* * * * *
It is not many years since a wealthy New Yorker, a man who employs
builders a good deal, and architects somewhat, objected to arguments
and appeals similar to those printed above, by demonstrating that a
good old building was certainly fine, whereas a proposed new building
only ran small chance of being fine, and that it followed (for so
it seemed to him)—it followed that it was wiser for an architect to
copy the old building rather than to try to design a fresh one. This
was a _fin-de-siècle_ idea, indeed! Surely, the decadence can hardly
go farther than to embody itself in a declaration that it was less
troublesome and more satisfactory to take your designs ready-made
from fine old things of the past! The rich New Yorker in question was,
undoubtedly, quoting his favorite architectural practitioner; but that
same practitioner would hardly have been willing to have said as much
among artists. Assuredly he would never have stood up at a meeting of
artists and have declared his gospel in any such terms.
The difficulty in the way of expense may be thought by some not so great
as Mr. Crowninshield has made it. When the present writer was a pupil
in an architect's office, the head man, the designer, the real maker
of the drawings, a workman prolific and able in his way, allowed this
confidence to escape him—"Yes, I used to think I would get a mountain
of tracing-paper and trace everything [photographs were not so cheap
in those days]—and then I would never be out of material! But I found
by and by that it was too much trouble to find what I wanted; it is
really much easier to design it; what you want, is a knowledge of the
style, and what may be done, and what cannot be done; and there you
are! Besides the time lost in finding your 'material' you lose another
infinite lot of time in fitting the material together—and _then_ it does
not fit!" That is as true now as it was a good many years ago. The only
reason why a modern designer finds it easier to copy than to invent is
that he is not really familiar with the style, nor really in the habit
of designing in it. He is not really familiar with the style, because he
has accustomed himself to go straight to books where all his details are
to be found complete, and with their relative dimensions figured, and to
copy them. He is not in the habit of designing in the style (whatever
it may be), because, again, he has done nothing for years but patch
together copied details. He is not in the habit of inventing, because,
as Mr. Crowninshield has shown, he has too much else to do and too much
else to think of; and because invention is not required of him by his
clients, nor even delicate, choice, and careful treating of what he
has chosen, nor even seemly combination of what he has chosen into new
resulting wholes. If he really knew his style so that he felt at home
in it—so that he felt it to be plastic in his hands; so that he dared
play with it and alter its details in absolute conviction that he would
not abandon its essential characteristics in so doing—then he would find
it easier to invent than to copy, provided always he had the habit of
freehand drawing and of simple modelling, and the habit of using either
or both of those familiar arts for the ornamentation of objects large
and small.