[Japanese design for “ramma” (frieze) Fret‐saw work.]
Flowers, having great variety of line and proportion, are valuable, as
well as convenient subjects for elementary composition. Their forms and
colors have furnished themes for painters and sculptors since the
beginning of Art, and the treatment has ranged from abstractions to
extreme realism; from refinements of lotus‐derived friezes to poppy and
rose wall papers of the present time. In the exercise here suggested,
there is no intention of making a design to apply to anything as
decoration, hence there need be no question as to the amount of nature’s
truth to be introduced. The flower may be rendered realistically, as in
some Japanese design, or reduced to an abstraction as in the Greek,
without in the least affecting the purpose in view, namely, the setting of
floral lines into a space in a fine way—forming a line‐scheme on which may
be played many notan‐variations.
It is essential that the space should be cut by the main lines.
(Subordination, page 23.) A small spray in the middle of a big oblong, or
disconnected groups of flowers, cannot be called compositions all the
lines and areas must be related one to another by connections and
placings, so as to form a beautiful whole. Not a picture of a flower is
sought,—that can be left to the botanist—but rather an irregular pattern
of lines and spaces, something far beyond the mere drawing of of a flower
from nature, and laying an oblong over it, or vice versa.