34. Another, very characteristic of the Florentine style, with its
beautiful landscape background.
35. This is one in which the ornament has really got into the
Renaissance style. It is a sort of "Lucky Book," with all sorts of
ways of finding your fortune, discovering where your money has gone,
who is your enemy, and so on. One of the Peschia books, actually
printed at Milan, but of the Venetian school.
36. From a book of the Venetian style, about the same date. I show it
as an example of the carefulness and beauty with which the artists of
the time combined the border work with the pictures. There is
something very satisfactory in the proportion of black and white in
the whole page.
Now you have seen my examples, I want once more to impress upon you
the fact that these designs, one and all, while they perform their
especial function--the office of telling a tale--never forget their
other function of decorating the book of which they form a part; this
is the essential difference between them and modern book
illustrations, which I suppose make no pretence at decorating the
pages of the book, but must be looked upon as black and white pictures
which it is convenient to print and bind up along with the printed
matter. The question, in fact, which I want to put to you is this,
Whether we are to have books which are beautiful as books; books in
which type, paper, woodcuts, and the due arrangement of all these are
to be considered, and which are so treated as to produce a harmonious
whole, something which will give a person with a sense of beauty real
pleasure whenever and wherever the book is opened, even before he
begins to look closely into the illustrations; or whether the
beautiful and inventive illustrations are to be looked on as separate
pictures imbedded in a piece of utilitarianism, which they cannot
decorate because it cannot help them to do so. Take, as an example of
the latter, Mr. Fred. Walker's illustrations to "Philip" in the
"Cornhill Magazine," of the days when some of us were young, since I
am inclined to think that they are about the best of such
illustrations. Now they are part of Thackeray's story, and I don't
want them to be in any way less a part of it, but they are in no
respect a part of the tangible printed book, and I do want them to be
that. As it is, the mass of utilitarian matter in which they are
imbedded is absolutely helpless and dead. Why it is not even ugly--at
least not vitally ugly.
Now the reverse is the case with the books from which I have taken the
examples which you have been seeing. As things to be looked at they
are beautiful, taken as a whole; they are alive all over, and not
merely in a corner here and there. The illustrator has to share the
success and the failure, not only of the wood-cutter, who has
translated his drawing, but also of the printer and the mere
ornamentalist, and the result is that you have a book which is a
visible work of art.
You may say that you don't care for this result, that you wish to read
literature and to look at pictures; and that so long as the modern
book gives you these pleasures you ask no more of it; well, I can
understand that, but you must pardon me if I say that your interest in
books in that case is literary only, and not artistic, and that
implies, I think, a partial crippling of the faculties; a misfortune
which no one should be proud of.
However, it seems certain that there is growing up a taste for books
which are visible works of art, and that especially in this country,
where the printers, at their best, do now use letters much superior in
form to those in use elsewhere, and where a great deal of work
intending to ornament books reasonably is turned out; most of which,
however, is deficient in some respect; which, in fact, is seldom
satisfactory unless the whole page, picture, ornament, and type is
reproduced literally from the handiwork of the artist, as in some of
the beautiful works of Mr. Walter Crane. But this is a thing that can
rarely be done, and what we want, it seems to me, is, not that books
should sometimes be beautiful, but that they should generally be
beautiful; indeed, if they are not, it increases the difficulties of
those who would make them sometimes beautiful immensely. At any rate,
I claim that illustrated books should always be beautiful, unless,
perhaps, where the illustrations are present rather for the purpose of
giving information than for that of giving pleasure to the intellect
through the eye; but surely, even in this latter case, they should be
reasonably and decently good-looking.
Well, how is this beauty to be obtained? It must be by the harmonious
coöperation of the craftsmen and artists who produce the book. First,
the paper should be good, which is a more important point than might
be thought, and one in which there is a most complete contrast between
the old and the modern books; for no bad paper was made till about the
middle of the sixteenth century, and the worst that was made even then
was far better than what is now considered good. Next, the type must
be good, a matter in which there is more room for excellence than
those may think who have not studied the forms of letters closely.
There are other matters, however, besides the mere form of the type
which are of much importance in the producing of a beautiful book,
which, however, I cannot go into tonight, as it is a little beside my
present subject. Then, the mere ornament must be good, and even very
good. I do not know anything more dispiriting than the mere platitudes
of printers' ornaments--trade ornaments. It is not uncommon now-a-days
to see handsome books quite spoiled by them--books in which plain,
unadorned letters would have been far more ornamental.
Then we come to the picture woodcuts. And here I feel I shall find
many of you differing from me strongly; for I am sure that such
illustrations as those excellent black and white pictures of Fred.
Walker could never make book ornaments. The artist, to produce these
satisfactorily, must exercise severe self-restraint, and must never
lose sight of the page of the book he is ornamenting. That ought to be
obvious to you, but I am afraid it will not be. I do not think any
artist will ever make a good book illustrator, unless he is keenly
alive to the value of a well-drawn line, crisp and clean, suggesting a
simple and beautiful silhouette. Anything which obscures this, and
just to the extent to which it does obscure it, takes away from the
fitness of the design as a book ornament. In this art vagueness is
quite inadmissible. It is better to be wrong than vague in making
designs which are meant to be book ornaments.
Again, as the artists' designs must necessarily be reproduced for this
purpose, he should never lose sight of the material he is designing
for. Lack of precision is fatal (to take up again what I have just
advanced) in an art produced by the point of the graver on a material
which offers just the amount of resistance which helps precision. And
here I come to a very important part of my subject, to wit, the
relation between the designer and the wood-engraver; and it is clear
that if these two artists do not understand one another, the result
must be failure; and this understanding can never exist if the
wood-engraver has but to cut servilely what the artist draws
carelessly. If any real school of wood-engraving is to exist again,
the wood-cutter must be an artist translating the designer's drawing.
It is quite pitiable to see the patience and ingenuity of such clever
workmen, as some modern wood-cutters are, thrown away on the literal
reproduction of mere meaningless scrawls. The want of logic in artists
who will insist on such work is really appalling. It is the actual
touches of the hand that give the speciality, the final finish to a
work of art, which carries out in one material what is designed in
another; and for the designer to ignore the instrument and material by
which the touches are to be done, shows complete want of understanding
of the scope of reproducible design.
I cannot help thinking that it would be a good thing for artists who
consider designing a part of their province (I admit there are very
few such artists) to learn the art of wood-engraving, which, up to a
certain point, is a far from difficult art; at any rate for those who
have the kind of eyes suitable for the work. I do not mean that they
should necessarily always cut their own designs, but that they should
be able to cut them. They would then learn what the real capacities of
the art are, and would, I should hope, give the executing artists
genuine designs to execute, rather than problems to solve. I do not
know if it is necessary to remind you that the difficulties in cutting
a simple design on wood (and I repeat that all designs for book
illustrations should be simple) are very much decreased since the
fifteenth century, whereas instead of using the knife on the plank
section of the wood, we now use the graver on the end section.
Perhaps, indeed, some of you may think this simple wood-cutting
contemptible, because of its ease; but delicacy and refinement of
execution are always necessary in producing a line, and this is not
easy, nay it is not possible to those who have not got the due
instinct for it; mere mechanical deftness is no substitute for this
instinct.
Again, as it is necessary for the designer to have a feeling for the
quality of the final execution, to sympathise with the engravers
difficulties, and know why one block looks artistic and another
mechanical; so it is necessary for the engraver to have some capacity
for design, so that he may know what the designer wants of him, and
that he may be able to translate the designer, and give him a genuine
and obvious cut line in place of his pencilled or penned line without
injuring in any way the due expression of the original design. Lastly,
what I want the artist--the great man who designs for the humble
executant--to think of is, not his drawn design, which he should look
upon as a thing to be thrown away when it has served its purpose, but
the finished and duly printed ornament which is offered to the public.
I find that the executants of my humble designs always speak of them
as "sketches," however painstaking they may be in execution. This is
the recognised trade term, and I quite approve of it as keeping the
"great man" in his place, and showing him what his duty is, to wit, to
take infinite trouble in getting the finished work turned out of hand.
I lay it down as a general principle in all the arts, where one
artist's design is carried out by another in a different material,
that doing the work twice over is by all means to be avoided as the
source of dead mechanical work. The "sketch" should be as slight as
possible, i.e., as much as possible should be left to the executant.
A word or two of recapitulation as to the practical side of my
subject, and I have done. An illustrated book, where the illustrations
are more than mere illustrations of the printed text, should be a
harmonious work of art. The type, the spacing of the type, the
position of the pages of print on the paper, should be considered from
the artistic point of view. The illustrations should not have a mere
accidental connection with the other ornament and the type, but an
essential and artistic connection. They should be designed as a part
of the whole, so that they would seem obviously imperfect without
their surroundings. The designs must be suitable to the material and
method of reproduction, and not offer to the executant artist a mere
thicket of unnatural difficulties, producing no result when finished,
save the exhibition of a tour de force. The executant, on his side,
whether he be the original designer or someone else, must understand
that his business is sympathetic translation, and not mechanical
reproduction of the original drawing. This means, in other words, the
designer of the picture-blocks, the designer of the ornamental blocks,
the wood-engraver, and the printer, all of them thoughtful,
painstaking artists, and all working in harmonious coöperation for the
production of a work of art. This is the only possible way in which
you can get beautiful books.