop in Ornament. IV. Style 
 and Handicraft. V. The Teaching of the Tool. VI. Some 
 Superstitions. Third Edition (Fourth Thousand), further 
 revised, with 48 full-page Illustrations and 7 Woodcuts in the 
 text. Crown 8vo, cloth, price y. 6d., net 3^. 
 
 "A most worthy supplement to the former work, and a distinct gain to the art student 
 who has already applied his art knowledge in a practical manner, or who hopes yet to do so." 
 
 Science and Art. 
 
 ORNAMENTAL DESIGN. — Comprising the above Three 
 Books, " Anatomy of Pattern," " Planning of Orna- 
 ment," and "Application of Ornament," handsomely 
 bound in one volume, cloth gilt, price 10s. 6d., net 8s. 6d. 
 
MR. LEWIS F. DAY'S WORKS— continued. 
 
 NATURE IN ORNAMENT With 123 full-page Plates and 
 
 1 9 2 Illustrations in the text. Third Edition (Fifth Thousand). 
 Thick crown 8vo, in handsome cloth binding, richly gilt, 
 price I2J. 6d., net 10^. 
 
 Contents : I. Introductory. II. Ornament in Nature. 
 III. Nature in Ornament. IV. The Simplification of 
 Natural Forms. V. The Elaboration of Natural Forms. 
 VI. Consistency in the Modification of Nature. VII. Parallel 
 Renderings. VIII. More Parallels. IX. Tradition in Design. 
 X. Treatment. XI. Animals in Ornament. XII. The 
 Element of the Grotesque. XIII. Still Life in Ornament. 
 XIV. Symbolic Ornament. 
 
 "Amongst the best of our few good ornamental designers is Mr. Lewis F. Day, who is 
 the author of several books on ornamental art. ' Nature in Ornament ' is the latest of 
 these, and is probably the best. The treatise should be in the hands of every student of orna- 
 mental design. It is profusely and admirably illustrated, and well printed." — Magctziiie of Art. 
 
 "A book more beautiful for its illustrations, or one more helpful to Students of Art, can 
 hardly be imagined." — Queen. 
 
 WINDOWS.— A BOOK ABOUT STAINED AND PAINTED 
 GLASS. By Lewis F. Day. Containing 410 pages, including 
 50 full-page Plates, and upwards of 200 Illustrations in the text, 
 all of Old Examples. Large 8vo, cloth gilt. Price 2ii-. net. 
 
 " Contains a more complete popular account — technical and historical — of stained and 
 painted glass than has previously appeared in this country." — The Times. 
 
 " The book is a masterpiece in its way. . . amply illustrated and carefully printed ; 
 it will long remain an authority on its subject." — Tfie Art youmal. 
 
 " All for whom the subject of stained glass possesses an interest and a charm, will peruse 
 these pages with pleasure and profit." — The Morning Post. 
 
 " Mr. Day has done a worthy piece of work iu more than his usual admirable manner 
 . . . the illustrations are all good and some the best black-and-white drawings of stained 
 glass yet produced." — The Studio. 
 
 Just Published. 
 
 ALPHABETS, OLD AND NEW. Containing 150 complete 
 Alphabets, 30 Series of Numerals, Numerous Facsimiles of 
 Ancient Dates. Selected and arranged by Lewis F. Day. 
 Preceded by a short account of the Development of the 
 Alphabet. With Modern Examples specially Designed by 
 Walter Crane, Patten Wilson, A. Beresford Pite, the 
 Author, and others. C'rown 8vo, art linen. Price 3.f. 6^. 
 net. 
 A very comprehensive and varied series of examples of lettering, nume- 
 rals, &c. , at a popular price. 
 
 A small remainder, just reduced in price. 
 
 ANIMALS IN ORNAMENT. By Professor G. Sturm. Con- 
 taining 30 large collotype plates, printed in tint, of designs 
 suitable for Friezes, Panels, Borders, Wall-papers, Carving, 
 and all kinds of Surface Decoration, tSjc. Large folio in 
 portfolio, price i8.f. net (published ^,^1 \qs.). 
 
 A new and useful series of clever designs, showing how animal forms 
 may be adapted to decorative purposes with good eHcct. 
 
yusi Filljlisficd.' 
 THE DECORATION OF HOfSES. By Edith Wharton 
 and Ogden Codman, Architect. ■ 204 pages of text, with 56 
 full-page Photographic Plates of .Views of Rooms, Doors, 
 Ceilings, Fireplaces, various pieces of Furniture, &c., from the 
 Renaissance period. Large square 8vo, cloth gilt, price 
 1 2 J. 6d. net. 
 
 Contents : Introduction. I. The Historical Tradition. II. Rooms in 
 General. III. Walls. IV. Doors. V. Windows. VI. Fireplaces. VII. Ceilings 
 and Floors. VIII. Entrance and Vestibule. IX. Hall and Stairs. X. The 
 Drawing Room, Boudoir, and Morning Roam. XI. Gala Rooms : Ball 
 Room, Saloon, Music Room, and Gallery. XII. The Library, Smoking 
 Room, and "Den," XIII. The Dining Room. XIV. Bedrooms. XV. The 
 School Room and Nurseries. XVI. Bric-a-Brac. Conclusion. 
 
 This volume, written by an American Lady Artist, and an Architect, 
 describes and illustrates in a very interesting way the Decorative treatment 
 of Rooms during the Renaissance period, and deduces principles for the 
 decoration, furnishing, and arrangements of Modern Houses. 
 
 DETAILS OF GOTHIC WOOD CARVING.— Being a 
 
 Series of Drawings from original work of the Fourteenth and 
 Fifteenth Centuries. By Franklyn A. Crallan. Contain- 
 ing 34 large Photo-lithographic Plates, with introductory and 
 descriptive text. Large 4to, in handsome cloth portfolio, or 
 bound in cloth gilt, price 2'is., net 24^. 
 
 "The examples are carefully drawn to a large size . well selected and very well 
 
 executed. '- — The Bnilder. 
 
 Just Published. 
 
 THE HISTORIC STYLES OF ORNAMENT. Containing 
 1,500 examples from all countries and all periods, exhibited 
 on 100 Plates, mostly printed in gold and colours. With 
 historical and descriptive text translated from the German of 
 H. DoLMETSCH. Folio, handsomely bound in cloth, gilt 
 price ;^i 5.r. net. 
 
 This w ork has been designed to serve as a practical guide for the purpose 
 of showing the development of Ornament, and the application of colour to it in 
 various countries through the epochs of history. The work illustrates not only 
 Flat Ornament, but also many Decorative Objects, such as Metal-Work, 
 Pottery and Porcelain, Lace, Enamel, Mosaic, Illumination, 
 Stained Glass, Jewellery, Bookbinding, &c., showing the application 
 of Ornament to Industrial Art. 
 
Published with the Sanction of the Science and Art Department . 
 FRENCH WOOD CARVINGS FROM THE NATIONAL 
 MUSEUMS. — A Series of Examples printed in Collotype 
 from Photographs specially taken from the Carvings direct. 
 Edited by Eleanor Rowe. Parti.: Late 15th and Early 
 i6th Century Examples; Part II.: i6th Century Work; 
 Part III. : 17th and 1 8th Centuries. The Three Series Com- 
 plete, each containing 18 large folio Plates, with descriptive 
 letterpress. Folio, in portfolios, price 12s. each net; or 
 handsomely bound in one volume, ^2 y. net. 
 
 " Students of the Art of Wood Carving will find a mine of inexhaustible treasures in this 
 series of illustrations of French Wood Carvings. .' . . Each plate is a work of art in 
 itself; the distribution of light and shade is admirably managed, and the differences in relief 
 are faithfully indicated, while every detail is reproduced with a cle.-irness that will prove in- 
 valuable to the student. Sections are given with several of the plates." — The Qlteen, 
 
 _ " Needs only to be seen to be purchased by all interested in the craft, whetiier archaeo- 
 logically or practically." — The SttuNo. 
 
 HINTS ON WOOD CARVING FOR BEGINNERS.— By 
 Eleanor Rowe. Fourth Edition, revised and enlarged,, 
 Illustrated. 8vo, sewed, price is. in paper covers, or bound 
 in cloth, price is. 6d. 
 
 "The most useful and practical small book oh wood-carving we know of." — B-uiider. 
 " . . . Is a useful little book, full of sound directions and good suggestibrts." 
 
 Magazine 9/ Art. 
 
 HINTS ON CHIP CARVING.— (Class Teaching and other 
 Northern Styles.) By Eleanor Rowe. 40 Illustrations. 8vo, 
 sewed, price i^-. in paper covers, or in cloth, price i,r. dd. 
 
 " A capital manual of instruction in a craft that ought to be most popular." 
 
 Saturday Review. 
 
 A Facsimile reproduction of one of the rarest and most remarkable 
 Books of Designs ever pttblished in England. 
 A NEW BOOKE OF DRAWINGS OF IRONWORKE.— 
 Invented and Desined by John Tijou. Containing severall 
 sortes of Iron Worke, as Gates, Frontispieces, ■ Balconies, 
 Staircases, Pannells, &c., of which the most part hath been 
 wrought at the Royall Building of Hampton Court, &c. 
 All for the use of them that worke iron in per- 
 fection AND with art. (Sold by the author in London, 
 1693.) Containing 20 folio Plates. With Introductory Note 
 and Descriptions of the Plates by J. Starkie Gardner. 
 Folio, bound in boards, old style, price 25^-. net. 
 Only 150 copies were printed for England, and very few now remain. 
 An original copy is priced at £/^ by Mr. Quaritch, the renowned bookseller. 
 
 DECORATIVE WROUGHT IRONWORK OF THE 17TH 
 AND i8th centuries.— By D. J. Ebbetts. Con- 
 taining 16 large Lithographic Plates, illustrating 70 English 
 examples of Screens, Grilles, Panels, Balustrades, &:c. Folio, 
 boards, cloth back, price izs. 6d., net io.f, 
 
PROGRESSIVE STUDIES AND DESIGNS FOR WOOD- 
 CARVERS. By Miss E. R. Plowden. With a Preface 
 by Miss Rowe. Consisting of five large folding sheets, of 
 Illustrations (drawn full size), of a variety of objects suitable 
 for Wood Carving. With descriptive text. Second Edition, 
 enlarged. 4to, in portfolio. Price ^s. net. 
 
 HEPPLEWHITE'S CABINET MAKER AND UPHOL- 
 STERER'S GUIDE; or Repository of Designs for every 
 article of Household Furniture in the newest and most 
 approved taste. A complete facsimile reproduction of this 
 rare work, containing nearly 300 charming Designs on 128 
 Plates. Small folio, bound in speckled cloth, gilt, old style, 
 price ;^2 lo;-. net. (1794.) Original copies when met with 
 fetch from jQi-j to £i&. 
 
 " A beautiful replica, which every admirer of the author and period should possess." — 
 'Bnildinff News, 
 
 CHIPPENDALE'S THE GENTLEMAN AND CABINET- 
 MAKER'S DIRECTOR.— A complete facsimile of the 
 3rd and rarest Edition, containing 200 Plates of Designs of 
 Chairs, Sofas, Beds and Couches, Tables, Library Book 
 Cases, Clock Cases, Stove Grates, &c., &c." Folio, strongly 
 bound in half-cloth, price ;£t, i^s. net. (1762.) , 
 
 SHERATON'S CABINET-MAKER and UPHOLSTERER'S 
 DRAWING-BOOK.— A complete Facsimile Reproduction 
 of the scarce Third Edition. With the rare Appendix and 
 Accompaniment complete. Containing in all 434 pages and 
 122 Plates. 4to, cloth, price ^2 10s. net. 
 
 EXAMPLES OF OLD FURNITURE, English and Foreign. 
 Drawn and described by Alfred Ernest Chancellor. 
 Containing 40 Photo-lithographic Plates exhibiting some 100 
 examples of Elizabethan, Stuart, Queen Anne, Georgian and 
 Chippendale furniture ; and an interesting variety of Conti- 
 nental work. With historical and descriptive notes. Large 
 4to, gilt, price £1 5^., net £1 is. 
 
 "In publishing his admirable collection of drawings of old furniture, Mr. Chancellor 
 secures the gratitude of all admirers of the consummate craftsmanship of the past. His 
 e_xample5_ are selected from a variety of sources with fine discrimination, all having an expres- 
 sion and individuality of their own — qualities that are so conspicuously lacking in the furni- 
 ture of our own day. It forms a very acceptable work." — The Morning Fo^. 
 
 SELECT FURNITURE IN ALL STYLES. A series of 70 
 Plates, containing over 200 Designs for Modern Furniture, 
 in the Queen Anne, Adam, Chippendale, Sheraton and 
 French Styles, illustrating all kinds of Dining and Drawing 
 room. Hall and Bedroom Furniture ; Draperies, Overmantels, 
 Boudoirs, &c. Compiled by Messrs. Timms and Webb. 
 Imperial 4to., cloth. Price ;4'i S'f' n^t. 
 
OLD CLOCKS AND WATCHES. Former Clock and 
 Watch Makers, and their Work. — Including an Account 
 of the Development of Horological Instruments from the 
 Earliest Mechanism, with Portraits of Masters of the Art, and 
 a Directory of over 5,000 Names of the Old Makers, with 
 Dates. By F. J. Britten. With numerous Illustrations of 
 Old Clocks and Watches, &c. , Cr. 8vo, cloth, price 5^. net. 
 
 FLAT ORNAMENT : A Pattern Book for Designers of 
 Textiles, Embroideries, Wall Papers, Inlays, &c., &c. 
 — 150 Plates, some printed in Colours, exhibiting upwards of 
 500 Historical Examples of Textiles, Embroideries, Paper 
 Hangings, Tile Pavements, Intarsia Work, &c. With some 
 Designs by Dr. Fischbach. Imperial 410 boards, cloth 
 back, price ;^ I 55., net 20s. 
 
 REMAINS OF ECCLESIASTICAL WOOD -WORK.— A 
 Series of Examples of Stalls, Screens, Book-Boards, Roofs, 
 Pulpits, &c., containing 21 Plates beautifully engraved on 
 Copper, from drawings by T. Talbot Bury, Archt. 4to, 
 half-bound, price los. 6d., net &s. 6d. 
 
 ANCIENT WOOD AND IRONWORK IN CAMBRIDGE. 
 — By AV. B. Redfarn, the Letterpress by John Willis 
 Clark. 29 folio Lithographed Plates drawn to a good scale. 
 Cloth gilt, a handsome volume, price loi-. 6d., net 8^-. 6d. 
 
 This Work, giving an interesting and useful series of Examples, is but 
 little known. Very few copies remain. 
 
 EXAMPLES OF ENGLISH MEDIEVAL FOLIAGE AND 
 COLOURED DECORATION. — By Jas. K. Colling, 
 Architect, F.R.I.B.A. Taken from Buildings of the Xllth 
 to the XVth Century. Containing 76 Lithographic Plates, 
 and 79 Woodcut Illustrations, with Text. Royal 4to, cloth, 
 gilt top, price iSj., net 155. (published at jQz 2s.). 
 
 PLASTERING— PLAIN AND DECORATIVE. A Practical 
 Treatise on the Art and Craft of Plastering and Modelling. 
 Including full descriptions of the various Tools, Materials, 
 Processes and Appliances employed. With over 50 full- 
 page Plates, and about 500 smaller Illustrations in the 
 Text. By William Millar. With an Introduction, treating 
 of the History of the Art, by G. T. Robinson, F.S. A. Thick 
 4to, cloth, containing 600 pages of text, price 185. net. 
 
 "This new and in many senses remarkable treatise . . unquestionably contains 
 
 an immense amount nf valuable iirst-hand information. . . * Millar on Plastering ' may 
 
 be expected to be the standard authority on the subject for many years to come. . . A 
 truly monumental work." — The Builder. 
 
 A HISTORY OF DESIGN IN PAINTED GLASS.— From 
 the Earliest Times to the end of the Seventeenth Century. 
 By N. H. J. Westlake, F.S.A. Containing four hundred 
 and sixty seven illustrations with historical text. Four 
 volumes, small folio, cloth, price ^5 io.f., net ;^4 8^. 
 
 f this valuable work. 
 
Just Published. 
 
 KING RENE'S HONEYNOON CABINET. A Monograph. 
 By John P. Seddon, Architect. Illustrated by lo photo- 
 graphic reproductions of the Cabinet, and the Panels, painted 
 by the late Sir E. Burne Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 
 and Ford Madox Brown. With a chapter on the 
 . Hereditary Earls of Anjou, by G. H. Birch, F.S.A. Large 
 8vo, cloth, price 5^. neti 
 
 This interesting little work has' been issued by the author to make 
 known and commemorate some early designs by the celebrated artists. 
 Very few copies are printed for sale. 
 
 DECORATIVE DESIGNS.— By Robert Adam. Transfers, 
 taken from the Original Drawings in the Soane Museum, by 
 R. Charles. Six fine large Plates of Ceilings, Scroll Orna- 
 ment, &c. Folded in \\'rapper, price 2S. 6d. net. 
 
 FURNITURE AND DECORATION IN ENGLAND 
 DURING THE THE XA^IIth CENTURY.— By J. 
 Aldam Heaton. Tavo volumes, each of two parts, bound in 
 four, large folio, cloth, price ;^ 7 -js. net. Containing upwards 
 of 150 plates of photographic reproductions from the 
 published designs of R. & J. Adam, C'hippendale, Hepple- 
 white, Sheraton, Shearer, Pergolesi, Cipriani, Darly, Johnson, 
 Richardson, and all great English designers and cabinet- 
 makers of the period. 
 
 This worlc forms an encyclopaedic and , almost inexhaustible treasury 
 of reference for all Furniture Designers, Painters, Interior Decorators, 
 Cabinet-makers, &c., since no artist of irnportance is unrepresented, and 
 a fair selection is in every case given of his work. 
 
 The subjects illustrated are of the most varied description, and include 
 chairs, tables, sofas, bookcases, mirrors; grates, clock-cases, and all 
 ■ articles of furniture, and also cornices, capitals, .friezes, ceilings, chimney- 
 pieces, decorative panels, schemes for interior decoration, &c. 
 
 EXAMPLES OF MOSAIC PAVING.— From Rubbings of 
 Floors at Pompeii and Venice, with additional Patterns from 
 Rome and Palermo. By Arthur T. Bolton, A.R.I.B.A. 
 Thirteen large plates, folio boards, including the Title Page, 
 price 21S. net. 
 
 . The object of the work is to demonstrate the actual technical methods 
 of the old examples, and to give to Architects, Mosaic Workers and 
 others, a reliable and useful guide in working out their designs in accord- 
 ance with the true principles of Mosaic Paving. 
 
 The size of the plates is half that of the original, drawings, which are 
 the exact size of the rubbings taken on the spot. 
 
 Only 100 Copies were printed, of which very few reviain unsold, and early 
 application is necessary to secure a copy. 
 
A GRAMMAR OF JAPANESE ORNAMENT AND DE- 
 SIGN. — Illustrated by 65 Plates, many in Gold and Colours, 
 representing all Classes of Natural and Conventional Forms, 
 drawn from the Originals, with introductory, descriptive, and 
 analytical text. By T. W. Cutler, F.R.I.B.A. Imperial 
 4to, in elegant cloth binding, price £^1 ds., ^\ \%s. net. 
 
 "The beauty of JMr. Cutler's folio pages of illustrations, the systematic order of their 
 arrangement, and the production of a certain proportion of the plates in the rich gold and 
 colours of the original Japanese embroidery, give instructive value as well as pictorial charm 
 to this beautiful work." — Edinburgh Review, 
 
 NATIVE PRINTED JAPANESE ART BOOKS. 
 JAPANESE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DESIGN. 
 
 Book I. — Containing over 1,500 engraved curios, and 
 most ingenious Geometric Patterns of Circles, Medallions, 
 &c., comprising Conventional Details of Plants, Flowers, 
 Leaves, Petals, also Birds, Fans, Animals, Key Patterns, &c., 
 &c. Oblong 1 2mo, fancy covers, price 2s. net. 
 
 Book II. — Containing over 600 most original and effective 
 Designs for Diaper Ornament, giving the base lines to the 
 design, also artistic Miniature Picturesque Sketches. Oblong 
 i2mo, price 2s. net. 
 
 These books exhibit the varied charm and originality of conception of 
 Japanese Ornament, and form an inexhaustible field of design. 
 
 A DELIGHTFUL SERIES OF STUDIES OF BIRDS, in 
 MOST Characteristic and Life-like Attitudes, sur- 
 rounded vi^iTH appropriate Foliage and Flowers. — By 
 the celebrated Japanese Artist, Bairei Kono. In three 
 Books, 8vo, each containing 36 pages of highly artistic and 
 decorative Illustrations, printed in tints. Bound in fancy 
 paper covers, price 105. net. 
 
 " In attitude and gesture and expression, these Birds, whether perching or soaring, 
 swooping or brooding, are admirable," — Magazine of Art. 
 
 A NEW SERIES OF BIRD AND FLOWER STUDIES. 
 By Watanabe Sietei, the acknowledged leading living 
 Artist in Japan. In 3 Books, containing numerous exceed- 
 ingly Artistic Sketches in various tints, 8vo, fancy covers. 
 Price IOJ-. net. 
 
 OLD JAPANESE EMBROIDERIES, TEXTILE PATTERNS 
 Etc. Five Native Books, containing upwards of 1,000 
 wonderful Illustrations of Conventionalised Plants, Flowers, 
 Animals, Birds, &c., and of Geometrical and other Patterns 
 most useful for all kinds of Decorative Work. 5 vols., 8vo, 
 fancy paper covers, price 10/. net. 
 
10 
 
 Just Publishid. 
 THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE RENAISSANCE IN 
 ITALY. — A General View for the Use of Students and 
 Others. By W. J. Anderson, A.R.I.B.A., Director of Archi- 
 tecture, Glasgow School of Art. Second Edition, revised 
 and enlarged. Containing 64 full-page Plates, mostly repro- 
 duced from Photographs, and 100 Illustrations in text. 
 Large 8vo, cloth gilt, price izj. 6(/. net. 
 
 " A delightful and scholarly work . . . veryfullyillustrated."— /o?i?-?/rt/^./,5.-4, 
 
 A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE for the Student, 
 Craftsman and Amateur. — Being a Comparative View of 
 the Historical Styles from the Earliest Period. By Banister 
 Fletcher, F.R.I. B. A., Professor of Architecture in King's 
 College, London, and B. F. Fletcher, A.R.I.B.A. Con- 
 taining 300 pages, with 115 Collotype Plates, mostly from 
 large Photographs, and other Illustrations in the text. Third 
 Edition, revised. Cr. 8vo, cloth gilt, price 125. 6d., net loj'. 
 
 '* We shall be amazed if it is not immediately recognised and adopted as par excellence 
 the student's manual of the history of architecture." — The Architect. 
 
 THE ORDERS OF ARCHITECTURE : GREEK, ROMAN 
 AND ITALIAN.— Edited with Notes by R. Phen^ Spiers, 
 F.S.A., F.R.I.B.A. Third Edition, revised and enlarged, 
 containing 26 Plates. 4to, cloth, price \os. 6d., net 8.f. 6d. 
 
 " A most useful work for architectural .students. . . . Mr. Spiers has done excellent 
 service in editing this work, and his notes on the plates are very appropriate and useful." 
 
 British Architect. 
 
 DETAIL AND ORNAMENT OF THE ITALIAN 
 RENAISSANCE.— Drawn by G. J. Oakeshott, Architect, 
 A.R.I.B.A. Containing 40 Photo-lithographic Plates, illus- 
 trating some of the choicest Examples of the Architectural 
 Detail and Ornament of the Renaissance Period in Italy. 
 Folio, strongly bound in buckram, price £^\ 12J., net £,\ ds. 
 
 "Includes some exquisite examples of Renaissance art, illustrated almost entirely in 
 th6 form of geometrical drawings." — British Architect. 
 
 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE AND ORNAMENT 
 IN SPAIN. — A Series 'of Examples selected from the purest 
 executed between the years 1 500-1 560. By Andrew N. 
 Prentice, A.R.I.B.A. Containing 60 beautiful Plates, repro- 
 duced by Photo-lithography and Photo Process from the 
 author's drawings, of Perspective Views and Geometrical 
 Drawings, and details, in Stone, Wood, and Metal. With 
 short descriptive text. Fplio, handsomely bound in cloth 
 gilt, price £^2 icf., net £,2 2s. 
 
 " For the drawing and production of this book one can have no words but praise. , . 
 It is a pleasure to have so good a record of such admirable Architectural Drawing, free firm 
 and delicate." — British Architect. 
 
 B. T. BATSFORDr94, HIGH~HOrBORN, LONDON.