\ s ORNAMENTAL DESIGN, 1 ■ EMBRACING THE ANATOMY OF PATTERN. (SECOND EDITION.) THE PLANNING OF ORNAMENT. (SECOND EDITION.) THE APPLICATION OF ORNAMENT. LEWIS F. DAY. WITH ONE HUNDRED & SIXTEEN FULL PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS. LONDON: B. T. BATSFORD, 52, HIGH HOLBORN. 1890. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2018 with funding from Getty Research Institute https://archive.org/details/ornamentaldesignOOdayl_O (plate 1 TEXT BOOKS OF ORNAMENTAL DESIGN. THE ANATOMY of PATTERN. BY LEWIS F. DAY, AUTHOR OF ‘EVERY-DAY ART,’ ETC. SECOND EDITION, REVISED. ILLUSTRATED. LONDON: B. T. BATSFORD, 52, HIGH HOLBORN. 1889. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. In the preface to the first edition of the Anatomy of Pattern, I explained how the recollection of my own want of some practical direction in the first steps towards orna¬ mental design, had led me to think, that there must be students who would find it helpful to have set before them plainly what I had pain¬ fully to puzzle out for myself. The call for a second edition leads me to the gratifying conclusion that my text-book did actually fill a vacant place on the student’s book-shelf. The occasion of reprinting has afforded also an opportunity for revision. Wherever a passage has seemed to be open to mis¬ understanding I have made it more precise. I have added, here an explanation, there a diagram. Some of the plates which came out unsatisfactorily in the first edition have been worked on or altered : one new one has been added. VI Preface . It should be understood, however, that the illustrations are literally illustrations. It has naturally been endeavoured to make them in themselves as interesting as might be ; but it is only as diagrams that they have any claim to insertion at all. Indeed, if they fulfil their functipn, it should be possible to gain from the study of the plates alone, apart from anything that is said on the subject, some notion of what pattern construction is. Throughout this text-book (as throughout the series) I have assumed no particular knowledge on the part of the reader, but only that he wants to know. It follows from the very rudimentary nature of my subject, that is not by any means free from the difficulties which beset all beginnings whatsoever. Of course no pains of mine will save the student the pains of study ; but I have done my best to present to him, in as few words as possible, the sum of my experience—for what that may be worth at second hand. Lewis F. Day. 13, Mecklenburg Square, London, IV. C. April 24 th, 1889. TABLE OF CONTENTS, PAGE I.—Introductory .. .. . 1 II. —Pattern Dissection.. •• 8 III. —Practical Pattern Planning . 25 IV. —The “Drop” Pattern . 34 V. —Skeleton Plans .. .. . 4° VI.—Appropriate Pattern 48 DESCRIPTIVE LIST OF PLATES. 1. THE CONSTRUCTION OF GOTHIC TRACERY PATTERNS— Showing the square, diamond, hexagon, circular, or other plan on which elaborate tracery is built. 2. the square —Checks and other diapers built on cross- lines. 3. the lattice and the diamond— Plaids, zigzags, &c., built on cross-lines. 4. frets, &c.—Showing their construction on a network of cross-lines. 5. all-over pattern— Showing the cross-lines upon which it is planned. 6. the triangle —Diapers of star, hexagon, and lozenge shapes, built up on the lines of the equilateral triangle. 7. the triangle —Diapers composed of the equilateral triangle and its compounds. 8. the hexagon —Honeycomb and other diapers based upon the hexagon and its compound. 9. the octagon —Simple octagon diapers and the lines of their construction. 10. arab lattice pattern —Dissected, and their anatomy laid bare. 11. curvilinear patterns —Showing the construction of the wave, the ogee, the net, &c. b X List of Plates. 12. diapers OF CIRCLES —With lines showing the points from which they are struck. 13. other circular diaper FORMS —Produced by inter¬ secting circles. 14. free Japanese diaper —The repetition of geometric forms not geometrically disposed. 15. the scale pattern —Together with ogee, cusped, and othfer shapes derived from it. 16. A STAR pattern —Showing six different ways of arriving at a simple diaper. 17. ITALIAN damask —Showing its construction upon the lines of the scale pattern. 18. HENRI 11. BOOK cover —Showing result of reversing, and again reversing, the pattern. 19. some pattern plans —Showing (A) the square plan, (B) the dropped parallelogram plan. 20. Sicilian silk —With the cross lines on which the design is built, and the diagonal lines it assumes. 21. tapestry of the xvth century —With the rect¬ angular unit of repeat, in which the pattern is turned over, after the manner of the weaver. 22. late-gothic velvet —Showing horizontal effect of pattern constructed upon the lines of the ogee or hexagon. 23. wall-paper pattern —Showing ogee lines on which it is planned. 24. a drop-pattern —In which the construction is not at first apparent. List of Plates. xi 25. map —Showing three plans, on either of which the same simple pattern may be produced. 26. various drop-patterns —Showing the effect of the drop according to its length, &c. 27. diagonal damask pattern —Showing its construc¬ tion on the diamond, which is not apparent. 27A. diagram —How to prove a drop design. 28. ARAB TILE AND LATTICE PATTERNS —Showing the simple means by which intricacy is produced. 29. DESIGN —Exemplifying the intentional confusion of forms. 30 WALL-PAPER DESIGN —Showing a “ drop ” in the ornamental scroll, whilst the grotesque creatures in¬ troduced follow the lines of the square block. 31. PERSIAN TEXTILE —Showing the lines of the double square on which the pattern is constructed, as distinct from the lines it takes. 32. foliated scroll —A design made on square lines, yet assuming an ogee shape. 33 ITALIAN SILK —Showing ogee, hexagon, or diamond plan. 34. SET PATTERN —Explanatory of economy in weaving. 35. DAMASK —On the plan of waved upright lines, crossed by horizontal bands of rosettes. ; THE ANATOMY OF PATTERN. i. INTRODUCTORY. The dictionary scarcely helps us to a defini¬ tion of the word pattern, in the somewhat technical sense in which it is used by the designer. Inasmuch as a pattern signifies a “speci¬ men,” one might argue that repetition is im¬ plied in ornamental pattern. But inasmuch as any “shape or model for imitation” is quite as strictly speaking a pattern, one cannot exactly define pattern as repeating ornament. Nevertheless, pattern mostly comes of re¬ petition. Many a pattern bears on the very face of it the evidence that it grew directly out of the necessity of repetition. It is more than probable that some me¬ chanical necessity gave rise to all geometric B 2 The Anatomy of Pattern. pattern ; certainly it is impossible to plait, net, knit, weave, or otherwise mechanically make, without producing pattern. It may be infinitesimally small, as in weaving, where the warp and weft are often invisible to the naked eye; but it is there ; and all that re¬ mains for us to do is, to efface it as far as we can, or to make the best of it. Out of the determination to make the best of it has grown much of the most beautiful pattern-work. To neglect this source of in¬ spiration, therefore, to say nothing of the attempt to suppress it, would seem to be wasteful of opportunity to the very last degree. So certainly will the repetition of parts result in some sort of pattern, that one may say, wherever there is ordered repetition there is pattern. Take any form you please, and repeat it at regular intervals, and you have, whether you want it or no, a pattern, as surely as the recurrence of sounds will pro¬ duce rhythm or cadence. The distribution of the parts need not even be regular. The wave marks on the sand, the veins of marble, the grain of wood, the crystallisation of the breath upon the window- Introductory. 3 panes, the curls-of the hair, the very features of the human face-resolve themselves into pattern. So distinctly is this last the case, that the ornamentist finds himself con¬ tinually devising, malgre lui , patterns that remind one of faces. There is even room for speculation whether it may not have been with a view to escaping this danger, or anticipating it rather, that the designer first took to the deliberate use of those masks and grotesque heads, which form so prominent a feature in certain styles of ornament. The popular idea of the process of orna¬ mental design is, that the artist has only to let his hand crawl over a piece of paper, and, like a spider, spin out the fancies that may crowd his fertile imagination. Indeed, there is scope in design for all his fancy ; but he is no Zeus, that ornament should spring, Athena-like, full-grown from his brain. Ornament is constructed, patiently (I will not say laboriously, for the artist loves the labour), patiently built up on lines inevitable to its consistency—lines so simple, that to the expert it is not difficult to lay bare its very skeleton ; and just as the physiologist divides the animal world, according to anatomy, into B 2 4 The A natomy of Pattern. families and classes, so the ornamentist is able to classify all pattern-work according to its structure. Like the scientist, he is able even to show the affinity between groups to all first appearances dissimilar ; and, indeed, to point out how few are the varieties of skeleton upon which all this variety of effect is framed. Before enumerating those varieties, let us suppose for a moment a man to imagine (and this is by no means an imaginary case) that he will make to himself a repeating pattern without regard to its logical construction as though in his domain there should be no skeletons. That would be, from my point of view, a profoundly foolish thing to do ; but, more than that, it is impossible. He may design a unit in which there is no repetition, and no formality ; but the moment he repeats that unit, the very order of its repetition proves to be, if I may call it so, the cupboard in which the skeleton will be found. It might be imagined that by designing in some such haphazard fashion as I have just supposed, the artist would secure to his design a freedom of line, an absence of formality, not readily to be obtained by adopting the more systematic method. But this is not by any Introductory. 5 means so. If, indeed, the design be of that absolute uniformity all over, that there is no one feature in it more pronounced than another, it may pass muster, notwithstanding the want of backbone. But that is not to claim, much for it as a design. And it is scarcely worth the pains to take a round¬ about way to this insignificant end. If, on the other hand, a design be above the level of insignificance, there must be in it some dominant feature or features, which, when many times repeated, will appear more prominent than ever. It is to these features that the eye will irresistibly be drawn ; and it is the lines they take in relation one to another, which will assert themselves. It is hardly to be expected that, if these lines have never been taken into consideration, they should come out very satisfactorily—and, as a matter of experience, they always come out awry. Every one must have suffered more or less from wall-paper and other patterns, in which certain ill-defined but awkward stripes impressed themselves upon him; and he may have imagined possibly, if he thought about it, that this effect of stripes came of working upon the vertical, horizontal, or diagonal 6 The Anatomy of Pattern. lines, which thus asserted themselves. It was much more likely, the result of not working upon definite lines at all. A designer who knew the ABC of his business, would make sure of lines not in themselves offensive; he would counteract a tendency to stripes in one direction by features directing the atten¬ tion otherwards ; and he would so clothe any doubtful line that there would be no fear of its unduly asserting itself, as in its naked¬ ness it might. He foresees the danger (it is a danger even to the most experienced) and he is fore-armed against it. The mighty man of valour who disdains to be trammelled by principles, or any such encumbrance, is with¬ out defence against contingencies practically certain to arrive. It is only by a miracle, or a fluke, that he can escape failure. The over¬ whelming odds are, that the petty considera¬ tions he has despised will be quite enough to wreck any venture he has dared in defiance of them. Since, then, it is practically inevitable that there shall be definite lines in ornamental design—seeing that if you don’t arrange for them they arrange themselves—it is the merest common sense to lay down those lines to begin Introductory . 7 with, and, in fact, to make them the skeleton or framework upon which you build up your pattern. You will see, when they are laid bare for you, that these skeletons are after all very few. 8 The Anatomy of Pattern. II. PATTERN DISSECTION. Repeated pattern may be classified ac¬ cording to its structure, I said. First in order of obviousness comes the stripe. It comes also very early in order of invention : the loom must from the begin¬ ning have suggested the stripe-pattern, which practically grows out of it. The stripe, however, carries us only a very short distance in the direction of design. For as soon as you make any break in the re¬ peated line, the recurrence of that break gives other lines in the cross direction. Suppose a series of horizontal bands broken at equal intervals by a series of rosettes. It is clear, that if the rosettes fall one under the other, they give upright lines ; or if they are shifted you get diagonal cross lines. If the line itself is broken, as in the case of a series of waved lines, or, still more plainly, in a ' L. rfxo.&Sun>L*ml TI o."t» j?m,/ l" (Tlafe 8. C P JT^Q,23»«*»-L^cK-' . ^ ^.Halbon.£X. Pattern Dissection. 13 the blunter angles, you have only to bisect the blunt angle of the diamonds by this third series of cross lines to arrive at the equilateral triangle, which of all triangles is far away the most useful in design. By merely grouping the equilateral triangles, as in Plate 6, we get the hexagon (a group of six triangles), the star (a group of twelve), and other shapes, such as that on Plate 7, which is made up of seven triangles (i. e. three diamonds and a triangle); or that on Plate 8, which is composed of eighteen triangles (i. e. three hexagons.) A glance at the three Plates 6, 7, 8, will show how immensely the designer’s scope is now widened. We have already the basis of all that in¬ finity of geometric pattern which we find in Byzantine mosaic, and in the Moresque tile-work derived from it. It will be seen that the hexagon, the star, and other compound shapes, themselves form exactly-fitting diapers. By the use of a fourth series of cross lines another new shape is evolved. Returning once again to the square lattice, if we cross it diagonally both ways, cross it by itself, 14 The Anatomy of Pattern. that is, so that each square is cut up into four, we get out of those lines the octagon (Plate 9) ; but not an equal-sided octagon ; that is, built on a cross lattice of different proportions. The octagon, however, is not a unit which will of itself form a diaper, as the hexagon will. It is only in connection with a square, diamond, or other four-sided figure, that it will “ repeat.” Place side by side a series of octagons, and there will appear four-sided gaps between (Plate 9). Nevertheless, this new series of lines gives us new varieties of radi¬ ated pattern : witness once more the elaborate interlacings of the Arabs ; all of which, even the most magnificent, are closely related to the seat of a common cane-bottomed chair. It is possible to carry the principle of radia¬ tion further still. You may, for example, cross this more elaborate lattice by a lattice like itself; but you get by that means rather intricacy than variety—especially when the intersecting lines are in part interrupted. In certain Arab patterns, where this ultra-elabora¬ tion of lines is employed, it appears almost as if a new principle had been introduced (Plate 10); but upon analysis the designs fplate 9. Pattern Dissection. 15 resolve themselves into the elements with which we have already had to deal—so few are the plans upon which pattern is con¬ structed. Already we have come to the end of the straight-lined family. Why, it may be asked, can you not make a diaper on other lines, on the lines of the pentagon for example ? Well, you may put together so many pentagons—and a very re¬ spectable diaper they form—especially if you further enrich the pentagons with five-pointed stars. Not long since I came upon just such a diaper, which, for a mo¬ ment, promised to upset all my neatly arranged theories on the subject of pat¬ tern anatomy. However, I had only to dissect it, to discover that it was our old friend the diamond in disguise ; but so artfully made up as at first sight to deceive. There it is. It consists of 16 The A natomy of Pattern. pentagons put side by side, the interstices between them ingeniously filled with stars and triangles, much as the pentagons them¬ selves are filled—-so that one does not readily distinguish the main divisions. It wants no telling that shapes of any kind may be put together to form a pattern ; but that does not alter the fact that the lines on which they are arranged, or into which they fall, must be those I have already laid down ; which are indeed the base of all possible pattern. For further variety in design, we must resort to the use of the circle. The circle itself has, indeed, to be arranged on one or other of the foregoing plans. It must be struck, that is to say, from centres corresponding to the points of intersection of lines, such as have already been described. In so far it is only one of the innumerable arbitrary shapes that may be so arranged. But the circle is so important a feature in itself, it so entirely alters the scope of geometric pattern, that it deserves to be considered apart. One cannot lightly pass over the element of curvilinear design in ornament. Whether or not the idea of flowing patterns originated in the circle, is of no great conse- ^l&te 11. Pattern Dissection. 17 quence. Instinctive practice must have pre¬ ceded geometric principles in the mind of man. One may very easily deduce many of the common curvilinear patterns directly from angular motives. (Platen.) The wave, for example, is a zigzag just blunted at the points. Soften the lines of the hexagon, and you have the ogee. Interlace straight rods, and you get waved lines, as may be seen in the perspective view of the common hurdle. Round the corners of the hexagon or octagon, and you arrive at a rude circle. The relation of the hexagon or octa¬ gon diaper to the diaper of circles is obvious. Presumably, the busy bee, if one may suggest such a thing without irreverence, only works in a circle ; and the hexagonal form of the cells of the honeycomb is simply the result of gravitation; just as you find that cylinders crowded crush themselves into hexagonal prisms. Geometric shapes offer themselves to us from the first—stars in the heaven above and in the grass below, circles in the sun’s disc and in the eye of the daisy. For all we know, the very first pattern ever traced by C 18 The Anatomy of Pattern. human hand may have consisted of circles- The primeval artist had only to pick up the nearest dry twig and indent the damp earth with the end of it, to get a series of round impressions which would pass for a very respectable diaper, I do not say that was so. I only mean to say that the ways in which patterns can be formed are of the simplest ; and that they practically force themselves upon the workman-making him, as it were, an artist in spite of himself. The circle, with its segment the curve, and its compound the spiral, assumes extreme importance when we come to the consideration of the scroll (with which just now we are not concerned) ; but it will be seen that even in mere diapers it leads to an apparently new order of things. The simplest form of circle diaper is when the circles are arranged on the square or the diamond plan, and so as to touch at the edges. By the intersection of the circles one by another, an effect of much greater elabora¬ tion is at once obtained : and it makes all the difference whether you determine the pro¬ portions of the circle according to the inter¬ sections of the lines on which they are struck (Pla.te? }? (Plate 13. Pattern Dissection. 19 (as in Plate 12) or not (as on the upper part of Plate 13). Out of the circle, or its segments, we get the trefoil, the quatrefoil, and all manner of cusped shapes (Plate 15)—which also must needs be put together on one or other of the plans already set forth. Further, out of the segments of the circle you can construct the scale pattern ; which (as you may see on Plate 15) might equally have been derived from the scales of a fish or the plumage of a bird’s neck. The scale may also be considered as a translation of the diamond into curved lines. Re-arrange the scales and you have a more graceful, as well as a more complicated, diaper (same plate)— in which appears the ogee shape, once before referred to as being a curvilinear modification of the hexagon. The hexagon itself may be deduced from it. Suppose a network of interlacing wave lines or ogee shapes—it amounts to the same thing—and the result is a series of six-sided figures (Plate 11), very nearly approaching the straight-lined hexagon. In this way the straight-lined series might be derived from the curved ; and so once more, C 2 20 The Anatomy of Pattern. by a very different road, we reach always, in this maze of pattern-work, the same point, which is, the limited variety of skeleton on which pattern is built. From the combination of straight lines with curved (Plates 12 and 13) result all manner of new diaper forms ; which, however, present nothing very new in the way of skeleton. You might start a scroll pattern, such as that given in Plate 17 ( a type common in the sixteenth and seven¬ teenth centuries), on the lines either of the hexagon or of the ogee, or of a mixture of curved and straight lines which I may call the broken ogee ; and in the end it would not be very clear which of them you had taken for a groundwork; or even whether you had not founded your design upon the diamond—such close kindred do those various skeletons betray. I have dwelt at some length upon rudi¬ mentary diaper forms, for reasons quite apart from anything intrinsically interesting or beautiful in them, although they may be both the one and the other. More especially is this likely if tender colours be employed to soften 'Plate !5 Pattern Dissection. 21 the forms, or if the colour variations do not quite follow the pattern, as in the case of marble inlay, where the accidental colour of the material is a relief from the geometric monotony of the shapes. The Japanese some¬ times go so far as to interrupt the pattern, wiping out a bit of it here and there, anti¬ cipating, indeed, the softening effect that age might impart to it. (Plate 14.) But it is more as a basis of design that we have at present to consider geometric forms. The basis of all repeated patterns is, as I said, geometric. And, this being so, it is as essen¬ tial that the designer should be acquainted with simple geometric principles, as it is that a figure draughtsman should have some knowledge of superficial anatomy. For all the simplicity of the skeleton lines he has to deal with, the pattern designer’s art is not such a simple thing as you might suppose. He has not merely to invent pretty patterns, but patterns that can be conveniently worked—and the lines mapped out for him by the conditions of his work, are, in most instances, not just those which beauty would have decreed. They prove, however, to be identical with 22 The Anatomy of Pattern. the lines already shown to be the basis of all recurring pattern-work ; and so we begin to see that, had there been no such thing as pattern design before, and no traditional forms of design for us to follow, those very forms must have been evolved as certainly out of the more complex conditions of modern manufacture as they were out of the simple contrivances of primitive handicraft. That is to say, that the lines first given to us by the primary processes of netting, plaiting, and so on, would equally have been prescribed by the printing roller or the power loom. It is one of the most interesting points in the analysis of pattern design to see how regularly we work round, again and again, to identically the same shapes. You cannot safely dogmatise as to the origin of this or that pattern ; there are always so many ways, in which it might have been suggested. Put side by side a series of waved lines so that then- curves are opposed (Plate n) and the effect is exactly the same as though you had opened out an ogee diaper ; you can deduce either pattern from the other. Or, again (same plate), if the ogees interlace, it is impossible to say whether this was the outcome of the ‘Plate 16. Pattern Dissection. ogee, or of waved lines, or simply of the pro¬ cess of netting. On Plate 16 are shown six different ways in which one and the same simple star pattern may be arrived at. 1. By the juxtaposition of stars and the addition of cross-lines. 2. By the juxtaposition of diamonds and the addition of cross-lines. 3. By the juxtaposition of right-angled diamonds, each occupied by a star. 4. By the interlacing of two series of octagons, and the addition of cross-lines. 5. By the crossing of two series of zigzag lines, and the addition of cross-lines. 6. By the crossing of two series of diamonds or lozenges, and the addition of cross-lines. And this does not by any means exhaust the number of ways in which the same result might have been reached. To take another instance, of a very dif¬ ferent kind, you know how common it is to see a waved line with leaves alternating on each side of it. This appears on the face of it, a quite mechanical and arbitrary arrangement; but you have only to note how, in nature, the alternate leaves on a slender stem, pull 24 The Anatomy of Pattern. it out of the straight, to see the natural and inevitable origin of the idea. By merely ex¬ aggerating the slight wave of the natural stem, you get one of the most conventional of ornamental border patterns. So it would seem that, whether you begin with mechanical construction or with nature, it works round to the same thing in the end—in the hands of an ornamentist. 'Plate 17 Practical Pattern Planning. 25 III. PRACTICAL PATTERN PLANNING. Pattern design is very seriously affected by this circumstance—that the possible lines of construction are not in all cases practicable. In practical design for manufacture the limitations are strict ; and it is only by sub¬ mission to them that success in ornamental design is possible. Nor is it only the style or character of the design that is affected, but its plan also. The Oriental mind, delighting in geometric intricacy, has availed itself largely of the triangular unit, and has built up with it all manner of delightfully elaborate patterns. The modern European finds it more con¬ venient to him to adopt the simpler paral¬ lelogram. He may now and then use hexa¬ gonal or other many-sided tiles, but he prefers the square. So also the weaver’s cards are inevitably in the shape of parallelo¬ grams, and the printer’s blocks, too; and 26 The Anatomy of Pattern. though the printer make use of the roller instead of the block, the conditions of design remain unaltered; for the roller is, for all practical purposes of design, only a block bent round in the shape of a cylinder. Even the bookbinder of earlier days, who was comparatively free to do what he liked in the way of “ tooling,” was led, whether by instinct or by his tools, to adopt a rectangular repeat, as in Plate 18 , in which also is exemplified what may be done in the way of reversing, and again reveising, the unit of design—so as with comparatively little drawing to produce the effect of an extensive pattern. We have, ordinarily, to reconsider the pos¬ sible lines of pattern construction in their relation to the rectangular figure, which is the j repeat determined for us by the conditions of nearly all modern manufactuie. The base of our operations is, then, usually a parallelogram. Furthermore, this parallelogram is in all cases restricted in size, and in most cases of more or less arbitrary proportions. For example—in the case of wall-paper printing, it is practically determined for us Practical Pattern Planning. 2 7 that the printer’s block shall be rectangular. Custom has further fixed its width at 21 inches. And, since a block of greater length than that would be unwieldy, we are restricted to a square of 21 inches by 21 inches. The block may represent a fraction only of the design, which can theoretically be made up of as many blocks as you please. But in practice the expense of such a pro¬ ceeding would make the paper-hangings cost more than paper-hangings are ordinarily worth; and, apart from commercial consider¬ ations, which would be enough to prevent that kind of extravagance, it is contrary to craftsmanship so to misapply labour. The most capable artist is he who can apply his art to most purpose, and get full value out of his materials. As a matter of fact, the wall-paper designer has to content himself, then, except in very few instances, with a repeat of at most 21 inches square. Within those limits he is comparatively free; but, as I have already shown, do what he will, his repeated pattern will fall into geometric lines, if only those of the parallelo¬ gram on which it is built. A pattern, such as 28 The Anatomy of Pattern. A, on Plate 19, may seem at first sight to conform to no conditions of restraint ; but the actual lines of the repeat reveal them¬ selves, on closer inspection, in any single feature whose recurrence is to be tiaced. It is based, you will find, upon the squaie. Apart from the conditions of actual manu¬ facture it is found commercially expedient to adopt certain fixed dimensions for the tile, block, roller, or whatever it may be and we are thus constrained to design tiles (if they are to be of any use) on the usual three-, six-, eight-inch or other accepted scale ; textiles to* a width fixed by the loom, and a length controlled by the consideration of economy ; j block-printed fabrics under very similar con- • ditions ; and roller-printed to a length as well j as a width prescribed. The proportion of the parallelogram within which our design must be confined varies, that is to say, with the manufacture for which we are designing. An experienced designer could often tell, from its proportion and scale alone, for what par¬ ticular manufacture a design was made. And it is in the impracticability of his ideas that the novice most infallibly betrays his lack of experience. c r KtLL , PHOTO'UITMO. B.FUKMIVAL ST HOllO*N,t O Practical Pattern Planning. 29 There is no occasion to enter more fully into all the various technical reasons for the limitations to which the designer is subject. The practical convenience of them, however, is patent. It is as desirable that the architect, for example, should know what sized tiles may be available, as that he should be able to reckon upon the “bond ” of his brickwork ; and it is equally clear that without some uni¬ formity in the width of materials (such as silks, velvets, carpets, chintzes, and so on), it would be difficult to estimate, off-hand, the relative cost of each. As it is, the public is not seldom misled in that way. The difference between 18 and 21 inches in width, is not so apparent to the eye that the purchaser of a French wall¬ paper need realise, when he selects it, that it is actually nearly seventeen per cent, dearer than an English paper nominally at the same price! Something very like a swindle is perpetrated when facts of this kind are deliberately kept from the buyer. There is a further fraud in withholding from him the in¬ formation that certain foreign goods sold by the piece are only about three-quarters of the length of English goods competing with them. 3 o The Anatomy of Pattern. To return to the subject—the upshot of it is, that the designer has habitually to shape his design according to a rectangular plan, and that of limited, if not fixed, dimensions. It becomes, then, a very serious question with him how far he can avail himself of any other basis. The student might with advantage set himself to tabulate the possibilities in the way of adapting the various units of repeat to repetition, within the square. It would then be seen that, though all things are possible, j there are schemes the artist would like to adopt, which, in order to be brought into the repeat permitted, would need to be worked out upon so small a scale as to become quite too insignificant for use. One instance of this it may be worth while , to give. | ! Suppose a square block of 21 inches, and you wish to adapt a hexagonal design to it. Only those who have tried the experi¬ ment have any notion how small the hexa¬ gons would come. If you made your hexa¬ gons io^ inches wide, so as to get two in width, they would not come true in the length ; they would be too long. If you made "91 ate 20. Practical Pattern Planning. 31 them true, they would not fill the square, but only a space about 21 inches by 18. Three and a half hexagons in the width would work, but only as a “ drop ” pattern : that would give hexa¬ gons of six inches across. In order to occupy the square with true hexagons repeating without a “ drop,” they would need to be re¬ duced to half that size ; that is to say, there would have to be seven hexagons to the width, measuring each only three inches across. It will plainly be seen, in this instance, how very strictly the artist is bound by considerations which scarcely occur to the <-scale 21 tixlj) 32 The Anatomy of Pattern. uninitiated, considerations which have always had a great deal to do with the design of pattern-work. Fashion has had her say in the matter, too, no doubt—it is a wicked way she has ; but though certain lines have been generally adopted at certain periods and in certain countries, I think it will invariably be found that there was some technical or prac¬ tical reason for their adoption in the first instance. Out of the conditions of weaving came, for example, the adoption of upright patterns and cross colouring (as in the silks of Byzantine, Sicilian, and early Italian design), as well as the turning over of the design on the two sides of an upright stem, or purely imaginary central line; examples of which are shown in Plates 20 and 21, the one taken from an old Sicilian silk, the other from a coarse woollen fabric of the 15th century. In Plate 22 may further be seen what great influence material may exercise upon pattern. There was a whole class of pat¬ terns of this kind schemed in the 15th and 16th centuries, with the obvious purpose of disturbing as little as possible of the ^Plate 21 'Plate 22 . Practical Pattern Planning. 33 rich pile of the velvet for which they were designed.* The turning over of the pattern is essen¬ tially a weaver’s device. In a pattern similarly planned for printing there is no occasion for that same rigid symmetry of the two sides. On the contrary, it is desirable rather to introduce some variations, such as occur in the design on Plate 23. * See ‘The Application of Ornament,’ page 44. D 34 The Anatomy of Pattern. IV. THE “DROP” PATTERN. The most useful skeleton to work upon, all things considered, is the diamond. For it is on the basis of the diamond that drop patterns are most readily designed. The “ drop ” is a device by means of which the designer is enabled, without reducing the scale of his work, to minimise the danger of unforeseen horizontal stripes in his design, a danger which is imminent when the repeats occur always side by side on the same level. The printer’s block, we will say, is a square , or the roller is its equivalent; or the cards take that form. In the printed or woven strip, whether paper, cretonne, silk, or what not, the end of one repeat must tally with the beginning of the next, in order that the pattern may be continuous throughout the piece. Equally of course the design must be so schemed that the right side of one 'Plate 23 . The “ Drop ” Pattern. 35 piece of the stuff will fit on to the left of another, and so on. V But it is clear that the design may be so contrived that each succeeding breadth has to be dropped in the hanging. If this drop were only very slight_say three inches—it would take seven breadths, in a pattern of 21 inches deep, before a given feature in the design occurred again exactly on the same level. There would be no dan¬ ger then of any horizontal tendency in the lines which recurring features of the design might take, but, on the other hand, great like¬ lihood of a diagonal line developing itself, with even more unfortunate effect. The design would seem, rather, to step down¬ wards; and the shorter the steps, the more noticeable would be the line such features might take. This difficulty is avoided if you make the “drop” just one-half the depth of the pattern, so that every alternate strip is hung on the same level. Then the diagonal lines correct themselves. If any line at all asserts itself, it is more likely a zigzag (instead of a step), which, in connection with corre¬ sponding zigzags above and below, may very possibly form a trellis or lozenge pattern. D 2 3 6 The Anatomy of Pattern. There is good reason, therefore, for saying the diamond is a useful plan to work on ; for upon it is formed the safest variety of drop pattern—that, namely, which drops one-hali its depth. Instances of drop patterns are given in Plates 17, 24, 29, 32, 33, and others. One has heard persons, more familiar wit the forms of ornament than expert in practical design, complain of the difficulty they ex¬ perience in scheming a “drop.” If they would only think of the problem as the filling of a diamond shape, it would come very easily to them. There is this further advantage in adopt- lng the lines of the diamond-.hat it affords an opportunity of working out a design which is apparently twice the width of mat subdivide a block of 21 inches thus, so that the two smaller divisions A and V together equal the larger division v , it amounts to precisely the same thing as though you designed upon the basis of a squat diamond 2. inches high by 42 inches wide. You have only to If you A A V Ul W@‘WS“YlWf! iy Jasa«c Aksyaian. rEXT BOOKS OF ORNAMENTAL DESIGN. THE PLANNING of ORNAMENT. BY LEWIS F. DAY, IUTHOR OF ‘SOME PRINCIPLES OF EYERY-DAY ART,’ ‘THE INATOMY OF PATTERN,’ ‘THE APPLICATION OF ORNAMENT,’ ETC. SECOND EDITION, REVISED, WITH ADDITIONAL ILLUSTRATIONS. LONDON: B. T. BATSFORD, 52, HIGH HOLBORN. 1890. PREFACE. The second of a series of Text Books stands scarcely in need of preface. The aim and scope, as well as the origin, of this series were duly set forth in ‘ The Anatomy of Pattern.’ What was there said applies for the most part to the present volume. A new edition gives me the opportunity of revising both the text and illustrations, and of adding some new plates. It is encouraging to find that the demand for the Text Books is not exhausted with the first issue, and that they appear to be fulfilling the purpose I had in view in under¬ taking them. Lewis F. Day. 13, Mecklenburg Square, London, W.C. September 2 1st, 1890. TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGE I.— Introductory .. .. .. i II.— -The Use of the Border .. .. 3 III. —Within the Border . .. 16 IV. —Some Alternatives in Design .. .. .. 27 V. —On the Filling of the Circle and other Shapes. ..37 VI. —Order and Accident .. .. 45 DESCRIPTIVE LIST OF PLATES. 1. PANEL AFTER THE MANNER OF DU CERCEAU— -Order in apparent disorder. 2. BORDER IN THE MANNER OF FLOTNER— -Example of comparatively important frame. 3. ROMAN pavement—I n which is shown the development of a geometric diaper into a more important scheme of ornament. 4. Greek border —-Instance of simple and very formal treatment. 5- diapers—S chemed to fit panels. 6. painted door— Showing the influence of the propor¬ tions of the panels upon the design of the decoration. 7. BOOK COVER OF xviith century—I llustrating the use of border within border, 8 . panel —Invaded by ornament springing from the border. 9 - interlaced HENRI II. book cover—I n which a border line is suggested. 10. panel —In which the border is inseparable from the filling. n. panel—I n which the filling breaks over the border, in the Japanese manner. X List of Plates. 12. PANEL— In which the border is invaded by the field. 13. inlay, after boule —In which the border, so to speak, loses itself. 14. FREE DESIGN —Which by the orderly arrangement of the parts constitutes itself a border. 15. BROKEN BORDERS— Showing various ways of breaking them. 16. INLAID PANEL— Showing a break in the border, and the suspension of the principal ornamental feature. 17. cartouche, after JOST amman— A very free treat¬ ment of the frame. 18. panel— With medallion, &c. 19. pattern —In which the detail is grouped so as to give medallion shapes not otherwise marked. 20. diaper —-Not schemed with reference to the panel it fills. , 21 . panel in niello— With geometric diapers disposed in eccentric Japanese fashion. 22. bands— Their application to a cylindrical shape. 23. door panels— Treated from the ends. 24. book cover —Treated from the corners. 25. doors —One-sided scheme accounted for by the position of lock plates. 26. part of cabinet— In which the construction has sug¬ gested the scheme of ornament. 27. lacquer box- —In which the artist takes the whole object for his field. List of Plates. xi 28. cabinet door —Jacobean panelling. 29. carved dado— With square panel shapes within the panels. 30. design —-In which the borders are interrupted. 31. door— In which the disproportion of the panels is recti¬ fied by borders supplementary to the mouldings. 32. panel —Where the borders round a central medallion interrupt the borders of the panel itself. 33. subdivisions —Each with its own ornamental filling. 34. panel —Eccentrically cut in two. 35. broken surface —Japanese diaper without repeat. 36. stencilled roof decoration — Designed in cross bands to correct the parallel lines of the joists. 37. vases —Illustrating lines on which they may be decorated. 38. diagrams— Explanatory of the subdivision of the circle. 39. circles —Illustrating lines on which they may be deco¬ rated. 40. book cover— One ornamental feature designed to disappear behind another. 41. panels— Jointly symmetrical. THE PLANNING OF ORNAMENT. I. INTRODUCTORY. “ The Anatomy of Pattern” concerned itself with the lines on which repeated pattern is built. It is proposed in this second text¬ book of the series to discuss the order in which ornament not necessarily recurring may be distributed. And it will not be diffi¬ cult to show that, illimitable as those lines may at first sight appear to be, they too allow themselves to be classed pretty definitely ; and, moreover, that the classes are not by any means so numerous as might be supposed. The first step in design, or rather the preliminary to all design, is to determine the lines on which it shall be distributed—to plan it, that is to say. The more clearly the designer realises to himself the lines on which it is open to him to B 2 The Planning of Ornament. proceed, the better ; and if it can be shown (as it can) that these are, comparatively speaking, few and simple, so much the easier will it be for him to make up his mind promptly and determinedly which of them he will in any given case adopt. The shape of the actual space to be filled will oftentimes determine for him, more or less, the distribution of his design. That is to say> it may very likely render certain schemes altogether unavailable, and perhaps even limit his choice to a single plan ; but at his very freest a man is limited, in the nature of things, to certain methods of procedure presently to be defined. Plainly it would be out of the question to discuss at length the relation of every possible plan to every possible shape. I purpose, therefore, to take the simple parallelogram (which may stand for panel, page, floor, ceiling, carpet, curtain, wall, window, door, facade, no matter what), and to show the possibilities with regard to the distribution of ornament over its surface. It will then remain only to explain how the same prin¬ ciples apply, whatever the shape to be filled. The Use of the Border. o II. The Use of the Border. Given a panel to be filled, how is this to be done ? There are two very obvious ways of going to work, either of which, to the sophisticated modern at all events, seems equally natural. You may start as well from the centre as from the edge of it. That is to say, you may boldly attack the centre and let your design spread outwards to the margin ; or you may begin with a border and creep cautiously inwards. When once the border is defined, the space within remains to be treated. Theoretically, indeed, you have only reduced the area over which your composition is to be distributed. But practically that is not quite so ; more especially if the border be of any importance. For a border may be of such interest that nothing further is needed, and the centre of the panel is best undisturbed by ornament. Especially may this be so if the material in B 2 The Planning of Ornament. use be in itself of some intrinsic interest. It is distinctly not desirable to mar the surface of beautiful wood or richly varied marble with added ornament. And, for example, with the cabinet maker it resolves itself pretty generally (unless he should once in a while mean to indulge in ultra lavish enrichment), into a question of whether he shall enrich his panels or the mouldings bordering them. The' proportion of a border is of more importance to a scheme of design than might be supposed. It makes all the difference whether it is simple or elaborate in character. A very deep rich border has such an entirely different effect from a moderately simple one, that it looks something like a different treat¬ ment altogether. Compare Plates 2, 3, and 4, and see what a different part the border plays in each. The ornament on Plate 2 might appropriately enrich a page of text: that on Plate 4 requires obviously some more substantial filling. The strength of the border goes for something as well as its depth. Borders may easily be so schemed (and should be so schemed) as to give panels of proportions calculated to allow of the decora¬ tion proposed for them. If, for instance, a I i (Plsite 2 »M«7#-LKTH0.#>tn»»IVAl S T K01A3MI,* « 'Plate 3. | iMlMMfti llilE^'Ml 1 i 91 ate 4. The Use of the Border. 5 panel is to be filled with a diaper, arrange¬ ment should be made for the “ repeat ” of the pattern within it. It is quite clear that the Arab diaper spread over the panels in Plate 5 was devised expressly with that object. Again in Plate 6 the necessity of accommodating one’s ornament to shapes so unequal as the panels of the door, has obviously to a con¬ siderable extent controlled the design. But for those small upper panels, it would never have occurred to one to break up the longer panels just so. Panels or other spaces which are to contain figures or figure subjects should be of a pro¬ portion and size not too difficult to occupy in that way. In the case of an isolated panel, this is perhaps of less importance—the artist ought to be equal to the occasion-—-but in the case of a series of panels to be treated in accord, the problem is made infinitely more difficult when they are of all manner of shapes and sizes. It is no easy matter to scheme even the sim¬ plest ornament into panels of such awkward and widely different shapes and sizes as the decorator has only too frequently to deal with. 6 The Planning of Ornament. There is a salon in the palace at Fontaine¬ bleau in which the proportions of the panel¬ ling prove to be due almost entirely to the painter, who has brought the larger panels into scale with the smaller by means of a series of borders within the actual mouldings. It is much less trouble, of course, for the joiner, when he has an awkward space to panel, to determine the width of the stiles, and let the panels come as they may. But a very little consideration on his part would save the decorator, who comes after him, an infinity of pains. And though it may be the business of the decorator to get over difficul¬ ties of the sort, his work is not so easy that there is any occasion to put difficulties in his way. The stiles which frame a panel may be con¬ sidered as its border; the mouldings again, are so many borders within borders. A border which is made up of many lines really constitutes a series of borders one within the other. The use of border within border as a deliberate scheme of ornament is common enough, as was the case in certain tooled bookbindings of the seventeenth cen¬ tury, one of which is represented on Plate 7. J Akerman.Photo-luh London ^Plate 6 fplate 7 . , moTo-ufMo.a.ruiwivAi r» molbomh,c.< The Use of the Border. 7 You may even add border to border (as was sometimes done) until the whole field is occupied. It is not altogether uncommon in Renaissance cabinet-work to find the panel en¬ croached upon by border after border of mould¬ ings until it dwindles practically to nothing. The obvious and simple thing to do with a border is to keep it of one uniform and equal width. But such equality of width is by no means essential. You may see in mediaeval illuminations the effect, more or less satisfac¬ tory, of emphasising two sides of the page. Nor need the border necessarily be continued all round the space at all. Curtains have often a border on two sides only, and some¬ times only on one, marking what one may call the lips of the hangings. You may look upon the architrave of a door as a border on three sides of it only. And in the same way a mantelpiece partly frames the fire-grate, the fender completing the scheme. A certain reasonableness is the most complete justifica¬ tion of such partial bordering. Every frame is a border. No matter how irregular the shape of it may be, a frame’s a frame “ for a’ that.” It may take the archi¬ tectural form of cornice, pilasters, and dado, 8 The Planning of Ornament. or it may be arched ; and in either case the architectural members are but unequal borders. All this applies, it need scarcely be said, not only to an architectural picture frame, but to architecture itself, and to whatever may be framed. Something like a new departure occurs when the border, so to speak, invades the field or centre of the panel, as it very often does in French Renaissance work, sometimes to such an extent that little or no further decoration of the field is necessary. There is an indication of such trespass in Plate 8, where the “ swag ” and corner ornaments, which belong to the border, cut deliberately across the face of the panel. In some of the interlacing strap work of the Henri II. period (the French equivalent to our Elizabethan ornament), you cannot always clearly tell where the border begins and ends, or even whether a border was intended at all. It looks sometimes as if the designer had started with the notion of a border, but had allowed it so to encroach upon the field, or the field upon it, that in the end it is not at all clearly recognisable as such. An example of the kind occurs in Plate 9. You may l 'P1a.te °) 6 f KILL . PHOTO-UTMO. e.FURMVAL S T HOLSOfiN.e 0 ^PTate 10. by Jsracs Alc«rman 91 ate 11. The Use of the Border. 9 see the idea of a border here; but you cannot be quite so certain that the designer intended it. Nearly allied to this is another variety of border, also devised so as to be quite in¬ separable from the filling ; in which, in fact, frame and filling are so ingeniously mixed up that but for the emphasis of colour, the effect would be confused. There is an instance of this in Plate io, where the scroll, whilst to some extent acknowledging the boundary line, invades, and indeed entirely occupies, the border. In such a case there is at all events no fear of the exceeding preciseness which is one of the dangers to beware of in border design. It is interesting to notice the difference between the last-mentioned method and the practice of the Japanese, who will, in the most unhesitating manner, allow the panel pattern, whatever it may be, to break over the margin or border, as the impulse may prompt. It is a proceeding which may or may not result in confusion, according to the relative strength of the border and the pattern that cuts across it. In Plate 11 the border pattern is so subdued that the more important floral growth is very io The Planning of Ornament. well able to take care of itself. In the case of a panel in which the enrichment only partially occupies the ground, it is often advisable to introduce some sort of subsidiary border, losing itself behind such more pro¬ minent enrichment. One appreciates the freak of the Japanese as a relief from the monotony of absolutely formal disposition; but it is not a thing to indulge in very freely. It is refreshing to see that a man is not afraid of infringing occasionally upon the margin—on sufficient grounds ; but the licence needs always to be justified by some excuse other than the artist’s impatience of order. We have to be on our guard against a certain spirit of anarchy which appears to have taken posses¬ sion of so many a modern artist. There is a class (one cannot call it properly a school) which will repudiate, not only all the laws of art, but the need of all law whatsoever. Urgent need there may be of reform in our ideas of art, perhaps even of revolution ; but sobriety recognises in the artistic anarchist only the enemy of art. There is no peculiar sanctity implied in a margin, that it should be held inviolate; but ’PMOTe-TlKri by J; ^Plate 14. Pmot®-TimT, by James Akerm^n The Use of the Border. 11 the very idea of ornament implies order. And the artist cannot afford to be forgetful of order, even when he allows his border to overgrow the field, or his filling pattern to extend beyond the frame. There was a fashion in vogue in the seven¬ teenth and eighteenth centuries — borrowed probably from the East—according to which the border is invaded rather by the field or ground than by the pattern on it; where the field, in fact, seems to eat into the border. It is usually, as you may observe in Plate 12, rather a symmetrical mouthful that it takes. A border may be lost in a sort of confusion with the panel it began by pretending to enclose. No one ever managed that more cleverly than Boulle, a panel of whose design is given in Plate 13. There is considerable ingenuity in the way in which the pattern is made to appear alternately light on dark and dark on light, without actually confining such alternation within strict border lines, as on Plate 16. But a border remains a border, however undefined. Boundaries may be un¬ derstood rather than expressed. Yet that makes no difference as to the lines upon which a design is constructed. You may discard the 12 The Planning of Ornament. very idea of formality ; you may determine that you will have none of it; that you will merely sketch upon your page such and such marginal forms, natural or ornamental; but if you dispose them in anything like an orderly manner, you arrive at something which comes as clearly under the category of border treat¬ ment as though it had been enclosed by hard and fast boundary lines. The winged heads and boys and ribands on Plate 14 form, after all, a border. Every margin or marginal line is in its degree a border. The white margin of this printed page borders the type. In Indian and other Oriental work you often see the orna¬ mental details so closely packed as to define the border-shape even without actual boun¬ dary lines. And the Germans of the sixteenth century (Jost Amman, for example) sometimes did with very different details just the same thing. The looser borders of the looser times of Louis XIV., XV., XVI., do everything they can to hide the lines of their construction ; but you may take it as a sign of artistic demoralisation to be afraid of a straight line. Hogarth, who preached “the line of beauty,” was not exactly an apostle of the beautiful. 1G 'The Use of the Border. 13 So great is the use of the border, that even they who least like formal lines are bound to adopt it; although they are perpetually re¬ belling against its formality, and doing their best to break it up, as in the case of the encroaching and interrupted borders already mentioned. The very naivest way of getting over the difficulty—it is a difficulty, there is no denying —is by, so to speak, snipping a piece or two out of the panel, and carrying the border round the incisions, so as to get a more or less irre¬ gular central space instead of the four-square parallelogram. In the Certosa near Florence, there are some windows by Giovanni da Udine (the border of one of them is illustrated on Plate 15), in which he has deliberately snipped pieces (a) out of the space to be filled, and left them as so many gaps in the design. We can forgive this kind of thing once in a way ; but it stands very much in need of justifi¬ cation. Where a gap has some meaning it is different. In the case where there is a square block or patera occupying the corner, as you sometimes see in seventeenth century 14 The Planning of Ornament. wood-panelling (and on Plates 15 and 16), that seems to account for the break in the border. It is as though the border went out of its way in order to escape the patera. Nor is there any objection to the doubling of the border round an imaginary line (b on Plate 15); by which means the same end of irregularity is arrived at without the brutality of da Udine’s method. The Italians of the .Cinque Cento resorted freely to the foregoing plans—in their schemes of ceiling decoration to wit ; and with marvellously beautiful results. Perhaps, however, they were rather too ready,—certainly the artists of the later Renaissance were too ready—to adopt any device which would enable them to depart from the simple panel form. In not a few instances, the further they went from it the worse it fared with them. A separate treatise might be written upon the construction of the border itself. It may be continuous or broken, and broken at all manner of intervals, and in all manner of ways. It may flow, or grow. It may be symmetrical or absolutely free. The outer or the inner edge may be accentuated, or both, or neither. It may spread outwards from The Use of the Border. 15 a well-defined central feature or inwards from the margin, diffusing itself, and giving a less definite central shape. But it is not so much the design of the border that we are considering at present as the place of the border in design—on which point enough for the present has been said. 16 The Planning of Ornament. III. Within the Border. Though you abandon all idea of bordering, and elect to place, as you well may, some arbitrary shape within the parallelogram, the space round about that shape may indeed be considered as an irregular border to the same. If, for example, you plant in the centre of the space a medallion, and round that medallion design a cartouche, after the manner of Jost Amman in Plate 17, the cartouche and its accessories may be called the frame or border of the medallion; and, again, the ground beyond the edge of the ornament may be taken to be the margin or border to that. But it is going rather out of the way to look at Amman’s design in that light. In the example chosen for illustration we have shapes, fitted one to the other; but one might just as well have two or more indepen¬ dent and unconnected shapes. Nothing is easier than to take a simple field, and to spot ^Plate 17. r VI ate 18 “Photo -Tint" by James Alcenman. Within the Border. 17 about upon it any shapes you please. That is one way, not a very ornamental way, but one way, of occupying the space. When you proceed to connect such shapes in any way, you bring in another principle of design—which, however, will be more con¬ veniently approached from the other side, when we come (as we presently shall) to the discussion of the lines enclosing various shapes and subdivisions. Abandoning all thought of border, or sup¬ posing a border already in existence, you may, as I said, plant any independent shape, medallion, shield, cartouche, tablet, what you will, within it. This form may be left, as it were, floating in space, or it may be sup¬ ported by ornament ; which ornament may literally seem to hold it up; or, if you will, the ornament may appear to be suspended from it, as was most frequently the case with the festoons and garlands of the later Re¬ naissance. Instances of such support and suspension are given in Plates 16, 17, 18. Finally, the ornament may be unconnected with the central shape, and comparatively independent of it, as a powdering or sprig- diaper would be. C 18 The Planning of Ornament. The central feature need not, of course, in¬ clude a frame of any kind ; it may be a figure, a spray of flowers or ornament, a vignette, a spot, a spray—as free as painter’s heart could wish. Or, just as in the case of the closely- packed border whose shape was marked without the aid of boundary lines, so any central sprig of ornament or foliage may be so densely massed within a square, circle, quatrefoil, or other imaginary form, as to assume a quite regular outline. Such group¬ ing of the ornament is shown very plainly in Plate 19, where the circular shape is emphatically pronounced without the aid of any enclosing line. You see the same thing very commonly in Indian art. A number of sprays, or other features, free or formal, group themselves into a sort of diaper. Such diaper should naturally have some reference to the space it fills, or it will appear less than trivial. The interlacings on Plate 5 form panels, Plates 20 and 35 are only bits of diaper work. Whether the com¬ ponent units of such a decoration be all alike, or of various design, is a question independent of the lines of their distribution. The variety in Plate 21 is at all events amusing. Had , ( l J 1ate 20. ^Plate 21. Within the Border. 19 there been evidence of order within this dis¬ order, of any plan on which the various diapers were put together, one would have welcomed it as a relief from obvious geometry. The merely accidental patchwork is perhaps condonable once in a way. It is instanced here as a freak of Japanese perversity, not as a model of design. But it has its charm : one does not readily grasp all that is in it: there is always something to find out ; which is just what there would not be in a simple and orderly geometric pattern of the European type. A mere series of bands or stripes across the field (vertical, horizontal, diagonal, waved, or in whatever direction), is an obviously simple way of getting over the ground, about which not much further need be said. As the filling of a panel, such a treatment as that I shown on Plate 22 is not very adequate. Rightly employed it forms, however, a very fit and proper method of decoration : for the slight enrichment of a vase or cylinder nothing could well be more apropos than this banded scheme of ornament. _ Such filling as a scroll or anything of the kind may be quite freely drawn, as on Plates C 2 20 The Planning of Ornament. n and 25, or disposed symmetrically in rela¬ tion to an imaginary central line or spinal cord, as in Plates 10, 13. 1 6, &c. ; or it may radiate from the centre, as it naturally would in a ceiling, pavement, carpet, or other object demanding an all-round treatment. Some¬ thing like radiation of the design occurs in Plates 3 and 9. The scroll work, or what not, may equally proceed from two ends of the panel, as in Plate 23, or from the sides, or from both sides and ends, either symmetrically or at irregular intervals; or it may spring from the corner or corners, as in Plate 24. The treatment from the corners is, again, adapted to, and often adopted in, ceiling decoration. In principle it is very right indeed ; but in practice it is not invariably all that decorator could desire. The “ line and corner ” tune, as it may be called, has been harped upon until one is pretty well sick of it, even when it is played in time'—which is not always the case. A corner-wise treatment is seen to advan¬ tage when it has been suggested by use, as in the metal garniture of old book-bindings, and in the clamps of coffers such as German ^PlatG 24 J Akerman, Photo-litli. Lon don. Within the Border. 21 smiths of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries elaborated with workmanlike pride. In the tooled binding of the Henri II. period, given on Plate 9, the corner is very carefully taken into consideration, such consideration being very possibly a survival from the times when the corners were habitually protected by metal-work. There is an instance of this on Plate 40. You see also in book covers of all times instances of a treatment where the design is manifestly “ to be continued in our next,” the side unseen being necessary to its symmetrical completeness. Further examples of the same thing occur in the mediaeval cabinet doors given in Plate 25. The need of clasps, hinges, and so forth, no doubt gave the hint of such a manner, which, in spite of the one-sided forms it gives, is wholly satisfactory in effect. We do not sufficiently realise how readily the mind makes good what the eye does not see in design ; assuming, that is to say, a certain workmanlike reasonableness in it. In Plate 26 (which is only one half of a cabinet) the design is in a very noticeable degree the outcome of the constructional idea. The 22 The Planning of Ornament. artist relied greatly upon the locks and hinges for his effect. It is worth while to compare the above- mentioned scheme, in which the symmetry is suggested rather than expressed, with the free and easy way in which the Japanese lacquer- worker will overrun the limits of a box top or cabinet front, and trail his ornament over all or any of its sides indiscriminately. The front of the box is not enough for the dragon on Plate 27. Yet you will observe that there is a certain consideration for ornamental pro¬ priety in the disposition, for example, of the creature’s claws. There also, the artist, in his very different fashion, chooses to consider the whole object his field, and not just the portion of it he sees before him. There is a certain logic in his licence, too—especially as it appears to be good manners in Japan minutely to examine your neighbour’s nicknacks; but the more restrained manner of the mediaeval workman is, in proportion to its restraint, the more to be preferred. Where the design-scroll, foliage, or what¬ ever it may be—bears no relation at all to the shape or space it occupies, like the diapers 'Plate 2 I S •DOCKS. of o!c| i Ocrtoai?] (Jvbmelfe' with | heraldic ca.rvit><5^ i'anels ipcoto-plefe or ooe-sided "Plate 26 . Within the Border. 23 on Plates 20 and 35, it ceases to be surface design, and is merely a means of breaking the surface. It is only as a background that such hap-hazard distribution of forms has any meaning. But then a good deal of decorative design pretends to be no more than back¬ ground. A very satisfactory and effective result is sometimes reached where the artist starts, as it seems, with the idea of a diaper more or less geometrical, and, as he approaches the centre of the panel, gathers together the pattern, so to speak, into points of emphasis. You see this in the Roman pavement repre¬ sented on Plate 3. That is a case in which the design was unmistakably set out first of all in geometric divisions, certain of which divisions were afterwards grouped together to give point to the pattern. If you analyse any of the old Jacobean ceiling designs, or the Italian originals on which they are but variations, you will find that many of them may be resolved into very simple diapers, on a rather large scale, adapted to the space they fill, and emphasised here and there by figure subjects or other special filling of some of the more 24 The Planning of Ornament. prominent geometric compartments. The panelling of the Jacobean cupboard door on Plate 28 resolves itself into just such a diaper, to which the figure in the central octagon gives point. The difference between the method of design employed in Plate 3, and the plan adopted in the kind of design shown on Plate 9 is, that in this last the main shapes appear rather to have' suggested the corresponding interlace¬ ments than the interlacements to have led up to them. But even in such a case it seems desirable that the artist should have in his mind from the beginning some kind of idea of geometric construction. The lpnger he can manage to keep that geometric notion in his mind, without putting it on paper, the more freely he can go to work. That same faculty of holding a design, so to speak, in solution in the mind, is most invaluable to the designer. A notion is so much more manageable in its fluid state. Once an idea is allowed to crystallise into definite form, it is no easy matter to modify it. Should the space to be decorated be very considerable in extent, it is often necessary to cut it up into sections, otherwise than by ^Pla.te 27. hy J*mes Akerman. ''"Plate 28. "Pmoyo-Tiht! Ly James Akerman, Within the Border. 25 merely marking off a border. A wall, for example, is divided horizontally into cornice, frieze, wall space, dado, and so on, or verti¬ cally into arcading. Some such sub-divisional process may be adopted in the case of a smaller panel, with a view to modifying its proportions. If the subdividing lines take both direc¬ tions, the result is a scheme of panelling, such as was commonly adopted in the domestic wainscoting of some centuries ago. Further, by the introduction of cross-lines at various angles, or of curved lines, we arrive, by a different road, at panelling of more com¬ plicate character (see once more Plate 28), and at something like the interlaced patterns to which reference has already been made. It is clear that these various ways and means may be associated ; and under the complex conditions of the times, they usually are more or less “ highly mixed.” Thus one may, as I have said, begin with a border, and then treat the space within it in any of the ways already described ; one may divide a wall horizontally into two, with a diaper or frieze at the top, and panelling below; or into three, with frieze, wall, and 26 The Planning of Ornament. dado, either one of which may again be broken up. Thus the dado on Plate 29, itself one division of a scheme, is again subdivided into panels—and each of these panels is further broken up by a square of carving enclosed within an irregular margin of plain wood. Again one may plant upon the field any independent feature, frame, shield, tablet, or such like, and then fill in the background without regard to it, as though a portion of the design were lost behind it. As many as three, or more, plans may be associated. For example, one may, as on Plate %o> stietcn across a title-page a tablet, then introduce a border disappearing behind it, and the spaces enclosed between the border and the top and bottom of the tablet one may treat again either as one interrupted panel or as two independent parts. The fact, however, that they are both, as it were, on one plane in the design, seems to require that they should both be treated in much the same way. The possibilities opened out by this associ¬ ation of various plans, are obvious. ^Plate 30. Some Alternatives in Design. 27 IV. Some Alternatives in Design. The use of the border is not, of course, con¬ fined to the outer edge of the main space to be filled. Every sub-section of the design may be provided with its own border, as you see in the case of panelling, where each separate panel has its own border of mouldings. Plate 3 shows two panels only of the design emphasised by independent borders within the outer frame. On Plates 6 and 31, the mouldings round the door panels are supple¬ mented by additional painted borders. A central feature, such as the medallion on Plate 32, may have its border or borders, interlacing with, intercepting, or intercepted by, the borders which mark the space or panel itself. A surface once subdivided, as already described, two separate courses are open to the artist. The one is to accept each com¬ partment as a separate panel, designing his 28 The Planning of Ornament. ornament into it; in the manner shown on Plate 33. The other, which is no less reason¬ able, is to make his ornament continuous throughout; allowing it, that is to say, to cross the dividing lines or to interlace with them ; more in the manner of Plate 9. The necessary thing is always to take the dividing lines duly into account even when crossing them. Again, the two plans may be combined, certain prominent parts being reseived for individual treatment, and the subsidiary spaces only being linked together by the forms of the ornament, as though in Plate 33 the pattern had been allowed to meander through the lesser panels, the central diamond only being reserved for the grotesque head. Which of these plans may be the better to adopt is a question of some nicety, not always easily to be decided. What rational ques¬ tion is ? In proportion to the importance of the framing lines, it becomes dangerous to overstep them. Who ventures nothing runs no risk of failure ; but neither will he achieve any great success in art. And then there is the charm of danger. Soldiers, sports¬ men, and mountaineers are not the only class (Plate 31. '•WO-erfMS r.fURMIVAl * T KptCOMH, ^late 32. 8 *»«% i^''g5tr6’ r g L y^^"TS' , 3 5 a .TT?n *Ph6t@-Timy” iy James Akei ^Plate 33. “Photo -Timt' iy Janies Ak« Some Alternatives in Design. 29 of persons privileged to run a risk. It is a luxury we may all indulge in on occasion —were it not so, art would be no congenial pursuit for any one who is really alive. Only a man should look before he leaps into danger, weigh the odds before he wagers; “ Erst wagen, dann wagen,” is the pithy way Count Moltke’s motto puts it. When the artist starts from the beginning, and the scheme of design rests entirely in his own hands, it is not so difficult to determine just what is fit. The scheme develops itself. But in the more frequent case, in which the art of the ornamentist is only supplementary, and he has to work, as he usually has, upon lines already laid down for him, it is only where those lines are worth preserving that he is necessarily bound to preserve them— assuming, that is, that he can obliterate them. This is heterodox, but none the less true. If the lines existing are bad, and he can by his design withdraw attention from them to lines more reposeful to the eye, he is doing good work. Only he should do nothing but what he can make seem right. There must be no appearance of awkwardness, no suspicion of effort about it. It is a case in which success 30 The Planning of Ornament. alone justifies the attack upon the situation. To fail is to lay yourself open to the charge of the unpardonable sin, the sin of disobedience to the conditions of design. An actually hap-hazard or eccentric scheme of composition, such as a Japanese will some¬ times affect, is hardly in contradiction to what I have laid down. When a Japanese artist cuts a panel quaintly into two, after the manner' of Plate 34, and treats each part of it as seems good to his queer mind, he is only doing what the Pompeian decorator did when he cut off a portion of his wall space, and painted it as a dado; though he does it more energetically, not to say spasmodically, and with less appreciation of proportion. So, again, when the said Japanese strews buds and blossoms about a box top, and breaks up the ground between with conven¬ tional, though very accidental, lines of crackle, as on Plate 35, or when he crams all manner of geometric diapers into a panel, as on Plate 21 , he is merely doing in a more eccen¬ tric manner what the European artist does, with greater regard for symmetry, when he disposes his sprigs or what not on a geometric basis. If only he arrive at balance, which he ^Plate 34. \ty Jta« AJt«r«urn — Some A lter natives in Design. 31 almost invariably does (so little is his instinct in this respect likely to err), there is no occasion to cry out against him. We, on our part, are perhaps too much disposed to design as though there were no possible distinction between symmetry and balance, between bulk and value—as though the little leaden weight did not balance the heaped-up pound of fruit or feathers in the scale. Design apparently quite unrestrained, such as the men of the Renaissance habitually indulged in, proves very often, upon exami¬ nation, to be constructed upon one or other of the systems I have described. Sometimes, indeed, the system of construction is very frankly indicated, though not precisely de¬ fined—-the confession, that is to say, is full enough to ensure absolution for any offence there may be against strict order. On Plate 1 there is blotted in a panel of ornament somewhat on the lines of Androuet du Cerceau, in which the central feature is an echo of the medallion treatment, whilst certain vertical and horizontal lines recall, however vaguely, the notion of a border. Such remi¬ niscences of severely constructional divisions give additional charm, as it seems to me, to 32 The Planning of Ornament. design otherwise fanciful, and even fantastic in character. It is as though a man said in his design, almost in so many words : I claim my freedom, but I have some lingering respect for law and order. Except on the very minutest scale, the scope of subdivision possible with regard to a space, is not affected by the amount of ornament introduced, nor by its character. No matter whether it be human or animal figure that you employ, conventional or natural foliage, scroll or growth, interlace¬ ment, arabesque, or geometric pattern, the possibilities in the way of distribution are the same. Naturally, however, certain lines of sub¬ division will be found to accord with certain kinds of treatment; and so we find that, as a matter of history, the Mohammedans adopted certain lines of composition, the Greeks other lines, and the Japanese quite others again, and so on. Furthermore, the lines one would instinc¬ tively choose for different purposes would themselves be different. One would scarcely proceed to decorate a panel by merely cross¬ ing it with bands of ornament (see Plate 22), 'Plate 35. Some Alternatives in Design. 33 except perhaps in the case of some long strip of a panel which it was absolutely necessary to shorten. There is a case in point given on Plate 36, where the disproportionate, though constructionally very proper, length of the panels of a roof is mitigated by the band-wise arrangement of the stencilled ornament. A similar system was found by the Greeks to be the most satisfactory way of dealing both with vases and draperies. Their pet idea of decorating a full skirt seems to have been by meansmf so many parallel patterns. You have only to refer to the terra-cottas at the British Museum to see both of these uses illustrated, often in a single vase. What one would do, then, is not the same thing as what might be done. The possible ways of distribution are never all of them alike expedient. There must, for example, necessarily be some correspondence between detail and its distribution. For all that, there is no cut and dried rule as to the association of this kind of detail with that kind of distribution, or vice versa. It does not even follow that the description of detail usually found in connection with a certain order of composition is the only detail D 34 The Planning of Ornament. appropriate to it. The happy connection of the one with the other is evidence only of their conformity, not at all of the incongru¬ ity of other combinations. It is just possible to fry without bread-crumbs. Is it not chiefly laziness (where it is not a suspicion of our own incompetence) which tempts us to adopt bodily what has already been found to suc¬ ceed ? There are so many people in the world to whom it comes easier to take what there is than to give something of their own. A design is in harmony, not when it is strictly according to Greek or Gothic prece¬ dent, but when the parts all fit. Suppose, for instance, the lines in a compo¬ sition lead up to some prominent feature, that feature must be of sufficient interest to justify the attention it attracts. There are positions so prominent they almost demand | figure design properly to occupy them. Such central features as those in Plates I, 17, and 32 are bound in consistency to be of’more importance than their surroundings. I don’t mean to say that an heraldic shield like that on Plate 17 is essentially of pro- foundest interest; but in the eyes of its owner at least it is worthy of all prominence. ^Plate 36. Some Alternatives in Design. 35 In like manner also, if it is proposed to introduce the figure, or anything of that importance, it is only natural to provide for it in your scheme, whether in the shape of medallion, frame, niche, or what not. The gem of your design should have a setting worthy of it. Any feature, such as a tablet, medallion, label, cartouche, shield, and so on, introduced into a composition, should bear relation not only to its surroundings, but to what it is to enclose. This is a serious consideration very often neglected. It is no uncommon thing to see a shield introduced only to bear an inscrip¬ tion, a circular medallion to frame a picture which demands a rectangular outline, and all manner of queerly proportioned shapes, which by their very position call for decoration, whilst, at the same time, it is almost impossible to fill them satisfactorily. Upon the same principle of fitness, a pre¬ determination to adopt natural forms of foliage would, artistically speaking, necessitate the choice of a not too rigid skeleton for it. Detail designed on a large scale would call for equal breadth and simplicity in the setting out. D 2 36 The Planning of Ornament. So with regard to the allotment of orna¬ ment—once the lines determined, the artist must scheme his ornament accordingly. Whether he elect to ornament every portion of the surface, as the Orientals and the artists of the Early Renaissance often do, or certain selected parts only, like the Greeks, whether he chose to decorate many parts or few, and which parts, and how—that is his affair. His taste must be his guide in that; and unless he have some taste he had better not attempt to design. This may sound like discouragement; but it is only kindness to the beginner easily capable of discouragement to make him aware at once of the difficulties in his way. The lukewarm may as well be warned off. Ornament is not one of those easy things a man may take up for a liveli¬ hood, pending fame as a painter. Success in ornament implies devotion to it. On the Filling of the Circle , &c. 3 7 V. On the Filling of the Circle and other Shapes. The various lines on which ornament may¬ be distributed over a simple panel or parallel¬ ogram having been so far discussed, it remains now to show how the same principles apply to the covering of all manner of shapes. Evidently it makes little difference at all, and in principle none whatever, whether it is four sides of a figure we have to deal with, or three, or five, or how many. In either case you proceed in the same way ; you work from the centre or from the sides, as best may suit; you divide your space into regular or irregular compartments, on the systems already ex¬ plained ; you overlay one feature with another, or interweave this with that; you interrupt a border, or encroach upon a field, according to the circumstances of the case; and so on, much as though it were a square shape you were dealing with. 38 The Planning of Ornament. In the case of anything like an awkward shape, you have even an opportunity of correcting it, by introducing into it some pro¬ minent figure of more regular outline, which, if you insist upon it, will occupy attention, whilst the irregular surrounding space will go only for margin or border—just as in the case of the regular panel you had the option of discounting its severity by means of any irreeulat feature it seemed good to you to insert. The management of the circular shape, and of the irregular forms of vases, seems to present a more serious difficulty; but it is more apparent than real. The simple treatment of a vase is (l) ac¬ cording to its elevation, as may be seen in Vase i, Plate 37, or in any striped Venetian glass, or (2) according to its plan, as exem¬ plified in Vases 2, 3, 4, or in the rude earthenware of every period. The glass- blower falls, in fact, as naturally into the one scheme of lines as the thrower or turner into the other. (“ The Application of Orna¬ ment,” Plate 8). A third way is to cross the shape diago¬ nally, which gives the appearance of twisting, I 5 late 37 On the Filling of the Circle, &c. 39 to be seen in the bowl of Vase 3 a device common enough in old silversmiths’ work. Two or more of these systems may be asso¬ ciated ; and they often are ; as in so many a German tankard of the fifteenth or sixteenth century, where the bulbous bowl is beaten out into the semblance of a melon, and the neck and foot take the lines of the lathe. In Vases 5 and 6 it is very noticeable how the ornament is constructed on two series of cross lines, the one series according to their plan, the other according to their elevation. Now the decoration of a vase lengthwise, according to its elevation, corresponds to the striping of a panel with vertical lines ; the decoration bandwise, according to plan, cor¬ responds to the striping of a panel with hori¬ zontal lines; and the twisted treatment corresponds to a series of diagonal lines crossing a panel. The way in which medallions, panels, and other shapes may be incorporated with the design of a vase is not different from that already set forth. There is, however, this difficulty, that any marked independent shape is likely to interfere with the form of the vase, or the form of the vase to distort it, which is 40 The Planning of Ornament. the way with the landscape and picture medal¬ lions so persistently misapplied to Sevres and Dresden china. Not that it is impossible to introduce such features with good effect, only it needs to be done with judgment, which of all things is most rare. And, as it happens, the difficulty has been more often attacked with valour than with that discretion which is reputed to be its better part. What is said with reference to the vase shape applies equally to balusters, columns, and cylindrical shapes generally. When we come to the circular shape, as of coins, plates, medallions and so on, its decoration involves new forms rather than new principles. The circle is most naturally divided either into rays or into rings. In the one case the radiating lines may be said to answer to the division of a rectangular space by vertical lines; in the other the rings would answer to the horizontal lines dividing a panel. A reference to Plate 38 will make this more clear. Imagine a series of upright lines (A) to re¬ present the folding of a sheet of paper. You have only to gather the folds together at one end, after the manner of a fan (B), and you ( 1 J 1ate 38. On the Filling of the Circle , &c. 41 have the system of radiation. Repeat the fan shapes side by side, and you arrive at a circle divided into rays (C). Again, in the case of a series of horizontal bands (D), you have only to suppose them elastic enough to be bent, and you have a series of concentric arcs (E), so many slices, so to speak, out of a circle decorated ring- wise (F). The identical target-like result may be arrived at by the continuation of a series of borders round the circle, one within the other. That is only another way of reaching the same point in design. As in the case of pattern planning (“Anatomy of Pattern,” pages 19 and 22), one comes by various lines of thought to the same conclusion. The crossing of the two schemes (G) is much the same thing as a square lattice of cross lines in a rectangular panel. The sub¬ division of the circular space by lines of more flowing character (H) would correspond to the division of the panel by diagonal lines. And if those lines were crossed (J), it would be analogous to the division of the square by cross lines into diamonds. The spiral line, as applied to the decoration of the circle (K), is equivalent to the fret or key 42 The Planning of Ornament. pattern as applied to the square (L). These analogies, I think, are plain enough. They were suggested to me by Mr. Henri Mayeux s “La Composition decorative” (A. Quantin, Paris), to which the student may refer for more ample illustration of the subject. All manner of independent shapes may be introduced into the decoration of the circle, as into that of the panel. One may plant a shield in the centre, and surround it with a border, as in the central disc on Plate 39: one may associate any arbitrary form with ringed or radiating lines. But should any such shape form an important feature in the de¬ sign, the situation is not so free from danger. The limit is soon reached, that is to say, within which lines or forms at once indepen¬ dent and emphatic may judiciously be intro¬ duced into a circular design. Anything which counteracts the shape of the space you have to fill needs to be accounted for. The two rosettes at the top of Plate 39 are designed on the safe lines of radiation ; in the two at the bottom of the plate the design is based, in the one case on a vertical dividing line, in the other on a horizontal. The difficulty in dealing with forms con- < 1^33 On the Filling of the Circle, &c. 43 tradictory one to another is, that you are apt to leave interspaces of irregular shape, which are not easily manageable; as for instance, in the inevitable spandril which occurs so fre¬ quently in architecture. If a spandril happen to be very large you can insert into it a more symmetrical shape, which will hold its own ; and if it be insignificantly small, you may ignore it. You may (where it is of import¬ ance enough to be accepted as an individual panel) treat it as such, with figures, scrolls, and so on. You may simply cover it with an unimportant pattern in the nature of a diaper, or leave it blank. These are the extremes: the happy mean in spandril deco¬ ration is not easy to find. The spandril may be taken as typical of all the many awkward shapes which come of the intersection of curved lines by straight. Ornamental design would be a very much easier thing if we had only to consider the lines of the ornament, without any regard to the interspaces. From the circle to the rosette, or cusped circle, is so short a step, that the treatment of such shapes goes almost without further sa ying. The cusps seem almost to call for 44 The Planning of Ornament. acknowledgment by lines radiating towards them. Indeed, if you simply carry a series of borders, one within the other, round the cusps, the points where they meet will give of themselves radiating lines; just as in the case of the vandyke or zigzag (“Anatomy of Pattern,” p. 9) if was shown that the recurring points gave vertical cross lines. The pentagon, hexagon, and other equal¬ sided polygonal figures may be considered as broken circles. The triangle offers no new difficulty: it is merely a case of three sides to deal with instead of four. A branched form may be resolved into its elements. The Greek cross, for example, may be regarded as an assemblage of five squares ; the Latin cross as a group of as many as you please, according to the length of its arms, or as four parallelograms arranged round a square. An altogether exceptional space will be pretty sure to indicate of itself the exceptional lines on which it can best be decorated ; and a capricious one may well be left to the caprice of the artist. Order and Accident. 45 VI. Order and Accident. Entirely apart from the question of the skeleton of a design, is the consideration as to whether it shall be looked at primarily from the point of view of line or of mass. In any satisfactorily completed scheme, lines and masses must alike have been taken into account; but the artist must begin with one or the other ; and the result will probably be influenced by the one or other consideration which was uppermost in his mind. Which of the two it may happen to be, is more often a matter of temperament than of choice with him. The primary consideration, whether of line or mass, will always lead the designer, though perhaps unconsciously, to adopt a plan accord¬ ingly. That is to say, the preference for mass will lead him to attack his panel resolutely, planting shapes upon it, which it will be his business afterwards to connect by means of 46 The Planning of Ornament. the subsidiary lines needful to the completion of the scheme. On the other hand, a greater partiality for line will induce him to have recourse to a more orderly procedure; will, perhaps, even suggest a geometric ground¬ work, which, however far he may depart from the first lines, will materially help him in securing the object he has most at heart. If you start with certain arbitrary and irregular forms, arbitrarily and irregularly disposed, so many patches, as one may say, on the panel, it is clearly not such a very easy matter to connect them by any systematic lines of ornament. If, on the contrary, you begin with a system of orderly lines, these must necessarily determine in some measure the shape and distribution of any more prominent features you may thereafter introduce into the scheme. For my own part (whilst I disbelieve entirely in arriving at anything more than flat mediocrity by the adoption of set rules of proportion), I feel rather strongly that there should be by rights a strict relation between the parts of a design, however little it may be obvious. If, for example, there is a space to fill between border and central medallion, Pk©to-Tiht\ hy James Akerman Oblate 4-0. Order and Accident. 47 a diaper may be enough; but the diaper should be designed into its space. And even if part of a design be permitted to disappear, as it were, behind this feature or that, it should be so schemed that no very material form is mutilated in the process. Where an interrup¬ tion occurs in a border the pattern should be planned with a view to such interruption. Even though you deliberately adopt a diaper, say as background to a scroll, the character of that diaper should be determined by the scroll, notwithstanding that the lines of the one are meant to contradict the lines of the other. The cultivated artistic sense is by no means satisfied with the casual employment of any diaper. Again, where one feature of the design is overlaid by another, as frequently happens in Early Gothic glass, the overlapping pat¬ terns should be designed to overlap—as they always were. The spaces between one series of medallions should suggest the outlines of the subordinate medallions between, which again should be shaped with a view to any proposed interruption. In the book cover on Plate 40 the tooled borders disappear as it were behind the silver clasps 48 The Planning of Ornament. and corners; and one sees no harm in this, because the tooling is so distinctly subor¬ dinate to the silver mounting, indeed one may say designed to supplement and connect it. The careless overlaying of one pattern, or of one scheme, by another, is the merest make-shift for design. The apparently “accidental” treatment, when it is at all successful, is not quite so much a, matter of accident after all. You will find invariably, if you inquire into it, that there has been no disregard of the laws of composition, but only the omission of some accustomed ceremonial. To take what might seem a flagrant instance of the disregard of an obvious rule of art:—an artist like Boulle would sometimes boldly treat the doors of a cabinet as one panel, notwithstanding their actual separation by a pilaster between them. However wicked this may be in theory, his practice proved it to be not so unsatisfactory. And for this reason—that the upright inter¬ vening space was, as a matter of fact, very carefully taken into account in the design. He only goes a step further than the obviously permissible treatment shown in the double panel on Plate 41, where the two one- i?yiT)n?etric&1 par) el ireafrmevi~. VSyiVnyefri cal panels Jointly s^njnjetri cal Order and A ccident. 49 sided panels are jointly symmetrical. Boule chose to make a constructive feature less em¬ phatic than its position would have suggested to most of us it should be. But he did not really ignore it. Very far from it. Had he disregarded construction, the error would have been very perceptible. If he succeeded at all in satisfying the eye, it is because he did with great deliberation and judgment what might easily be mistaken by the inexperienced for an inconsiderate thing. Giants can afford to be daring. It is when dangerous liberties are taken by the novice, without forethought and without discrimination, that they become offensive. Where there is no offence in the lapse from what we have been accustomed to think a wise rule, be sure it was designed, and designed with more than ordinary skill. It is only a master that can reconcile us to something - which, until he did it, we did not think could properly be done. There is nothing careless or casual in the art of design—not even in the little art of ornament. E LONDON : PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. ■ Tlate 1 rEXT BOOKS OF ORNAMENTAL DESIGN. THE Application of Ornament. LEWIS F. DAY, VOTHOR OF ‘EVERY-DAY ART,’ ‘THE ANATOMY OF PATTERN,’ ETC. ILLUSTRA TED. LONDON: I T. BATSFORD, 52, HIGH HOLBORN. 1888. PREFACE. The former text-books of this series con¬ cerned themselves with the rudimentary lines on which ornament may be designed and distributed. It is only in theory, however, that orna¬ ment can be independently discussed. Prac¬ tically it exists only relatively to its applica¬ tion. Apart from its place and purpose and the process of its doing, there is no such thing as ornament. The necessity of adapting design to its position and use is as obvious as it is abso¬ lute. The need of conforming to the more technical conditions imposed by material, and the means of working it, is not so generally understood. It takes, perhaps, a craftsman thoroughly to appreciate its urgency. These few chapters go to demonstrate how essential to ornament is its strict subordina- VI Preface. tion to practical conditions ; how in all times and in all crafts good workmen have cheer¬ fully accepted them ; and how the very forms of historic detail handed down to us grew out of obedience to them. In the genesis of ornament will be found the strongest argu¬ ment for the study of technique. The consideration of natural form and its adaptation to ornamental design is reserved for a separate volume. Lewis F. Day. i 3, Mecklenburg Square, London, W. C. October qth, 1888. TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGE I.—The Rationale of the Conventional .. i II.—What is Implied by Repetition. 7 III. —Where to Stop in Ornament . 17 IY.—Style and Handicraft. 37 V.—The Teaching of the Tool. 51 VI. —Some Superstitions. 65 DESCRIPTIVE LIST OF PLATES. 1. stencil —The ties breaking up the broad masses of colour. 2. ornamental figure composition— Identical figures reversed. 3. animals and arabesque — Varied creatures sym¬ metrically disposed. 4. A tree of jesse — Figures ornamentally valuable among the foliage. 5. NURSERY WALL PAPER—Fun in design. 6. ANIMALS AND ARABESQUE—Various creatures enliven¬ ing the ornament. 7. pattern with grotesques— The creatures them¬ selves reduced to ornament. 8. various vessels— Characteristic of the way of their making. 9. wood carving— Showing the marks of the chisel. 10. AFRICAN BASKET WORK—A typical example of plaiting. 11. CARVED leather —Preserving the quality of the material. 12. PERSIAN FAIENCE—Direct potter’s work. 13. lettering —Showing its relation to the pen, &c, b X List of Plates. 14. EGYPTIAN SCULPTURE —Basalt. 15. Greek sculpture —Marble. 16. RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE— Marble. 17. RENAISSANCE sculpture— Sandstone. 18. wool pamask —Broad surfaces calculated to exhibit the quality of the material. 19. LYONS silk —Trivial design, disguised by the sheen and colour of the material. 20. byzajsitine silk —Coloured according to the weft. 21. ARABIAN PATTERNS —Incised in soft plaster. 22. ironwork —Characteristic similarity of motif in work of quite different periods. 23. ironwork —Characteristically different types of wrought iron. 24. needlework —Characteristic quality of line. 25. embossed panel —Design suggested by the process. 26. filagree —Characteristic design common to work of different periods. 27. Greek lace —Analogous to filagree on straight lines. 28. JAVANESE ORNAMENT —Inspired by the way of working. 29. fretwork —In wood and metal. jo. sawn work —Ingenious patterns produced by veiy simple means. 31. STENCIL pattern —And the way of producing it. List of Plates. xi 32. bookbinder’s tooling —And the tools used. 33. MOSAIC PAVEMENT —Workmanlike thrift. 34. rigid design— In need of the softening influence of accidental colour. 35. niello —Severity of pattern calculated to be mitigated by the brilliancy of the metal. 36. MARBLE INLAY— Practically a fret pattern. 37. arab lattices —Characteristic wood-turning. 38. enamel —Showing the difference of outline in cloisonni and chci 7 nplev£. 39. stained glass —The glazing lines for the most part the outlines. 40. APPLIQUE embroidery —The joints masked by a corded outline. 41. OUTLINE —Defining the forms. 42. outline —Softening the forms. THE APPLICATION OF ORNAMENT. I. The Rationale of the Conventional. Concerning all questions of art, the diffi¬ culty of coming to any clear understanding is greatly increased by the totally different meanings attached to the terms, more or less technical, one cannot avoid using. To begin with definitions does not greatly help us. We no sooner commence to define than we find ourselves stumbling against other words equally in need of explana¬ tion. What a flood of light would be let in upon the question of decorative design, could we but agree amongst ourselves as to what is meant by the term “ conventional ” ! An English ornamentist understands by conventional treatment, such a rendering of natural forms as may be consistent with the B 2 The Application of Ornament. decorative character of the work in hand. It implies to him that self-restraint, that intelli¬ gent selection, that recognition of material tnd its characteristics, that strict regard for the purpose and position of design, without which ornament does not so much as deserve the name of ornament. To a Frenchman, on the other hand, it stands for all that is helpless and hopeless in art, “ C’est de la convention , f«,” is the expression of his supremest contempt. Of course it is not merely a matter of country. Not all Britons are agreed as to what they mean by the word conventional, nor all Frenchmen; but there is in the national interpretation of the term an expla¬ nation of the respect, as of the contempt, in which conventionality is held. The continental use of the word is perhaps the more exact. The conventional is literally that which has come to be accepted ; and, as a matter of experience, we find that, even in a world of progress, little or nothing is ever universally accepted until it is already toler¬ ably stale. The accepted thing becomes, i therefore, identified with all that is most | deadly dull and tedious in modern art. The Rationale of the Conventional. 3 There seems to be no hope or promise in it; it stands for stagnation. \ et there is another side to the question. We find in the best work of nearly all periods, and of nearly all nations, certain principles which appear to have been generally obeyed ; so universally obeyed, indeed, as to warrant us in calling them the principles of decorative art. In endeavouring to explain those principles, concerning which we have come to some sort of general understanding or agreement, the advocates of due restraint in ornament adopted in an evil hour the term conventional, to ex¬ press that kind of treatment which, whatever it might be, was adapted to the purposes of decoration. But it proved less easy to grasp the elusive spirit of design than to take pos¬ session of the forms in which it was embodied. And the cut-and-dried character of the ex¬ amples of design adduced by way of illustra¬ tion, led to the supposition that the conven¬ tional was neither more nor less than the trite , the literal meaning of the word lending itself to the confusion. One may take it that the artistic verdict on convention will be mainly according to the B 2 4 The Application of Ornament. artist’s interpretation of the word. If by conventional ornament we mean perpetual variations on the old, old tunes, long since played out ; if we mean adherence to well- worn types ; if we mean affectation, imita¬ tion, mimicry, a bigoted belief in the letter of the law as it was in the days that are happily past; no one of any originality or in¬ vention of his own—no artist, that is to say can consistently belong to the party of con¬ vention. If, however, what we understand by the term is the spirit in which the past masters of ornament accepted nature, finding m her a never-failing source of inspiration, reverencing her most deeply—aye, and following her most j tru l y __in that they were not content to copy, without further thought, the forms nearest at hand, because they did not imagine for a moment that what she had made fit for her ends must, without modification, perforce be fittest for their very different purposes then it seems hard to understand how ornament can properly be anything but conventional. A fitter term might be found for it, no doubt ; I prefer myself the more expressive word “apt”; but in discussing the thing we The Rationale of the Conventional. 5 cannot conveniently ignore the word by which it is currently known, and we find the word “ conventional ” in possession. One can scarcely conceive of ornament which is not, in a manner, more or less modi¬ fied by considerations altogether apart from the natural forms on which it may have been founded. Even the human form, which is our highest type, and with which liberty may less safely be taken than with any other of nature’s works—even the human form is not ready-made to the hand of the sculptor. The works of the great masters, to which we accord the title of “monumental,” are so in virtue of a something which was not in the model of the sculptor, but in his art. Call this subtle quality what you will—con¬ ventional, traditional, monumental, ideal, indi¬ vidual-something there is in all applied art (in all art for that matter, but our concern is just now more especially with decorative and ornamental art), something which is, let us not say contrary to nature, for it belongs in¬ herently to human nature, but non-natural, in the sense that it is not directly borrowed from natural forms. Conventionality in ornament is another 6 The Application of Ornament. term for reticence or self-restraint. The artist who exercises no restraint upon himself will hardly command the full sympathy or admira¬ tion of Englishmen. Apart from the natural, or national, desire for some reserve in art, as in everything else, restraint is forced upon the ornamentist by all the conditions of his work, by its purpose, place, and means of execution, no less than by that necessity for repetition which, 'in these days more than ever, is a con¬ dition of its very existence. What is Implied by Repetition. 7 II. What is Implied by Repetition. The very purpose and position of ornament, the method of its execution, and even its construction, insist upon some treatment of natural forms which, for want of a better word, we call “ conventional.” First, in reference to the construction of ornament. Its mere repetition, which in a former text-book (‘ The Anatomy of Pattern ’) was shown to be inevitable, would of itself render such treatment necessary ; and even without the inducement of economy, which calls for the use of a machine, we should still resort to repetition, if only because the human brain cannot go on inventing without inter¬ mission, but needs the comparative rest of repeating itself, even in hand work. In the artist’s repetition of himself (unless the fatal pressure of the times have made him also a machine), there will always be a certain degree of variety, which there could 8 The Application of Ornament. not be in mere mechanical reproduction. But he cannot afford to dispense with repetition ; nor need he wish to dispense with it. It is in itself an element in decorative design ; it is a preventive against loose and rambling ornament ; it exhibits order, and gives scale. The only question is, where and to what extent we should avail ourselves of it. In proportion to the naturalism of a design, and the point of realism to which it is carried, it becomes unsuited to multiplication, do put it the other way about, the oftener it is proposed to repeat a form, the more impera¬ tive it is that it should be removed from the imitation of nature, and the further it should be removed. It needs, in short, adaptation to the purpose of repetition. Such adaptation is strictly in proportion to what one may call its reticence. A highly elaborate and attractive feature—anything, certainly, that is in the least self-assertive will not bear so much as reduplication ; where¬ as an insignificant device may be multiplied ad infinitum. In anything of the nature of a background (and so many manufactures are intended to serve only as backgrounds) repe- Tlate 2 What is Implied by Repetition. 9 tition is of the utmost service, and repetition implies modification. It follows from what has already been said as to the danger of tampering with the human figure, and the prominence it naturally as¬ sumes, that there is great difficulty in repeat¬ ing it without offence. The interest of a pattern is enhanced, no doubt, by the re¬ currence at stated intervals of appropriate figures. But it is desirable that there shall be always some difference in them; for with every repetition of the same figure its charm is discounted. There is something exaspera¬ ting in the reversing of identical figures in a pattern (Plate 2), when it is so simple a thing by the careful disposition of various creatures to retain the symmetry of effect desired (Plate 3). Presumably the reason for introducing figures into ornamental design, is for the sake of some added interest there may be in them. But you cannot get up any absorbing interest in a series of figures all identically of one pattern. They suggest only the mechanism employed in producing them. The multipli¬ cation of the figure, far from multiplying its interest, diminishes it in proportion to the i o The Application of Ornament . number of times it is repeated. And though it be a very good thing that is repeated, the case is not greatly mended—it is so easy to have too much of a good thing. The only safety is in toning down the re¬ peated form until its recurrence ceases to be very obvious. This may be effected in various ways. In certain embossed leather, and such like designs, it is brought about partly by the low relief of the stamping, partly by the soft¬ ness of the colouring, and partly by a more or less cunning complication of the figures with the rest of the design, so that they do not thrust themselves into notice. That variety in the creatures, were it possible, would be desirable no one can doubt. The consideration which occurs in the case of figure design which it is so necessary to re¬ duce to comparative insignificance is, whether it was then worth doing. Perhaps not. Except that ornament has a way of being a trifle too ornamental, or, more strictly speaking, too monotonously ornamental ; and the introduc¬ tion of any bold mass, such as the figure very readily gives, is one obvious way out of the besetting danger. Apart from the symbolic intention of the 'Variety it) Creatures* sy mm^ richly disposed _ C>ern?&.tj { P1ate 4 Pkot©-Tint, \>y J. AkeTman.6,QneeTi Square ,W.C. 'PortionoFe\Tree of Jesse I'.vah Meckcn end of tf^Cenly. --—-- What is Implied by Repetition, 11 figures on Plate 4 (it is part of a genealogical tree of Jesse), the ornamental use of them in the design is conspicuous. We may take it that symbolism does not flourish where the symbols are ugly or unamenable to orna¬ mental effect. It is not suggested that we should be straightlaced to the extent of denying our¬ selves the amusement that may be got out of designs such as Mr. Crane has made popular in his nursery wall-papers, in which he has contrived to give us grace of line and charm of colour, as well as the humour of the nursery rhyme (Plate 5). Once in a while the human figure may be degraded to do the merest pattern work. The artist must be allowed, now and again, to put off his dignity and in¬ dulge in an artistic gambol. Even a bad joke may, on occasion, be more to the purpose than an everlasting seriousness. Still it is as well to bear in mind the prima facie objection to the repetition, not only of the human form, but of the forms even of birds, beasts, and all living, and especially moving, creatures. The occurrence of the stag, boar, hare, fox, hounds, and birds in the border of which 12 The Application of Ornament. portions are given on Plate 6, clearly gives point to the ornament; and they are rendered with a certain conventionality which makes them one with it. To reconcile us to the repetition of these creatures would be a feat indeed. The grotesques introduced into the cretonne design on Plate 7 may perhaps be excused on the plea of their remoteness from nature in the first place, and further on ac¬ count of the minuteness of the scale on which they are drawn : they are scarcely apparent at first sight. But their real justification is that they are a joke. Alas, it is not often that the conditions of manufacture allow us that relief. The advisability of introducing animal forms into mechanically repeated manufac¬ ture depends entirely upon the possibility of keeping them in appropriate subjection—in their place, in fact—which, in turn, depends upon the art of the artist. There is a lesson for us in the artful way in which the designers of the Renaissance contrived to keep down the creatures, graceful or fantastic, with which they peopled their scrolls, subduing them to the decorative key. Where the forms which first take the eye are the bold lines of the leafage, among which the live things are more or less , PHOTO'LITHO. 6.FUI What is Implied by Repetition. 13 hidden, so that it is only by degrees that one becomes fully conscious of them all, scarcely the purist can find cause of complaint. Some sort of mystery in design is always delight¬ ful. The perfection of art is reached when, however attractive at first sight, it continues to grow upon you, and the more you contem¬ plate it, the more you see in it. Natural forms, to be admissible in ornament, must be decoratively treated. Natural though they be, they must be at the same time orna¬ mental. A lion, as Landseer modelled it, is not fit for any decorative purpose. An Egyptian or Assyrian lion, on the other hand, Dona¬ tello’s lion at Florence, or Stevens’s outside the British Museum, are admirably decorative. The objection to naturalism, or perhaps it would be more exact to say literalism, in forms repeated, applies not only to animal but even to floral forms. It exists in a less degree, inasmuch as they are of less prominent interest; but for all that it exists. The charm of the simplest flower is lost when we see, side by side, so many copies of it —not varieties, as they would be in nature, but stereotyped repetitions of the same thing. The designer is exposed, by his very artistic 14 The Application of Ornament . ability, to the temptation of aiming at natural effects, a temptation all the stronger because, few persons having knowledge enough to appreciate design, whilst all are more or less familiar with natural forms, there is nothing in the shape of public opinion to keep him in check. Every artist likes, of course, to make a good drawing, and to carry it as far as he can. But that is not at all the vital point in de¬ corative design : the all-important thing is the effect of the work in execution and in its place. Any one who thinks twice about it must realise that in very self-defence he is bound to consider the repetition of his design, and all else that concerns its use. If he is really a designer, he will know how to make capital out of the very poverty of the condi¬ tions to which he submits. Submit he must —better do it, then, with a good grace. Some adaptation of natural forms, some simplification in fact, is demanded, not only to fit them for repetition, but, further, by the position and purpose of the work ; sometimes in order that the detail may not assert itself too much, sometimes in order to give it the emphasis that is needed. Plate 6 What is Implied by Repetition . 15 For example, it is quite a common thing to see an infinity of elaborate and laborious work misspent upon details of domestic furni¬ ture, which not only pass unnoticed, but which ought never to attract notice. It often seems as if the workman had set himself to show how far it was possible to go in the direction of minuteness of detail. It is quite possible to show that, and at the same time illustrate the futility of going anything like so far. In proposing to carry execution to a point beyond what has hitherto been attempted, it is as well to ask oneself, whether there may not be good reason why the attempt has never been made. Our forerunners were not all of them fools, we may be sure. As a tour de force , once and again, most things may be ad¬ missible; but a wise workman rarely indulges of his own accord in that kind of “ brag ” (there is no better word for it) which exhibi¬ tions, international and other, have done so much to encourage. A master is loth to waste labour, and he knows how to make his work hold its own without shouting at you. He deliberately does less than an inexperienced person would have thought necessary, with a view to making 16 The Application of Ornament. his design tell in its place. In wall decoration, for example, to be seen from some distance, a merely natural representation of natural forms would often go for very little. By the omission of multitudinous detail, he manages to emphasise what he is anxious to preserve. Or (since decorative treatment by no means consists in omission only) he exaggerates, perhaps, features in his design which, in the position assigned to it, would otherwise be lost. According to his purpose, he makes no scruple about modifying natural forms and colours: he enforces his effect, indeed, by every conventional—that is to say, every workman¬ like—expedient at his command. Plate. 7 KEU - 'HOTO-LITHO.e.FURNlVAL S’- H0L80RN.E .C Where to Stop in Ornament. 17 III. W here to Stop in Ornament. Assuming, on the one hand, the urgency for some modification of natural forms accord¬ ing to the work in hand, and on the other, of some continual reference to nature in design, the question arises as to the limits of the one and of the other. How far may one safely go in the direction of nature? And to what extent is it well to admit the dictation of the tool ? In order to settle that point quite definitely, each separate craft would have to be discussed. An excellent pre¬ scription would be, just so much of natural food as the artistic stomach can digest ; but then we have to take into account each man’s powers of artistic assimilation—always an unknown quantity. The degree of ornament which is barely enough for one man will be far too much for another. Any attempt to define the limits within which decoration should reasonably be con- C 18 The Application of Ornament. fined may seem at first sight rash enough. But with regard at all events to things of common everyday use, there clearly is a point at which the line of decoration must be drawn. And, more than this, just as the object itself, its use, its material, and the j manner of its making, indicate plainly enough ,[ the fit method of its decoration, so also they | give the hint as to the measure thereof. It would 'seem, in short, as though the point at which a material or a process failed were the j point at which we might most conveniently stop, rather than bring in some supplementary j process, which, under pretence of helping it out, ends more likely in supplanting it. This will be made clearer by an example, let us say pottery, in aid of which so many of the applied arts are called in, that we shall necessarily have to branch out by the way into discussion of the wider subject of applied ornament, with which this text-book is con¬ cerned. The primitive way of making a pot is by what is known as “ throwing,” that is to say, shaping the lump of wet clay with the hands as it revolves on the wheel before the potter. This, it should be observed, is at the same ^Plate 8 Where to Stop in Ornament. 19 time the way most directly conducive to artistic results (Plate 8). Bigotry alone would seek to narrow the scope of a workman to any single process of making. One is fain to own that in the hands of an artist the lathe too may have its use (Plate 8). The so-called Etruscan vases (Plate 8) were turned on the lathe, the artist probably caring more about the painting of his vessel than its shape. But whilst you watch the potter at his wheel, it appears to you that no supple¬ mentary process can be necessary. Almost from the moment he begins to hollow with his hands the revolving lump of plastic clay before him, it begins to take suave and beautiful shapes, gliding the one into the other, as the wheel goes round, with an ease which it is delightful to see. It all seems to go so easily that your fingers itch to try a turn at it. Seeing the potter at his work, you see how the typical pottery forms grew out of his fingers ; you realise how it is that ugly forms are so rare in primitive pottery ; and you are inclined to think that the ugliest pot ever made on the wheel must have passed in the making through several stages of C 2 20 The Application of Ornament. beautiful form, which the potter, sitting over his work, did not perceive perhaps, or did not see to be beautiful. It is taken for granted by our makers-by- deputy, that the soft shapes of the wheel need to be effaced by the more mechanical action of the lathe—in other words, that a second and supplementary process should be called in to do the work over again. It is true that Only certain shapes can conveniently be thrown on the wheel. But these are obviously the most beautiful. There may be monotony in them, but so there is in the shapes of turnery. Moreover, if the potter were in the habit of depending more upon the wheel, he would surely find in it still further facilities. If the blunt forms produced by his finger-tips arc wanting somewhat in precision, he might even use the modelling-tool (reticently, at. an artist would) to make indentations smaller than with his fingers only he could. But that is a very different thing from sub¬ mitting his work to an after-process, and, in fact, effacing with a mere revolving plane in the half-dry state of the clay, all that was done to it whilst it was amenably moist to 21 Where to Stop in Ornament. the hand. If any such final shaving is to take place there is, artistically, small reason for the preparatory process of throwing. The thing might just as well be cast, or otherwise mecha¬ nically made from the commencement, since there is to be nothing but what is mechanical in the result. There is this against after¬ processes generally. They are apt to undo a great deal of what has been done. How fatally the final process of glass-papering wipes all character out of our modern wood¬ carving ; whereas one great charm about old work (Plate 9) is in that crispness of touch which tells of the carver’s chisel. The excuse in the particular instance of earthenware (there is always an excuse ready for unworkmanlikeness) is in some supposed advantages of lightness and so-called elegance. The answer to this is that lightness is not the quality most characteristic of, or especially desirable in, pottery. If it is elegance we want we had better employ glass (Plate 8), the convenient and conventional treatment of which is all in the direction of grace and airi¬ ness. A bubble, whether blown in molten glass or soap and water, is a bubble. In earthenware we had best be content with 2 2 The Application of Ornament. the subtle and beautiful, if heavier, forms the j wet clay gives us. The various vessels on Plate 8 aie all charac¬ teristic of the process of their making. The j Chinese vase and the ruder earthen pot have | that softness of contour which comes oi throwing on the wheel. The Greek \ase jj shows, by its harder and more precise outline, . that it was finished on the lathe. The coarse : but rich ornament of the German tankard i is appropriate to stamped stoneware. The j savagery of the cut crystal cup, and the fan¬ tastic grace of the Venetian wine-glass, are no j less characteristic and workmanlike. Apart from the commercial incentive to make his craft fulfil all manner of impossible j purposes, the workman unfortunately (and ; this is true of us all, whatever our walk in art) always wants to do more than his means will let him. It is the rarest thing in the world to know where to stay your hand, or to have the self-restraint to stay it. It is the more necessary therefore to insist—one can¬ not insist too strongly—that in ornament, at all events in ornament applied to any useful purpose, it is best to stop when the material itself gives you the hint. In the “ convention worte^ (AFn'c^v? Where to Stop in Ornament. 23 of work in which that hint has been taken, there is always a fitness or rightness which is inestimable in art applied. Would any more pretentious form of art be so entirely satisfac¬ tory for the purpose of basketwork as the ingeniously plaited pattern on Plate 10 ? If you once go beyond the resources of your material there is no knowing where to pull up; and few indeed are they who manage to halt in time. You may go on until you reach a sort of lower stage of “ high art but in doing that you inevitably lose those qualities of use¬ fulness and fitness which are the only justifica¬ tion of art, excepting only such as may be of the supreme beauty to justify its claims to independence. A great work of art is a kind of king among created things, deserving of all homage. But we don’t want this work-a-day world peopled with kings, least of all with petty princes and pretenders. To return to the instance in point, when it comes to the after-decoration of earthenware, the rule of convention holds equally good : “ If it were done, when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly.” Elaborate and difficult processes, involving something in the nature of a totir de force, are a snare to the 24 The Application of Ornament. artist and a delusion to the buyer. The sales¬ man has a way of excusing the high price of a thing on the score of the difficulty there was in making it. But was it worth while ? That is the question. Apart from its superiority in design, there is not much to choose between the Portland vase and the marvellously cut glass or crystal of modern Bohemia. They are the very extravagance of workmanship, and as such merit the praise due to all patient labour, 'and no more. The simplicity and appropriate breadth of treatment of the crystal cup on Plate 8 is vastly more workmanlike than either. Patience does not rank, outside the copybook, as the virtue of virtues. With¬ out some share of it genius falls short; never¬ theless the power of taking pains does not constitute genius, nor will it even enable one to design so much as a good pattern. But this is straying rather from the point, which is, that material and process may be trusted to suggest the character of de¬ coration and the point at which it should be restrained. The lavish and unintelligent use of ornament about us is enough to reduce one to despair. In our longing for palat¬ able ornament we seem sometimes to see Where to Stop in Ornament. 25 pattern, pattern everywhere, and not a line in place. Suppose an earthen vessel is somehow to be enriched with colour, the simplest and about the most obvious means to employ is to dip it into a coloured glaze, just as the simplest way to dye a textile is to dip it into the vat. The glaze will naturally follow the law of gravitation, so that it is rather difficult to get an even colour by that means. But there is no artistic reason whatever why colour should be even. On the contrary, beautiful effects of quasi-accidental colour result from the running of the glaze. I say quasi-acci¬ dental, because the accidents in art are, or | ought to be, foreseen and reckoned upon. Though the potter cannot be sure of any pre¬ cise shade of colour, experience tells him ; within a little the kind of “fluke” he may anticipate. He fires, so to speak, with his I eyes shut, but not quite so wildly as might seem. He takes a good look first at the I object of his aim,—or he would not be so habitually near the mark. In actual flaws and failures there is nearly 1 always a lesson which artists have promptly turned to account—not by intentionally 26 The Application of Ornament. producing faulty work, but by noting how a new and beautiful, and at the same time workmanlike, effect may be obtained by working with the material. A coloured glaze, no doubt, may be too unequal; a careless or lazy workman may stop too soon. In the glazes of the Chinese and Japanese the change of colour is sometimes far too sudden. But even so, it is a hundred times to be preferred to the insipid evenness of tint which is the aim of so many a modern manufacturer. It was the aim too of the celebrated French potters, who laboriously produced some of the most exciuciating tints —whether due to their own want of taste or to the vulgarity of the Du Barry and other such patrons, one hardly knows. In how many of the arts is insipid evenness reached, with infinite pains, and at the sacrifice of beauties peculiar to the material! Greater variety of colour than is to be obtained by simple glaze may naturally be arrived at by in any way roughening the sur¬ face of the ware before it is dipped. And the judicious contrast of smoother and rougher parts is only what would naturally occur to the artist. This roughness may consist in the Where to Stop in Ornament . 27 merest scratching, or in raised modelling, which last is capable of being carried to the point even of competing with sculpture. In that case it enters a class of work not now under consideration. If the perfection of figure modelling is what is wanted (and this, again, applies to a great deal of misplaced figure work in decorative art generally), it would be so much more properly put to so many other purposes, that it is a mistake to apply it to the useful but homely pot The genius of Flaxman was, relatively speaking, wasted on those finikin and crudely- coloured medallions with which the most familiar form of Wedgwood ware is encrusted. A much more workmanlike process is that of painting in clay on clay, usually in white upon a coloured ground. M. Solon, with whose name it is associated in England, is not a Flaxman ; but his paintings in pate sur pate, as it is termed, are infinitely superior as pot- decoration to Wedgwood’s moulded medal¬ lions. You get here the utmost delicacy of which the material is capable. Not that this utmost delicacy is a thing universally to be sought. It is a kind of luxury in which one may be occasionally allowed to indulge, or 28 The Application of Ornament. in which here and there one competent may be permitted to indulge, growing as it does naturally out of a natural process of work. It is a sort of fine-gentleman cousin of the process that is easy and obvious enough for the decoration of ware for common use—that more rough and ready painting, namely, in clay or “slip,” as it is called, where the touches of the brush are left to tell their own tale. It is strange that the public should have to learn that the tale of the tool—brush, chisel, hammer, or whatever it may be- -is never discreditable, and always interesting. There is a something very direct and work¬ manlike in the way “ slip ” is used in modern Indian pottery. The dark-coloured clay is first patterned over in whitish slip, and then the whole is dipped in transparent glaze. It results from the very method of execution that the relief is so slight as not in any way to interfere with the form of the thing it enriches, nor yet in any way to hinder its usefulness. The necessarily restricted relief of repousse metal is accounted for in a similar manner; whereas ornament in lelief applied to a vase usually presents the appear¬ ance of so much excrescence upon it. The •Plate 11. PM®Te-TlKT" by J. AkeTman,6,Queen Square .W.C. Where to Stop in Ornament. 29 modelling you get with a brush is not likely ever to be in too bold relief, nor that which you get by punching too sharp. A very suggestive illustration of appropriate flatness of relief resulting from a workmanlike proceeding, is given in Plate 11, representing an old German book-cover in carved leather. The flatness is such that it is not unsuited for its purpose, and the quality of the material is retained. It looks like leather. Sgraffitto, or the art of scratching, is another of those direct methods plainly appropriate to the decoration of earthenware. Just as the Italian decorator covered his tinted plaster with a layer of white plaster, and while it was yet soft scratched out his design (which thus appeared in the dark colour of the under¬ ground), so the potter dips his vessel of dark- toned clay into a paste of white, and on this outer coating proceeds to scratch his design. Or, of course, he may scratch on the moist body of the vessel itself, and rub colour into the incised lines. These simple processes in a manner suggest themselves by their very easiness ; and the blunt line produced by the point on the damp clay, has an ornamental character of its own 30 The Application of Ornament. well worth keeping. The delicate diaper lines, simply picked out of the painted ground (Plate 12), have a different character of their own. The objection there is to obtaining relief by the application of cast ornament applies only in a less degree to rude and rough and less assuming work, such as German stone¬ ware or gres de Flandres (Plate 8 ). Stamps or punches for impressing coarse patternwork, need to be used with judgment. Within certain limits one may employ in ornament, especially of the ruder kind, devices which would not be endurable in work of more lofty pretensions; still there is always a danger of hardness resulting from mecha¬ nical and perfunctory ways of working, even though, as in stoneware, the glaze may help to soften the forms. The important thing is that the end of beauty be gained without sacrifice of use, and without greater ex¬ penditure of time and labour than is justified by the purpose in view. The truly con¬ ventional way is the workmanlike way. One would not by any means exclude human or animal figures from the sphere of ornamental design; but it should be of the ^Plate 12. Where to Stop in Ornament. 31 simplest and most spontaneous kind, such as can be done without effort and under no special disadvantage, such as in no way pre¬ tends to the accuracy, finish, or dignity of art unapplied. The figures on the Etruscan vases (Plate 8 ) were, ordinarily, painted right off without any great care for accuracy. Some¬ times they are wild enough in drawing. If it comes easier to a man, or is more amusing to him, to devise human or animal forms rather than any other, by all means let him do that; but, in so doing, let him aim at what he can best do under the circumstances, and not ignore them, nor yet attempt to oppose them. How desirable it is to let the mode of work¬ manship suggest the design, is shown by the futility of searching for qualities difficult of attainment in the material used. This is nowhere more apparent than in the painting of pottery. Think of all the miniatures in china turned out from the factories of Sevres, Dresden, and Stoke—marvels of misapplied skill—and compare their absolute ineffective¬ ness as decorations with a bit of Italian or Persian faience (Plate 12), and see how the glory is all with the direct and untrammelled “ conventional ” art of the potter who made 32 The Application of Ornament. the most of the beautiful capacities for colour and iridescent beauty which lay in his crucible, and how vain were the efforts of the would-be miniature or landscape painter. If he ever succeeded in getting what he sought (which is very doubtful), he certainly failed to produce decoration ; that was sacrificed, as it so often is, to a misplaced pictorial ambition. This applies, mutatis mutandis , with equal force to decorative treatment in general. Whatever medium a painter may adopt, he is bound in reason to consider that medium, as he is bound to consider the work before him in adopting it—distemper, fresco, oil, encaustic, or whatever it may be. In ceramic painting the choice lies between painting on the glaze and on the “ biscuit,” as it is called before it is glazed. For ordinary earthenware the more limited resources of the “ underglaze ” method offer all that the orna- mentist need desire. One reason for our modern failures lies in the multitude of our facilities ; the secret of the ancient triumphs is often in the simplicity of the workman’s resources. The artist’s choice of manner will be regulated to some extent by what he wants Where to Stop in Ornament. 33 to do. In any case, if he is discreet, he will limit his ambition to the range of his appli¬ ances. The china painter, that is to say, will think out a scheme of colour which, if not suggested by the oxides employed in ceramic painting, is not in any way opposed to them. This will, indeed, deprive him of some pos¬ sible indulgence in naturalistic effect, but in the main it will lead him to more perfect achievement than would the pursuit of mere difficulties, without regard to the nature of vitreous colours and the action of the kiln upon them. One appreciates more fully the colour of the Persian or Damascus pottery when one realises that the painter’s palette was set by the circumstances. It is only when we respect our materials that we get so much out of them. The uncertainty of all colour which has to pass through the fire renders it most unwise to entertain a scheme which (whether founded upon nature or not) depends upon absolute accuracy of tint. The certain thing about vitreous colours is their uncertainty in the kiln. The potter is working always more or less in the dark, since the value of his work is not D 34 The Application of Ornament. perceived until it comes out of the furnace. It may be within the bounds of possibility to get actual flesh tones in china colours; but at what a cost of risk, and at what a sacrifice of qualities (rich colour qualities, for example) so easily obtainable, and decoratively so much more valuable ! It is only reasonable that, if an artist elect flesh-painting as his metier , he should for¬ swear Whatever has to pass through the fire, and adopt a medium in which he can express himself with ease, or at all events without for ever breaking his heart over it. Better be an underwriter during perpetual high gales, or a large holder of doubtful stock in a time of general panic, than live the life of a pot- painter whose ambitions are all in opposition to his craft. So in other crafts. The glass-painters of the best periods were content with white glass for their flesh tone. And it was for no lack of ability to get something more like flesh-colour that the great decorators of the 16th century adopted flesh tints, which certainly must be called conventional. However limited the re¬ sources of an art, a man knows them, or should know them, when he takes it up. Besides, eveiy Where to Stop in Ornament. 35 medium has its inherent advantages as well as its limits—and it is these which should be turned to account. There is a liquid and transparent quality in water colour, which every water-colour painter wishes he could only retain beyond the wet stage of his picture. This is just what the china painter can get, without the least trouble, by simply floating on his colour with a full brush. Surely, then, that is the kind of thing to aim at, when it is within easy reach ; instead of fidgetting it, or stippling it, or dabbing it with cotton wool, to the dull evenness so dear to the commercial mind, or otherwise laboriously seeking effects more easily and much better produced by other means. That loose, juicy, pot-like look is more valuable in ceramic painting than any degree of mere finish, and should be valued accordingly. So also the scheme of colour should have reference to what can best be done with the palette available. In pottery painting, or whatever it may be, in all kinds of carving, in mosaic, in embroi- dery, in jewellery, everywhere it holds good, that the selection both of the forms and the colour should have direct reference to the technique employed. What is simplest under D 2 36 The Application of Ornament. the circumstances is not only safest but most directly conducive to success ; and there is a further charm in the evidence of directness itself. In all applied art, and in every stage of it, the work in hand points out the appropriate treatment ; it suggests the degree as well as the kind of conventionality to adopt; you have but to heed its prompting and it will tell you what to do, and where to stop. Style and Handicraft. 37 IV. Style and Handicraft. The purpose and position of ornament belong to the wider subject of decoration, at which we have not yet arrived, and come only incidentally under our consideration. On the method of its execution depends, as already said, the very conception of ornamental design. One cannot properly discuss style without reference to material and tools. The style peculiar to each particular kind of work is, indeed, so strongly marked, that it would be quite feasible to classify ornament according to its evolution. Mr. Wornum’s analogy between “style” in ornament and “ hand ” in writing, holds absolutely good. There never was a tool or process but it wrote its character on the work done. It was so in a simple practical matter like lettering. The cuneiform character of the Assyrian inscrip¬ tions was developed chisel in hand. It was the chisel shaped the hieroglyphs of Egypt. 38 The Application of Ornament. In a certain bluntness of the early Greek character the influence of the stylus is ap¬ parent. Chinese and Japanese writing must first have been done with the brush. The various shapes of letters on Plate 13 are instructive. The simple form of the Roman capitals ABC might, like the Greek, first have been indented on a soft substance with a point. The later form of lettering, D E F, 'with its varying thickness of line and its spurred extremities, was better calculated for engraving on hard stone. The use of the thick and thin lines (the down-stroke and the up-stroke) comes of the use of the pen, and so, plainly, does the characteristic thickening of the backs of certain Gothic capitals such as the G. The smaller Roman letters, h i j, and still more plainly the italics k l in, are unmis¬ takably related to the “ round-hand ” n o p. But it is in the medieval “ black letter ” that penmanship is most plainly pronounced, as in the letters Q r S, in the capitals VhWLHh, and in the more fantastically flourishing M, on the same plate. That our own printed type does not more distinctly reveal the intervention of the metal worker, is accounted for by our following the V3S yx IT Jit QO/l 9 - 9 ? /Si gff Cun etform oo o>/a ; ^ncie'oT Greek Plate 13 £\pAT7CSe HOTO-LITMO. 8,FUBNIVAL S T Style and Handicraft. 39 historic, pen-born, fashion of lettering—I would say, too closely, but that history and senti¬ ment must be allowed to count for something ; and it would be hard to set a limit on their just influence. In our day we are given to the cultivation of “a good business hand,” which is just a little characterless and monotonous, as are indeed the lives of some of us who accomplish that modest end. Time was when the pen of the ready writer indulged in occasional flourishes. There is no time for such frivolity nowadays ; and what little character there is left in our handwriting seems likely to be sacrificed to the convenience of the stylographic pen—even if we do not give up penmanship altogether in favour of the “ type-writer.” Style, then, is not so much a thing of dates and countries as of materials and tools. Whenever the development of ornament is discussed, it is the custom to begin with the savage. How the aboriginal developed into the Assyrian is not very clearly shown. But from Assyrian art is traced Egyptian, and from that again Greek art, and its Roman imitation—all very plausibly. The foun¬ dation of Byzantine art upon the ruins of 40 The Application of Ornament. Classic, the growth of Gothic, the reaction of the Renaissance, its transplanting, and its degradation, follow in accustomed order. It is easier to jog along this well-beaten road, though it be a trifle tedious, than to explain how, all the while, parallel with this, Oriental art was pursuing a course of its own, infringing, nevertheless, at times upon Western art, and whenever that was the case, leaving the imprint of its touch upon it. This would be well worth doing; but it would take volumes to do it in, and would demand, besides, historical knowledge far greater than I can pretend to—a knowledge perhaps scarcely compatible with the neces¬ sary knowledge of art. One feels always how hard it is for the artist to equip himself with the necessary scientific and historic knowledge; as for the man of learning and research to cultivate that susceptibility to art necessary to any profitable discussion of the subject. Still more to the purpose would it be to classify ornament according as it was plaited, notched, scratched, turned, modelled, carved, inlaid, printed, woven, embroidered, or what not (see Plates io, 30, 12, 37, 21, 9, 36, 7, I 9 > 40, respectively). 41 ate 14. Pm©?»-Ti MT, by J. Akerman,6,Que«n Square ,W.C. 4i Style and Handicraft. In such a classification architecture would divide itself into masonry, brick, concrete, timber, plaster, and iron styles. The sub¬ sidiary arts would class themselves in con¬ formity with the use of clay, stone, wood, metal, yarn, and so on. There would be further subdivisions into granite, marble, sandstone; into hard and soft wood, close grained and variegated ; into wrought, cast, chased or beaten metal; into tapestry, cloth, damask, velvet, lace, brocade, embroidery, and the like. What are known as the historic styles might be examined by the way; they would go to illustrate the development of style more technically considered. In all probability it would be shown that, wherever the historic style is marked, its character is to be traced to some mode of workmanship which, if it did not actually inspire it, made it advisable. The characteristic ornamental forms of a period or people can usually be traced to the technique and needs of that same people. In this far, ornament rises to the dignity of history. A tolerably clear idea of style is conveyed to us at once by the mention of Egyptian, 42 The Application of Ornament. Greek, Gothic, or Renaissance sculpture. But if we compare for a moment the carving of Egypt, of Greece, and of Medieval and Renaissance Europe, we shall see at once that the styles are not more distinctly of a place and of a period than they are markedly granite, marble, and soft stone styles. The monumental simplicity of the graven obelisk, the refinement of the Panathenaic frieze, the rude grandeur of the Gothic portal, the delicate elaboration of the Italian ara¬ besque, were but the natural development of resources at hand. Working in porphyry, basalt, or granite, severe simplicity was in¬ evitable, and the Egyptian (Plate 14) was severe with a vengeance. There was no temptation to him to fritter away all breadth in the accumulation of petty detail. On the other hand, the even textured but less obsti¬ nate marble encouraged the Greek sculptor and his fifteenth century successor (Plates 15 and 16) to greater and ever greater subtlety of execution; which again would have been quite out of the question in working the more friable sandstone native to Northern Euiope (Plate 17). We associate the coarser treatment with Tlale 16 . •Plate 17 Ph^TO-Timt", fcy J. Akerman.S,Queen .Square ,W.C. Style and Handicraft. 43 Gothic carving in particular. It is all the more noticeable, therefore, how the sculptor of the Renaissance, working in a coarse stone, arrived at results in some respects so like Gothic work. Compare Plate 16 with Plate 17, and see the difference between early Re¬ naissance marble and later Renaissance sand¬ stone. The later work is much the rougher, as sandstone is rougher than marble. Apart from all that has been said, there are conditions of sunlight and grey skies, dry atmosphere and moist, which also have their say in the character of carving everywhere. To explain at length the invariable con¬ ventionality of historic ornament, would be to write the history of the various crafts, each of which might claim a treatise to itself. All that one can do within the limits of a manual like this is to give instances, typical as may be, of the influence of material, tool, or process of execution upon design, and to show how the forms of ornament were inevitably modified by such influence, if not actually due to it. In discussing in a former text-book the anatomy of pattern, I pointed out how its construction was affected by, and very often 44 The Application of Ornament. directly due to, some particular manufactuie or method of work. So it is with the details of ornamental design. The exquisite simplicity of certain cha¬ racteristic patterns familiar in the figured velvets of the 15th century, is cleverly calcu¬ lated to disturb the least possible amount of the sumptuous pile, so that the full value of the rich texture is preserved. In the old-fashioned damask patterns the bier broad leaves and scrolls are planned (like o a Turkey carpet or an Indian rug) with a view, before all things, of getting a broken effect of colour. The designer relied upon the quality of the silk with its varying sheen to alleviate the exceeding flatness of the pattern. No treatment less broad would have done justice to the quality of the stuff, which in those days was worth consideration. Compare even the comparatively debased specimen of woollen damask on Plqte 18, with the current designs in linen damask, and it will be seen how well advised were our grandfathers. Nineteenth century manufacturers who desire equally to exhibit the quality of their woof, can think of no other way of doing it than by leaving the ground for the most part empty. They Tlate 18 Style and Handicraft. 45 dearly love a spot pattern. Is it possibly out of consideration for the lady purchaser that modern table-linen is for the most part so petite in style ? The consideration of the customer and not the thing to be done, is responsible for much of our modern misdoing. In certain woven fabrics of our time the hope of disguising the shabbiness of the substance has prompted the adoption of the fussiest kind of pattern. One had need be¬ ware of textiles worried all over with pattern ; they are often expressly designed to hide shoddy. The manufacturer of bond fide silk, or wool, or other worthy material, would do well, for his part, to identify his goods with a kind of design which the baser fabrics cannot imitate without convicting themselves. The character of the Lyons silk designs of the 17th and 18th centuries owes very much to the circumstance, that the lustrous material was so fascinating that artists were led astray from beautiful form, and simply revelled in the delights of colour. Charming as these silks often are, translate any one of the pat¬ terns into uncompromising black and white, and you are disillusioned at once. The most characteristic of them lose all their 46 The Application of Ornament. charm in monochrome. It is hard to realise that forms like those on Plate 19 can ever pass for beautiful: but it is wonderful what colour and texture will reconcile us to in the way of design. That is no reason why the artist should leave us to reconcile ourselves with ugly forms, still less why we should accept such models without attempting to improve upon them. The Byzantine colouring, in bands, accord¬ ing to the weft (Plate 20) is almost brutal in its outspoken acceptance of the limitations of weaving.* It speaks volumes for the safety with which such limitations may be accepted, that the contradiction between the forms of the design and the scheme of colour does not in the least offend one in the silk. The same kind of thing occurs sometimes in Japanese stuffs. Until recently, the conventional treatment of foliated forms always and everywhere con¬ fessed quite frankly the way it was done. The so-called honeysuckle of the Greeks I have shown elsewhere f to be directly trace¬ able to the use of the brush, as was the case * See ‘Anatomy of Pattern,’ pp. 49, 50. f See * Everyday Art,’ pp. 106-8. Plate 21 Style and Handicraft. 47 with other familiar forms of painted Greek ornament. The Corinthian capital and the acanthus scroll, even when they most nearly approach nature (which is never very closely), are always modified according to the conditions of sculpture. In the Byzantine version of the Classic leafage, in which the sculptors made abun¬ dant use of the drill, the drill-holes form an element in the design. The same thing occurs in much of the later Gothic foliage more especially in German work.* The Arabian borders on Plate 21 leave no possible doubt as to their having been traced on the plastic stucco with the modelling tool. The workman did what was simplest for him to do. We may be sure, too, that it was the ease w r ith which the plaster could be manipu¬ lated, which led to the extraordinary elabora¬ tion characterising the impressed diapers on the walls of the Alhambra. The somewhat savage enrichment of our own Norman buildings forcibly recalls the rude way it was done. It is more properly speaking chopped than carved. * See ‘The Planning of Ornament,’ Plate 24. 48 The Application of Ornament. To refer to a specific material, you cannot look at the ironwork of any early period without seeing how directly the forge affected its design. It was the obvious thing to do to beat out the metal into a bar, and equally obvious to beat out the bar into the familiar spirals. And the very difficulty of forging a perfectly even bar was the surest preventive against mechanical results, such as we see in the handiwork of the modern smith, whose bars are made for him by machine. The forms on Plate 22 belong more dis¬ tinctly to the forge than to France of the 13th century or Italy of the 17th. The metal-workers in different parts of medieval Germany give different expression to their work (Plate 23). If a man had anything to say he expressed himself. A strong man would found a school. But it is smith’s work everywhere. Even in the decadence of the art, when it bursts out into an uncomfortably bristling form of foliage, it breathes always the atmosphere of the forge. If natuie in¬ spired it, it was the hammer and the pincers that shaped it. It is precisely for this reason that similar forms in cast iron are so singularly ill-judged. "Plate 22 'Plate 23 49 Style and Handicraft. There is nothing contemptible in cast iron, if we would but abstain from the reproduction in it of forms inappropriate to casting. We should have no cause to regret the institution of the foundry, if founders would but put art into their moulds ; and the first step towards that end would be, to dismiss from their memories the familiar forms of the forge It is customary to talk about cast iron as if it were an. abomination. It is its misapplication only that is objectionable. There is no reason why we should not do in iron something like what the Italians of the 15th century did in bronze—unless it be 19th century incom¬ petence. It is one of the wicked ways of our civilisation to smoothe out all character from workmanship. For idiomatic expression in ornament we have generally to travel back to a remote period. The angularity of the piece of darning on Plate 24 is what might be called old-fashioned. But how it explains itself! No one who cares for needlework would wish to have it otherwise. So in embroidery (Plate 40) we look for colour and not perfect lines ; and so again in mosaic or stained glass (Plate 39),—just as E 50 The Application of Ornament. in glass-blowing (Plate 8) we properly expect to find lightness rather than precision of form. In the pursuit of mechanical finish and the blind worship of nature, considerations of this kind are commonly lost sight of. The love of smoothness comes of our abuse of ma¬ chinery. The love of nature is not, as the realists (so-called) would have us believe, an invention of to-day. Artists have always loved and studied nature. Only, in the historic treatment of natural forms, modelled in clay or plaster, carved in wood or stone, painted on wall or window, wrought in metal, or on a loom, or with the needle—there is always a touch of the tool which removes the tendering by so much,—let us not say from nature, for the instinct which directs such modifications is natural enough,—but from the imitation of nature. 'late 24. The Teaching of the Tool. 5i V. The Teaching of the Tool. Difficult as it may be for any but a work¬ man quite to appreciate the influence of tools and treatment upon ornamental design, and so to trace the origin of time-honoured forms to their first cause—it is certain that nearly all forms of ornament may be followed back to a beginning in technique. Take any tool in hand and proceed to design with it, and see what comes of the experiment. It will be something quite different fiom what you would have drawn with a pencil on paper, and something much less literally like any natural object : and according to the tool employed will be the character of your design. The process of vepousse work or embossing will serve for an example. You lay a sheet of brass or copper, with its face downwards, on a bed or cushion of pitch, and proceed with tools of various shapes and sizes to E 2 52 The Application of Ornament. punch the pattern from the back. Now, if you have any feeling for the material at all (and if you have not, you have mistaken your vocation), you begin very naturally to do what can be done in it. Accordingly you set to work to beat out certain round bosses, Plate 25, A, which you surround with smaller bosses, B, arriving so at something like flowers. These you go on to connect with rounded stems, C, from which grows a kind of foliage, D, large or small in detail, as need may be, but always more or less bulbous in shape. We have thus a pattern, which is characteristically repousse, beaten work, and which has grown to a great extent out of the conditions under which you were working. Plate 25 pretends to do no more than illustrate this method of proceeding. Your bosses may take the form of figures, animals, or what not ; yet, in the hands of a sympathetic workman, they will not cease, whatever their individual shape or inteiest, to be always bosses. It is your unsympa¬ thetic workman who designs without fore¬ seeing how every detail is to be canied out, and misses the characteristic qualities of his material. 'Plate 27. Plate 28 53 The Teaching of the Tool. It cannot be insisted upon too strongly that, in designing for ornament, it is abso¬ lutely essential always to have those con¬ ditions in mind, as clearly as though you were yourself working under them. In beaten work you descend from the mass to the minutiae ; in filagree, on the contrary, you would work from the minutiae to the mass. Commencing with wiry lines, you would perhaps clothe them with more com¬ pact spirals, clustering these together where you wished to concentrate the effect. The design of the Byzantine artist of a thousand years ago is not, you will see (Plate 26), very different from that of the medieval silver¬ smith, nor yet from that of the Genoese and Maltese artificer of to-day. This is the type of all ornament in deli¬ cately elaborate line, as, for instance, damas¬ cening, embroidery in gold or silken outline, and, on a larger scale, hammered ironwork. Substituting straight lines for curved, it has its parallel in certain kinds of lacework, such as the so-called “ Greek lace.” (Plate 27.) A very curious instance of design directly inspired by the way of working occurs in the Javanese work on Plate 28. Some plastic 54 The Application of Ornament. substance, paper or gutta-percha, is rolled out into the thickness of stout wire, curled round into spirals, and laid on papier-mache. The ground is then partly fretted away and the whole gilded. There is something delight¬ fully naive in the result. Fret cutting affords another homely illus¬ tration. The very necessities of the saw suggest the nature of the design. You are led to devise some form of pierced ornament not unlike stencilling ; or, if you prefer to cut away the ground instead of the pattern, you are compelled to hold the design together by ties. Unless these ties were from the first taken into account, they would be sure to mar the effect. The artist, accordingly, finds himself, as if by instinct, evolving a kind of strap- work, which reminds one of the typical Elizabethan ornament—which very possibly originated in some such device as fret carving, although the forms show also the influence of types more proper to metal. The likeness of the strip of low-relief pattern- work, on Plate 29, to fret cutting, is too striking to be merely accidental. The rela¬ tionship challenges recognition. 12 ate 29 The Teaching of the Tool. 55 In the comparative massiveness or delicacy of a fret pattern, one sees at once whether it was designed for stone, or wood, or metal. The artful fret-worker leaves no frail project¬ ing ends, in stone or wood to be promptly broken off, and in metal to catch hold of any textile thing that may brush against them. The strength of a metal fret naturally affords facility for indulging in more florid forms of ornament. The iron lock-plate represented on Plate 29 shows this, and exemplifies be¬ sides how the metal may be in part embossed, and, of course, engraved. Even simpler and more direct than fret¬ work is the plan of notching thin planks of wood and crossing them (as in Plate 30). It has all the effect of elaborate fretwork. The acme of simplicity is shown in the no less ingenious device of placing the notched planks side by side, so as to produce a pierced pat¬ tern of singular effectiveness. Instances of this, taken from the balconies of Swiss chalets, are given on the same plate with the Arab lattices referred to above. The likeness between a fret pattern and a stencil pattern is explained when one realises that a stencil plate is a fret of cartridge paper, 56 The Application of Ornament. through which the design is rubbed in, the plate protecting the ground. Stencilling is very properly used in decora¬ tion as a means of laying in a first painting only, in which case one may do with it what one will, or what one can. One may even, by the use of a succession of plates, produce most elaborate designs. An ordinary Italian house decorator will manage to stencil a wall surface with a gorgeously rich damask pat¬ tern, at a cost not exceeding that of equally effective wall-paper. A stencil pattern proper should, however, be designed to be stencilled right off, without needing to be made good at all by hand. This principle is illustrated in Plate 1, which by its construction owns to being stencilled. It is a bastard kind of design that is ashamed of its origin. Ties, it will be seen, may well be turned to account to form a pattern on the pattern, to give detail, such as the veining of large leaves, or otherwise to break up the broader masses of the design. The geometric diaper on Plate 31 is ob¬ viously produced by means of two stencils, the outline being formed by the "portion of wswas H. B 1 i^lN4 /fr-JT’ m ^m 7. u (/") '•••"/N f '.A; •' ^V ' \ | V r ■ A B^ r « ^ SB ^ i < T v* / a a 9 \r m a r, a • "j wr t "j v“ 1 ^ .>* ~n ►- k . a \_ r a a a l F ** a _ H r j ^T f m j ^ L ~ T ®J E. c r KELL, rHOTO-LITMO. 8.KURNIVAL ST 57 The Teaching of the Tool. the ground left clear. In the case of an elaborate series of stencils each one may be schemed to make good the ties of another • but, to the workman at least, there will always be an interest in the evidence of the way an effect has been produced. He looks for character as well as beauty. It must be confessed that he is the only one who does. This merit of workmanlike-ness is one which the public cannot, as I said, be expected to appreciate. It is reserved for the craftsman to recognise behind his work a craftsman with whom it is his pride to claim fellowship. His interest in it is not alone in seeing how another solved a difficulty which had occurred to himself, or took advantage of an accident which to him had been fruitful only of disappointment. He has a thrill of purest satisfaction in feeling how some one, far away and years ago perhaps, realised, as he does, that this, and not that, was the spirit in which such and such thing should be done, such and such material should be treated, saw the same hint in nature as he sees, or felt the same limitation in his art as he feels. This is the satisfaction, not of the sentimentalist but of the workman. And no workman of any 58 The Application of Ornament. account will be satisfied without the appioba- tion of the fellow-workman he respects. The tooled book-binding illustrated on Plate 32 is interesting rather to the craftsman than to the artist. The ingenuity with which a few simple and rather insignificant tools are made to suffice towards a somewhat florid effect, shows the practised hand. Our wonder at the splendid scheme of architectural colouring which prevailed in Italy, settles down into the conviction that it was encouraged, if not wholly suggested, by the gorgeousness of the multi-coloured marbles within easy reach. This it was which led also to the development of a kind of decoration, very characteristically mosaic, in which the beauty of the material is displayed in large slabs of rich veneer, whilst the waste is used up in the form of geometric pattern work, the design of which is literally cut according to the chips. The contrast between the broad surfaces and the minute mosaic is exceedingly happy. The large circular slabs of porphyry which form so prominent a feature in the pavements of Byzantine churches in Italy, notably in many of the Roman Basilicas (Plate 33 )» ^Plate 32. Photo -Ti nt”, hy J. Akerm ar. , 6 , Quo. an q ua -e ,W.C. 'fnl^ic! Mosm'c 'JPAve-mercl M&rco . T^ome C F KELL. PMOTO-LITHO. 8.FURNIVAL S T HOLBORN E C The Teaching of the Tool. 59 afford yet further evidence of the dependence of design upon the conditions of material. These circular plaques are in fact so many slices of old columns, saved from the wreck¬ age of more ancient buildings, and put to this ingenious use. The common adoption of geometric pat¬ terns for inlaid pavements was countenanced by the circumstance that the unequal and accidental colour of the marble cubes, just counteracted the tendency to mechanical hardness, in which lies the danger of purely geometric ornament. In marquetry, similar geometric forms were found, for similar reasons, to be serviceable, so that one may say that, whether in wood, or mother-o’-pearl, or marble, a style of inlaid pattern-work was begotten of the very facility of shaping and laying geometric forms, by the certainty of the harmonising influence of colour. It is in the inlay of natural woods and stones and the like that we find the most satisfactory use of absolutely geometric pat¬ tern. The accidental variation of the natural colours is exactly the thing needful. Unex¬ pectedness of tint makes amends for cer- 6 o The Application of Ornament. tainty of shape, and gives an air of mystery to what would otherwise be only so much mechanism. The rigid forms of the diaper on Plate 34 are plainly in need of some such softening influence of colour. Again, in geometric ornament like the “ niello ” on 'Plate 35, the silvery brilliancy of the metal glorifies, so to speak, the nakedness of the design. So in the ornamental glass mosaic so often used in Italy about Giotto’s time in connec¬ tion with white marble, the shimmer of the surface, more especially as it was never absolutely even, put all contingency of harsh¬ ness out of the question. Such a thing was barely possible with all those little facets of glass catching the light at all manner of angles, and glittering each according to its own bright will. In marble inlay of strongly contrasted colour there is no such excuse for severity of form; some of the old pavement patterns, that for example in the baptistry at Florence (Plate 36), are exceedingly graceful in design. Even there you see the influence of the material. The desirability of maintaining the solidity of the white slabs into which the blackish-green nwo. f.runviVAL Plate 35 The Teaching of the Tool . 61 is inlaid, has led to a kind of network of white enclosing the darker tints, by which means the contrast between light and dark is most judiciously softened. These patterns would stencil perfectly. They are, in fact, fretted in marble. Here it may be as well to remark that, though a stencil is a kind of fret, a fret is not exactly the same as a stencil. In designing a stencil the ties are the main consideration. In designing a fret, the connection of the openings is an important point. One must as much as possible avoid the hindrance of perpetually removing and refixing the saw,, which, in fretting a stencil pattern such as that on Plate I, would take almost as much time as the actual cutting. Long, smooth, sweep¬ ing lines are also suggested by the saw, the backward and forward action involved in following jagged lines, such as the serrated edges of leaves, resulting in some waste of labour. Very characteristic design occurs in the wooden lattice work which has lately been imported from Cairo, and freely used (not always with discretion) in the decoration and furniture of English houses (Plate 37). Better 62 The Application of Ornament. lattices it would be difficult to find, or a better means of employing otherwise not very useful scraps of wood, or a better employment of wood turning. This Cairene woodwork in¬ dicates equally the scarcity of large timber, the cheapness of labour, and the dependence 'upon the lathe. Had the conditions been other, we should never have had just such patterns as the Arab builders evolved in infinite variety. The characterlessness of 19th century orna¬ ment is due very largely to the absence of any direct impress of the tool upon design. In the process of modern manufacture, every¬ thing is planed down to a marvellous but monotonous smoothness; the mark of the tool, which is the evidence of workmanlike¬ ness, is popularly regarded even as bad work —want of finish, indeed. Even in this age of enlightenment there are some who have yet to learn that work may be smooth and smug, and yet not beautiful, nor so much as finished. This mistaken ideal of perfection is not, it must be owned, altogether a modern one. In tapestry, for example, designers have been working for centuries past, steadily in the pictorial direction, and against the threads ; ^Plate 36. ' Photo-Tint^ by J. AkM-roan,6,Queen Square ,W.o. The Teaching of the Tool. 63 until there is now little difference between the picture and its copy in wool, except that the copy costs ever so much more than the original. Already in the comparatively early tapestries of Raffaelle, you can see at Dresden or Beauvais what inferior and characterless hangings his famous cartoons make, as com¬ pared with the neighbouring designs of earlier, unknown, and less accomplished draughtsmen, who knew their trade. That Raffaelle either knew little or cared little about tapestry, is clear. And in his failure there is some con¬ solation for the least of us. If we only love our trade, and know it (as only those can who love it) we may succeed where a Raffaelle would fail, though we be anything but Raffaelles. It is easier said than done, for a great painter to step down to mastery in the minor arts. All trades want learning. The crowning point of ignorance and incon¬ sistency in design is reached where the con¬ vention peculiar to and characteristic of some quite different material is affected, as in the bulbous forms of beaten metal reproduced in 15th century Gothic stonework, or the facets of Brobdingnag jewels in Elizabethan wood¬ carving. 64 The Application of Ornament. The modern Frenchman seems to have no conscience at all in this respect. He will copy anything in any material, and be proud of himself. He is not to be persuaded that the characteristic lines of darning for example (Plate 24), when reproduced in wall paper are •simply broken lines, as meaningless as they are awkward. Affectation of that kind seems to throw into stronger relief the fitness of fit ornament. Plate 37 Some Superstitions. 65 VI. Some Superstitions. Out of the practical conditions of work have arisen elements of design so distinctly decorative that they are sometimes taken to be inseparable from ornament and essential to it. Flatness of effect, symmetry of dis¬ tribution, firmness of outline, and other such useful devices, have been adopted as articles of a rather too credulous faith. That is a proud position to which they are by no means entitled. They are at the best work¬ ing rules, a sort of recipe , not without use, but useful mainly to those who are not much in need of such help. Let us inquire into one of these supersti¬ tions—outline. It is of such use in ornament, and so often useful, that it has come to be accepted by certain theorists as a necessity of the case ; with them it is the passport to “ the decorative.” Useful as an outline is in decoration, it is not, however, inevitable. Nor F 66 The Application of Ornament. is it so easy to say just where an outline should be used. In very many cases, the material and its workmanlike employment necessitate an out¬ line. They may even determine its colour, as in the case of the metal lines marking - the cells in which the paste of enamel is laid. And it is curious to notice how, in champlevi enamel, where the cells for the paste are dug out of the metal ground, the outlines are of varying thickness ; whilst in cloisonne work the even section of the wire soldered on to form the cells, necessitates an absolutely even strength of line. You have only to look at the quality of the outline, to tell at once whether enamel is champleve (a sort of niello in colours instead of black) or cloisonne. The evangelistic emblem on Plate 38 combines the two pro¬ cesses. You can distinguish the solid metal from the wire-work quite plainly. You find that when the more laborious process of cutting out the ground is used, the artist adopts a larger treatment, and is altogether more chary of his lines, omitting them even, and blending one colour into another. The method invites the use of broad Tlate 38 paim^ '12^ C eiotiir 15^ Century ■^french I EtfAMEX I QoAwplevc I cloth, i8r. Handbook of Coloured Ornament, in 'the Historic Styles: a Collection of Choice Authentic Examples, represented on 36 plates, printed in Colours and Gold. Royal 4to, cloth gilt, tor. 61 i. WORKS ON DECORATIVE ART. Japanese Encyclopedia of Design (Native printed). Book I.—Containing over 1500 engraved, curious, 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. 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 !2mo, price 2 s. each, net. Native Printed Japanese A rt Books: a Charming Series of Studies of Birds in most Characteristic and Life-like Attitudes, surrounded with appropriate Foliage and Flowers.. In Two Books, each containing 66 pages of highly Artistic and Decorative Illustrations, Printed in Tints. Price 6 s. 6 d. each Book ; or the set of two, I2.r. net. Art Foliage for Sculpture and Decoration. By Jas. K. Colling. Second Edition, Enlarged and Revised, containing 81 plates , with letterpress and numerous woodcuts. Royal 4to, cloth, i8r. Examples of English Medieval Foliage and Coloured Decoration. By Jas. K. Colling. Taken from Buildings of the Twelfth to the Fifteenth Century. 76 lithographic plates, and 79 woodcut illustra¬ tions, with text. Royal 4to, cloth, gilt top, i8r. 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 Examples of Textiles, Embroideries, Paper Hangings, Tile Pavements, Intarsia Work, Tapes¬ tries, Bookbindings, Surface Ornaments- from Buildings, &c., &c., collected from Various Museums, Churches, Mosques, &c., &e., with some Original Designs for Textile and other Ornament by Dr. Fischbach, Giraud, and others. Imperial 4to, bound, 25.L Examples of A ncient and Modern Furniture , Metal Work, Tapestries, Decoration, &=c. By B. J. Talbert, Architect, Author of “ Gothic Forms applied to Furniture and Decoration.” 21 plates, with Description, &c., folio, cloth, reduced to i8r. Original Sketches for A rt Furniture: By A. J onquet. A Series of Designs for Modern Furniture in the Jacobean, Queen Anne, Adam, Chippendale, and Sheraton Styles, illustrated in 143 Designs on 65 lithographic plates, exhibiting Examples of Drawing Room, Dining Room, Bedroom, and Flail Furniture, Chimney-Pieces, &c. Imperial 4to, cloth, 25 s. Examples of Decorative Wrought Iron Work of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Measured and Drawn by D. J. EBBETTS. Sixteen large Photo-Lithographic Plates, containing 7 ° Examples. Folio, bound. Price 12 s. 6 d. ILQi'T > /- GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE 3 3125 01043 4740