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ARTS AND CRAFTS ESSAYS
_Arts and Crafts Essays_
By
Members of the Arts and Crafts
Exhibition Society
_With a Preface_
By William Morris
London
RIVINGTON, PERCIVAL, & CO.
1893
PREFACE
The papers that follow this need no explanation, since they are directed
towards special sides of the Arts and Crafts. Mr. Crane has put forward
the aims of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society _as_ an Exhibition
Society, therefore I need not enlarge upon that phase of this book. But
I will write a few words on the way in which it seems to me we ought to
face the present position of that revival in decorative art of which our
Society is one of the tokens.
And, in the first place, the very fact that there is a "revival" shows
that the arts aforesaid have been sick unto death. In all such changes
the first of the new does not appear till there is little or no life
left in the old, and yet the old, even when it is all but dead, goes on
living in corruption, and refuses to get itself put quietly out of the
way and decently buried. So that while the revival advances and does
some good work, the period of corruption goes on from worse to worse,
till it arrives at the point when it can no longer be borne, and
disappears. To give a concrete example: in these last days there are
many buildings erected which (in spite of our eclecticism, our lack of a
traditional style) are at least well designed and give pleasure to the
eye; nevertheless, so hopelessly hideous and vulgar is general building
that persons of taste find themselves regretting the brown brick box
with its feeble and trumpery attempts at ornament, which characterises
the style of building current at the end of the last and beginning of
this century, because there is some style about it, and even some merit
of design, if only negative.
The position which we have to face then is this: the lack of beauty in
modern life (of decoration in the best sense of the word), which in the
earlier part of the century was unnoticed, is now recognised by a part
of the public as an evil to be remedied if possible; but by far the
larger part of civilised mankind does not feel that lack in the least,
so that no general sense of beauty is extant which would _force_ us into
the creation of a feeling for art which in its turn would _force_ us
into taking up the dropped links of tradition, and once more producing
genuine organic art. Such art as we have is not the work of the mass of
craftsmen unconscious of any definite style, but producing beauty
instinctively; conscious rather of the desire to turn out a creditable
piece of work than of any aim towards positive beauty. That is the
essential motive power towards art in past ages; but our art is the work
of a small minority composed of educated persons, fully conscious of
their aim of producing beauty, and distinguished from the great body of
workmen by the possession of that aim.
I do not, indeed, ignore the fact that there is a school of artists
belonging to this decade who set forth that beauty is not an essential
part of art; which they consider rather as an instrument for the
statement of fact, or an exhibition of the artist's intellectual
observation and skill of hand. Such a school would seem at first sight
to have an interest of its own as a genuine traditional development of
the art of the eighteenth century, which, like all intellectual
movements in that century, was negative and destructive; and this all
the more as the above-mentioned school is connected with science rather
than art. But on looking closer into the matter it will be seen that
this school cannot claim any special interest on the score of tradition.
For the eighteenth century art was quite unconscious of its tendency
towards ugliness and nullity, whereas the modern "Impressionists" loudly
proclaim their enmity to beauty, and are no more unconscious of their
aim than the artists of the revival are of their longing to link
themselves to the traditional art of the past.
Here we have then, on the one hand, a school which is pushing rather
than drifting into the domain of the empirical science of to-day, and
another which can only work through its observation of an art which was
once organic, but which died centuries ago, leaving us what by this time
has become but the wreckage of its brilliant and eager life, while at
the same time the great mass of civilisation lives on content to forgo
art almost altogether. Nevertheless the artists of both the schools
spoken of are undoubtedly honest and eager in pursuit of art under the
conditions of modern civilisation; that is to say, that they have this
much in common with the schools of tradition, that they do what they are
impelled to do, and that the public would be quite wrong in supposing
them to be swayed by mere affectation.
Now it seems to me that this impulse in men of certain minds and moods
towards certain forms of art, this genuine eclecticism, is all that we
can expect under modern civilisation; that we can expect no _general_
impulse towards the fine arts till civilisation has been transformed
into some other condition of life, the details of which we cannot
foresee. Let us then make the best of it, and admit that those who
practise art must nowadays be conscious of that practice; conscious I
mean that they are either adding a certain amount of artistic beauty and
interest to a piece of goods which would, if produced in the ordinary
way, have no beauty or artistic interest, or to produce works of art, to
supply the lack of tradition by diligently cultivating in ourselves the
sense of beauty (_pace_ the Impressionists), skill of hand, and
niceness of observation, without which only a _makeshift_ of art can be
got; and also, so far as we can, to call the attention of the public to
the fact that there are a few persons who are doing this, and even
earning a livelihood by so doing, and that therefore, in spite of the
destructive tradition of our immediate past, in spite of the great
revolution in the production of wares, which this century only has seen
on the road to completion, and which on the face of it, and perhaps
essentially, is hostile to art, in spite of all difficulties which the
evolution of the later days of society has thrown in the way of that
side of human pleasure which is called art, there is still a minority
with a good deal of life in it which is not content with what is called
utilitarianism, which, being interpreted, means the reckless waste of
life in the pursuit of the means of life.
It is this conscious cultivation of art and the attempt to interest the
public in it which the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society has set itself
to help, by calling special attention to that really most important side
of art, the decoration of utilities by furnishing them with genuine
artistic finish in place of trade finish.
WILLIAM MORRIS.
_July 1893._
CONTENTS
PAGE
OF THE REVIVAL OF DESIGN AND HANDICRAFT:
with Notes on the Work of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society.
Walter Crane 1
TEXTILES. William Morris 22
OF DECORATIVE PAINTING AND DESIGN. Walter Crane 39
OF WALL PAPERS. Walter Crane 52
FICTILES. G. T. Robinson 62
METAL WORK. W. A. S. Benson 68
STONE AND WOOD CARVING. Somers Clarke 81
FURNITURE. Stephen Webb 89
STAINED GLASS. Somers Clarke 98
TABLE GLASS. Somers Clarke 106
PRINTING. William Morris and Emery Walker 111
BOOKBINDING. T. J. Cobden-Sanderson 134
OF MURAL PAINTING. F. Madox Brown 149
OF SGRAFFITO WORK. Heywood Sumner 161
OF STUCCO AND GESSO. G. T. Robinson 172
OF CAST IRON. W. R. Lethaby 184
OF DYEING AS AN ART. William Morris 196
OF EMBROIDERY. May Morris 212
OF LACE. Alan S. Cole 224
OF BOOK ILLUSTRATION AND BOOK DECORATION. Reginald Blomfield 237
OF DESIGNS AND WORKING DRAWINGS. Lewis F. Day 249
FURNITURE AND THE ROOM. Edward S. Prior 261
OF THE ROOM AND FURNITURE. Halsey Ricardo 274
THE ENGLISH TRADITION. Reginald Blomfield 289
CARPENTERS' FURNITURE. W. R. Lethaby 302
OF DECORATED FURNITURE. J. H. Pollen 310
OF CARVING. Stephen Webb 322
INTARSIA AND INLAID WOOD-WORK. T. G. Jackson 330
WOODS AND OTHER MATERIALS. Stephen Webb 345
OF MODERN EMBROIDERY. Mary E. Turner 355
OF MATERIALS. May Morris 365
COLOUR. May Morris 376
STITCHES AND MECHANISM. Alan S. Cole 387
DESIGN. John D. Sedding 405
ON DESIGNING FOR THE ART OF EMBROIDERY. Selwyn Image 414
OF THE REVIVAL OF DESIGN AND
HANDICRAFT: WITH NOTES ON
THE WORK OF THE ARTS AND
CRAFTS EXHIBITION SOCIETY
The decorative artist and the handicraftsman have hitherto had but
little opportunity of displaying their work in the public eye, or rather
of appealing to it upon strictly artistic grounds in the same sense as
the pictorial artist; and it is a somewhat singular state of things that
at a time when the Arts are perhaps more looked after, and certainly
more talked about, than they have ever been before, and the beautifying
of houses, to those to whom it is possible, has become in some cases
almost a religion, so little is known of the actual designer and maker
(as distinct from the proprietary manufacturer or middleman) of those
familiar things which contribute so much to the comfort and refinement
of life--of our chairs and cabinets, our chintzes and wall-papers, our
lamps and pitchers--the Lares and Penates of our households, which with
the touch of time and association often come to be regarded with so
peculiar an affection.
Nor is this condition of affairs in regard to applied Art without an
explanation, since it is undeniable that under the modern industrial
system that personal element, which is so important in all forms of Art,
has been thrust farther and farther into the background, until the
production of what are called ornamental objects, and the supply of
ornamental additions generally, instead of growing out of organic
necessities, have become, under a misapplication of machinery, driven by
the keen competition of trade, purely commercial affairs--questions of
the supply and demand of the market artificially stimulated and
controlled by the arts of the advertiser and the salesman bidding
against each other for the favour of a capricious and passing fashion,
which too often takes the place of a real love of Art in our days.
Of late years, however, a kind of revival has been going on, as a
protest against the conviction that, with all our modern mechanical
achievements, comforts, and luxuries, life is growing "uglier every
day," as Mr. Morris puts it. Even our painters are driven to rely rather
on the accidental beauty which, like a struggling ray through a London
fog, sometimes illumes and transfigures the sordid commonplace of
everyday life. We cannot, however, live on sensational effects without
impairing our sense of form and balance--of beauty, in short. We cannot
concentrate our attention on pictorial and graphic art, and come to
regard it as the one form worth pursuing, without losing our sense of
construction and power of adaptation in design to all kinds of very
different materials and purposes--that sense of relation--that
architectonic sense which built up the great monuments of the past.
The true root and basis of all Art lies in the handicrafts. If there is
no room or chance of recognition for really artistic power and feeling
in design and craftsmanship--if Art is not recognised in the humblest
object and material, and felt to be as valuable in its own way as the
more highly rewarded pictorial skill--the arts cannot be in a sound
condition; and if artists cease to be found among the crafts there is
great danger that they will vanish from the arts also, and become
manufacturers and salesmen instead.
It was with the object of giving some visible expression to these views
that the Exhibitions of the Arts and Crafts Society were organised.
As was to be expected, many difficulties had to be encountered. In the
endeavour to assign due credit to the responsible designer and workman,
it was found sometimes difficult to do so amid the very numerous
artificers (in some cases) who under our industrial conditions
contribute to the production of a work.
It will readily be understood that the organisation of exhibitions of
this character, and with such objects as have been stated, is a far less
simple matter than an ordinary picture exhibition. Instead of having an
array of artists whose names and addresses are in every catalogue, our
constituency, as it were, outside the personal knowledge of the
Committee, had to be discovered. Under the designation of So-and-so and
Co. many a skilful designer and craftsman may be concealed; and
individual and independent artists in design and handicraft are as yet
few and far between.
However, in the belief, as elsewhere expressed, that it is little good
nourishing the tree at the head if it is dying at the root, and that,
living or dying, the desirability of an accurate diagnosis while there
is any doubt of our artistic health will at once be admitted, the
Society determined to try the experiment and so opened their first
Exhibition.
The reception given to it having so far justified our plea for the due
recognition of the arts and crafts of design, and our belief in their
fundamental importance--the amount of public interest and support
accorded to the Exhibition having, in fact, far exceeded our
anticipations, it was determined to hold a second on the same lines, and
to endeavour to carry out, with more completeness than was at first
found possible, those principles of work, ideas, and aims in art for
which we contended, and to make the Exhibition a rallying point, as it
were, for all sympathetic workers.
Regarding design as a species of language capable of very varied
expression through the medium of different methods and materials, it
naturally follows that there is all the difference in the world between
one treatment and another, both of design and material; and, moreover,
every material has its own proper capacity and appropriate range of
expression, so that it becomes the business of the sympathetic workman
to discover this and give it due expansion.
For the absence of this discriminating sense no amount of mechanical
smoothness or imitative skill can compensate; and it is obvious that any
attempt to imitate or render the qualities peculiar to one material in
another leads the workman on a false track.
Now, we have only to consider how much of the work commonly produced,
which comes under the head of what is called "industrial art," depends
upon this very false quality of imitation (whether as to design or
material) to show how far we have departed in the ordinary processes of
manufacture and standards of trade from primitive and true artistic
instincts. The demand, artificially stimulated, is less for thought or
beauty than for novelty, and all sorts of mechanical invention are
applied, chiefly with the view of increasing the rate of production and
diminishing its cost, regardless of the fact that anything in the nature
of bad or false art is dear at any price.
Plain materials and surfaces are infinitely preferable to inorganic and
inappropriate ornament; yet there is not the simplest article of common
use made by the hand of man that is not capable of receiving some touch
of art--whether it lies in the planning and proportions, or in the final
decorative adornment; whether in the work of the smith, the carpenter,
the carver, the weaver, or the potter, and the other indispensable
crafts.
With the organisation of industry on the grand scale, and the enormous
application of machinery in the interests of competitive production for
profit, when both art and industry are forced to make their appeal to
the unreal and impersonal _average_, rather than to the real and
personal _you_ and _me_, it is not wonderful that beauty should have
become divorced from use, and that attempts to concede its demands, and
the desire for it, should too often mean the ill-considered bedizenment
of meaningless and unrelated ornament.
The very producer, the designer, and craftsman, too, has been lost sight
of, and his personality submerged in that of a business firm, so that we
have reached the _reductio ad absurdum_ of an impersonal artist or
craftsman trying to produce things of beauty for an impersonal and
unknown public--a purely conjectural matter from first to last.
Under such conditions it is hardly surprising that the arts of design
should have declined, and that the idea of art should have become
limited to pictorial work (where, at least, the artist may be known, in
some relation to his public, and comparatively free).
Partly as a protest against this state of things, and partly to
concentrate the awakened feeling for beauty in the accessories of life,
the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society commenced their work.
The movement, however, towards a revival of design and handicraft, the
effort to unite--or rather to re-unite--the artist and the craftsman, so
sundered by the industrial conditions of our century, has been growing
and gathering force for some time past. It reflects in art the
intellectual movement of inquiry into fundamental principles and
necessities, and is a practical expression of the philosophy of the
conditioned. It is true it has many different sides and manifestations,
and is under many different influences and impelled by different aims.
With some the question is closely connected with the commercial
prosperity of England, and her prowess in the competitive race for
wealth; with others it is enough if the social well-being and happiness
of her people is advanced, and that the touch of art should lighten the
toil of joyless lives. The movement, indeed, represents in some sense a
revolt against the hard mechanical conventional life and its
insensibility to beauty (quite another thing to ornament). It is a
protest against that so-called industrial progress which produces shoddy
wares, the cheapness of which is paid for by the lives of their
producers and the degradation of their users. It is a protest against
the turning of men into machines, against artificial distinctions in
art, and against making the immediate market value, or possibility of
profit, the chief test of artistic merit. It also advances the claim of
all and each to the common possession of beauty in things common and
familiar, and would awaken the sense of this beauty, deadened and
depressed as it now too often is, either on the one hand by luxurious
superfluities, or on the other by the absence of the commonest
necessities and the gnawing anxiety for the means of livelihood; not to
speak of the everyday uglinesses to which we have accustomed our eyes,
confused by the flood of false taste, or darkened by the hurried life of
modern towns in which huge aggregations of humanity exist, equally
removed from both art and nature and their kindly and refining
influences.
It asserts, moreover, the value of the practice of handicraft as a good
training for the faculties, and as a most valuable counteraction to that
overstraining of purely mental effort under the fierce competitive
conditions of the day; apart from the very wholesome and real pleasure
in the fashioning of a thing with claims to art and beauty, the struggle
with and triumph over the stubborn technical necessities which refuse to
be gainsaid. And, finally, thus claiming for man this primitive and
common delight in common things made beautiful, it makes, through art,
the great socialiser for a common and kindred life, for sympathetic and
helpful fellowship, and demands conditions under which your artist and
craftsman shall be free.
"See how great a matter a little fire kindleth." Some may think this is
an extensive programme--a remote ideal for a purely artistic movement to
touch. Yet if the revival of art and handicraft is not a mere theatric
and imitative impulse; if it is not merely to gratify a passing whim of
fashion, or demand of commerce; if it has reality and roots of its own;
if it is not merely a delicate luxury--a little glow of colour at the
end of a sombre day--it can hardly mean less than what I have written.
It must mean either the sunset or the dawn.
The success which had hitherto attended the efforts of our Society, the
sympathy and response elicited by the claims which had been advanced by
us on behalf of the Arts and Crafts of Design, and (despite difficulties
and imperfections) I think it may be said the character of our
exhibitions, and last, but not least, the public interest and support,
manifested in various ways, and from different parts of the country,
went far to prove both their necessity and importance.
We were therefore encouraged to open a third Exhibition in the autumn of
1890. In this last it was the Society's object to make in it leading
features of two crafts in which good design and handicraft are of the
utmost importance, namely, Furniture and Embroidery; and endeavours were
made to get together good examples of each.
It may be noted that while some well-known firms, who had hitherto held
aloof, now exhibited with us, the old difficulty about the names of the
responsible executants continued; but while some evaded the question,
others were models of exactitude in this respect, proving that in this
as in other questions where there is a will there is a way.
The Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, while at first, of necessity,
depending on the work of a comparatively limited circle, had no wish to
be narrower than the recognition of certain fundamental principles in
design will allow, and, indeed, desired but to receive and to show the
_best_ after its kind in contemporary design and handicraft. Judgment is
not always infallible, and the best is not always forthcoming, and in a
mixed exhibition it is difficult to maintain an unvarying standard. At
present, indeed, an exhibition may be said to be but a necessary evil;
but it is the only means of obtaining a standard, and giving publicity
to the works of Designer and Craftsman; but it must be more or less of a
compromise, and of course no more can be done than to make an
exhibition of contemporary work representative of current ideas and
skill, since it is impossible to get outside our own time.
In some quarters it appears to have been supposed that our Exhibitions
are intended to appeal, by the exhibition of cheap and saleable
articles, to what are rudely termed "the masses"; we appeal to _all_
certainly, but it should be remembered that cheapness in art and
handicraft is well-nigh impossible, save in some forms of more or less
mechanical reproduction. In fact, cheapness as a rule, in the sense of
low-priced production, can only be obtained at the cost of
cheapness--that is, the cheapening of human life and labour; surely, in
reality, a most wasteful and extravagant cheapness! It is difficult to
see how, under present economic conditions, it can be otherwise. Art
is, in its true sense, after all, the crown and flowering of life and
labour, and we cannot reasonably expect to gain that crown except at the
true value of the human life and labour of which it is the result.
Of course there is the difference of cost between materials to be taken
into account: a table may be of oak or of deal; a cloth may be of silk
or of linen; but the labour, skill, taste, intelligence, thought, and
fancy, which give the sense of art to the work, are much the same, and,
being bound up with human lives, need the means of life in its
completion for their proper sustenance.
At all events, I think it may be said that the principle of the
essential unity and interdependence of the arts has been again
asserted--the brotherhood of designer and craftsman; that goes for
something, with whatever imperfections or disadvantages its
acknowledgment may have been obscured.
In putting this principle before the public, the Arts and Crafts
Exhibition Society has availed itself from the first of both lecture and
essay, as well as the display of examples. Lectures and demonstrations
were given during the progress of the Exhibitions, and essays written by
well-known workers in the crafts of which they treated have accompanied
the catalogues. These papers have now been collected together, and
revised by their authors, and appear in book form under the editorship
of Mr. William Morris, whose name has been practically associated with
the revival of beauty in the arts and crafts of design in many ways
before our Society came into existence, and who with his co-workers may
be said to have been the pioneer of our English Renascence, which it is
our earnest desire to foster and perpetuate.
Every movement which has any substance and vitality must expect to
encounter misrepresentation, and even abuse, as well as sympathy and
support. In its work, so far, the Society to which I have the honour to
belong has had its share of both, perhaps.
Those pledged to the support of existing conditions, whether in art or
social life, are always sensitive to attacks upon their weak points, and
it is not possible to avoid touching them to any man who ventures to
look an inch or two beyond the immediate present. But the hostility of
some is as much a mark of vitality and progress as the sympathy of
others. The sun strikes hottest as the traveller climbs the hill; and we
must be content to leave the value of our work to the unfailing test of
time.
WALTER CRANE.
TEXTILES
There are several ways of ornamenting a woven cloth: (1) real tapestry,
(2) carpet-weaving, (3) mechanical weaving, (4) printing or painting,
and (5) embroidery. There has been no improvement (indeed, as to the
main processes, no change) in the manufacture of the wares in all these
branches since the fourteenth century, as far as the wares themselves
are concerned; whatever improvements have been introduced have been
purely commercial, and have had to do merely with reducing the cost of
production; nay, more, the commercial improvements have on the whole
been decidedly injurious to the quality of the wares themselves.
The noblest of the weaving arts is Tapestry, in which there is nothing
mechanical: it may be looked upon as a mosaic of pieces of colour made
up of dyed threads, and is capable of producing wall ornament of any
degree of elaboration within the proper limits of duly considered
decorative work.
As in all wall-decoration, the first thing to be considered in the
designing of Tapestry is the force, purity, and elegance of the
_silhouette_ of the objects represented, and nothing vague or
indeterminate is admissible. But special excellences can be expected
from it. Depth of tone, richness of colour, and exquisite gradation of
tints are easily to be obtained in Tapestry; and it also demands that
crispness and abundance of beautiful detail which was the especial
characteristic of fully developed Mediaeval Art. The style of even the
best period of the Renaissance is wholly unfit for Tapestry: accordingly
we find that Tapestry retained its Gothic character longer than any
other of the pictorial arts. A comparison of the wall-hangings in the
Great Hall at Hampton Court with those in the Solar or Drawing-room,
will make this superiority of the earlier design for its purpose clear
to any one not lacking in artistic perception: and the comparison is all
the fairer, as both the Gothic tapestries of the Solar and the
post-Gothic hangings of the Hall are pre-eminently good of their kinds.
Not to go into a description of the process of weaving tapestry, which
would be futile without illustrations, I may say that in
contradistinction to mechanical weaving, the warp is quite hidden, with
the result that the colours are as solid as they can be made in
painting.
Carpet-weaving is somewhat of the nature of Tapestry: it also is wholly
unmechanical, but its use as a floor-cloth somewhat degrades it,
especially in our northern or western countries, where people come out
of the muddy streets into rooms without taking off their shoes.
Carpet-weaving undoubtedly arose among peoples living a tent life, and
for such a dwelling as a tent, carpets are the best possible ornaments.
Carpets form a mosaic of small squares of worsted, or hair, or silk
threads, tied into a coarse canvas, which is made as the work
progresses. Owing to the comparative coarseness of the work, the designs
should always be very elementary in form, and _suggestive_ merely of
forms of leafage, flowers, beasts and birds, etc. The soft gradations
of tint to which Tapestry lends itself are unfit for Carpet-weaving;
beauty and variety of colour must be attained by harmonious
juxtaposition of tints, bounded by judiciously chosen outlines; and the
pattern should lie absolutely flat upon the ground. On the whole, in
designing carpets the method of _contrast_ is the best one to employ,
and blue and red, quite frankly used, with white or very light outlines
on a dark ground, and black or some very dark colour on a light ground,
are the main colours on which the designer should depend.
In making the above remarks I have been thinking only of the genuine or
hand-made carpets. The mechanically-made carpets of to-day must be
looked upon as makeshifts for cheapness' sake. Of these, the velvet pile
and Brussels are simply coarse worsted velvets woven over wires like
other velvet, and cut, in the case of the velvet pile; and Kidderminster
carpets are stout cloths, in which abundance of warp (a warp to each
weft) is used for the sake of wear and tear. The velvet carpets need the
same kind of design as to colour and quality as the real carpets; only,
as the colours are necessarily limited in number, and the pattern must
repeat at certain distances, the design should be simpler and smaller
than in a real carpet. A Kidderminster carpet calls for a small design
in which the different planes, or plies, as they are called, are well
interlocked.
Mechanical weaving has to repeat the pattern on the cloth within
comparatively narrow limits; the number of colours also is limited in
most cases to four or five. In most cloths so woven, therefore, the
best plan seems to be to choose a pleasant ground colour and to
superimpose a pattern mainly composed of either a lighter shade of that
colour, or a colour in no very strong contrast to the ground; and then,
if you are using several colours, to light up this general arrangement
either with a more forcible outline, or by spots of stronger colour
carefully disposed. Often the lighter shade on the darker suffices, and
hardly calls for anything else: some very beautiful cloths are merely
damasks, in which the warp and weft are of the same colour, but a
different tone is obtained by the figure and the ground being woven with
a longer or shorter twill: the _tabby_ being tied by the warp very
often, the _satin_ much more rarely. In any case, the patterned webs
produced by mechanical weaving, if the ornament is to be effective and
worth the doing, require that same Gothic crispness and clearness of
detail which has been spoken of before: the geometrical structure of the
pattern, which is a necessity in all recurring patterns, should be
boldly insisted upon, so as to draw the eye from accidental figures,
which the recurrence of the pattern is apt to produce.
The meaningless stripes and spots and other tormentings of the simple
twill of the web, which are so common in the woven ornament of the
eighteenth century and in our own times, should be carefully avoided:
all these things are the last resource of a jaded invention and a
contempt of the simple and fresh beauty that comes of a sympathetic
_suggestion_ of natural forms: if the pattern be vigorously and firmly
drawn with a true feeling for the beauty of line and _silhouette_, the
play of light and shade on the material of the simple twill will give
all the necessary variety. I invite my readers to make another
comparison: to go to the South Kensington Museum and study the
invaluable fragments of the stuffs of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries of Syrian and Sicilian manufacture, or the almost equally
beautiful webs of Persian design, which are later in date, but instinct
with the purest and best Eastern feeling; they may also note the
splendid stuffs produced mostly in Italy in the later Middle Ages, which
are unsurpassed for richness and _effect_ of design, and when they have
impressed their minds with the productions of this great historic
school, let them contrast with them the work of the vile Pompadour
period, passing by the early seventeenth century as a period of
transition into corruption. They will then (if, once more, they have
real artistic perception) see at once the difference between the results
of irrepressible imagination and love of beauty, on the one hand, and,
on the other, of restless and weary vacuity of mind, forced by the
exigencies of fashion to do something or other to the innocent surface
of the cloth in order to distinguish it in the market from other cloths;
between the handiwork of the free craftsman doing as he _pleased_ with
his work, and the drudgery of the "operative" set to his task by the
tradesman competing for the custom of a frivolous public, which had
forgotten that there was such a thing as art.
The next method of ornamenting cloth is by painting it or printing on it
with dyes. As to the painting of cloths with dyes by hand, which is no
doubt a very old and widely practised art, it has now quite disappeared
(modern society not being rich enough to pay the necessary price for
such work), and its place has now been taken by printing by block or
cylinder-machine. The remarks made on the design for mechanically woven
cloths apply pretty much to these printed stuffs: only, in the first
place, more play of delicate and pretty colour is possible, and more
variety of colour also; and in the second, much more use can be made of
hatching and dotting, which are obviously suitable to the method of
block-printing. In the many-coloured printed cloths, frank red and blue
are again the mainstays of the colour arrangement; these colours,
softened by the paler shades of red, outlined with black and made more
tender by the addition of yellow in small quantities, mostly forming
part of brightish greens, make up the colouring of the old Persian
prints, which carry the art as far as it can be carried.
It must be added that no textile ornament has suffered so much as
cloth-printing from those above-mentioned commercial inventions. A
hundred years ago the processes for printing on cloth differed little
from those used by the Indians and Persians; and even up to within forty
years ago they produced colours that were in themselves good enough,
however inartistically they might be used. Then came one of the most
wonderful and most useless of the inventions of modern Chemistry, that
of the dyes made from coal-tar, producing a series of hideous colours,
crude, livid--and cheap,--which every person of taste loathes, but which
nevertheless we can by no means get rid of until we are able to struggle
successfully against the doom of cheap and nasty which has overtaken
us.
Last of the methods of ornamenting cloth comes Embroidery: of the design
for which it must be said that one of its aims should be the exhibition
of beautiful material. Furthermore, it is not worth doing unless it is
either very copious and rich, or very delicate--or both. For such an art
nothing patchy or scrappy, or half-starved, should be done: there is no
excuse for doing anything which is not strikingly beautiful; and that
more especially as the exuberance of beauty of the work of the East and
of Mediaeval Europe, and even of the time of the Renaissance, is at hand
to reproach us. It may be well here to warn those occupied in Embroidery
against the feeble imitations of Japanese art which are so disastrously
common amongst us. The Japanese are admirable naturalists, wonderfully
skilful draughtsmen, deft beyond all others in mere execution of
whatever they take in hand; and also great masters of style within
certain narrow limitations. But with all this, a Japanese design is
absolutely worthless unless it is executed with Japanese skill. In
truth, with all their brilliant qualities as handicraftsmen, which have
so dazzled us, the Japanese have no architectural, and therefore no
decorative, instinct. Their works of art are isolated and blankly
individualistic, and in consequence, unless where they rise, as they
sometimes do, to the dignity of a suggestion for a picture (always
devoid of human interest), they remain mere wonderful toys, things quite
outside the pale of the evolution of art, which, I repeat, cannot be
carried on without the architectural sense that connects it with the
history of mankind.
To conclude with some general remarks about designing for textiles: the
aim should be to combine clearness of form and firmness of structure
with the mystery which comes of abundance and richness of detail; and
this is easier of attainment in woven goods than in flat painted
decoration and paper-hangings; because in the former the stuffs usually
hang in folds and the pattern is broken more or less, while in the
latter it is spread out flat against the wall. Do not introduce any
lines or objects which cannot be explained by the structure of the
pattern; it is just this logical sequence of form, this growth which
looks as if, under the circumstances, it could not have been otherwise,
which prevents the eye wearying of the repetition of the pattern.
Never introduce any shading for the purpose of making an object look
round; whatever shading you use should be used for explanation only, to
show what you mean by such and such a piece of drawing; and even that
you had better be sparing of.
Do not be afraid of large patterns; if properly designed they are more
restful to the eye than small ones: on the whole, a pattern where the
structure is large and the details much broken up is the most useful.
Large patterns are not necessarily startling; this comes more of violent
relief of the figure from the ground, or inharmonious colouring:
beautiful and logical form relieved from the ground by well-managed
contrast or gradation, and lying flat on the ground, will never weary
the eye. Very small rooms, as well as very large ones, look best
ornamented with large patterns, whatever you do with the middling-sized
ones.
As final maxims: never forget the material you are working with, and
try always to use it for doing what it can do best: if you feel
yourself hampered by the material in which you are working, instead of
being helped by it, you have so far not learned your business, any more
than a would-be poet has, who complains of the hardship of writing in
measure and rhyme. The special limitations of the material should be a
pleasure to you, not a hindrance: a designer, therefore, should always
thoroughly understand the processes of the special manufacture he is
dealing with, or the result will be a mere _tour de force_. On the other
hand, it is the pleasure in understanding the capabilities of a special
material, and using them for suggesting (not imitating) natural beauty
and incident, that gives the _raison d'etre_ of decorative art.
WILLIAM MORRIS.
OF DECORATIVE PAINTING AND DESIGN
The term Decorative painting implies the existence of painting which is
not decorative: a strange state of things for an art which primarily and
pre-eminently appeals to the eye. If we look back to the times when the
arts and crafts were in their most flourishing and vigorous condition,
and dwelt together, like brethren, in unity--say to the fifteenth
century--such a distinction did not exist. Painting only differed in its
application, and in degree, not in kind. In the painting of a MS., of
the panels of a coffer, of a ceiling, a wall, or an altar-piece, the
painter was alike--however different his theme and conception--possessed
with a paramount impulse to decorate, to make the space or surface he
dealt with as lovely to the eye in design and colour as he had skill to
do.
The art of painting has, however, become considerably differentiated
since those days. We are here in the nineteenth century encumbered with
many distinctions in the art. There is obviously much painting which is
not decorative, or ornamental in any sense, which has indeed quite other
objects. It may be the presentment of the more superficial natural
facts, phases, or accidents of light; the pictorial dramatising of life
or past history; the pointing of a moral; or the embodiment of romance
and poetic thought or symbol. Not but what it is quite possible for a
painter to deal with such things and yet to produce a work that shall be
decorative.
A picture, of course, may be a piece of decorative art of the most
beautiful kind; but to begin with, if it is an easel picture, it is not
necessarily related to anything but itself: its painter is not bound to
consider anything outside its own dimensions; and, indeed, the practice
of holding large and mixed picture-shows has taught him the uselessness
of so doing.
Then, too, the demand for literal presentment of the superficial facts
or phases of nature often removes the painter and his picture still
farther from the architectural, decorative, and constructive artist and
the handicraftsman, who are bound to think of plan, and design, and
materials--of the adaptation of their work, in short--while the painter
seeks only to be an unbiassed recorder of all accidents and sensational
conditions of nature and life,--and so we get our illustrated newspapers
on a grand scale.
An illustrated newspaper, however, in spite of the skill and enterprise
it may absorb, is not somehow a joy for ever; and, after all, if
literalism and instantaneous appearances are the only things worth
striving for in painting, the photograph beats any painter at that.
If truth is the object of the modern painter of pictures--truth as
distinct from or opposed to beauty--beauty is certainly the object of
the decorative painter, but beauty not necessarily severed from truth.
Without beauty, however, decoration has no reason for existence; indeed
it can hardly be said to exist.
Next to beauty, the first essential of a decoration is that it shall be
related to its environment, that it shall express or acknowledge the
conditions under which it exists. If a fresco on a wall, for instance,
it adorns the wall without attempting to look like a hole cut in it
through which something is accidentally seen; if a painting on a vase,
it acknowledges the convexity of the shape, and helps to express instead
of contradicting it; if on a panel in a cabinet or door, it spreads
itself in an appropriate filling on an organic plan to cover it; being,
in short, ornamental by its very nature, its first business is to
ornament.
There exist, therefore, certain definite tests for the work of the
decorative artist. Does the design fit its place and material? Is it in
scale with its surroundings and in harmony with itself? Is it fair and
lovely in colour? Has it beauty and invention? Has it thought and poetic
feeling? These are the demands a decorator has to answer, and by his
answer he must stand or fall; but such questions show that the scope of
decoration is no mean one.
It must be acknowledged that a mixed exhibition does not easily afford
the fairest or completest tests of such qualities. An exhibition is at
best a compromise, a convenience, a means of comparison, and to enable
work to be shown to the public; but of course is, after all, only really
and properly exhibited when it is in the place and position and light
for which it was destined. The tests by which to judge a designer's work
are only complete then.
As the stem and branches to the leaves, flowers, and fruit of a tree, so
is design to painting. In decoration one cannot exist without the other,
as the beauty of a figure depends upon the well-built and
well-proportioned skeleton and its mechanism. You cannot separate a
house from its plan and foundations. So it is in decoration; often
thought of lightly as something trivial and superficial, a merely
aimless combination of curves and colours, or a mere _rechauffe_ of the
dead languages of art, but really demanding the best thought and
capacity of a man; and in the range of its application it is not less
comprehensive.
The mural painter is not only a painter, but a poet, historian,
dramatist, philosopher. What should we know, how much should we realise,
of the ancient world and its life without him, and his brother the
architectural sculptor? How would ancient Egypt live without her wall
paintings--or Rome, or Pompeii, or Mediaeval Italy? How much of beauty as
well as of history is contained in the illuminated pages of the books of
the Middle Ages!
Some modern essays in mural painting show that the habit of mind and
method of work fostered by the production of trifles for the picture
market is not favourable to monumental painting. Neither the mood nor
the skill, indeed, can be grown like a mushroom; such works as the
Sistine Chapel, the Stanzi of Raphael, or the Apartimenti Borgia, are
the result of long practice through many centuries, and intimate
relationship and harmony in the arts, as well as a certain unity of
public sentiment.
The true soil for the growth of the painter in this higher sense is a
rich and varied external life: familiarity from early youth with the
uses of materials and methods, and the hand facility which comes of
close and constant acquaintanceship with the tools of the artist, who
sums up and includes in himself other crafts, such as modelling,
carving, and the hammering of metal, architectural design, and a
knowledge of all the ways man has used to beautify and deck the
surroundings and accessories of life to satisfy his delight in beauty.
We know that painting was strictly an applied art in its earlier
history, and all through the Middle Ages painters were in close alliance
with the other crafts of design, and their work in one craft no doubt
reacted on and influenced that in another, while each was kept distinct.
At all events, painters like Albert Duerer and Holbein were also masters
of design in all ways.
Through the various arts and crafts of the Greek, Mediaeval, or Early
Renaissance periods, there is evident, from the examples which have come
down to us, a certain unity and common character in design, asserting
itself through all diverse individualities: each art is kept distinct,
with a complete recognition of the capacity and advantages of its own
particular method and purpose.
In our age, for various reasons (social, commercial, economic), the
specialised and purely pictorial painter is dominant. His aims and
methods influence other arts and crafts, but by no means advantageously
as a rule; since, unchecked by judicious ideas of design, attempts are
made in unsuitable materials to produce so-called realistic force, and
superficial and accidental appearances dependent on peculiar qualities
of lighting and atmosphere, quite out of place in any other method than
painting, or in any place but an easel picture.
From such tendencies, such influences as these, in the matter of applied
art and design, we are striving to recover. One of the first results
is, perhaps, this apparently artificial distinction between decorative
and other painting. But along with this we have painters whose easel
pictures are in feeling and treatment quite adaptable as wall and panel
decorations, and they are painters who, as a rule, have studied other
methods in art, and drawn their inspiration from the mode of Mediaeval or
Early Renaissance times.