DESIGN.
_Gorgo._ Behold these 'broideries! Finer saw you never.
_Praxinoè._ Ye gods! What artists work'd these pictures in?
What kind of painter could these clear lines limn?
How true they stand! nay, lifelike, moving ever;
Not worked--_created!_ Woman, thou art clever!
(Scene at a Festival) _Theocritus_, Idyll xv. line 78.
The word design, as applied to needlework, includes the principles and
laws of the art: the motives and their hereditary outcome; the art
creating the principles; the laws controlling the art.
Design means intention, motive, and should as such be applied to the
smallest as to the greatest efforts of art. That which results from
it, either as picture or pattern, is a record of the thoughts which
produced it, and by its style fixes the date, of its production.
I will first consider the principles of design, and afterwards, in
another chapter, inquire into the origin of patterns; investigating
their motives, and using them as examples, and also as warnings.
The individual genius of the artist works first in design, though his
work is for the use of the craftsman or artisan, his collaborator; for
the two, head and hands, must work together, or else will render each
other inoperative or ineffective.
The artisan, by right of his title, claims a part in the art itself;
the craftsman, by his name, points out that he, too, has to work out
the craft, the mystery, the inner meaning, of the design or intention.
The designer himself is subject to the prejudices called the taste of
his day. He is necessarily under the influence which that taste has
imposed upon him, and from which no spontaneous efforts of genius can
entirely emancipate him. Whether he is conceiving a temple for the
worship of a national faith, or the edging for the robe of a fair
votaress, or the pattern on the border of a cup of gold or brass, he
cannot avoid the force of tradition and of custom, which comes from
afar, weighted with the power of long descent, and which crushes
individuality, unless it is of the most robust nature.
Of very early design we have most curious and mysterious glimpses. The
cave man was an artist. The few scratches on a bone, cleverly showing
the forms of a dog or a stag, a whale or a seal, nay, the figure of a
man, have enabled us to ascertain and to classify the Palæolithic cave
man; from whom his less civilized successor, the Neolithic man, may be
distinguished by his absence of all animal design.[73]
These fragmentary scraps of information, pieced together only in these
later years, teach us the value of very small facts which time and
care are now accumulating, and which, being the remains of lives and
nations passed away, still serve as the soil in which history can be
fertilized.
We have no means of judging whether the cave man was an artist on a
greater or more advanced scale than is actually shown by the
bone-scratchings; the only other relic of his handiwork is the
needle.[74]
It is evident that a direct imitation of nature, such as is seen in
these "graffiti," and at an immense distance in advance of them, in
the earliest known Egyptian sculptures, preceded all conventional art.
Some of the earliest portrait statues in the Museum at Boulac exhibit
a high degree of naturalistic design before it became subservient to
the expression of the faith of the people. As soon as art was found to
be the fittest conveyance of symbolism, it became the consecrated
medium for transmitting language, thought, and history, and was
reduced to forms in which it was contented to remain petrified for
many centuries, entirely foregoing the study or imitation of
nature.[75] It recorded customs, historical events, and religious
beliefs; receiving from the last the impress of the unchangeable and
the absolute, which it gave to the other subjects on which it touched.
It ceased to be a creative art (if it had ever aspired to such a
function), and was never the embodiment of individual thought. This
phase prevailed under different manifestations in Assyria and China.
Pictorial art had, in fact, become merely the nursing mother of the
alphabet, guiding its first steps--the hieroglyphic delineation or
expression of thoughts and facts.[76]
In Egypt, the change from the first period of actual imitation of
nature was succeeded by many centuries of the very slowest progress.
Renouf speaks,[77] however, of "the astonishing identity that is
visible through all the periods of Egyptian art" (for you could never
mistake anything Egyptian for the produce of any other country). "This
identity and slow movement," he says, "are not inconsistent with an
immense amount of change, which must exist if there is any real life."
In fact, there were periods of relative progress, repose, and decay,
and every age had its peculiar character. Birch, Lepsius, or Marriette
could at once tell you the age of a statue, inscription, or
manuscript, by the characteristic signs which actually fix[78] the
date.
Design, unconsciously has a slowly altering and persistently onward
movement, which but seldom repeats itself. It is one of the most
remarkable instances of evolution. But it also has its cataclysms
(however we may account for them), of which the Greek apotheosis of
all art is a shining example, and the total disappearance of classical
influence in Europe before the Renaissance is another.
I will instance one prevailing habit of Egyptian art.[79] In the long
processional subjects, and in individual separate figures, it was
usual to draw the head in perfect profile, the body facing you, but
not completely--a sort of compromise with a three-quarter view of
it--and the feet following each other, on the same line as the
profile. This mode of representing the human figure was only effaced
gradually by the introduction of Greek art, and continued to be the
conventional and decorative method even in the latest days of Egyptian
art; and it is curious to observe, that in the Dark ages European
design fell into the same habit. We cannot imagine that this distorted
way of drawing the human figure could have any intentional meaning,
and therefore may simply believe that it had become a custom; and that
when art has so stiffened and consolidated itself by precedent and
long tradition, as in Egypt and in India, certain errors as well as
certain truths become, as it were, ingrained into it. Plato remarked
of Egyptian art, that "the pictures and statues they made ten thousand
years ago were in no particular better than those they make now."[80]
One day, however, the Greek broke away from the ancient bonds of
custom. The body was made to accompany the head, and the feet followed
suit. But the strange fact remains that for several thousand years men
walked in profile, all out of drawing. Evidently originality was not
in much estimation among the Egyptian patrons of art. Design seemed to
have restricted itself to effective adaptations in a few permitted
forms in architecture and painting, and the illumination of the
papyrus MSS.
Egyptian elasticity of design found some scope in its domestic
ornamentation, in jewellery and hangings, but especially in its
embroideries for dress. Here much ingenuity was shown, and the
patterns on walls and the ceilings of tombs give us the designs which
Semper considers as having been originally intended for textile
purposes. He strains to a point to which I can hardly follow him, the
theory that all decorations were originally textile (except such as
proceeded in China from the lattice-work motive); though I willingly
accept the idea that textile decoration was one of the first and most
active promoters of design.
It is not possible for us to trace systematically the different points
at which Egyptian and Asiatic art touch, but we can see that they were
always acting and reacting on each other in the later centuries before
our era, and that Greece profited by them. The first efforts of both
to break through this chrysalis stage, resulted in the early Greek
archaic style. Its strongly marked, muscular humanity reminds one of
all the conflicting impressions struggling in the conception of the
great artist who first embodied them. They appear to be breaking out
from the trammels of Egyptian and Assyrian styles, which by meeting
had engendered life; and Greek art was the child of their union. Then
art, having shaken off symbolism as its only purpose, and seeking to
represent the forms of men, yet possessed by a guiding spirit, first
sought to convey the idea of expression. The worship of humanity,
mingling with that of their gods, produced the Heroic ideal; and all
the attributes of their heroes--majesty, beauty, grace, and
passion--had to be depicted; as well as rage, sorrow, despair, and
revenge. These were soon to be surrounded with all the splendours of
the arts of decoration.
Greece had prepared for this outburst of excellence and the perfect
science of art, by collecting the traditions, the symbols, the
experience in colouring, and the knowledge of beautiful forms, human
and ideal. All that was needed for the advent of the man who could
design and create types of beauty for all ages was thus accumulated,
and the man came, and his name was Pheidias. A crowd followed him, all
steeped in the same flood of poetry and art; and for several
centuries they filled the world with the sense and science of beauty.
Then the function of the designer--the artist--was changed and
elevated, and he became, through the great days of Greek and Roman
Pagan art, and afterwards through the rise of that of Christianity,
the exponent of all that was poetical and ennobling in the life of
man.
But though the Greek artist had broken the chains of prescribed form,
he still adhered to the "motive"--the inner symbolical thought--and
strove to express it as it had never been expressed before.[81] New
principles were evoked, and the artist, while revelling in the
"sweetness and light" of freedom, framed for himself standards of
taste and refinement, which he left as a heritage to all succeeding
generations.
I fear that I am repeating a platitude when insisting that freedom in
all design, but especially that employed in decoration, must be kept
within certain boundaries; otherwise it becomes lawless. Rules, like
all other controlling circumstances, are of the greatest service to
the artist, as they suggest what he can do, as well as decide what he
ought not to attempt. All boundaries are highly suggestive; the size
of a sheet of paper--the form of a panel--the colours in the box of
pigments--even the touch of the brush which comes to hand,--all these
help to shape the idea to our ends, and assist us in giving to the
original motive the form which is most suitable. These restrictions
are often regarded as impediments by the impatient artist; whereas he
ought to look on them as hints and suggestions, and claim their
assistance, instead of struggling against them. Let us accept the
principle that it is good for each of our efforts at decoration that
we are controlled by the space allotted to its composition. The
relative size (small, perhaps, for a table-cover, but large for that
of a book) and the shape to which we are limited, alter all the
conditions of a design. Whether it is square or oblong, or lengthened
into a frieze; whether it must be divided into parts, including more
than one motive, or be grouped round one centre; whether it is to be
repeated more than once within the range of the eye, or whether it is
to disappear into space upwards or horizontally; and whether it is to
stand alone, or be framed with lines or a border,--all these
restrictions must govern the design, or, in its highest phase, the
composition.
The composition must consist of supporting lines well balanced, and
"values" filling up the whole surface of the space, which is to
contain it, and beyond which it must not seek to extend. As we have in
embroidery no distances--only a foreground--the design must be placed
all on one plane. The title of "composition" cannot be granted to a
bouquet or a bird cast on one corner of a square of linen, however
gracefully it may be drawn. It does not cover the space allotted to
it.
If we carefully study the great and guiding principles that have been
distinctly formulated by some of the Continental authorities on
decorative art, we shall find much help in composing our designs.
Nothing is more interesting than to search for the foundation of the
structure which centuries have helped to raise, and to dig out, as it
were, the original plan or thought of the founder. So it is most
instructive to learn the fundamental rules by which such results are
secured.
M. Blanc[82] says of the general laws of ornamentation: "There can be
no nobler satisfaction to the mind, than to be able to unravel what is
beyond measure complicated, to diminish what is apparently immense,
and to reduce to a few clear points what has been till now involved in
a haze of obscurity. Just as the twenty-six letters of the alphabet
have been, and always will be sufficient to form the expression of the
words necessary for all human thought, so certain elements susceptible
of combination among themselves have sufficed, and will suffice, to
create ornament, whose variety may be indefinitely multiplied."
He reduces ornamental design to five principles, Repetition,
Alternation, Symmetry, Progression, and Confusion.
[Illustration: Fig. 5.
Wave Pattern.]
First, Repetition. "You may act on the mind, through sight, by the
same means as those that will excite physical sensations. A single
prick of a pin is nothing, but a hundred such will be intolerably
painful. Repetition produces pleasurable sensations, as well as
painful ones." An insignificant form can become interesting by
repetition, and by the suggestion which, singly, it could not
originate. For example, the rolling of the Greek scroll or wave
pattern awakens in us the idea of one object following another. "It
also suggests the waves of the ocean; or the poet may see in it a
troop of maidens pursuing each other in space, not frivolously, but in
cadence, as if executing a mystic dance." Change the curves into
angular forms, as making the key pattern, and it will no longer flow,
but become as severe as the other was graceful. No principle gives
greater pleasure than repetition, and next to it, _alternation_.
[Illustration: Fig. 6.
Key Pattern.]
Variety is here added to the law of repetition. "There can be
repetition without alternation, but no alternation without
repetition." Alternation is, then, a succession of two objects
recurring regularly in turn; and the cadence of appearance and
disappearance gives pleasure to the senses, whether it be addressed to
taste, hearing, or sight. Alternate rhymes, and even short and long
lines, soothe the ear in verse. In form, the alternations are the more
agreeable, the more they differ. Such are, in architecture, a
succession of metopes and triglyphs on a Doric frieze, where the
circle and the straight lines relieve each other.
[Illustration: Fig. 7.
Metopes and Triglyphs.]
Symmetry. The correspondence of two parts opposite to each other is
symmetrical. "A living being, man or animal, is composed of two parts,
which appear to have been united down one central line. Without being
identical, if you folded them down the line, they would overlap and
perfectly cover each other. Man is born with the sense of symmetry, to
match his outward form; and he appreciates its existence, and
instinctively feels the want of it. Symmetry is another word for
justness of proportion. The Greeks understood by symmetry, the
condition of a body of which the members have a common measure among
themselves. We expect the two sides of a living being to correspond,
and we look for these proportions in the living body to balance each
other, which we do not expect to find in any other natural object. A
large leaf at the end of a slender stem may be as appropriate, and
give as much pleasure, as a small leaf in the same position; but a
huge hand at the end of an arm is not so agreeable to our sense of
symmetry as one of the size and outline which we naturally expect to
see.
"The mind of man expects to find, outside of himself and his own
proportions, something which he feels is proportionate and
symmetrical; in fact, he at once detects the want of it. The Japanese,
with delicacy and taste, often substitute for symmetry its
corollary--balance. The Chinese or Japanese vase will often have an
appreciable affinity and resemblance to a Greek one, each preserving a
secret balance, even in the extremest whimsicality of its composition.
Proportion is another corollary to symmetry, if it is not another word
for some of its qualities."
"Progression. In this principle are included long perspectives,
pyramidal forms in architecture, and certain processional
compositions."
"For pyramidal surfaces, such as pediments, a progressive ornament is
the fittest. All the buildings in the East, and in the ancient cities
of Central America, which are raised on pyramids of steps, show the
tendency to this species of effect in giving dignity to the buildings
placed on such platforms."
"Perspectives are highly attractive specimens of progression, which,
when made use of in the decorations of a theatre, produce delightful
illusions."
M. Blanc quotes Bernardin de St. Pierre, who says: "When the
branches of a plant are disposed in a uniform plan of diminishing
size, as in the pyramidal shape of a pine, there is progression; and
if these trees be planted in long avenues, diminishing in height and
colour, as each tree does in itself, our pleasure is redoubled,
because progression here becomes infinite. It is owing to this
feeling of infinity that we take pleasure in looking at anything that
presents progression, such as nurseries in different stages of
growth, the slopes of hills retreating to the horizon at different
levels--interminable perspectives."
All floral compositions which give the effect or impression of growth
may be included in the progressive principle. A composition which,
beginning as it were with a stem, spreads and floreates equally on
each side; thrusting outwards and upwards, and ending in a topmost
twig or bud, is governed by this principle.
Confusion. Boileau is quoted by M. Blanc as saying, "A fine disorder
is often the effect of art;" and he adds, "But before he said it,
nature had shown it." Here we must observe that the confusions or
disorders of nature are all subject to certain laws; and it is in
adopting this idea, that an artistic confusion may give us the sense
of its being ordered by, and subject to definite rules. These rules
act as the frame affects the picture, circumscribing its
irregularities, and restricting them to a certain area. "The
artist-painter is, in a small space, permitted to employ confusion,
because the art of the cabinet-maker will keep the geometrical effect
in view." When the Japanese throw their ornaments, apparently without
rule, here and there on the japanned box, they reckon on the square
shape being sufficiently marked to the eye by its shining surface and
sharp corners.
The confusion in a Japanese landscape is so beautiful that one
appreciates the innate sense of balance, which modifies the
confusion--rules and orders it.
"In the hands of the designer, confusion is only a method of rendering
order visible in a happy disorder. Here contraries meet and touch....
Admit these as the principles of all decoration, and you will find
that, by following and combining them, you may produce varieties as
numberless as the sands of the sea, and that a latent equilibrium will
reduce nearly every complication and confusion to perfect harmony."
Each of the five principles we have discussed has its corollary, which
adds to the resources of the decorative artist. These are as
follows:--To Repetition belongs harmony, or consonance; to
Alternation, contrast; to Symmetry, radiation; to Progression,
gradation; to balanced Confusion, deliberate complication.[83]
_Harmonies_ in form and in colour are produced in different
ways--sometimes by repetition with variation; sometimes by the
different parts being rather reflected on each than repeated. This
explains the harmony that may be called consonance, if I rightly
understand M. Blanc's theory.
_Contrast_ is most generally understood as a common resource in the
hands of the artist for producing strong effects; but M. Blanc
cleverly expresses the reticence needed to ensure contrast being
pleasurable, not painful. "To adorn persons or things," he says, "is
not simply for the purpose of causing them to be conspicuous; it is
that they may be admired. It is not simply to draw attention to them,
but that they may be regarded with feelings of pleasure.... If
contrast be needed, let it be used as the means of rendering the whole
more powerful, brilliant, and striking. For instance, if orange is
intended to predominate in a decoration, let blue be mingled with it,
but sparingly. Let the complementary colour be its auxiliary, and not
its rival." Contrasts are always unpleasant, if the two forces
struggle with each other for pre-eminence, whether it be in form or in
colour. The rule to be observed in all ornamental design is this:
"that contrasting objects, instead of disturbing unity, should assist
it by giving most effect to that we wish to bring forward and
display."
_Radiation_ belongs to the principle of symmetry, starting from a
centre from which all lines diverge, and to which all lines point.
This is to be found throughout nature, from the rays of the sun to the
petals of the daisy. All decorative art employs and illustrates it.
"_Gradation_ in colour, as in form, is not quite synonymous with
progression, but expresses a series of adroitly managed transitions.
The English intermingle in their decoration, colours very finely
blended; nor do they find any transition too delicate. This, as in all
principles of ornament, has to be employed according to the feelings
intended to be produced on the mind of the spectator--whether for
absolute contrast or for imperceptible progression, when the tenderest
colours are needed."
_Complication_ is illustrated by M. Blanc, by a quotation from
"Ziegler."[84] "Complication is another aspect of the art which owns
the same sentiment as that expressed by Dædalus in his labyrinth,
Solomon in his mysterious seal, the Greeks in their interlacing and
winding ornaments, the Byzantines, the Moors, and the architects of
our cathedrals in their finest works. Intertwined mosaics, and
intersection of arches and ribs, all spring from complication."
To follow the interlacing line of an ornament, gives the mind the
pleasure of untying the Gordian knot, without cutting it. It gives the
excitement of curiosity, pursuit, and discovery. "When we see these
traceries so skilfully plaited, in which straight lines and curves
intermingle, cross, branch out, disappear and recur, we experience a
high pleasure in unravelling a puzzle which at first, perhaps,
appeared to be undecipherable; and in acknowledging that a latent
arrangement may be recognized in what at first, and at a distance,
seems an inextricable confusion." The Celtic, Moorish, and Gothic
styles illustrate and are explained by these remarks; and they are
well worthy the attention of the designer.
Having so freely borrowed from M. Blanc's chapter on the general laws
of ornamentation, I will finish my quotations with the words with
which he concludes: "There is no decoration in the works of nature or
the inventions of men which does not owe its birth to one of the
original principles here enumerated, viz. Repetition, Alternation,
Symmetry, Progression, and Balanced Confusion; or else to one of their
secondary causes, consonance, contrast, radiation, gradation, and
complication; or lastly, to a combination of these different elements,
which all finally lose themselves in a primordial cause--the origin of
the movements of the universe--ORDER."[85]
The extracts from M. Blanc's works I have carefully placed between
commas, being most anxious to express my obligation to him for his
carefully formulated epitome of the laws of design. But though I have
largely quoted, there remains still much most interesting and
suggestive matter, which I recommend the reader to seek in his book.
Though we should call to our aid the general laws of design for all
art, we must select from them what is specially appropriate for the
needs of our craft. From the art of needlework we should eliminate
as much as possible all ideas of _roundness_, all variety of surface
and effects of light and shadow and contrasting colours. Unity,
softness, grace, refinement, brightness, cheerfulness, pleasant
suggestions,--these should be the objects in view when we design the
panels for the drawing-room or boudoir, the hangings for the bed, or
the cover for the table--harmony which will satisfy the eye, thoughts
that shall please the mind.
The objects in nature that give us the most unalloyed pleasure--birds
and flowers--are those that from all time have served as the materials
for decorative design, and therefore have been moulded into the
traditional patterns which have descended to us from the earliest
times. Design must follow the scientific laws of art, and shape the
variations of traditional forms from which we cannot escape. In our
present search after these inner truths, I repeat that we have nothing
to do with the rules of painting, sculpture, and architecture, or any
other of the secondary arts, such as wood carving, metal work, &c.;
these having each their own intrinsic principles, which must be worked
out as corollaries from the general laws of composition which govern
all Aryan art.[86]
It is curious that in drawing on the flat, in ancient frescoes, there
appear to be no acknowledged rules of perspective--hardly more in
Pompeii, than on early Chinese screens and plates; or than later in
the Bayeux tapestries. And yet the Greeks, with their unerring
instinct, actually made use of false architectural perspectives to add
to the effects of height and depth in their colonnaded buildings.[87]
They sensibly diminished the circumference of the columns, and used
other means in their designs for this purpose. They understood the
principle, but they did not carry it into flat decorative art. They
did not attempt, when they painted a landscape on the wall, to do more
than recall the idea they were sketching; and never thought of vying
in scientific or naturalistic imitation with the real landscape they
saw through the window; they did not wish to interfere with the effect
of the statue, or the human figures grouped in front of it, to which
the wall served as a background. Those threw shadows and cast lights;
but in the flat there were no shadows, no perspective--all was
flat.[88] We must draw from this the deduction that the Greeks held
that flatness was an essential quality of wall decoration (except in
friezes) as well as of all textile ornament; and for every reason we
must accept this flatness as a general law for designs in embroidery.
In hangings and dress materials, flatness is more agreeable than a
complicated shaded design, especially when it is further confused by
folds, disturbing and interrupting the flow of the lines of the
pattern.
The reader will perceive that the laws of composition for textiles
quoted from M. Blanc, apply perfectly to designs on the flat, and to
outlined sketches in black and white, as well as to the most
elaborate compositions for pictures, either historical or "genre."
They are rules which should be understood and employed by the man who
draws for a wall-paper or an area railing; and certainly by him who
makes patterns for our schools of design.
It may therefore be laid down as a general rule, that all designs for
embroidery should be considered first as outlined drawings, covering a
flat surface, and then filled in with colour. The outlines should as
little as possible overlap one another, as flatness is one of the
first objects to be remembered; and this, of course, will be disturbed
by the parts passing over or under each other. Indian designs in
flowers have invariably a wonderful flatness, in the absence of all
light and shadow; joined to a naturalistic suggestion of detail, which
is accounted for by their traditional mode of copying from nature. The
branch or blossom to be copied, is laid on the ground and pegged down
with care, to eliminate every variety of surface, and every branch and
twig so arranged that they may not cross or touch each other. This
conventional composition is then drawn, and every natural distinction
in the form carefully copied. I would suggest that this idea should be
accepted as useful for imitation among ourselves in certain
conventional compositions of vegetable forms. Perhaps it is our Aryan
ancestry that has given us a prevailing taste for such decorations;
and it is worth while to consider how best to manipulate them.[89]
Clinging as we do to these floral designs, we can see that they are
the only ones that bear repetition, whether covering the surface of
the material in the rich irregularity of the flowers in a field, or
conventionalized into a form or a pattern.
The eye is never shocked or fatigued by such repetitions in orderly
confusion, or trained by the hand into artistic shapes or meanderings
of tracery. But when embroidery or weaving attempts to represent
animals or typical human figures, repetition immediately becomes
tiresome. A Madonna surrounded by angels, comes in badly, repeated
over and over again as a pattern, broken up by folds, cut up by a
seam, dislocated in the joining, and repeated in tiers. Such a design
is figured in Auberville's book.[90] The drawing is beautiful, but by
repetition it becomes ridiculous. I therefore deprecate this kind of
ornament in textile work. For this reason embroidery, which can be
fitted to each space that is to be covered, is preferable to woven
designs, however richly or perfectly they may be carried out.
Another class of design, which must be considered apart, is the
conventional-geometrical, of which the special distinction appears to
be that it consists of echoes or fragments of what we have seen
elsewhere. These conventional patterns are often merely the _detritus_
of past styles or motives crushed and placed by time in a sort of
kaleidoscope. They remind one of the little wreaths of broken shells
and coloured sea-weeds left on the sands by the retiring waves after a
storm, and are sometimes full of beauty and suggestion. (Pl. 17.) We
trace in these fragmentary patterns forgotten links with different
civilizations; and we ponder on the historical events which have
brought them into juxtaposition. These kaleidoscope patterns are to be
seen in Persian and Turkish carpets of the present day, and we find,
on examination, little bits which can only be the remnants of a
broken-up motive, probably as much lost now to the designer who
inherits the traditional form, as to us who can only see the vague
results.
I illustrate this remark by giving the border of a modern Persian
carpet which has certainly had Egyptian ancestry. The boat, the
beetle, and the prehistoric cross are to be found in it.
[Illustration: Fig. 8.
Persian Carpet.]
Many conventional patterns of to-day are descendants of the
lattice-work of Chinese art, and of the zigzags, lines, and discs of
barbarous primitive ornamentation.
The traceries in Indian stone windows show some of the most charming
geometrical forms, and are akin to the Persian and Russian modes of
composing conventional patterns. They appear on very ancient metal
work, and are the motives of all the embroideries in the Greek islands
and the principalities, and of the linen embroideries of Russia. Their
Byzantine origin gave its impress to the European schools of the
Middle Ages, and the pattern-books of Germany and Venice of the
sixteenth century are full of them. They are best suited for the
mosaic stitches, and, kept in their places as decoration, they are
useful for carpets and borders.
It should be impressed on our young artists, that, in composing their
designs, they must be influenced by the materials to be employed, and
the purpose for which the decoration is intended. Thus in textile
design for dress and hangings (excepting for tapestries) the fact must
never be lost sight of that they will be subject to disturbance by
crossing folds and crumplings, which will break up the lines of the
pattern. It is therefore evident that a design fitted for a rigid
material in a fixed place, such as an architectural decoration in
wood, stone, or stucco, must be subject to a treatment different from
that which befits an embroidered curtain or panel.
Stone and wood, being materials of uniform colour, require all the
help of recessed shadows and projections to catch the light; whereas
in textiles, form is assisted by colour, and smoothness of surface is
a primary consideration. The strongly accentuated design for
wood-carving becomes poor and lifeless when deprived of its essential
conditions and _raison d'être_, and the pattern which looks charming,
outlined and filled in with colour, could be hardly seen incised on a
flat stone surface. This seems a truism, but the neglect of these
plain axioms causes many mistakes in decorative art. Mr. Redgrave
says: "A design must be bad which applies the same treatment to
different materials." He further says: "The position of the ornament
requires special consideration. The varied quantities, bolder relief,
and coarser execution are not only allowable, but absolutely
necessary, at heights considerably above the eye. Moreover, each
fabric has its own peculiar lustre, texture, &c. Thus, in the use of
hangings, curtains, &c., the design might be suitable in silk, and
coarse or dull in woollen."[91]
Here I venture to differ from Mr. Redgrave. Perspective is as much to
be respected in decoration as in pictures, near to the eye; and the
gradation in size and colour, as the ornament travels up into height
or fades into distance, is a phase of pleasure which should not be
checked by enlargement of form or reinforcement of colouring.
It is hardly necessary to warn our artists against a sort of design
which is conventional, yet had its own meaning in the beginning. This
is to be found in Indian carvings and embroideries of a certain date,
or imitating the works of that distant period. It proceeded from a
hideous worship of monstrous Dravidian divinities. Their statues are
to be found, surrounded by coarsely designed patterns, in the temple
architecture of the first and second centuries. Its characteristics
are idols in niches or shrines, distorted in form or attitude; foliage
of unnatural, twisted plants, added to the recurring of the lotus and
tree of life; or animals destroying each other, or kneeling in worship
to the idols. These ugly designs are purely conventional. Fergusson
suggests that they were introduced into Mexico in the fourth or fifth
centuries A.D. by Buddhism.[92]
Those many-armed, sometimes many-faced divinities drove out the
beautiful Aryan types, which, however, resumed their sway when the
wave of the Renaissance flowed back to India, and was remodelled by
Oriental taste to the lovely designs we find in the Taj Mahal.
In M. Blanc's classification of ornament, he has placed Gothic design
under the head of deliberate complication. The whole of the Gothic
decorations, which are a gradual growth in one direction, arose from
the study of interlacing boughs and stems, employed as the enrichment
of the newly-grown forms of the vaulted roofs. The possibilities of
great size and height covered these designs and inspired all their
decoration; and the effect of reiteration and long recurring lines in
perspective was essentially the motive of these avenues in stone.[93]
Here enter the principles of repetition and progression, and you will
find how carefully the designers of the twelfth, thirteenth, and
fourteenth centuries worked up to these ideas. You will see in their
embroideries, shining figures or pictures in gold, silver, and
coloured silks, shimmering on dark velvet backgrounds, each design
terminating a perspective of architectural forms which enhances their
brilliancy. The most effective, probably, were generally employed for
the adornment of the high altar, so as to be seen from a great
distance. The smaller and less distinct and more delicate ornaments
were reserved for the side chapels or for smaller churches, where such
distant effects were inappropriate. But the motives of ecclesiastical
embroidery will be discussed in a future chapter.
All attempts at pictorial art are a mistake in textiles. It does not
enter into such designs; and when by chance it is allowed to be so
used, it is an error of judgment, and only exhibits a laborious and
useless ingenuity. It is no longer an artistic delineation of a
natural object, but becomes an imitation of another way of rendering
such objects.
Mr. Redgrave says that pictorial art in our manufactures is one of our
great mistakes. "The picture must be independent of the material, the
thought alone should govern it; whereas in decoration the material
must be one of the suggestors of the thought, its use must govern the
design."
Perhaps it will appear to my readers that here I repeat, in different
forms, what has been said in a previous chapter on the history of
style. I think that it is better to do so, than to omit to show where
style and design must accompany each other. Style, without any
reference to design, would be but a barren subject; and design,
without reference to style, would become lawless, and soon be lost in
the mazes of bad taste and mannerism. Both subjects are of so large
and important a nature that I do not attempt to do more than point out
how, in their history and their influence, they belong to the craft of
embroidery.
Such influences belong to all art; and though I am anxious to confine
myself to only one section of it, I find it difficult to resist the
temptation to generalize and stray from the prescribed path, when
large and important views are opened on every side, as I travel on
from point to point.
In sketching the history of design, as well as I may in so short a
space, it is only considered in the light in which it illustrates our
craft.
I repeat that the design should be informed by the motive which
suggested it, and by the need which has called it forth; and it must
be moulded to the space it has to fill, and the position it will
occupy. The design must be modified into different outward forms,
according to whether it is to be fitted to the edge of a building
against the sky; to a high panelled wall; to be applied as a frieze,
or round the capital of a pillar; to the embroidered cover of an
altar, or the silken hangings of a bed, or the framed flat spaces on
the walls of a saloon. In fact, "intention," "place," and "shape" are
necessary motives and limits to a flat design.
Leaving aside all architectural ornamentation, and adhering only to my
own subject, embroidery, I will limit my observations to the three
purposes here suggested. Firstly, as the central effect of the holiest
part of a church; secondly, in the domestic and comfortable room, to
be adorned and made cheerful; and thirdly, as decking the refined and
gay saloon or banqueting-hall.
To the church we should devote the most splendid and effective
contrasts, to blaze unframed against dark empty backgrounds, or amidst
stone and marble decorations; something set apart from its
surroundings, and asserting that separation, is the desirable effect
to be attained.
A totally different set of rules come into play when we have to select
the decorations of a bedroom. Here a background does not exist. We are
surrounded by four walls very near to the eye, so that perspectives
are a secondary interest, if indeed they can claim any consideration;
severe and magnificent ornamentation is out of place, except perhaps
in that time-honoured institution--to be found in every great house
possessing a suite of reception-rooms--the State bedroom, where the
display of hangings and embroideries was the first motive of the
decoration of the past, clothing and garnishing the bare spaces on the
lofty walls. Space and separateness are not the object or aim of the
bedroom of to-day; but lightness, snugness, and cheerful comfort, with
which the design of the textile ornaments have much to do. This will
in a later chapter come under the head of furniture.
For the saloon we may accept any splendour of rich and costly design,
and the variously shaped panels assist in suggesting the form of the
decoration. The plain or moulded panels, called in Italian "targhe,"
or shields, seem to be descended from the actual shields of gold which
Solomon hung on the walls of the king's house in the Forest of
Lebanon.[94] The motive was apparently Tyrian, and traces of it are
also to be found in Assyrian sculpture.[95]
The practice of framing the design gives opportunities for change of
materials, colour, and pattern, permitting the employment of different
flat surfaces laid on each other, and scope for endless enrichment;
the framed picture being, perhaps, the central culminating attraction,
crowning, as it were, the textile ornamentation.
I merely give these instances as illustrating the rule that we have
more than once laid down, that a design cannot fitly be employed
except in the position for which the artist has composed it. I will,
however, add that though it is right to give due consideration to the
preparation of each work for its intended use, yet we often have
charming suggestions offered to us, by the chance acquisition of a
beautiful artistic specimen, which finds its own place and
accommodates itself to the surrounding colours and forms. These are
the happy accidents of which the cultivated artistic eye takes
advantage, adding them to the experience which may help those who are
seeking for the rules of harmony and contrast in design.
Research into the mysteries and principles of design applies to woven
arabesques and patterns, and must include machine-made textile
ornament, and all decorative needlework. It is, in fact, the fabric
for the million which most especially needs the careful study of
guiding rules. When a plant sends forth hundreds of winged, wind-blown
seeds, like the thistle, it spreads itself over wide fields, and is
more mischievous than a more noxious growth, such as the deadly
nightshade, which only drops an occasional berry into the earth. So a
common cheap chintz or carpet, with a poor, gaudy, motiveless design,
carries a bad style into thousands of homes wherever our commerce
extends; disgracing us, while it corrupts the taste of other nations.
In addressing our young designers, I would remind them that in art the
race is not always to the strong. Prudence and educated powers,
thoughtfulness and study, often carry us where unassisted and
uncultivated genius has signally failed. Even such facilities as are
afforded by the acquirement of freehand drawing, as taught in our
schools of art, are not to be despised. The workman should thoroughly
master his tools, or they will hamper him. The first step towards
design is that you should learn to draw. After this, appreciation and
observation are necessary, and due balance in outline and colour
should be studied; and all this is as much needed in drawing a
pattern as in composing a picture. The difference lies in our art
being only decorative, wherein beauty and fitness are to be
remembered, and nothing else; whereas the picture may have to record
historical facts, or to inspire poetical thoughts--to awe or to touch
the beholder. A decorative design is only asked to delight him.
Intelligent delight, however, can only be evoked by intelligent art,
and to this, decoration must be subjected.
FOOTNOTES:
[73] The earliest art we know (the bone-scratching) is
naturalistic and imitative. We are unaware of any
attempt at a pattern of the prehistoric period. The lake
cities are of so vague a date that their ornaments on
pottery are puzzling rather than instructive. The
earliest Hellenic pottery was scratched or painted.
Cuttle-fish, repeated over and over again, are among the
earliest attempts at a pattern, by repetition of a
natural object. Naturalism soon fell into symbolism,
which appropriated it and all art, and the upheaval of a
new culture was needed to lift it once more into the
region of individual creation. See Boyd Dawkins' "Early
Man in Britain;" also General Pitt Rivers's Museum of
Prehistoric Art, lately presented to the University of
Oxford.
[74] See Boyd Dawkins' "Early Man in Britain."
[75] "I hope, indeed, to enable them" (the members of
his class) "to read, above all, the minds of
semi-barbarous nations in the only language by which
their feelings were capable of expression; and those
whose temper inclines them to take a pleasure in mythic
symbols, will not probably be induced to quit the
profound fields of investigation which early art will
open to them, and which belong to it alone. For this is
a general law, that supposing the intellect of the
workman the same, the more imitatively complete his art,
the less he will mean by it, and the ruder the symbol,
the deeper the intention."--Ruskin's "Oxford Lectures on
Art," 1870, p. 19.
[76] See Isaac Taylor's "History of the Alphabet."
[77] Renouf's Hibbert Lectures, 1879, p. 67.
[78] Now there is a point of view in which we may regard
the imitative art of all races, the most civilized as
well as the most barbarous--in reference to the power of
correctly representing animal and vegetable forms, such
as they exist in nature. The perfection of such
imitation depends not so much on the manual dexterity of
the artist as on his intelligence and comprehension of
the type of the essential qualities of the form he
desires to represent. See Ch. T. Newton's "Essays on Art
and Archæology," p. 17.
[79] See Wilkinson's "Ancient Egyptians."
[80] Plato's Second Book of Laws, p. 656.
[81] "The religion of the Greeks penetrated into their
institutions and daily life. The myth was not only
embodied in the sculptures of Pheidias on the Parthenon,
and portrayed in the paintings of Polygnotus in the Stoa
Poikile; it was repeated in a more compendious and
abbreviated form on the fictile vase of the Athenian
household, on the coin circulated in the market-place,
on the mirror in which the Aspasia of the day beheld her
charms. Every domestic implement was made the vehicle of
figurative language, or fashioned into a
symbol."--Newton's "Essays on Art and Archæology," p.
23.
[82] "Art in Ornament and Dress," by M. Charles Blanc,
formerly Director of the French Institute. Eng. Trans.,
Chapman and Hall, London.
[83] See Charles Blanc's "Art in Ornament and Dress," p.
31.
[84] Charles Blanc's "Art in Ornament and Dress," p. 43.
[85] Charles Blanc's "Art in Ornament and Dress," pp.
43, 45, 46.
[86] Chinese design shows naturalistic art arrested and
perpetuated on totally different principles. Their
representations are all equally allied to their art of
picture-painting, whether on china with the brush, or on
textiles with the needle. The flatness of the picture is
still preserved by their ignorance of perspective. When
they attempted to express different distances, they did
so by placing them one above another, so that in reading
the composition the eye first takes in the distant
horizon; next below it, the middle distance; and being
thus prepared, it comes down to the actual living
foreground, on which rests the dramatic action and
interest addressed to the spectator. The Chinese
understood many of the secrets of art, yet never
achieved perspective.
[87] See Mr. Penrose's work on the measurements of the
Parthenon at Athens. Published by the Society of the
Dilettanti.
[88] Marked outlines in embroidery add to the flatness,
and enable us to omit cast shadows. In this it differs
entirely from pictorial art, where one of the great
objects is to avoid flatness.
[89] Semper's theory, already mentioned, is that textile
design was certainly flat; that it was the first form of
decoration, and was followed by bas-relief, which could
not at once rid itself of the original motive.
[90] Auberville's "Ornamentation des Tissus" (eleventh
century).
[91] Redgrave's "Manual of Design," pp. 43-45.
[92] This idolatrous type was introduced into England by
the Buccaneers, and reflected on our carvings and
embroideries of the time of James I., slightly modified
by the Italian Renaissance of that period. As this sort
of vulgar ornamentation has once prevailed, let us
protect ourselves against its possible recurrence.
[93] While making this passing allusion to the theory
that the origin of all Gothic decoration is mainly
founded on the motive of interlacing stems and foliage,
I wish to guard myself against being supposed in any way
to argue against other beginnings, whenever they can be
proved. I have said before that most decorations have a
mixed ancestry. But when I see single or clustered
columns starting from the ground--spreading at the base
like the gnarled root, and growing till they culminate
in crowns of foliage, forming symmetrical capitals, like
the first clusters of leaves on a strong young
sapling--then the branches spreading and interlacing,
only checked at equal intervals by a lovely leaf or
burgeon, till they meet in blossoms on the highest point
of the arch,--I cannot but adhere to the old idea that
rows of trees meeting overhead suggested Gothic ornament
as well as Gothic Architecture. The Spanish or Moresque
Gothic was overloaded with leaves and flowers, and the
German Gothic was enriched with fantastic trees and
flowers, each according to its national taste and
fashion. A Gothic tree is a very conventional plant; and
generally carries only one leaf on each branch. I have
given a specimen of archaic trees from the Bayeux
tapestry. They are typical of the Gothic botanical idea
and style down to the fourteenth century. (Fig. 13.)
Nor is this interpretation of Gothic design other than a
result of its descent from the Egyptian ancestral
motive, where the temple columns represented the single
stem of the lotus with one large blossom for its
capital, or else a bundle of stems of the lotus, palm,
and convolvulus flowering together into a beautiful
cluster. Even the gigantic columns of the great
hypæthral hall at Karnac are only a stupendous
exaggeration of the same stalk and flower motive. From
these were derived the forms of the early Greek
column--soon enriched by substituting the Acanthus for
the Lotus, but often retaining the convolvulus.
[94] 1 Kings x.; Ezek. xxvii. 10, 11. See Stanley's
"Lectures on the Jewish Church."
[95] Layard's "Nineveh and its Remains," vol. ii. p.
388; Rawlinson's "Ancient Monarchies," vol. ii. p. 2.