less weighted with relative considerations, than the designer, and
is at liberty, governed only by the necessary internal relation of
his work, to avail himself of effects beyond the scope of the maker
of tapestries or mosaics, the painter of glass, or the carver. Yet,
curiously enough, in our industrial century the influence of the
easel-picture painter has been paramount. He has ridden (I will not
say in triumph) over our household furniture, he has trampled on
our hearthrugs and carpets, he has left his impress on our napery
and antimacassars; his influence, in fact, can be traced from our
faience to our fish-slice; and this perhaps because, owing chiefly
to industrial and economic conditions, the term art and artist came
to be limited to pictorial work and its producer,--since the modern
easel-picture painter was until lately the only form of craftsman
working independently, and with anything like complete control of his
own work.
We are recovering, however, I think. We are realising the difference
between pictorial and decorative art, between _imitative_ and
_constructive_ design. It will do us no harm, as a corrective to our
pictorial excesses, to draw the line very sharply between the two,--to
put, metaphorically, the decorative sheep on the one hand, and the
pictorial goats on the other. For we must remember there are two sides
to art, with distinct aims. They may be characterised as “_aspect_” and
“_adaptation_”: the one seeking rather to imitate planes and surfaces,
accidental lighting, phases and effects; the other constructive,
depending on its beauty, on qualities of line and form and tint,
unaffected by accidental conditions, seeking typical rather than
individual forms, and ornamental rather than realistic results.
The first necessity in designing is Definition. Hence LINE is
all-important. Let the designer, therefore, in the adaptation of his
art, lean upon the staff of _line_,--line determinative, line emphatic,
line delicate, line expressive, line controlling and uniting. It
cannot lead him wrong; it will never deceive him. He will always know
where he is weak, and where he is indecisive, where he has hesitated,
and where he has been confident. It will be the solid framing of his
structure--the bones and marrow of his composition.
In line alone, having regard to all its different degrees of tenuity,
the designer possesses a means of expression of considerable force and
sympathetic range. It lends itself to the most sensitive and delicate
definition in a fine pen, pencil, or silver-point drawing, and it is
capable of the utmost strength and architectural solidity, as in the
emphatic outlines necessary to express the pattern and bring out the
qualities of the material in large mosaic decorations and stained
glass; where, too, other considerations come in, as the tesseræ (Fig.
2) of the one, and the lead lines (Fig. 1) and colour scheme in the
other.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.]
[Illustration: FIG. 2.]
And here we come to another essential element in designing: we cannot
touch what may be called the exigencies of particular materials, or
begin to define our cartoon or pattern in line without perceiving the
necessity of proceeding upon some kind of system in the treatment of
form and detail.
In purely pictorial work, of course, this is not felt to the same
degree, though the necessity _is_ present even there, since we cannot
work with Nature’s own materials. We cannot dip our brush in liquid
sunshine on the one hand, or have the blackness of night upon our
palette on the other. We have not her greens or her reds, and gold and
blue, in our boxes; we cannot command the full colours of the sunset
or the dawn; so that with the most uncompromising realist the result
is after all a compromise, a question of translation, adjustment to
a scale, and more or less figurative expression. The same as regards
minuteness of detail. Do we paint for the eye at such and such a
distance, the photographic lens, or the microscope? A little nearer or
a little farther, and all the conditions are changed. The fact is, as I
have said, _all_ art is conditioned; it is only a question of degree,
and it is the successful demonstration and determination of these
degrees which mark the difference between one kind of art and another,
between one artist and another.
There is of course no absolute determination of rules for all cases.
There is nothing absolute in art. _Art is not science._ The way is
perpetually open for new experiments, for new expositions, and new
adaptations and applications, which makes the pursuit of art in all its
forms so peculiarly fascinating, and ever fresh and inspiring.
But to return to the question of System. Now supposing we wanted to
make a pattern of a rose for a wall-paper. We might pick one from our
garden (if we had one, as indeed every designer ought to have) and
sketch it exactly as we found it--a portrait, as near as we could make
it, of an individual rose with all its accidental characteristics.
Well, we might make an interesting study, certainly, but when we came
to apply it we should perceive that it made, however good as a study,
a very poor pattern, and its virtue and interest as a drawing would be
at once destroyed directly our pictorial rose was repeated--which we
should be driven to do. We should practically get the repetition of a
more or less shapeless blot, a _formal_ and _regular repetition_ of
an _informal and naturalistic drawing_--a contradiction in terms, in
fact. Yet it is a thing that has been attempted over and over again. A
sentimental public perhaps likes roses, in season and out of season,
and considers perhaps that a rose in any material would, if not smell,
at least look as sweet. It may be so, but if it be not sweet and clear
in line and disposition, and organic as a pattern, its sweetness
is wasted on the desert air of false art and taste and failure in
decoration.
Therefore it is that the designer, having regard to the conditions
of ornamental effect and relation to use and material, proceeds in a
very different way. He finds that a certain formalism is an essential
condition of his work, seeing that his aim is to adorn a space
pleasantly, to construct a pattern that will bear repetition, or rather
demand it, as another essential condition of its existence. He finds
therefore that typical and abstract forms are of more value for the
purpose than accidental ones; that suggestion is better in decoration
than naturalistic or pictorial imitation. He would naturally, in taking
a rose as his theme, recur to the primitive and fundamental type--to
the simple flower as we see it on the parent stem of the wild rose of
our hedges (Fig. 3). With such a type as this he could safely make a
diaper or simple sprigged arrangement which would be satisfactory as
far as it went (Fig. 4).
Nor, let it be observed, is the designer, in following such principles,
departing from nature necessarily. Nay, in his way he may be expressing
as much natural truth even as the pictorial artist: as we have seen
that truth of aspect is one thing, and truth of construction and
detail another; while in following the necessities of adaptation to use
and material the designer is only carrying out in the region of art the
great principle of Nature herself, which rules through all forms of
life,--that necessity of adaptation to conditions, which, as we have
learned, has led to the endless variety of development in both plant
and animal form that we see on every side.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.]
[Illustration: FIG. 4.]
The necessity of plan in designing next makes itself felt, and is of
course very important, and capable of almost any degree of extension
and complexity, although designs for extension on walls or hangings
generally fall into recognisable classes with different variations.
Starting with our diaper, square or diagonal, which may be considered
the simplest, we may build our pattern upon a great variety of
foundations (Fig. 5). But we shall find it necessary to build upon
_some_ plan, as a plan is as essential to a pattern as the skeleton
to the human figure, though you may eventually conceal it as much as
the skeleton is concealed by the human form, or more, by superadded
enrichment, detail, and intricacy. How far to go in this way the
nature of the material and its uses will generally decide.
As to colour treatment, again, the best decorative effect does not
demand the use of heavy shading or relief. The colours should be pure
and fair, and the true local colours of all things should be sought,
unaffected by accidental lights and shadows, as if we saw everything in
an evenly diffused or flat light.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.]
In modelling, or any treatment where the means of expression and
ornamental effect is by relief, of course the question is different,
though here again the gist of the matter lies in treatment, and there
is all the difference in the world between one treatment and another.
Now of course the strictest observance of such principles in designing
as I have indicated will not necessarily ensure an interesting
pattern, though they would suffice to produce a workable one. Other
considerations come in as we advance. Plan involves the consideration
of the proportion and relation of our masses, and beauty of silhouette.
Draw a figure with a big head, and it at once looks ridiculous (this
seems so taken for granted by the many, that comic draughtsmen have
subsisted upon it for years), while with a head of the natural
proportion it may have grace and dignity. The same principle holds good
in ornamental designing, and a beautiful result very largely depends
upon a due recognition of the importance of proportions. It does not
follow that these proportions are those of nature, as in a naturalistic
picture. In a decorative design, to serve our ornamental purpose, one
may depart widely from them, as in the relative size of trees and
figures and flowers and animals, etc., where there is no approach to
naturalistic representation, as in designs for textiles and other
things.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.]
The important thing to preserve is the relation of masses, the organic
and necessary connection arising out of the constructive necessities.
In pattern work _three proportions_ are generally felt desirable. You
cannot jump at a bound from large to small, therefore an intermediate
scale is useful, as in the illustration (Fig. 6). The masses of the
tree and the pot are combined by the forms of the birds, and further,
by the thin stems and leaves behind.
[Illustration: FIG. 7.]
Silhouette, again, is a very important consideration in designing. It
is a very good practice to block out one’s design in silhouette in the
first instance, as this will afford the best test of the relations
and proportions of its masses possible, and of its variety. One does
not seek to arrange a figure exactly symmetrically (as at A, Fig. 7),
except under very formal conditions. That at B is felt to be a more
agreeable treatment. The more variety in contour, the more beauty we
get.
The best practice in effective and ornamental use of silhouette is
to be found in designing patterns for stencilling, where everything
depends upon it. You block out a pattern in flat colour--light on dark,
or dark on light--in such a way that it is capable of being cut out of
a sheet of card or zinc without breaking, so that by painting over the
perforated part, which is the pattern, it is transferred to any ground
you desire. Fig. 8 shows two sketches of stencil patterns; the halves
to repeat.
[Illustration: FIG. 8.]
Another important consideration in designing is the adequate filling of
the space for which your design is intended.
Now here again pictorial proclivities have been very misleading. They
have led us, in illustrating books for instance, to that inorganic way
of loosely vignetting a subject--splashing a landscape upon or across
a page without regard to its mechanical conditions, and ignoring its
necessary relation to the type. Instances of this kind of treatment
are to be found notably in our illustrated magazines of Continental
or American origin, which have been setting the fashion in so-called
page decoration of late years. But this inorganic, unrelated kind of
designing has not confined itself to books. You may find it anywhere
and everywhere almost,--dabbed upon fans, dragged across cupboard
doors, and generally upset over the unconsidered trifles of everyday
life.
I am afraid, too, that something is traceable to Japanese influence.
But it does not at all follow that, because a Japanese artist, with
his wonderful knowledge of nature and precision of touch, can throw
a flowering branch, or bird, or a fish across a sheet of paper, or
a panel, with such consummate skill as to delude us into the belief
that he has decorated the space, therefore any one, with very inferior
powers of draughtsmanship, can go and do likewise with equal _éclat_.
It is somewhat like attempting tightrope dancing before one can walk
properly on the ground.
The truth is that all the solid and determinative motives in design are
traceable to the influence of architectural style. In the absence of
a living style in architecture, the arts of design, which are really
its offspring, languish, and lose at once their fitness, monumental
dignity, and importance.
For style is strictly the sum of considerations like the
foregoing--with individual feeling superadded. It is the quality
which collects and concentrates, as it were, the virtue and essence
of the past, and fuses it with the present. It consists in that
highly selective impulse or instinct which gives an artist’s work
its own peculiar and distinctive character, without isolating him or
disconnecting him from the work that has gone before, or the work of
his own day, so that a great design is in fact a link, or a luminous
point or jewel, in a long golden chain, and necessarily dependent upon
its continuity.
Style, of course, is a very different thing from what are known as
“styles.” It is the difference between the quick and the dead. We can
get decorations “in any style” nowadays to order. We can be Ancient
Egyptian, or Greek, or Roman, or Pompeian, or Byzantine, or Celtic,
or Italian, or German, Gothic or Renaissance, whichever we please,
Louis Quatorze or Louis Seize--worse luck,--but none of them seems
to please for long, perhaps because their designers and producers
are only “pleasing to live,” as is the proverbial fate of those who
“live to please.” Ours is the age for masquerading, because we have
no particular _reality_ of our own--no style, in short. But we cannot
be always masquerading, however amusing it may be once in a while,
and whatever superior advantages we possess for getting at the best
authorities. The motley and fantastic crowd palls at last, and we are
glad to get back to everyday, if plain, habiliments, wherein we can at
least feel at home.
It is this feeling “at home,” too--which is so important in
design--which marks the difference between artist and archæologist.
Ease and mastery of expression in any material is the aim of the
designer, while keeping strictly within the limitations of that
material.
In making a working drawing the designer should be mentally, if not
actually, the craftsman also: the conditions and necessities of the
material ever present to his mind; its very limitations suggesting new
motives, and stimulating invention, as it never fails to do when the
designer and the craftsman are one.
So, too, where there has been no conscious aim at decorative beauty, we
find beauty of result, at least as regards the all-important quality of
line, which goes to prove that organic lines, or lines of construction,
at least where the construction is simple and evident to the eye, are
usually beautiful lines, as in the sickle, the scythe, plough, ship,
bridge, and wagon, for instance, and that this relation to material and
use is a fundamental and necessary quality of all design.
Mistakes are usually made in the attempts to beautify by superadded
ornament, unrelated to the object, use, and material, instead of
treating it as a natural outgrowth, so that the absence of ornament is
preferable to ornament not beautiful, or to ornament, however beautiful
in itself, which does not decorate. And indeed, unless ornament is
organic in this sense, we had much better be without it, and trust to
the simple beauty of constructional lines alone.
Now this decline of organic design, it can hardly be doubted, is
traceable in a great measure to the economic conditions and the
development of machine industry in the interests of a commercial
system of centralisation and a world-market which have characterised
our century, and which have succeeded the system of division of
labour developed in the last, as that succeeded, as Mr. Morris has
often pointed out, the older system of local production for use; and
this _because_ its effect has been to _separate the designer and the
craftsman_, and to turn both more or less into machines. The effect of
this is to throw the designer out of sympathy with the use and material
of his design, to cut him off from the suggestive and inventive
stimulus of the material, while, under the pressure of competition,
forcing him to the constant production of so-called novelties, while it
turns the craftsman or mechanic into an indifferent tool. The results
are precisely what might have been expected, and what we have seen. In
fact, the only wonder is they are not worse; but humanity has always
been better than its systems.
As to the craftsman, the workman, he, perhaps, relegated to the
performance of one monotonous function--a unit in a long sum of
industrial production,--becomes but a part of a machine, his
personality merged in the general description of “hands” (a
designation, by the way, which does not encourage the development of
brains), and, in short, all personal interest and identity with his
work as a whole taken away, and leaving him with no prospect of winning
public and personal appreciation--even if a “forty-thousandth part,” as
Carlyle would have said, of a product could reasonably hope to win such
things--since all credit for the finished result is practically claimed
by the employer.
These things being so, I say it is not wonderful our “industrial art,”
as we call it, _is_ what it is.
What then should we aim at? If this is the _real_ condition of affairs,
what is the _ideal_? For unless we consider we are living under the
best possible arrangements--social, political, and industrial--we must
entertain an ideal of some sort, even if it be a stranger, like an
angel unawares.
Well, then, if so far you are disposed to agree with me (firstly) as
to the necessary conditions and considerations for the production of
well-designed decorations and accessories of daily life, from the
roof which shelters us to the cup we drink out of; (secondly) as to
the relation of the designer and producer of these necessities--for
I claim that beautiful things are a necessity of any reasonable and
refined human life; and (thirdly) as to the condition of the producer
of such things himself,--then we shall have reached the conclusion
that for the production of beautiful and thoughtful work you must
have conditions of life wherein beauty and thought have opportunity
to germinate and grow naturally, and as a matter of course, out of
the conditions of daily life and work, as naturally as the apple-tree
blooms in the spring. But this means no less than that the conditions
of health and refinement, of a vigorous and full if simple life, be
open to _all_, both men and women, without distinction; and before such
conditions can be realised it evidently implies that something like
fundamental changes must take place in the constitution of society.
Then it comes to this, that all we have to make up our minds about
are two things:--(1) Whether we consider art as an utterly unrelated,
individual, and accidental matter; or (2) whether we consider it
and its beautiful results as the highest outcome of life, and as
necessarily dependent upon the character, ideals, and conditions of
that life. If the latter, then it may be worth while to take such steps
as may be within our power and mental vision to co-operate towards
the realisation of such a life and such an ideal, which, strange and
roundabout a method as it appears, will yet prove the shortest way to
our goal, namely, a true revival of design in its relation to material
and use.
[Illustration]
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE APPLIED ARTS, AND THEIR RELATION TO COMMON LIFE
Man in a natural and primitive condition does not begin to think of
art until his physical wants are satisfied, since art is, in its true
sense, after all only a spontaneous manifestation of mental life in
form, colour, or line,--the outcome of surplus human energy. It is
only under what is called modern civilisation that this natural order
is artificially reversed, and men are forced, to attempt at least,
to produce forms of art in order to satisfy their physical wants.
Our troubles and failures in art may mostly be traced, directly
or indirectly, to this condition of things--all the horrors and
abominations perpetrated in the name of art, from the productions of
the poor man whom necessity compels to chalk on the pavement, through
the countless vanities and inanities of the fashionable store, to the
refined cruelty of what is known as the “pot-boiler” in the “fine art”
exhibition.
The primitive hunter in his cave, when his earliest efforts in applied
art, in the form of flint weapons, had secured to him a sufficiency
of fish and game and furred overcoats, began to record his impressions
of the chase, and to scratch the forms of his favourite animals on
their bones. If these representations of reindeer, mammoth, and
bison be indeed the earliest examples of art, it would seem that the
first impulse in art is imitative rather than what I should term
expressive or decorative--the spirit of the picturesque sketcher
recording his impressions of natural forms rather than the ordered,
systematic, applied art of the inventive designer, who uses natural
forms or colours much as a musician his notes to produce a rhythmical
arrangement--a tune, a pattern. If this inference is correct, we may
perhaps take comfort in the thought that out of our present pictorial
zeal and cultivation of the picturesque sketcher we may be led to the
study of the more ideal and intellectual side of art.
However the conscious invention of line, and its variation in pattern
came about, whether by the burnt stick of the idler (according to Mr.
Whistler), or on the soft clay of the primitive potter, it is tolerably
obvious that certain primitive patterns are derived from certain
necessities of construction, such as the chequer from the square plait
of a rush matting, where not taken straight from Nature’s pattern book
as in fish or serpent scale, and fan from leaf and shell. One of the
most natural impulses in man is to make a mark or a cut upon something
directly he has time on his hands. We can watch the development of this
impulse in children. One line or mark suggests another, and strokes
following one another in a certain order are found to have a pleasant
and interesting effect. Strings of them round clay vessels were found
to make them more exciting to the eye than the plain surface. The
handles of dishes and hunting knives and horns, bows, hatchets, nay,
even man’s own skin, all offered opportunities for the early ornamental
impulse in carving and painting patterns. The implements in constant
use, on which, indeed, rude as they were, life itself depended; the
things most familiar, most valuable, constantly before the eyes or in
the hands,--these were the first things to receive the touch of art,
which was then “applied,” indeed, and applied only.