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NATURE IN ORNAMENT.
BY LEWIS. F.. DAY:
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
SOME PRINCIPLES OF EVERY-DAY ART. Second Edition.
THE ANATOMY OF PATTERN. Fourth Edition.
THE PLANNING OF ORNAMENT. Third Edition.
THE APPLICATION OF ORNAMENT. Fourth Edition.
WINDOWS; A BOOK ABOUT STAINED AND PAINTED GLASS.
ALPHABETS, OLD AND NEW.
Third Impression.
ART IN NEEDLEWORK; A BOOK ABOUT EMBROIDERY.
Second Edition.
LETTERING IN ORNAMENT.
- : 719 i 7 in as a =, al 1 / a at c 7 ‘, : | t e e * + ¥ = " a * - , ~ - * "7 7 ¢ 7 4 ' * Z “ it , 1] cw Wee J cy c ' ea ~ 4 " 7
. - Mes: a :
poe ge Oe at . Pu * ak i ;
i ayn ’ r, 2 ind 7 = i PY, nal i j ~“ ‘ , j } ) : : ee 4 - é |
NK io> 4 NMA if
feet URE IN ORNAMENT
AN ENQUIRY INTO THE NATURAL ELEMENT IN ORNAMENTAL DESIGN & A SURVEY OF THE ORNAMENTAL TREATMENT OF NATURAL FORMS. ,
/
BY
LEWIS F. DAY,
AUTHOR OF ‘WINDOWS,’ ‘ART IN NEEDLEWORK,’ ‘LETTERING LIN ORNAMENT,’ ‘ ALPHABETS,’ &c.
WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS OF DESIGN AND TREATMENT IN ORNAMENT, OLD AND NEW.
THIRD EDITION Sixt THOUSAND,
LONDON: B. T. BATSFORD, 94 HIGH HOLBORN
1902.
MHA
PREFACE Peo tne THIRD .EDITION.
IT was explained in the Preface to the First Edition that the aim of this book was not merely to show the adaptability of plant form to the purposes of ornament. That is self- obvious: were it not, others have already called attention to the fact. The purpose is rather to demonstrate the natural develop- ment of ornament, to show its constant relation to natural form, and to deduce from the practice of past-masters of the craft of design something like principles, which may put the student in the way of turning nature to account in ornament of his own.
A Third Edition gives me the opportunity not only of once more carefully revising the text, but of adding a copious Index of Illus- trations ; which, as these are invariably to be found as near the reference to them as the pages would allow, should make _ general reference easy. |
LEewIs F.. DAY.
13 Mecklenburg Square, London, Fanuary 12th, 1896.
i, LE.
+¥,
Wi:
VII.
VIII. IX,
a XII.
XIII.
XIV.
TABLE - OF CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTORY ..
ORNAMENT IN NATURE ..
NATURE IN ORNAMENT ..
THE SIMPLIFICATION OF NATURAL FORMS THE ELABORATION OF NATURAL FORMS ..
CONSISTENCY IN THE MODIFICATION OF NATURE ..
PARALLEL RENDERINGS ..
MorE PARALLELS
TRADITION IN DESIGN
TREATMENT
ANIMALS IN ORNAMENT
THE ELEMENT OF THE GROTESQUE .. STILL LIFE IN ORNAMENT
SYMBOLIC ORNAMENT
INDEX TO ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
I2 32 52 69
84 103
129
165 177 195 213 236 249
I.
»
14. 15 16. M7.
List OF PLATES.
FLEUR DE LUCE—treatment of the Iris, by Walter Crane.
JAPANESE ROSES—from various Japanese printed books. BUDDING BRANCHES—drawn from nature.
NATURAL LEAF-SHEATHS—from a Japanese botany book.
VARIOUS BERRIES—drawn from nature.
SOME SEED-VESSELS—from a Japanese botany book. poDs—drawn from nature.
FLOWER AND LEAF BUDS—drawn from nature. OAK AND OAK GALLS—tile panel, L.F.D. NATURAL GROWTH—from a Japanese botany book. GREEK SCROLLS.
ROMAN SCROLLS.
ACANTHUS SCULPTURE AND BRUSH-WORK—illustra- tive diagram,
TWO VERSIONS OF THE SAME FRIEZE DESIGN—L.F.D. DETAILS OF ROMAN MOSAIC—from Carthage, B.M. TRANSITIONAL SCROLL—German, by D. Hopfer.
PAINTED WALL PANEL—from the Palazzo del T, by Giulio Romano.
18. IQ.
20. 21.
225 22 24.
2G 26.
27 28. 29 30.
Bie B32:
33:
34. 35
37 38.
List of Plates.
LUSTRE DISHES—of the sixteenth century—V.& A.M.
GERMAN GOTHIC SCROLL—from tapestry in the museum at Nuremberg.
ARAB-ESQUE RENAISSANCE ORNAMENT—German.
ORNAMENTAL BOUQUET—of the seventeenth century— design for goldsmith’s work.
BOOK-COVER—designed by Owen Jones. SUNFLOWERS AND ROSES—wall-paper by B. J. Talbert.
DETAILS OF GREEK TERRA-COTTA—from vases at Naples and at the B.M.
DETAILS OFANCIENT COPTIC EMBROIDERIES—V.& A.M.
DETAIL FROM AN INDIAN KINKAUB—modern tradi- tional design.
DETAILS FROM POMPEII—wall painting and mosaic. CARVED CABINET DOOR—from Cairo—V.& A.M. ENGLISH GOTHIC DETAILS—from various sources.
INDIAN RENDERINGS OF THE IRIS—painting and damascening.
INLAID FLOWER-PANELS—L.F.D.
LYONS SILK-WEAVING OF THE SEVENTEENTH OR EIGHTEENTH CENTURY—Dresden Museum.
DETAILS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY FOLIAGE—from old English silks.
SILK DAMASK OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY—Italian.
OLD LACE—ivory point, Munich Museum.
. DETAILS OF HAMMERED WORK—German Gothic.
WALL-PAPER—conventional growth—L.F.D. WALL-PAPER FOUNDED UPON NATURE—L.F.D.
39 40.
41. 42. 43. 44
45. 46.
47.
48. 49. 50. 5I. 52. 53- 54- 55+ 56. 57:
58.
60. 61.
List of Plates. x1
TILE PANEL BASED ON THE LILY—L.F.D.
CHRYSANTHEMUM PATTERN—comparatively natural— L.F.D.
ARCHAIC GREEK FOLIAGE—from a bronze cup—B.M.
MODERN GOTHIC LILY PANEL—B. J. Talbert.
LILY ORNAMENT—Italian inlay, Siena.
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY FLOWER RENDERINGS—from , old English silks.
A RENAISSANCE MEDLEY—S. Croce, Florence.
PEA-POD ORNAMENT—pilaster by Brunellesco.
DUTCH AND GERMAN CONVENTIONS—of the seven- teenth century.
SCROLL AND FOLIAGE—L.F.D.
ANCIENT COPTIC EMBROIDERY—V.& A.M.
VINE AND OLIVE PANEL—Lateran Museum, Rome.
ITALIAN GOTHIC VINE—from Giotto’s Tower, Florence
VINE AND APPLE-TREE FRIEZE—L.F.D.
CLASSIC RENDERINGS OF THE VINE—B.M.
ARAB VINE PANEL—showing one-half of the design.
VINE SCULPTURE—Lateran Museum.
STENCILLED VINE DECORATION—Heywood Sumner.
COPTIC VINE ORNAMENT—from ancient embroideries— V.& A.M.
ENGLISH GOTHIC VINE—stall-end, from Christchurch Priory.
59. VINE IN STAINED GLASS—L.F.D.
VINE BY DURER—from a woodcut.
CONVENTIONAL VINE-LEAF PATTERN—L.F.D.
Xi
62
63.
64. Os.
66. 67
68.
69. 70s
mike
ie 73: 74: 75° 76.
77: 78.
79-
LDSt Of, JUGS:
ARTIFICIAL RENDERINGS OF THE ROSE—from English silks of the eighteenth century.
TUDOR ROSE—from the bronze doors to Henry VII.’s chapel.
TUDOR ROSE—from a stall-arm, Henry VII.’s chapel.
ITALIAN VERSION OF A PERSIAN CARPET—rose and tulip—V.&A.M.
MARBLE INLAY—from the Taj Mahal, India.
INDIAN LOTUS PANEL—stone-carving, from the Buddhist Tope at Amarivati.
DETAILS OF BUDDHIST STONE-CARVING—lotus flowers, &c., from Amarivati.
THE PINK—various renderings of the flower.
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY VERSIONS OF THE PINK— English.
POPPY BY GHIBERTI—from the bronze doors of the Baptistery at Florence.
POPPY PATTERN—wall-paper, L.F.D.
POMEGRANATES—Chinese colour-printing and German incising.
GOTHIC OAK ORNAMENT—after Pugin.
COMPARATIVELY NATURAL LILY PANEL—L.F.D.
ORCHID AND FUNGUS PATTERN—old Chinese em- broidery.
CONVENTIONAL TREE WORK—Indian stone carving.
PERSIAN FOLIAGE—silk-weaving of the sixteenth cen- tury, Lyons Museum.
DETAILS OF EGYPTIAN SCULPTURE—B.M. DETAILS OF NINEVITE SCULPTURE—B.M.
SI. 82.
$3
85. 36. 87.
89. gl. 92.
93 94-
°
.o Sf
100. TOI.
List of Plates. xi
DETAILS OF GREEK VASE-PAINTING—B.M.
ROMAN SCULPTURE—lemon and apple trees—Lateran Museum.
SIXTEENTH CENTURY GERMAN DESIGN—Peter Quentel.
LATE GOTHIC ‘* PINE”? ORNAMENTS—from various textiles.
CONVENTIONAL TULIP FRIEZE—L.F.D. PEONY FRIEZE—by W. J. Muckley.
FRUIT PATTERN—wall-paper by Wm. Morris. CHINESE LOTUS—porcelain painting.
COBGA SCANDENS—linen damask—L.F.D, CONVENTIONAL DANDELION—L.F.D.
GERMAN GOTHIC THISTLE-SCROLL — wood-carving, V.& A.M.
JAPANESE CRANES—from a printed book. JAPANESE TORTOISES—from a printed book. PERUVIAN ECCENTRICITIES—from fragments of stuffs.
SICILIAN SILK PATTERNS—of about the thirteenth century.
SIXTEENTH CENTURY WOOD-CARVING—S. Pietro, Perugia.
CONVENTIONAL BUTTERFLIES—Chinese and Japanese.
- MODERN GERMAN RENAISSANCE—by Anton Seder.
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY SCROLL-WORK—from a book of designs, published 1682, by S. Gribelin.
SIXTEENTH CENTURY ARABESQUE—Italian. LATE GOTHIC FOLIAGE—tempera painting,
XIV List of Plates.
102. LUSTRE PLAQUES—L.F.D. 103
STUDIES IN ORNAMENTAL FIGURE-WORK—by Holbein. 104. GROTESQUE PANEL—by Sansovino. GROTESQUE FIGURE—by Marco Dente da Ravenna.
106. GROTESQUE SCROLL—cretonne, L.F.D.
105
107. KELTIC INTERLACED ORNAMENT—from a MS. in the B.M.
108. CONVENTIONAL WING FORMS-—sixteenth century Italian carving.
109. DIAPERS WITH A MEANING—Japanese.
110. EARLY GREEK WAVE AND LOTUS DIAPER—twelfth or thirteenth century B.C.
III, SEAWEED BORDERS—L.F.D.
112. SEAWEED PATTERN—L.F.D.
113. PEACOCK-FEATHER PATTERN— Japanese.
I14. PEACOCK-FEATHER DIAPERS—from various sources. II5. PEACOCK-FEATHER PATTERN—Turkish embroidery. 116. ROCOCO SCROLL-wORK—by Philippo Passarini.
II7, SEVENTEENTH CENTURY SCROLL-WORK — German, by Nicolaus Drusse.
118. POMPEIAN WALL PAINTING. 119. INDIAN NAJA—stone-carving from the Amarivati Tope. 120. CONVENTIONAL TREES—from various sources,
12I. LATE GOTHIC FLEUR-DE-LIS TRACERY—from wood- carvings at V.& A.M.
122. MARGUERITE PANELS—wood-carving.
123. SYMBOLIC ORNAMENT—book-cover—L.F.D.
_ oO
14. £5. 16. L7. 18.
Oo ON AN PW N
hist OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN. FHE TEX FP.
. Various tendrils .. . Vine tendrils
Romanesque ornamentation of the ian
. Part of a Pompeian candelabrum-—B.M.
. Renaissance use of pea-pods (Prato Cathedral) . Unequally divided oak-leaf
. Chinese rendering of Wistaria—old ube . Acanthus leaves reduced to brush-work
. Simple acanthus leafage
. Step between wave and acanthus ete
mosaic, B.M.
. Olive-like leafage £2.
13:
Oak-like leafage
Vine-like acanthus leafage, noe = Jubé at Limoges ..
Crocket-like foliage, from Pee Modern modification of Classic leafage .. Seventeenth century scroll—Boulle Details of Romanesque ornament
Details of early Gothic ornament—stained glass
PAGE 14 15 18 19 20 22 29 34 35
36 37 37
38 38 39 41 42
xvi Lust of Lllustrations in the Text.
PAGE TOyUSpiralekersian’scroll ge sie eee Peres cl) 20. Iris-like details of Persian oe eras and seventeenth centuries “2. 522.0 =e - 45 21. Details of Early Persian nen to twelfthvcentuny) oe. meee ss <<, AO 22. Sixteenth century arabesque deiaite“ Connon ee 235) Rosette m Nouen faience yen ie.) ye. | 24. Chinese foliage, not easy to identify be ee Peers 25. Bouquet of conventional ornament—Persian porce- lain, “VoSc ALM yo) ee) eee eee 26. Abstract ornament, not free from foliation .. .. 49 27. Conventional Chinese flower forms.. .. .. .. 50 28. Conventional Chinese foliage.) 9-2.) eee 29. Rectangular acorn patterns—old German .. 53
30. Simplified thistle—by the late G. E. Street, R. A 54 31. Gothic leaf border, wood-carving—Maidstone ano 5S
32.) Rosette or rose ¢— Germany Gothic) 2 age ae nSS 33. Gothic leaf-and-flower border—wood-carving SS Zan Seed-vessels fromy|naturel (1g). eet ees 35. Conventional buds, or seed-vessels ?—marble inlay, Florence. eee en a Gy ase eee eae eT 36. Conventional Greek ivy leaves and pee saad siete SI 27 aijapalese DOrder,, buds Or fruits |e) sate ee SS 38. Conventional tree—from a Siciliansilk .. .. .. 58 39. Simple Roman tree—mosaic, B.M... .. .. .. 59 Zo. Haw thor crocket) a) ie ttn eine een 41. Vine crocket detrei vgase’ csigs le ietec sone | Sot
42. Late Gothic pomegranate—stencil pattern .. .. 60 43-4. Indian renderings of the poppy—niellco .. .. 61
45: 46. 47: 48. 49. 50. 5I. Ge. 53:
54: 55-
56.
57:
58. 59-
. Ornamental pomegranate—old German embroi-
61. 62.
63.
64. 65.
List of Lllustrations in the Text, xvii
PAGE
fee poraer.witi lily buds 3. .. .. .» e» 61 Early Gothic foliated ornament—pavement tiles .. 62 Natural and ornamental foliage —Early French .. 63
Bud-like ornamental forms—Gothic wood-carving.. 63 Peony simplified to form a stencil—by H. Sumner 64 Meranan WOU-CATVINS 32s Oe tee ws G5 Gothic wood-carving ... atten Mone LOS Greek that might be ie eee carving gS. 65
Persian details which might be Gothic—porcelain of the sixteenth or seventeenth century .. .. .. 66
Japanese treatment of the iris—embroidery .. .. 66 Wheat-ears, simplified or elaborated ?—seventeenth momiuny tiabian' sill. 5. 6k ks ee et ee 8 Floral forms within floral forms—Italian velvet, PPM meStett a5: ou) oye ak! Spe at “Sore ewe ES Pomegranate berries arranged in bud-form—Per- aie er Me es i Eee ee ee ee Cee Ornamental pomegranates—Italian velvet .. .. 75
Ornamental pomegranate—eighteenth century silk 76
Reet AV le oe vial Pras cae e ceeh ioe: Utes. ee Foliated forms geometrically diapered—Japanese .. 78
Elaborated flower—from an embroidered Gothic UTE Ts 2 I ga a ae Pe ah ee A
Elaborated flower—from a table-cover of German emuroidery, FSee° ce. i! SL a) eal 8
Bulbous hop-leaves—German Gothic wood-carving 81 Indian corn adapted to ornament—Italian wood- TEU er ees Ee ee Ce b
xvii Lest of [llustrations in the Text.
PAGE 66. Rigid lines of the growth of corn turned to orna- mental account—by the lateC. Heaton .. .. 89
67. Artificial grace of line—Italian 9 3.92.) )-. nm 9 68. Quasi-natural rendering of the lily—by Sammicheli 91 69. Quattro-cento lily—S. Bernardino, Perugia... .. 92 70. Narcissus compelled into the way of ornament-
Te Ds eit eds een 0 pets hice. aie eet re 71. Incongruous treatment of the oak—Roman .. .. 04 72. Characterless desisn—Albertolli> 3. 92 ee 95 73- Inconsistency between flower and leaf—Japanese 96
74. Graceful artificiality—Lyons silk, about 1700 .. 97 75. De-naturalised floral details—by Gribelin, 1682 .. 98
76. Confusion of e:fect without confusion of growth— Persian tiles, V.& A.M. wil) Saas eS ee ee One
77. The vine in Assyrian sculpture—B.M. .. .. .. 106 78. Vine from a Greek vase—B.M. Sire) So (ee ee eS 79. Pompeian vine border—silver on bronze—Naples 109 So. Italian wood-carving—hop or vine?—V.& A.M. .. 110 81. Conventional Gothic vine and grapes—York ob lod
82. Gothic vine with mulberry-like grape-bunches— York sisjah ele Sc kes) Uilee) Ayejety yuna) “cukele) uel ae emma
83. Conventional vine, from Toledo—more or less WCC) ie ir me Go. (iS
$4. Moorish vine} irom Moledo v0 a) cee eee 85. Naive Byzantine vine—Ravenna .. .. oer eS 86. Early French Gothic vine—Notre Dame, Paris ce SSEEO
87. Square-shaped vine-leaves — scratched earthen- ware, TM ie ein) dete die coe bso kleiep
88 Diamond-shaped vine-leaves—Gothic .. .. .. 118
89. go. gl. 92. 93: 94. 95-
96.
97: 08. 99: 100.
Io!l. 102.
103. 104. 105. 100. 107.
108. 109.
IIO.
IIl.
List of Lllustrations in the Text.
Vesica-shaped vine-leaves—York .,
Diagram of Italian Gothic treatment—Padua
Transitional vine scroll—German linen damask ..
Italian quattro-cento vine scroll—Venice
German Renaissance foliage—by Aldegrever
Vine in Gothic glass-painting—Malvern
Quasi-Persian rose — Italian velvet, sixteenth century..
Oriental rose ee eed in silk Ae gold on linen
Rhodian rose—from a erence: dish Roman lily forms—a candelabrum d Indian lotus—Buddhist stone-carving, B. M.
Seventeenth century iris—appliqué embroidery, Italian, V.& A.M.
Renaissance pinks—needlework ye ees
Modern Gothic ee ae the me B. I. Talbert... be eee oe
Pomegranate— Spanish A or
Oak—from the Cathedral of Toledo
Assyrian tree of life ..
Oak—from a Sicilian silk
Romanesque tree of life—from a painted roof at Hildesheim ..
Renaissance silk—showing Persian influence Egyptian symbolic papyrus
Assyrian symbolic ornament— glazed earthenware, B.M.
Abstract Greek ornament—from a vase
X1X
PAGE 119 120 I2I 123 124 126
130
131 132 133 134
135 136
139 140 I4I 142 142
143
149 150
151
152
XX
112. Iles II4. I15. 116. Tele
118. 119.
120. 121. 122. 122)
124
Ibe
126
129. 130. gt.
132.
io 134. 135.
List of Lllustrations tn the Text.
PAGE Later Greek ornament—from a vase .. .. .. 153
Assyrian rosette of lotus flowers and buds .. .. 155 Gothic ornament—from Notre Dame, Paris .. 156 Kifteenth century, ir-cone ornaments) |.) eee Ms Chineseslowerdfornis: Gescness ae ence ee
Etruscan and Greek anthemion shapes as ere BRS Japanese diaper aap Oag ei ies le tele 2 rare Ure arate mmm Le) Japanese diaper ait gate aed ty lahat Sane ciae cele SO)
Lily-like Greek fecaeae various sources .. 160 Romanesque detail approaching to the fleur-de-lis 160 Gothic pattern—KEarly fleur-de-lis <n! eel Oe Concentric forms—seaweed) +.) 4 eee
Gothic—anthemion shape—from the nimbus of a figure in one of the stained-glass windows at Fairford wh) Ah Abies oo wed tC ee CO
Gothic diaper—radiating—from a paintedscreen 162
ra7. } Renaissance ornament—Italian wood-carving .. 163
. Renaissance aoe a, Mino da Fiesole,
Hilonrence: aeeanr 2) BGO Abstract ieee ae We & A. M.. S169 Would-be ornamental sdnudine Sige | AZO
Chinese rendering of ‘‘kiss-me-quick’’ — em- broidery ie Ve Ae abe) bia Taisen ieee iene aaa ER
pee natural treatment of poppy— SED): er apne : a ic, Ze
Cones natural treatment of fig Lt ED eee Ornamental treatment of strawberry—L.F.D. .. 174 Dolphins used as ornament—by George Fox .. 180
136. eye 138. 139.
140. 41. 142. 143. 144. 145. 146.
147. 148. 149. 150. I5I. 152. E53. 154. 155: 156. Lye 158. 159. 160.
idi.
List of Lllustrations wn the Text.
Circular bird (and flower) crest Circular bird crest WERT © 7%, Ornamental indication of birds in fight
Diaper of storks and eae Si flowers combined
Dragon-fly Sea ees
Diaper of conventional bats
Bird diaper by the late Wm. eee A.R.A. Repeating figure pattern.. Gat Pree apie at Conventional peacock border—Indian embroidery Egyptian wing treatment—vultures
Egyptian wing treatment—hawk in cloisonné enamel .,
Bat diaper—old Japanese
Embroidered bat—Chinese
Pilaster by Signorelli— Orvieto
Grotesque iron grille—German se eeae Mgak Wings reduced to ornament—Italian aay carving Ornamental dragon—Japanese .. .. .. «®t Arctic American grotesquerie—embroidered cloth Spring blossoms on the stream—Japanese .. Diaper of spiders’ webs ..
Diaper of flames
Cloud and bat pattern
Cloud pattern
Wave pattern ..
Water and water-lilies
Wave pattern and water-fowl
XX1
PAGE
181 181 ISI
182 183 184 185 186 187 188
189 IgI 194 202 204 209 210 211 213 214 215 216 216 216 217 218
xxii Last of /llustrations in the Text.
PAGE 162. Wave pattern—Japanese porcelain sia 7 ateloet a emeeeALE 163. Wave pattern—-Japanesellacquer =. 22-2) seaelo 164. Wave ornament shyile > berm Lo lacdll iotoal), cSt DO ney TG) LOS. \WAVECOEMAMNEM tH) ct) fon aceite sen een ING) 100s Waveland sprayspattern yen) on er eee 167. Decorative rendering of incoming wave—Japanese 221 TOS>" Shell ornaments. 0 je Seem yoo. 8 se) er ee eee 169; Seaweed onmanmivent iy. oem cea. Wilner ae enna 170. Heraldic mantling—part of a painted i ese): BY, A, Oca 0 sales ar eat tee mea 223 171. Heraldic cnaae — German Gothic Soee CALVIN Carr eu emir 224 172. Inlaid eae -feather onenea nn J. Talbert 226 173) Coptic feather bonder— Ve cc Ne Veneer eee 174. Coptic feather diaper—V.& A.M. cea oor 227, 175. Persian peacock feather areata Ae WaSe As MIG sis ke Sav cro tees Nit ears 2 170, Drophy panel —Nenaissance ). 05.) eee 177. Francois I** skull ornament—wood-carving, Fon- tamebleaus A. ese ices ees eee ee I 178. Early Phoenician wreath sre! 7 felelct'on ioe vstelatet as aanayee ama 179; OWAS OF tault= bunches sea nse ae 180; Weyptian sacred! beetle... | 3. sity ot ato REA
181. Diaper of waves, clouds, and oe birds cfos eeteoS 182. Cross of fleurs-de-lis—thirteenth century .. .. 238 183. Assyrian sacred tree auc sin Shei Ze 184. Assyrian sacred tree—B.C. 885- 860 os tee a eee
185. Iris or fleur-de-lis ?—Seventeenth century Vene- Hanrvielviet sce yetgeissiny Sti ited ech ier teen
List of Lllustrations in the Text. xxiii
2 PAGE Pemeeeyptian symbols .. 1) ss) we co os «2 240 187. Gothic fleurs-de-lis—from old glass, Lincoln .. 241 188. Heraldic badges—Sixteenth century, Mantua .. 242 189. Symbolic eye—Egyptian eatne arc ema. ins, 24S 190. Segment of Greek border of eyes—painted terra-
RE Se NM ie fee Pi Uk Seber cee sin! aS 191. Symbolic border of seed-vessels—L.F.D. .. .. 245 192. Heraldic oak—Italian Renaissance .. .. .. 246
ABBREVIATIONS,
B.M.—British Museum. V.& A.M.—Victoria & Albert Museum. L.F.D.—Lewis F. Day.
i i i
i oe
NATURE IN ORNAMENT.
INTRODUCTORY.
THE bias of the natural man is not un- naturally in the direction of nature. Almost alone in the history of art, the Greeks and the Moors appear to have been content with ornament which was ornament pure and simple. It is not too much to say, even in these days of supposed interest in things deco- rative, that the Englishman generally speaking neither knows nor cares anything about the subject. He is in most cases absolutely out of sympathy with it. Possibly he has even a sort of contempt for the “ornamental,” as some- thing opposed to that utility which he so highly esteems—never so much as appre- hending the fact that ornamental art is art applied to some useful purpose.
The forms of ornament he most admires are those most nearly resembling something
B
2 Nature in Ornament.
in nature, and it is because of that resemblance he admires them : abstract ornament is quite outside his sympathies and beyond his under- standing. He begins, for example, to take a feeble interest in Greek pattern-work only when he sees in it a likeness to the honey- suckle. Show him some purely ornamental form, “and “it is metther its, beautyA, monmmes character, nor its fitness that strikes him; he is perplexed only to know what it is meant to represent. Wo him’ every form or omna- ment must have its definite relation to some natural object, and therein lies all its interest.
Relation to nature there must be indeed, and every one will acknowledge the interest with which we trace such relationship ; but no one who really cares for ornament at all will allow that it depends upon that for its charm.
When ornament has gone astray, it has been more often in the direction of what one may call rusticity than of that artificiality which is at the other end of the scale.
Art passes through periods of affectation, when it becomes before all things urgent that opinion should be led back again to the for- gotten, grass-grown paths of nature. That is not our urgency just now. If there was at one time within our memory some fear of artificiality in art, the danger now lies in the
Introductory. 3
opposite direction of literalism; a literalism which assumes a copy of nature to be not only art, but the highest form of art; which ignores, if it does not in so many words deny, the necessity of anything like imagination or invention on the part of the artist, and accepts the imitative faculty for all in all.
To venture upon the sweeping assertion that all art whatsoever is, and must be, con- ventional, would be very likely to lay oneself open to the rebuke of judging all art by the decorative standard ; but with regard to orna- ment, it is no more than the bare truth to say that more or less conventional it must be, or it would not be ornamental.
Not, of course, that the ornamentist denies in the least the supreme beauty of natural form and colour, or thinks for a moment to improve upon it, as some seem to imagine, who insinu- ate that he proposes to surpass nature, pre- sumes to “paint the lily,” and so on. On the contrary, he is modest enough to recognise the impossibility of even approximately copying anything without the sacrifice of something which is more immediately to his purpose than any fact of nature—consistency namely, fitness, breadth, repose ; and is content, there- fore, to take only so much of natural beauty gs We can turn to use. He reculates Ins
B 2
A Nature in Ornament.
appetite, that is to say, according to his digestion. |
Such self-denial on his part is not by any means a shirking of the difficulties of the situa- tion. In art nothing is easy, except to such as have a natural faculty that way. It is not every one who finds it easy to make a striking study from nature; but that comparatively elementary accomplishment does demand ability of a lesser kind than the production of a picture in which there is design, unity, style, and whatever else may distinguish a master- work of the Renaissance from a study of to-day. 7
In like manner, the mere painting or carving of a sprig of foliage is within the reach of every amateur ; but to adapt such foliage to a given position and purpose, to design it into its place, to treat it after the manner of wood, stone, glass, metal, textile fabric, earthenware, or what not, demands not only intelligence and inborn aptitude, but training and experience too.
It is the easiest thing in the world to ridicule such decorative treatment ; but it would puzzle the scoffer if he were asked to pause a moment in his merriment and point out a single instance of even moderately satisfactory de- coration in which a more or less non-natural
Introductory. 5
treatment has not been adopted. The fact is, the artist has not yet arrived at a point where he is able to dispense altogether with art.
It is his misfortune (more so nowadays than ever it was) that it is extremely difficult for him to make up his mind precisely as to the relation of art to nature. That it is dependent upon nature, more or less, is obvious. Only by way of paradox is it possible to contend, like Mr. Whistler, that “nature is very seldom right.” Nature is our one and constant model. The question is as to how freely or how painfully, how broadly or how literally, how individually or how slavishly, we shall render the model before us, how much of it, and what of it, we shall depict. And this is a question which, if not quite beyond solution, must be solved by each man according to his idiosyncrasy, and that only after much anxiety and doubt and difficult self-questioning.
It is the good fortune of the decorator, the ornamentist, the worker in any of the more dependent arts, to be comparatively free from such incubus of doubt. In his art there is much less room for hesitation. For him to adopt the realistic creed would be to deny his calling, and to cut himself off from the art of his adoption: for the very idea of
6 Nature in Ornament.
ornament implies something to be ornamented, and accordingly to be taken into account.
A man is bound, by the very adoption of any one of the applied arts, to draw the line at realism so soon as ever it is opposed to the application of his art. In other words, the purpose to which his art is put indicates to him the limits of possible realism. And so, while the dispute about realism is still at its height so far as literature, the drama, and even painting are concerned, the question as to the adaptation of natural forms to ornamental design has resolved itself, for all who know anything of the subject, into inquiry as to the degree and kind of modification calculated to render natural forms applicable to orna- ment and the various purposes to which it is put.
This modification of natural form to orna- mental purpose we are accustomed to call “conventional.” In accepting this term, how- ever, we must be careful to distinguish con- vention from convention, and especially from that academic acceptation of the term which would give us to understand that the modi- fication of nature has been done for us, and that we have only to accept the (@lassie Medieval, Renaissance, or other more or less obsolete rendering at hand. As though the
Introductory. 7
tombs of buried peoples were heaven-sent habitations for live men !
The one thing to be insisted upon in refer- ence to convention is that it has zot been done for us once and for all, that we have to do our own conventionalising ; and not only that, but that we have to do it again and again, each time afresh, according to the work in hand. It is only by this means that art in ornament subsists and grows: when it ceases to grow, decay sets in of course.
To accept a convention ready-made is to compromise your own invention; to go on copying the accepted types, be they never so beautiful, is just to stifle it. But one must be familiar with them : one must be aware of what has been already done in the way of art, as well as conversant with nature. Simply to study nature is not enough. We have to know how artists of all times have interpreted nature ; how the same artist, or artists of the same period, treated natural form differently, according to the material employed, conform- ably with the position of the work, in view of the use it was to serve. Knowing all this, and being perfectly at home in the world of nature, one may set to work to conventionalise on one’s own account—and with the best possible chance of success.
8 Nature in Ornament.
Those who most keenly feel the need in ornament of a quality which the modern nature-worshipper delights to disparage, will be inclined to pray that they may be pre- served from some of their allies. There is, or was not long ago, a class of ornament in vogue, which appears to have originated in the idea that you have only to flatten out any kind of natural detail, and arrange it symmetrically upon arbitrary lines, and the end of ornament is achieved.
Decorative design is not so easy as all that. To emasculate a natural form is not to fit it for ornamental use, and to distribute detail according to diagram is not to design. The result say be conventional, but it is not the kind of convention here advocated ; one touch of nature is worth all the mechanical and life- less stuff of that kind that ever was done.
One hopes, and tries to think, that this sort of thing is dying out, if not quite dead already; but then one flatters oneself so readily that what has been proved absurd must be extinct, or moribund at least ; until, perhaps, an enforced stay among the Philis- tines brings us face to face with the evidence how very much it is alive. We have only weeded it out of our little garden plot ; about us is a wide world where itisrampant. There
Introductory. 9
is no hiding it from ourselves, there is life in the old dogma yet ; and, alas, in many another.
It is still as necessary as ever to deny the claim of merely geometric reconstruction to represent the due adaptation of natural forms to decorative needs. It is no more fair to take this ridiculously childish work to repre- sent conventional design than it would be to instance the immature studies of some raw student as examples of naturalistic treatment. Compare the best with the best. Compare the ceramic painting of Sevres with that of ancient Greece, China, or Japan; compare the work of Palissy with that of the potters of Persia and Moresque Spain; compare the finest Aubusson carpet with a Persian rug of the best period; compare the earlier Arras (such as we have at Hampton Court) with the most illusive of modern Gobelins tapestry ; compare the traditional Swiss wood-carving on the chalet fronts at Meyringen and there- abouts with the most ingenious model pro- duced in the same district for the English and American tourist; compare the peasant jewellery of almost any country except our own (we never seem to have had any) with the modern gewgaws which have taken its place; and who would hesitate to choose the more conventional art?
10 Nature in Ornament.
Conventional treatment, it will be seen, is no mere stopping short of perfect rendering, no bald excuse for incompetence. It is pur- posed presently to show that, if it does not on the one hand consist in the substitution of the diagram of a thing instead of its life and growth, neither does it mean the mere distor- tion of natural details, nor yet that mechanical repetition of ancient conventions which is a weariness to every one concerned in it. Our rendering of natural form must be our own, natural to us; but without some sort of con- ventionality (if we must use the word) deco- ration is impossible. There is no art without convention ; and your most determined realist is in his way as conventional as the best, or worst, of us.
It is not the word conventional for which contention is made, but that fit treatment of ornament which folk seem agreed to call by the title, more especially when they want to abuse it. By whatever name it is called, we cannot afford to let go our hold of that some- thing which distinguishes the decorative art of every country, period, and master, from the crude attempts of such as have not so much as grasped the idea that there is in art some- thing more than a dishing up of the raw facts of nature.
L[ntroductory. 11
Work as nearly natural as man can make it, though not in itself decorative, may be at times available in decoration. But forms de- naturalised by men alike: ignorant of the principles and unskilled in the practice of ornament, and more than half contemptuous of design to boot, are of no interest to any one but their authors, if even to them. Nature and art are not on such bad terms that to be unnatural is to be ornamental.
12 Nature in Ornament.
Li,
ORNAMENT IN NATURE.
NATURE being admittedly the primal source of all our inspiration, it is rather curious to observe the limited range within which we have been content to seek ideas, how we have gone on reflecting reflections of reflections, as though we dared not face the naked light of nature.
With all the wealth of suggestion in the world about us, and the never-ending variety of natural detail, the types which have sufficed for the ancient and medizval world, and for that matter for ourselves too, are, compara- tively speaking, very fewindeed. How largely the ornament of Egypt and Assyria is based upon the lotus, the papyrus, and the palm! The vine, the ivy, and the) olive, the miettee and the oak, together with the merest remin- iscence of the acanthus, went far to satisfy not only the Greeks but their Roman and Renaissance imitators as well.
Gothic art went further afield, and gathered
Proto-Tint, by James Akerman London W.(
Japanese Koses.
Ornament in Nature. 13
into its posy the lily and the rose, the pome- granate and the passion flower, the maple and the trefoil, but still only a comparatively small selection of the plants a-growing and a-blowing within sight of the village church. Oriental art is more conservative still; in it a very few types recur continually, with a monotony which becomes at last tedious. One wonders what Chinese art would have been without the aster and the peony, or Japanese without the almond blossom and bamboo, what Arab ornament would be but for the un-leaf-like leaf peculiar to it.
One is struck sometimes by the degree of variety in the treatment which a single type may undergo in different hands; more often it is the sameness of the renderings which impresses us.
Probably in the case of no single plant have the possibilities in the way of ornamental adap- tation been exhausted, and in many instances the very plainest hints in the way of design have not been taken.
The rose, for example, has been very variously treated ; but comparatively little use has been made of the fruit, or of the thorns, or of the broad stipules at the base of the leaves. We have to be grateful when the buds, with their boldly pronounced sepals, are
14 Nature in Ornament.
zt. Various tendrils, from nature.
once in a way, turned to ornamental account (Plate 65 and pp. 131, 132):
The Japanese roses on Plate 2 are some- what directly inspired by nature, but then they are not very ornamentally treated. They might almost have been drawn directly from nature. It is mainly the simplicity and direct- ness with which they are rendered which gives them some decorative quality.
Take the conventional vine again, with its stereotyped leaves and prim grapes. And its tendrils, how seldom they have suggested more than a rather meaningless wriggle, useful, no doubt, to fill an awkward gap in the composi- tion, but without either character or beauty.
Probably no feature of flower growth has been more badly treated than the tendril. Artists have thought themselves free to add a tendril to any plant whatsoever, and whereso-
Ornament in Nature. 15
2. Vine tendrils, from nature.
ever it pleased them. The clinging character of the bindweed, the hop, and plants of that kind, has suggested to artists who look with- out their eyes the necessity of support of some kind, and they have accordingly provided the tendrils nature has denied, neglecting all the while the peculiarly decorative character of the twining stem. Designers have seldom taken much account of the essentially orna- mental way in which plants like the nasturtium and the clematis attach themselves to what- ever they can lay hold on by their leaf-stalks ; nor have they rendered in design the suckers by which the ivy and the Virginia creeper adhere to the wall. It is so much simpler to provide convenient tendrils than to study nature.
And what tendrils they have provided ! All of one pattern ; whereas in nature they
16 Nature in Ornament.
are delightfully diverse. How vigorously the mature and woody tendril contrasts with the silky growth of the young shoots groping for something to support them! How different the branched tendril of the pea from the simple bryony tendril, and both from that of the vine! Certain poets of a past genera- tion thought fit to compare the tresses of their lady-loves to this last; and there was, perhaps, a certain suggestion of the corkscrew in both to warrant the comparison ; but what a lively corkscrew the tendril is, how friskily it twists and twirls about, and how gaily it starts off, as it were, on a fresh lease of life!
It is too exclusively in the leaf, the flower, and the fruit, that the ornamentist seems to have sought his model. The leaf-bud, for ex- ample, whether as giving character to the bare twigs (Plates 3 and 8) or conveniently softening the angle between the leaf-stalk and the stem, has been comparatively neglected: one type of bud at all events has usually done duty for all. The thickening of the leaf-stalk, again, at the joint with the stem, has rarely been made use of ; nor yet the quite young shoot, which not only fills the empty space about the stalk, but gives an opportunity, most invaluable in design, of contrasting smaller detail with the larger forms of the general design.
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“Puoto-Tint, by James Akerman,london W.C
Budding branches,from Nature.
Ornament in Nature. Ey
The stipules of the leaves, which also enrich the meagre joint, have been equally left out of ornament, characteristically ornamental as they are in the pea, for example, the sow thistle, and the passion flower. But even in the less marked form in which they appear in the hop, the medlar, the common nettle, and numberless wayside plants, they are worth an attention which they have not often received.
Nature seems to neglect no opportunity ; the very scars left on the stems of certain trees, such as the horse-chestnut, form a kind of decoration. Even in the scarred stalk of an old cabbage you may see pattern. In the case of the palm, the remains of the leaves of years past resolve themselves still more plainly into ornament; and for once the Roman sculptors, who saw palm-trees growing about them, adopted the idea in the decoration of their columns. The Indian rendering of the same notion, on Plate 77, is yet more conven- tional ; but there is no doubt as to the origin of that zigzag. Was it so, perhaps, that the idea of decorating columns in zigzag, common enough in Norman architecture, originated ?
In Greek ornament and its derivatives (Plates 11, 12, &c.), use is made of the sheath to clothe the branching of the spiral stems, but
C
18 Nature in Ornament,
3. Romanesque ornamentation of the stem.
there is still much to be learnt from the way in which nature wraps round a stalk with leaves, sheaths it, hides it, discreetly discloses it (Plate 4). he leaf scems sometimes to close round the stem so that that has almost the appearance of growing through ; so much so that the “thorough-wax? (Game plate), owes its name to that appearance. Still more plainly does the stem seem to grow through where the leaves are opposite and grow together round it, as in the teasel and the honeysuckle.
The arbitrary ornamentation of the stem in the Romanesque details above, indicates a feeling on the part of the artist that some- thing is needed to relieve the baldness of a stem. That something Nature is very ready to suggest, as the Pompeian bronze-worker
| Leaves sheathing stem
Stem Growing through SAN I thef Leaves
Wt i Sheathes
\\ |
Uy, \R wrapped round \¥ by [eaves \jF_
J Akerman, Photolith London
Natural leaf sheaths
Ornament in Nature.
realised when he went to the river- me for a reed as “motif” for the ornamentation of his candelabrum.
Certain fruits have, as I said, been made use of in design, either as affording convenient masses in the composition or, like the grape and the pomegranate, for reasons of symbolism. The smaller fruits have seldom had justice done to them. Bunches of berries are com- mon enough in ornament, but they are just berries, without as a rule the character of any particular plant. Yet how various they are in nature, and how differently they grow! This is indicated, however inadequately, on Plate 5. Space fails in which to illustrate fis part of our subject at all fully; but only compare the bryony with the spindle-berry, the snow- berry with the privet, the solanum with the laurel, the aucuba-berry with the barberry, and you will see that neither are berries all of one shape, nor do they grow always in one way—in nature, that is to say.
C2
42 bart ofa Pompeian candelabrum.
20 Nature in Ornament.
In the seed-vessel there is yet greater variety of natural design, in many cases most ornamental. The pea-pod has been slightly used in Renaissance ornament, in the anthe- mion for example below, and on Plates 45 and 46, where it is most effectively and characteristically treated.
On Plate 6 are a variety of cressworts in seed, indicating how in a single and un- pretending family of plants there may yet be considerable va- riety and character in the seed-vessels.
Sai Om | late 7 are some studies of the open pods of the common broom curling up as they dry in the sun, strictly > Bcilsctc copied from nature, but almost ready-made, as it seems, to the hand of the ornamentist.
The dried husks out of which flowers and seeds alike have fallen are often delightfully ornamental, as for example in the salvias, where they form at intervals a sort of crown round the stalk just above the starting point
“Puote-Tint? by James Akerman,London.W.C.
Various berries from Nature.
Ornament in Nature. 21
of the leaves. In certain thistles and kindred plants, the balls of seed-down are scarcely more beautiful than the silver-lined calices, from which the feathery seed has flown ; they shine in the sun like stars.
Very considerable ornamental use has been made of the bursting of the full pomegranate feuit (Plates 73 and 87 and pp. 74, 75, 76, 77, 139, 140). It is strange that the effective treatment of this symbol has not suggested the availability of other opening seed-vessels, the horse-chestnut for example and other nuts, the pod of the iris, and so on.
In the representation of fruits it is usually the ripe fruit that is given; but there is often quite as much if not more character in the unripe ; and some variety of form and size is very desirable.
The leaf in ornament is usually attached in a rather arbitrary way to the stalk, without sufficient heed to the twist and turn of the natural leaf, or to the angle at which it leaves the stem, to the length and thickness of its stalk, and to the way alternate leaves, say those of the lime, pull the stem out of the straight and give a zigzag line—in all of which there is character, and possibly a hint in design. |
Look at the poppies in the corn. Scarce
22 Nature in Ornament.
One of them [ever eets) Over the. chicka impme neck, which comes of hanging down its heavy head so! long when it is a bud (sce pai): There is always a tell-tale nick in the stalk of the full-blown flower, hidden it may be by drooping petals, but plain enough when they have dropped off and the seed-urn is left naked. It does not stand up straight and stiff like a barrel on a pole, but is poised with a subtlety characteristic always of the natural line as distinguished from the mechanical.
Notice — how ‘the apple-tree blossoms (Plate 3); “In edelr bunch a single topmost flower always opens first; S@=) than eit quite a common thing to see a white flower nestling among its five pink buds. Then in the case of the oak, the empty cup (see Plates 9g and 74) is a characteristic variation on the acorn shape, and there is usually at the end of the fruit-stalk a withered button or two, never to arrive at due development, which may be turned to account in design (Plate 9).
6. Unequally divided oak-leaf, from nature.
J Akerman Photolith London
Some seed vessels from Nature.
Ornament in Nature. 23
The gall-fly, again (same plates), comes to the help of the artist, and furnishes him with a further variety of forms more or less fruit- like in appearance, growing often in places where fruits would never be, on the unequal leaf forexample. I have counted rosy clusters of a dozen and moreon a singleleaf. Besides the soft oak-apple, associated in our boyish minds with King Charles, and the hard ink- gall which decorates the bare boughs in winter, there is a canker which attacks the leaf-bud and results in something rather like a small fir-cone.
Every one is familiar with the beautiful fearaery- burr of the rose: there are other rose-galls, peculiar to the leaves, looking like little beads of coral on their surface.
In the poplar too, the prominent gall-knob at the base of the leaf-stalk is distinctly characteristic. Almost every plant, in short, is attacked by its hereditary enemy, that seldom fails to leave his mark behind him, suggestive, it may very likely be, of orna- ment. And so with great part of the vicissi- tudes to which vegetation of all kinds is subject—the ceasing of the sap to flow, the drying of the leaves, the spread of some parasitic growth, and so on.
Historian and poet find in the misfortunes
24 Nature in Ornament.
and death of their characters a pathetic interest: the ornamentist may discover in the very decay of vegetation, apart from any sentimental interest, at least incident, character, and colour.
The vicissitudes of plant life, it may be said, are accidental, and what has accident to do with design? The very word implies, no doubt, the total absence of design. For all that, it is in some measure owing to the elimination of whatever is accidental in nature, that conventional ornament is apt to be so tame, and that the orthodox seems doomed to be dreary.
There is nothing, strictly speaking, acci- dental in design; but the designer is bound, nevertheless, to take every possible advantage of accident, not of course in order to incorpo- rate into his work, after the manner of the realist, as he calls himself, the awkward or ugly traits of nature which others have for obvious reasons left out of account, but that he may seize upon every freak of nature suggestive of characteristic and beautiful design.
Strict attention to botanic accuracy has resulted too frequently in ornament much more mechanically exact than anything in nature. If natural leaves grow at ordered intervals, they do grow, vigorously and vari-
C.F. KELL, PHOTO-LITHO.8.FURNIVAL ST HOLBORN EC
Fods from Nature.
Ornament in Nature. 25
ously, as if they had something like a will of their own.
The ideal of the horticulturist is a flower- head as even as if it had been “struck” geo- metrically, a spike of blossoms as trim as a clipped yew-tree or a French poodle. That is not Nature’s way. Regularly as a natural flower-spike may be planned, the actual blos- soms have a way of shooting out in the most casual manner. You see this very plainly in the salvias, for all the gardener’s pains with them ; and everywhere, in the woods and in the meadows, by the wayside and the river bank, Nature never wearies of playing varia- tions upon the symmetric plan of plant growth. Certain plants, says the gardener, have a bad habit of “sporting.” Truly there is nothing at all sportive in his reduction of all nature to one dead level of sameness.
Ornament might fairly be compared to the growth of a garden, not of a wilderness. But if, on the one hand, nature cannot be allowed to run wild over this garden, neither, on the other, should it be clipped and trimmed and formalised until there is no character of its own left in it.
The method of the florist affords a perfect example of what zo¢ to do in the way of modi- fying natural form. His plan is to eliminate
26 Nature in Ornament.
whatever is wayward, occasional, uncommon, characteristic. Look at his hyacinth, as regular as the curls of a wig, and compare it with the wild bluebells. Look at his double dahlia: the flower was prim enough in the siinple single form, with its obviously even- numbered petals insisting upon your count- ing them; but what a bunch of ribbons it has become in his hands! ‘To reduce a flower to the likeness of a rosette is not to make it the more ornamental ; and every accident indica- tive of a return to natlire 1s a) welcome mclicen from such unmeaning evenness of form. Those who would limit us to a hard and fast rule of growth, betray perhaps their own ignorance of the latitude Nature allows her- self. We have to acquaint ourselves with the anatomy of plants, and especially with their growth ; and where it comes to anything like natural treatment, we have Tunthey sto. stds into account the habits of a plant, its manners and customs, so to speak—for which there is, of ‘course, if we enquire into the “matter good structural reason always. It is, how- ever, with the outward form of things that the art of the ornamentist has to do, and for the most part it will be sufficient for him to confine his studies to the visible side of nature. Very slight observation will show
Waloul
Tilip- QTree
“Puoto-Tint, by James Akerman London W.C
Flower & leaf buds.
Ornament in Nature. 27
him that Nature is not so careful always to emphasise botanical points as are some of us, and that she appears often to break her own laws: or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, she breaks the laws we have been bold to make for her.
At all events plants very often seem to grow differently from what science has taught us to expect. Against a wall, for example, where leaves cannot grow in the normal spiral fashion, they will arrange themselves quite contentedly on two sides of the stem or on one side of it. If that may be so in nature, why not also in art? There is only one caution necessary against it: that the designer must not let it seem as though he were ignorant of the way in which a thing naturally grows.
To do full justice to a plant it is not enough for the designer to make a drawing of it. One has to watch it through the year, perhaps through several years, in order to seize the moment when it reveals all the possi- bilities that are in it. Certain seasons are peculiarly favourable to the development of certain plants in the direction of ornament, In a wet summer, for example, when things grow quickly, the apparently confused way some plants have of growing is made clear.
28 Nature in Ornament.
The stalks are so much longer than usual, and the leaves so much further apart, that they disclose for once the way the plant grows ; and this opening-out of natural growth goes some way towards fitting it for the purposes of ornament.
Again, it depends in some cases very much upon the season whether the sepals of the withered flower remain intact on the ripened fruit, and whether the stipules at the base of the leaf-stalk and the bracts at the axes of the flower-stalks adhere or not. In excep- tional seasons, also, fruit-trees begin to bloom again whilst the ripe fruit is on the tree. And what a vast difference all that makes to the designer who would found himself always upon nature ! 7
Many a happy inspiration of design is no more than the turning to account some fortu- nate accident in nature. You notice, as you walk through a clearing in the woods, where an oak-tree has been cut down close to the root ; and it has sent out a ring of young shoots all round it, so as to form a perfect garland of oak-leaves on the ground. A few days later and you would seek in vain a living, growing model for your oak wreath.
The conventions of artists are not so far removed from nature as we are apt to think.
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Puoto-Tint, by
kerman, London .W.C
Al
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Ornament in Nature. 29
Trees do grow in Umbria as Perugino, and Raf- faelle after him, painted them. The artist did not altogether imagine those graceful sprays of leafage, any
more than Ve- Ea y je s Dro ronese evolved a) oD 8 ay cn his lovely green- ow OS 4 ay blue skies from <p == , his imagina- ||| / 2 ifr Wd
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tion. You see
just such skies C Pag i italy: as og 2 NY you see also in | Al <a Titian’s country re, NS the purple hills | I ae \ vie ; y : GZ. Ns
and _ quasi-con- bie a a ventional land- be UMN OT} | At
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7 Bing / C93 pa scapes he put in © LOGY 2 yt ve to his pictures. Oa Gre Jane
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colour, we are |[| y ing IWS too much dis- AVE SP ey
; £56 Ne nS, posed to take it Oi a FOS | for granted that 6 Ga ae | & | red, blue, purple, Sai AoW = || and yellow are -7 Chinese rendering of wistaria—
old embroidery.
colours nature has reserved for flowers, and that leaves, stalks, and so on are only green. But as a
30 Nature in Ornament.
matter of fact, the flower-stalk is often more in harmony with the flowers than with the leaves, as in the begonia, salvia, sea holly, and other plants. The leaf-stalk, also, is sometimes bright crimson, as in the little wild cranesbill and in the sycamore; or vivid yellow, as in the case of some poplar- leaves.
Leaves themselves, again, are sometimes anything but ereen. Ido not mean taat they are merely oreyish, as they oftem “are or olive, which they seldom are, or that they merely change colour in the autumn, but that the foliage is of a delicate brown, as in the young growth of the wistaria (which the Chinese embroiderer (see p. 29) has meta- morphosed into something more like tendrils), or madder-coloured, as in the late shoots of the oak, briar, hornbeam, and other trees. And then what variety of tint there is in the backs of leaves: purple as in the wild lettuce, rich red-brown as in some magnolias and rhododendrons, silver grey as in the alder, the poplar, the willow, and some garden plants.
The Japanese have made admirable use of the contrast in colour between the back and front of leaves. They will make the leaf solid black with white veins, and sketch its reverse in outline only with black veins,
Plate 10.
= ORNAMENT in NATURE
“4 Buckwheat ‘o*
J Axgerman,Photodith London
Natural Growtb.
=
aie hae
Ornament in Nature. 31
counter-changing the colour as frankly as a medizval herald did in his treatment of the mantling about a shield.
Whether, then, it is form that we seek or colour, everywhere in nature there is material for the ornamentist, often, as it seems, almost ready made to his hand (Plate 10); but, promising as it may be, it is not yet orna- ment—it lacks always adaptation to our especial purpose. It is by our ¢reatment of nature that we justify our use of its forms.
32 Nature in Ornament.
ITl.
NATURE IN ORNAMENT.
IT is not at first sight obvious how much all ornament owes tonature. There is evena still surviving superstition that it is designed by the aid of the kaleidoscope.
True it is that the “itch to make patterns” was one of the very earliest symptoms of that artistic fever to which the human race has from the first been liable. Man may or may not have begun by scratching animals | on bones of other animals, he very soon began to scratch ornamental devices. The English race scarcely suffers from the malady nowa- days. When it does break out in us it may be traced probably to some Welsh or other Celtic ancestor. But to certain of us, however few, it is every bit as natural to trace patterns as to draw animals—or to kill them.
For all that, even the born pattern-designer is necessarily, as man, and more especially as artist, so intimately acquainted with nature that his work is inevitably imbued with it.
Greek Scrolls.
Nature 1n Ornament. 33
In almost every detail of design there 1s, whether he be conscious of it or no, a re- miniscence of nature. In the most abstract design he is accustomed to obey instinctively the natural laws of construction and growth, so much so that we resent his departure from them, and take exception, for example, to the scroll, even the most arbitrary, which violates the rule and presumes to grow, so to speak, both ways at once.
I have explained at length elsewhere * how the Greek honeysuckle ornament, as it is called, originated in no attempt to imitate natural bud forms, but grew, as one may say, out of the useof the brush. The fact remains, notwithstanding, that the brush-strokes came to range themselves very much on the lines of natural growth—all the more readily, of course, because of the memories or impressions of plant form stored away in men’s brains. The fact is those memories, vague as they may be, prompt the ornamentist at every turn in design.
What we call the acanthus scroll seems to have grown simply out of the desire to clothe with some sort of leafage the mere spiral lines with which archaic ornament, whether in Greece, or Northern Europe, or the Fiji
* *Some principles of Every-day Art,’ p. 104 e¢ seg.
D
Ral Nature in Ornament.
Islands, instinctively set out ; which spiral line not only occurs in many shells and in the horns of animals, but results inevitably from a cer- tain natural action of the draughtsman’s wrist.
he) Greek serolls (ons Plate~ 1m, consist practically of little more than branching spirals, with just a husk of something like foliage to mask the dividing of the stem: the lilies and the like are minor features obviously put in to fill up; they form no integral part of the main purpose.
The Roman scroll (Plate 12) is plainly more full (of sap it seems to bes bursting out into leafage; but it remains only a de- velopment of the Greek idea: it is simply a spiral clothed in conventional leafage, devised primarily to disguise its lines, and especially the branching of the lines. What is the root and origin of the acanthus scroll—not any attempt to reduce the acanthus to ornament,
but a desire to clothe wii the lines of the scroll.
We Archaic Greek orna- ils
ment is made up mainly Vy of spiral lines and groups Nis Nils of brush-strokes. On \ VN \\ iW, duced two typical acan- a ee thus leaves to brush-
8. Acanthus leaves reduce
Plate: 12° = shave were to brushwork. work, in order to show
Ti Oto aewo\y
F. KELL, PHOTO-LITHO,8,FURNIVAL ST HOLBORN,E-C
Acantbus Sculpture & brushwork.
Cc
“Proto -TIntT, by Jomes Akerman. London. W.
32 A@siQn.
4
of the same Frie
VS
Versiot
Nature in Ornament.
how, starting with the idea of deco- rating bald lines with brushwork, a painter, haunted as we all must be by the ghosts of natu- ral growth, might have arrived at something uncom- monly like the con- ventional Classic leafage. And again, on Plate 14, I have translated a scroll more or less of my own into the same language of the brush. It is not, of course, meant to imply that that is, as a matter of fact, how the acanthus scroll came about, but that it might have been deve- loped in that way. That fable about Callimachus and the Corinthian
A
g. Simple acanthus leafage.
Do2
36 Nature in Ornament.
to. Step between wave and acanthus scroll—Roman mosaic.
capital is the invention of a poet, not of a practical ornamentist.
Again, on the Roman pedestal on p. 35, where there is no scroll and no branching and no great variety of foliation, one may see very plainly indeed how the familiar type of foliation may have grown out of the very simplest idea of clothing a straight line. It is one step, just one step, beyond the Greek bay-leaf pattern (Plate 81): instead of simple bay-leaves in pairs we have opposite groups
“Puoto -TinT; by James Akerman, London, W.C
Vetails of Mosaic from. Carthage.
Nature in Ornament. 27
of five, not separate leaves, but massed together sculpturesquely, forming at the junction of the groups the “ pipes” so conspicuous in the full-grown Classic scroll.
In the Roman mosaic border on p. 36 is an indication of the growth of a very similar idea ; a simple wave stem is supplied with a spiral offshoot, and both are clothed with leaflets of the very simplest description. Serrate or subdivide such leaflets, and we
12. Oak-like leafage.
should not be far from the familiar arabesque.
Something of the kind does in fact occur in the mosaic detail from Carthage on Plate 15, which looks almost like the next step forward in the development of the scroll.
Such a system of foli- ation once invented, it was easy and natu- ral enough to make the detail more or less like some natural leaf.
It has been made to resemble the acanthus and the olive ; and it is clear, by the acorns accom-
38 Nature in Ornament.
panying it, that it was used also to represent the oak, The quasi - Classic scroll of the Renaissance assumes at times also a distinct _re- semblance to the vine. This 13. Vine-like See cece from the Jubé at is very plainly
seen in the leafage from the famous Jube at Limoges (above). Judging by this particular instance, one might pretend that the stock pattern of conventional foliage was suggested by the vine. The vine-leaf is here as unmistakable asthe) relationmonarne ornament to the An- tique; 7; lhe sdetailiiima question belongs of course to a transition period] It) halts ibe- tween two opinions.
ik iA
14. Crocket-like foliage, from Limoges.
CFE PhoteLitho, 8 Furnivel X.Eolbare,E.€
Transitional Scroll, D.Hopfer.
Nature in Ornament. 39
15. Modern modification of Classic leafage.
You see the hesitation, perhaps, more plainly still in the bracket from the same source (No. 14). That was plainly inspired by Classic art; but the sculptor was more accustomed to carve Gothic crockets than Roman scrolls. The result is ornament which, but for associa- tion of ideas, would never suggest the notion of the acanthus. A very characteristic and individual modern rendering of the old theme is given above, the design, apparently, of the late Godfrey Sykes.
Had the Classic scroll really been only a conventional treatment of the acanthus, it would have been difficult to understand how the sculptors stopped short at that one type, and did not attempt to manipulate other forms of leafage in the same way. That merely abstract leafage should, on the other hand, eventually remind us of olive, oak, or acanthus leaves, is readily understood.
The Gothic scrollery of Hopfer (Plate 16) is very remote indeed from the acanthus. The spirit of the Renaissance was already in
40 Nature in Ornament.
the air in the time of Hopfer, and probably influenced his work. If it did so to any extent, it shows how differently men could interpret the same notion. If it did not, it shows how from different directions they arrived at some- thing of the same kind. There is nothing of the acanthus here—the foliation is more sug- gestive of the thistle—but yet there is in the design a family likeness to Classic and Re- naissance types. The more naturalistic flowers introduced to fill up remind one distantly of the lily-like additions to the Greek scroll (Plate 11), and even the birds, too natural for the foliage they inhabit, have their counter- parts in Roman and Renaissance arabesque.
In the typical Renaissance arabesque the idea is still to clothe lines in themselves merely ornamental ; and in the best work these lines remain always apparent through the clothing (Plates 96 and 105). But that the Italians of the Cinque Cento did not allow themselves to be hampered by any consideration of natural possibility, still less of probability, is shown by their indulgence in the absurdities which deface many of their most graceful compo- sitions—_such for example as da Udine’s in the Loggie of the Vatican, and those of Giulio Romano at the Palazzo del T at Mantua, one of which is given on Plate 17.
Puoro-Tint, by Jemes Akerman,London .W.C
Painted Wall Fanel, by Giulto Romano.
a ‘|
ete
Nature in Ornament. AI
The Italian of the sixteenth century was seldom very particular how he arrived at his effect, so he arrived at it—the end justified the means with him ; but, little as he cared
16. Seventeenth century scroll— oulle.
for natural growth, he could not do without it, and his most un- natural ornament bristles with natural details.
Phe ornament round) 7 the. “fatence dishes on Plate 18 (a class of ornament commonly distin- cuished as_ Raffael- lesque) begins plainly with the idea of purely ornamental lines. It is another develop- ment of the foliated line. Both lines and masses are here ob- viously quite arbi- trary, suggested by
ornamental considerations ; but, almost in spite of the artist, they take the form of winged head,
dolphin, leaf, flower.
That fault already re-
ferred to of growing two ways at once, which
A2 Nature im Ornament.
SS ) G, Naas Rome: BNez es 2 A \. BAY ihe @, = Lay
17. Details of Romanesque ornament.
may be here observed, is a very common de- fect of Italian arabesque—as of Arab art also, although in it the detail is so vem, damune- moved from life that the defect is less apparent. Even in its degradation, however, the Renais- sance arabesque never quite let go the thread of nature ; and in the hands of Boulle (p. 41) it blossomed out during the seventeenth cen- tury into something more distinctly floral than the purer scroll of the Cinque Cento.
In Romanesque ornament, which is in the first instance only a rude rendering of Roman detail, there is, towards the twelfth century, some return to nature. The details above, for example, are not to be traced to any natural type, but they are alive with remi- niscences of nature. It is plain, nevertheless, always, from the freedom of the rendering, that the primitive idea was not to reproduce
lly
Proro-Tint, by
Lustre Dishes 16"? C
tury.
James
Akerman
London .W.C
’ ‘ A H N { ‘ ' i Ni
Nature in Ornament. 43
18. Details of Early Gothic ornament.
nature, still less to represent it naturally, but only to find a starting-point for design.
The same may be said with regard to Early Gothic ornament, originally little more than a carrying on of the Romanesque idea, and reminding us at times, even in the thirteenth century, unmistakably of Classic detail.
In some of the details at the head of the page may be seen how, eventually, the artist went more directly to nature; but though you might trace these home, they are as yet very arbitrary renderings. And for my part I think the earlier and more arbitrary Gothic forms by far the more ornamental : the stone budding into crockets or other sculp- turesque foliation, is to me far more beautiful than the would-be natural leaves and flowers spread over the architecture of the fourteenth century. In other words, the more strict
44 Nature in Ornament,
a S wv w WAAN
DPQ ]2_QUx][II LL»
ESS
1g. Spiral Persian scroll.
adherence to the natural type has resulted in the less satisfactory ornament.
The artists of the latest Gothic period seem to have realised that themselves. In the German tapestry on Plate 19 there is, properly speaking, neither leaf nor flower, but only ornamental detail corresponding to both. The lines are in a way ornamental; but the growth is of more account with the designer than the line of his ornament. In this re- spect it is interesting to compare it with more deliberately ornamental arabesque. In its vigorous Gothic way it too is a model of the use that may be made of nature in ornament.
Gothic Scroll
Nature in Ornament. 45
20. Iris-like details of Persian ornament.
In the Persian pattern on p. 44, the spiral line is decorated in a quite different manner from the Classical: it is not so much clothed in leafage as relieved by leaf-like touches and broken by daisy-like rosettes. It is quite certain that no natural type ever suggested the design; it was in seeking ornamental forms that the painter happened upon some- thing which suggests, but only suggests, nature. On the other hand, there are forms above, which, though scarcely recognisable at first, are distinctly formed upon the flower of the iris.
Still more remote from actuality are the details of Arab and older Persian ornament. And yet the most frequent feature in it is
46 Nature in Ornament.
21. Details of early Persian ornament.
not altogether unlike a folded leaf in profile ; and in other shapes (above) a likeness has been traced to the unfolding fronds of the young fern. Ifthese forms are indeed founded upon nature, it only goes to show how far one may, perhaps unconsciously, stray from one’s starting-point. If they are not, it indicates how impossible it is to invent forms which shall not in some degree recall the life and erowth about us.
Mohammedan design, we know, purposed deliberately to avoid the natural; but, for all that, the forms it borrowed from nature are perpetually betraying themselves, reminding us, if not of leaf or stalk, then of flower and bud. It looks as though, try as they might to
Plate 20.
~s A Del S SS ee Ks ONE One Neus TE ae
AN 9) 5] OR TASS Oe OA SOPRA = f] penny (E pe GR a dy
mAs
y Se Lae e aS ON CR OOF? TN Se SHO)
IMCS
Nature in Ornament. 47
ta ae Lene
22. Sixteenth century arabesque details.
( hi iy)
Et
evolve ornament out of their inner conscious- ness, the Arabs could not altogether silence their memories, even though conscience for- bade them to represent anything “ on the earth beneath.” Doubtless they sinned often un- consciously ; but they were foredoomed to sin. And so with their Renaissance imitators, German or Italian. Whenever they strayed from the source of Eastern —_inspira- tion, it “was ‘.in- Vatiably in “the direction of na- ture: s Dhete> is sometimes growth enough in the abs- tract Orientalism of Flotner and 23. Rosette in Rouen faier.ce. Holbein to make
48 Nature tn Ornament.
24. Chinese foliage, not easy to identify.
us wish it were more thoroughly consistent. One feels the lack of some controlling con- science in the growth.
It is curious to note how, on Llate Zo, the deliberately ornamental lines of strapwork break out into something like foliation—as
25- Bouquet of conventional ornament.
Plate 21.
C.F, KELL. PHOTO-LITHOD 6 FURNIVAL S7™ HOLBORN.E.C
Ornamental bouquet 17°" Century
Ce wer ihre Pen
Sip
Nature in Ornament. AQ
for the undergrowth of filigree it does grow. Even Nicho- laus Drusse (Plate 117) does not man- gee to get clear of natural influence, though it must be admitted that he treated nature with very scant respect. So in the arbitrary 26. Abstract pea ie not free from inlay pattern above,
the abstract lines of ornament must needs break out incontinently into something like foliation.
And again, in the faience pattern on p. 47, the painter, working on radiating lines in- dicated by the shape of his dish, seems to have arrived as a matter of course at a rosette suggesting a flower, and calling for something like a leaf in connection with it.
It is not by any means in the scroll alone that we trace the influence of nature in orna- ment. It is quite a common thing in Oriental art to find bouquets of quite conventional flower forms. There is an ingenious example of this in the Persian plaque on p. 48, in which the ornament consists almost entirely
E
~
50 Nature in Ornament.
aii Ses ) CIES -(}— Chinese ye
27. Conventional Chinese flower forms.
of flower forms, evenly diapered over the dish, and yet conforming to the idea of growth. The Oriental influence is seen again in Plate 21, where the ornament, far removed as it is from nature, conveys quite clearly the idea of a nosegay. Forms only remotely resembling flowers are arranged, with due regard to balance, I will not say in imitation, but in recollection, of a bunch of flowers, and lines are found to connect and support them, and give them a sort of artistic coherence. The artificiality of the design is obvious, but it is the artifice of an artist, and “a uveq, accomplished one too. It represents a type of ornament suggested by a wealth of flowers, where the stalks and especially the leaves go for very little.
There is a considerable amount of tradi- tional ornament which was founded, no doubt,
J. Akerman, Photo-hth. London.
Book Cover by Owen Jones.
Nature in Ornament. 51
J bs] e is
28. Conventional Chinese foliage.
originally upon natural types lost in the mists of long ago; artists have repeated the form so often, and at last so perfunctorily, that in the end it is as difficult to decipher as a man’s signature. One has almost to take it on faith that the flowers on p. 50 are asters, peonies, and so on. So with the border above, the flower is, I suppose, an aster, but what goes for leafage belongs to no flower that ever erew.
Even Owen Jones, who laid it down as an axiom that the recurrence to a natural type was by so much a degradation of design, could not do without foliation and growth, more or less according to nature. This is very plainly shown in the typical example geo his work ‘om. Plate. 22: He. had the strictest views as to the lines on which orna- ment should grow, but he insisted that it should grow; and his theory led him in practice to something always more or less suggestive of nature—because the logical way in which he went to work was indeed the way of nature.
E 2
52 Nature in Ornament.
IV.
THE SIMPLIFICATION OF NATURAL FORMS.
TO conventionalise is in some cases scarcely more than to simplify. So plainly is this so that the frequent occurrence of certain floral forms in decorative design is in part at least accounted for by the fact that they could be very considerably simplified without losing their clear identity. Ihe suntloweg foquexe ample (Plate 23) came into fashion” nok entirely because of the whimsical folly of a few so-called zsthetes, but because its hand- some and massive head was such an unmis- takably ornamental feature. Foliage and flower alike lent themselves to, and indeed almost compelled, a broad and simple treat- ment; whilst the character of the plant was so well defined, that it was difficult by any kind of rendering or any degree of conven- tionality of expression to eliminate it. It was never in danger of being reduced to the mere abstraction of a flower, that might have been suggested equally by any one of a dozen different natural types.
Plate 23.
e) yn & Ve oY SCE
eA
a py sila Ww
nt Se, < !
S ~~, = ~ as 1 nm
Re
SS Ws Se 5 BS (2 p SSS AVN
CF KELL, PHOTO-LITHO,6,FURNIVAL S* HOLBOAN.E Cc
Sunflowers & Roses by B. J. Talbert.
Simplification of Natural Forms. 53
29. Rectangular acorn patterns.
So also the acorn asserts its identity even in the rudimentary form in which it occurs in the old German stitching above.
You may see again in the late George Edmund Street’s cleverly contrived panel overleaf how a really characteristic and ener- getic shape will hold its own. Shorn as it is altogether of its leaves, its prickles, the very featheriness of its flower-heads, there rests not the least doubt that it is a thistle.
Less emphatic forms lose, when simpli- fied, all individual character ; and indeed you have only to carry such simplification far enough, to reduce the greater part of natural forms to one level—I might say perhaps one dead level—of convention.
It is remarkable how slight a modification will remove a flower from recognition. An alteration of scale is sometimes enough to puzzle us. To magnify a flower is in most cases to disguise its identity. Draw the pimpernel the size of a flax blossom, or the flax blossom the size of a mallow, and who
54 Nature in Ornament.
is to recognise it, especially when the subtler characteristics of texture and the individual turn of the petals are conventionalised away ? One can never be quite certain that any con- ventional five-petalled flower, such as the German Gothic rosette on p. 55 for example is not meant for a rose. Even in the case of more characteristic blossoms, like the speedwell, with its pe- tals three and One awe make put off the scent at first by unaccus- tomed __ pro- portions in the; flower And so with leaves. Failing anything like strict accuracy as to their growth—very rarely indeed observed in ornament—it is more than difficult to distinguish between one lanceolate leaf and another: the same shape may stand just as well for willow as for bay or olive. The heart-shaped leaves in the
30. Simplified thistle. G. E. Street, R.A.
Plate 24.
CONVENTIONAL FLORAL ORNAMENT FROM’ GREEK VASES
Vetails of Greek Terra Cotta pamting
Sey pee Pr
Me i fi = ‘ SK » xt ‘ re v .
Simplification of Natural Forms. 55
31. Gothic leaf border—wood carving.
border above may indicate the poplar or the lilac: possibly the carver had in his mind no leaf in particular.
It cannot be said that the danger of mis- take in the identity of natural forms has de- terred the designer from simplifying them. We find inevery period of art floral or foliated forms which may be meant for this or that, but which it is quite impossible to identify with any degree of certainty. The Gothic border below may stand for a rose, for all we know ; the Greek border A on Plate 24 may stand for a convolvulus; and B, I feel pretty certain, consists of birch-leaves and catkins. The strange leaf in border C on the same plate used to puzzle me until I discovered
32. Rosette or rose?
33- Gothic leaf and flower border—wood carving.
56 Nature in Ornament.
its source in nature. It proves, as you will see at a glance on this page, to be no leaf, but a_ seed- vessel : soften the angularity of “the Stem pulled out of the straight by the pods, and you have the starting- point of the Greek design. There is sometimes in this | Greels pattern an indication of the way the seed - vessels split asunder # and shed the
34. Seed-vessels from nature. seeds. The identification of this peculiar two-lobed feature
te
eects
don W.C
Lon
Proto-Tint, by James Akerman
“
Details of Ancient Captc Embroidenes.
35- Conventional buds, or seed-vessels ?—marble inlay.
was all the more difficult, because you see in other Greek vases something like the same shape doing obvious duty for a leaf.
The conventional tree, on the same plate, is quite impossible to name; the ivy in the border above it, on the other hand, is for once very clearly indicated; the berries, in par- ticular, are very characteristically given. Compare them with the more usual Greek ivy-berries below.
Again, in the Coptic embroideries on Plate 25,wehave heart - shaped leaves and tre- foils and fruit and flower, all alike symbolic no doubt, but without any meaning in par- ticular to us.
In the Floren- 36. Conventional Greek ivy- tine border above,
leaves and berries.
58 Nature in Ornament.
as in the Japanese bor- der -here given, we can please ourselves as_ to whether they are buds or seed-vessels that are repre- sented.
Again, the Sicilian tree, below, may stand for any- thing with a serrated leaf. Simplicity could not much fuGther co ethan: tae tine Roman version of a tree ons p.1502 ain the indian kinkaub pattern, on Plate
east
oy
=
37. Japanese border— buds or fruits ?
26, the charaeter
of the flowers and leaves, no less than the growth of the plant, are part and parcel
38. Conventional tree, from a
Sicilian silk. 27 betray more or
of the process of weaving employed; there is a. dis- tinct reminiscence of some plant with large foot-leaves and small stalk- leaves, but it would be rash to say more than that.
The Pompeian details on Plate
Indian — Kinkaub”
from an
‘Detail
epee ioe AW
Wale kts
Stuplification of Natural Forms. 59
less a natural source of inspiration, but with the exception of a_ tendril and something like a passion flower, there is not much in the mosaic that one can _ identify ; whilst in the painted panel the various details are so remote from lily Or campanula, or what- ever may have been their starting points, that one accepts even the arbi- trary way in which they are put together. Com- pare this Pompeian panel
fe :
N-2%O03 2- mp7 “se
39. Simple Roman tree.
with the Roman candelabrum on
p. 133.
40. Hawthorn
Again, in the carved door from Cairo, Plate 28, the details of the flowers are reduced to something
crocket. | Very nearly approaching to chip-
i trocket. them out, are rather mixed. Even
carving; the details consist not so much of leaves and flowers as of cuts of the chisel, an effect all the more satisfactory inasmuch as the types, as far as one can make
60 Nature in Ornament.
so, by the way, they are exceptionally natural for Arab work.
ayGotnie: areacas elsewhere, we identify a plant in many in- stances only because we expect to | Mid it there. Whatever can by any stretch of ima- gination pass for a vine-leaf (Plate 29) we accept as such—any bunch of berries we take for grapes.
In very many cases it is only by the flower or fruit that the definite relation of the leaf to nature is recognised. The crockets on the plate referred to are more like crockets than leaves; it is only by the berries and the winged seeds that one knows them to do duty for hawthorn and maple. One guesses that one of the crockets on p. 59 may also be a hawthorn leaf. It is only the tendril which gives us to suppose that the other is a vine. And so with the foliage from Henry the VII.’s Chapel on Plate 29.. “But for the acorn) cups; aoseme would ever have suspected the carver of having
42. Late Gothic pomegranate.
3 ¥
Z s i
from Pompen.
4
aS
4 |
Ve
Simplification of Natural Forms. 61
S54 W FG 7 PR OCC
,)
~\ Vs \
Tivssessccssevacsceess cessesesecenessasessssugssesereeseet
ni
43, 44. Indian renderings of the poppy.
had any thought of oak-leaves; and with regard to the sprig of painted decoration on p. 60, we make up our minds that it stands for the pomegranate only be- cause it comes nearer to that than to any other symbolic fruit.
It is all the more difficult, sometimes, to identify the plant which is meant, because one can never be sure of the knowledge, or of the con- scientiousness, of the artist. The two damascened patterns above presumably represent the poppy, but, in the one case at least, the artist has supplied the flower with five petals and a calyx—details which, if one had _ perfect faith in the artist, would com- || pletely put one off the scent. |
One is puzzled also by the
= . 45. Greek border, wiry shoots between the lily- with lily-buds.
62 Nature in Ornament.
46. Early Gothic foliated ornament.
like flowers in the admirably severe Greek border on p. 61, and wonders as to the source of its inspiration—the Solomon’s seal per- haps?
Any trefoil or cinquefoil’ may have in- fluenced, in its turn, the shape of early Gothic foliage, such as that above, which is founded, as we know, directly upon no natural type at all, but is a recollection of a recollectiongon a recollection going centuries back. It grew out of Byzantine or Romanesque forms, them- selves derived from Classic foliage; and it was only when the sculptor had arrived, through symbolism, at something reminding him of clover, or wood sorrel, or hepatica, that he began to think of making it more nearly like nature.
It is clear that the carver of themdetal on p. 63, had in his mind some natural leaf; what that leaf isis net sorceramnn ss Oneron
Puoro-Tint, by dames Akerman, London WC
Carved Cabinel Door from Catrro, SKM.
Simplification of Natural Forms. 63
47- Natural and ornamental foliage—Early French.
the charms of Early Gothic is that, conven- tional as it is, and in the main of one type, there is always a chance of our coming upon some touch of nature which brings the work- man nearer to us. You can see sometimes; in Early French Gothic, how the detail was
48. Bud-like ornamental forms.
64 Nature in Ornament.
CMs
inspired, as Key Viollet le ZB Duc points
out, by the ye: Ve fronds of Ze US the bracken
SS\ IWS Z <A [Aa and other ENG SS aN VAXS plants; but
Fa Va the sculptor
‘49. Peony simplified to form a stencil—H. Sumner. leaves out
so much, that it is not always easy, even with the assistance of Viollet le Duc, to detect the natural type. Whether of set purpose or by instinct, too, the sculptor chose persistently the simplest floral forms, which lent themselves to breadth and dignity of treatment. It is not surprising that, magnified in stone, they should appear to us abstractions.
In many instances, it is tolerably clear that no leaf was intended, but only foliation, no particular plant, but growth. And it is marvellous how the early Medizval sculptor contrived to convey that idea of vitality in the stone. In the ‘crockets” so, peeuliany, characteristic of early French Gothic, for example, he imitated no particular bud, but the stone itself seems budding into life. A later Gothic instance of that bud-like ornament in wood is given on p. 63.
A OC “a ce A a TQS , Novrina r7dy.
’ yA \\ ( \ 1 Vf Mul Winchester
ton OTT Pg Ne
—_
% 1172 ; ; 0 Ohristchurch<y Vine
Enghsb Gothic Details.
Simplification of Natural Forms. 65
How far the primitive Gothic sculptor could, if he had been so minded, have rendered nature im the coatse - stone in which he worked, is doubt- ful; happily he seized that in nature which he could _—_— express, and expressed it like an artist. It is a1 the very quality of an ornamentist, that
he should be 51. Gothic wood-carving. willing to omit much that
he could have put into his work had it been to the purpose. Inthe peony pat- tern on p. 64 Mr. Sumner has had the courage to leave out whatever could not conveniently be ren- dered in stencilling.
LM sec gee ee
Pectin iigutecsun . lt is eiriois how dit F
66 Nature in Ornament.
ferent artists, working at different ae times in different countries, have arrived sometimes at results not so very different. There seems to me a curious correspondence between the detail” of the Indian” jsecoll and the late Gothic rosette on
p. 65, the result, presumably, in each 53, eusee case, of a sympathetic use of the be Gothic. tools the carver had.
So, again, the fragment of archaic-Greek sculpture on the same page is so like certain rude stone carving of the Gothic period that one would have taken it almost for Medizval work. That bulging midrib is characteristic of a certain form of Perpendicular carving, derived no doubt from beaten metalwork. Did Greek and Gothic work- man alike refer A for inspiration ‘ to goldsmiths’ work, and so arriveatsome- thing: like tthe ss same form?
Once more in the Persian details above, 54. Japanese treatment of the iris.
Plate JO.
im dy Mlle "Pa 5 4 Bi ' Ds Nb Ni] Meng | Pe it © " aif
PA VPA fee ty tl ee Ps gf We ON bs sF a
———
fy |
¥ Hl li i ‘
“fi rt aoa th E % = # =| | H i fi i f : " i | >: Z E 7 eer Ht i ea Wi! j i ———— Be j Hi a HI f! i a i) shh ie FAO Mh i I 4 = ay Ee J , g Ls gel Ral | My Aa a 4 ; i : Aus t=. j= ———— a } Is} | Hi 4 ) | hy ~ ar Ht > ay i pS Za i) a 1 ma 2 fe il ih | i ie 1) 7 ‘i
Ve lI Ete i it M3 “Ai Se | a ie i a as ; | wn li ‘ Mp: | ly, in, uli i il “ail, Tully wl
4 a Ge A » my | NG " G i i ci L. | ail 3 th Ihe “ i It. 7, vei y We ih ‘el Vd >
Indian renderings of the Iris.
Simplification of Natural Forms. 67
there is a most marked resemblance to certain Decorated Gothic crocket forms—especially as they are rendered in stained glass—the play of the brush accounting no doubt partly for the likeness.
At other times one is struck by the variety in the sundry simplified versions of the same plant. There is a wide difference between the painted iris and that in niello, on Plate 30 ; and between these Indian renderings, again, and the characteristic adaptation of the plant in the Japanese embroidery on p. 66, in which nature is reduced to extreme simplicity with- out any loss of character.
Again, in the panels on Plate 31, modifi- cation consists mainly in simplifying the natural forms. The leaves, indeed, are elon- gated and refined, and, like the flowers, arranged to suit the ornamental scheme. But the liberties taken with the growth of crown- imperial, fritillary, bluebell, and Lent lily, are such as would not greatly shock the botanist. The lines on which they grow are (organi- cally) not altogether impossible.
At times the simplification resolves itself into something very different indeed from the actual thing, as in the Italian silk over- leaf, in which the ears of corn take the form of a distinct pattern; from which we may
F 2
68 Nature in Ornament.
apprehend how easily, from the simplification of natural form, the ornamentist glided imper- ceptibly into its elaboration. But that will form the subject of a separate chapter.
55. Wheat-ears, simplified or elaborated ?
PYVA\ IE
69
V. THE ELABORATION OF NATURAL FORMS.
IT has been shown in a preceding chapter, how the necessity of simplifying natural forms led as a matter of course to conventional treatment. It will be seen presently, that there is sometimes sufficient technical reason for the elaboration of the type before us.
The omission of the superfluous in orna- ment is indisputably right. How far it may be desirable or permissible to elaborate the simple forms of nature, is more open to question. It rather suggests to us painting the lily or gilding gold. There is a strong flavour of artificiality about it.
As a matter of fact, the practice flourished, though indeed it existed long before, in arti- ficial times, that is to say during the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries. It would be scarcely fair, however, to take everything of the kind as an indication of decadence. We are bound in justice, no less than in reason, to inquire if such elaboration may not have
70 Nature im Ornament.
led to some satisfactory results, and what those results were.
It may possibly prove that what was best in the later French styles, for example, was more or less of the artificially elaborate type. The rockwork and the broken scrolls, the gar- lands and the trellises, the bows and ribbons, and all such frivolities of the later French monarchy, have much less to recommend them than the patterns of the silks of the period. Restraint was out of the question. Licence was the order of the day, and kings’ mistresses reigned over art. Granting, how- ever, the absence of restraint in design, more objectionable to us than in French eyes, there is in the Lyons silks of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries not only considerable beauty of colour, but quite exceptional inge- nuity of design, especially in its relation to the technique of weaving ; and it will be time well spent to seek out the method, artificial though it may be, by which results so beauti- ful are arrived at.
The effect may be so far from nature as to be quite characteristically artificial, and yet it may turn out that almost every detail in the design is directly borrowed from reality. One might say, for instance. that in) vriatesss2 natural forms are removed from nature mainly
PrHoto-Tint, by James Akerman |.ondon W
7 ei a4... 17th 248 oa Lyons Silk of the 17°’ or 18 Cen?
The Elaboration of Natural Forms. 71
by diapering them over with other details borrowed from the same source. And this was quite the current way of design. Men adopted forms more or less natural, probably because such forms occurred most readily to them. But the natural veining of leaves and petals did not present sufficient variety and interest of surface for their purpose; and so they supplied its place by a subsidiary growth of smaller foliage. By the judicious alterna- tion of light on dark and dark on light, they even went so far as to produce an effect equivalent to—not at all resembling, but equivalent to—that of shading. Something of the same kind is seen again on Plate 33, where a sort of shading resolves itself into fresh forms of ornament. Those leaves are characteristically of the eighteenth century. This is a device at all events much more appropriate to silk weaving than the futile attempts at natural shading which have also had their vogue. Besides, in the rendering of the details themselves—observe the orna- mental serration of the large leaf on Plate 32, the cresting of the fruit, its calyx, the diaper- ing of the forms generally, and the rendering of the smaller foliage—there is such consistent artificiality throughout as to give a distinctly ornamental character to the design.
72 Nature in Ornament.
If the artists of the artificial periods were not always tasteful or intelligent, all the more opportunity for us to show how, by the exercise of intelligence and taste, it may be possible to turn their expedients to new and better account.
It was not they, however, who first hit upon the expedient. A simpler, bolder, and altogether nobler example of the same kind of thing is shown on Plate 34, an Italian damask of distinctly earlier date. Such a design loses very much by reduction to the scale of the illustration, and it depends also very much for its effect on its fitness to the simpler kind of weaving; but on the scale of the original, in single-colour damask, it is simply perfect for breadth and richness—a model of appropriate treatment. That is at all events one way of proceeding, namely, to design big, bold masses of foliage, and to break these again with smaller foliated detail.
That this should be done consistently would hardly need to be pointed out, were it not that in old work consistency has so fre- quently been lost sight of. There is no de- - fending flowers and fruits which agree neither with one another nor with the leaves in asso- ciation with them ; but if the pattern be but
Puoro-Tint, oy -Jsmes Akerman London WO
Details of 18” Century Fohage
The Elaboration of Natural Forms. 73
homogeneous, it would be absurd to say that it should not be constructed on the principle exemplified in Plate 34.
That principle, indeed, dates farther back than the Renaissance. The Italians borrowed it from the Persians, as the French borrowed it from them. The bro- cade here illustrated (56) is of old Italian manufacture, but the design is pretty literally taken from a Persian source. The way in which the broad surface of the main design, itself floral, is broken up with smaller floral detail, is distinctively Eastern. Precisely the same principle is in- volved in the design of the Persian silk on
56. Floral forms within floral
forms. Plate -75: You’ see it, too, on the pottery of Damascus, and in all manner of Oriental ornament.
A characteristic Persian treatment of the pomegranate is shown overleaf, where the bursting of the fruit takes a peculiarly ornamental bud shape. Other elaborately
74. Nature in Ornament,
57. Pomegranate-berries arranged in bud-form.
ornamental variations are shown on pp. 75, 70, 77, 130, 140, and on Plates) 735ancdae 2 The Italian version (58) is ornamental enough, but the artist has not realised that the crown of the pomegranate represents the sepals of the flower, and has added a sort of calyx beneath the fruit. In the eighteenth cen- tury version, the seeds are more fantastically rendered than ever—they are represented not merely by diaper as on p. 77, but by diapers as on p. 76. Observe also the ornamental scalloping of the rents in the fruit. Natural
late 4.
P
Silk Damask of the 16” Century
The Elaboration of Natural Forms. 75
58. Ornamental pome- granates.
form is used, indeed, only a5 a means of getting variety of texture in the silk.
One great advantage in the method of thus break- ing up broad surfaces is, that the introduction of the smaller detail does away with any possible appear- ance of baldness in the design; whilst yet, at a sufficient distance from the eye, the broad masses alone assert themselves. You get, in short, breadth at a distance, and detail on close inspection, each without interfering with the other. Leaves and fruits are very naively diapered in the Japanese pattern on page 78, de- signed presumably for weaving.
With the larger floral
forms in French silks are usually associated (see once more Plate 32) subordinate floral details, more on the scale of the detail within
76 Nature in Ornament. the larger detail,
gee as el | |] introduced mainly
y ae NG | foc the purpose “or he m It breaking the back- me erounds — Tieismons vious that such MS i WA: | | undergrowth must
Ni i nn ee be ornamentalised hoe cis no sles accordingly.
59- Ornamental pomegranate— By this means you
aoe get a further advan- tage in the opportunity it affords of mingling in the same design effects of light on dark and dark on light. If,; for example, the around is dark and the larger details light, and the smaller details breaking these dark again, any smaller details in light on the dark ground will contrast with the dark details on the same scale, and create a certain mystery in the design, which is of very distinct artistic value.
The substitution of geometric diaper in place of subordinate foliation, which occurs, for example, in. the Japanese patterngyon p. 78, is less absolutely satisfactory—least of all so when, as is often the case in silk (Plate 32), it takes the, form of imitation lace, In actual’ lace there is) periaps mone excuse than anywhere for elaborately orna-
a. cSceRs S e a7 Fas Py PDQ VA tee 4, —* Fe CEL & i = gISrd s >. a So pie : —
PHoTo-TinT, by James Akerman.London.W.C
Old Lace, Wory Point.
The Elaboration of Natural Forms. 77
mental treatment, and there geometry seems not to come so much amiss. A certain artificiality in the material seems to justify something very much like fri- volity in the design. This refers more es- pecially to the fanci- ful patterns of the lighter and flimsier lace of eighteenth-century frills and flounces.
A’ more dignified example of lacework, also elaborately artificial in its way, is given on Plate 35. It is open to the objection of combining in one growth flowers of various families, but in the general richness this effect of discrepancy is to some extent lost. The lily, the heartsease, and the picotee do not assert their individuality.
In lace and in certain kinds of embroidery ultra elaboration of detail is accounted for by the process of work. In stitching there seems some reason in making much of the stitches ; and this is what lace-workers and embroiderers have continually done.
An equally characteristic, but very different kind of elaboration grew out of the conditions
60. Ornamental pomegranate—old German embroidery.
78 Nature in Ornament.
of smiths’ work. Given the idea of foliated ironwork, and the facilities of cutting, hammer- ing, and twisting, it was only natural it should take something like the late Gothic forms on Plate 36. Some such excuse for elaboration makes a confessedly dangerous practice more tolerable if no safer.
Another good excuse for ela- borationis when, in what may be called fictitious detail, the fiction is founded upon fact, when it is the development of some natural fonm~ (Of; eect when the inimaet has been given : by nature, and 61. Foliated forms geometrically
diapered. the ornamental character is only an exaggeration of natural characteristics.
The seeds of the pomegranate already referred to are a case in point ine the vem broidered fruit on Plate 73 they are repre- sented. by a diaper yon ychequersa. a tiene
“Proto -Tint, by James Akermen Londen we
~ (
Details of Hanrnered Work
The Elaboration of Natural Forms. 79
German embroidery on p. 77 they are indicated by a lattice of silk cord, with here and there a spangle. The most impossible development of the Gothic ornaments below and overleaf is par- tially accounted | for as a remini- : scence of some flower in which the pistil’ was very strongly pronounced. No excuse of the kind can be urged for the treatment of the leaves: in. the design for wall paper on Plate
37. The more or less natu- 62. Elaborated flower. rally drawn
leaves are just
enriched with pattern, which takes the place
of natural veining, and gives variety of sur-
face. That personally I think such a proceed-
ing not altogether unjustifiable, is shown by my adopting it.
Another form of elaboration very common
So Nature in Ornament.
in fifteenth and sixteenth century ornament, consists in the turning over and curling up of the ends and edges of foliation of all kinds. Something of the kind occurs indeed in Greek and Roman scrollwork; but it is not until
late Gothic tiniest it becomes a inanked and charac- teristic -fea- ture in design,— partly, per- haps, owing to the influ- ence of the worker in iron, just as a certain bossy cha- racterin Per- pendicular carving 1s derived from
63. Elaborated flower.
goldsmiths’ work. You see that bossy cha-
racter in the rendering of the hop on p. 81,
andin the leaves on pp) Til, 112e1now ane: The limits within which the character of
eOeSe WL,
4 a £5 ee
RCCL OV ts
Sa Des: Ve Dyisxe
Wall paper, conventional growth.
The Elaboration of Natural Forms. 81
one material may fairly be given to another are soon reached. It is clearly a mistake in taste to give, as Gothic carvers did, to leaves in wood or stone the bulbous look of beaten metal, or to give to an embroidered scroll the character of forging. But one would be loth to give up that very valuable and _ practical device in design, the “ turn-over,” whatever its origin,
What indeed would _ Perpendi- cular and Flam- boyant ornament be without it? The Gothic scroll would be robbed of half i enercy,. the Tudor rose would Pemeeanived 1to ‘a °° 64 Bulbous ian ieance tenia flat rosette, the leafage of Aldegrever (p. 124) would lose al its crispness. I have resorted freely to the use of overlapping in Plate 38, a wall pattern founded upon the artichoke. If you take a plant only as a motzfof ornament, and attach no further significance to it, you are com- paratively free to be-decorate nature.
There would seem to be in nature some
G
bse
82 Nature in Ornament.
sort of precedent even! for tie se —tllimme of floral growth. Certain ferns grow with every appearance of artificiality. There is a particular kind of cabbage, much in favour with Medizval illuminators, which grows very much as though the milliner had taken it in ~ hand; and there is a wild flower, not un- common in marshy places, which looks for all the world as if it must have been designed somewhere about A.D. 1500.
The excellent rendering of the gooseberry- leaf on Plate 98 is a further application of the manner of the sixteenth century to new forms. It reminds one of the vine-leaves of Aldegrever, and of certain leaves of the cle- matis and other plants ‘treated in the same way in some Renaissance carving at Brescia. Professor Anton Seder has worked out the problem of treating vegetable form @ Kenaissance very thoroughly in that sumptu- ous work “Die Pflanze.” It might be sug- gested that the growth of the gooseberry in the example given is rather too rustic for the extremely ornamental turn of the leaves. The danger of such discrepancy is inherent in such treatment, and is seldom completely overcome. As it is, this is a most competent and indeed accomplished piece of work.
Once more, to presume to elaborate natural
“‘Puoro Tint, Ly James Akermon Lendon W.C
Wall paper founded upon
@
een ie
Lhe Elaboration of Natural Forms. 83
form is to trench upon very difficult ground ; but we cannot afford to shut ourselves off from any opportunity in design. It is easy enough to dismiss whole schools of thought and treatment with a word of contempt. We have most of us done so in our time. As we erow older we become, let us hope, more just, and confess to ourselves that there are more things in art and ornament than were dreamt of in our philosophy of a while ago.
84 Nature in Ornament.
WHE
CONSISTENCY IN THE MODIFICATION OB NAGURE:
ACCORDING to the use we make of natural form, it helps or hinders us in design. The flow of line, the grace, the growth, the tender- ness of colour, the subtlety of suggestion, which so delight us in ornament, would never have been evolved from man’s imagination apart from natural influences; but nature does not provide for us ornament ready made; were that so, our occupation would be gone. Nature is the starting-point, by no means the end, of ornament.
When Owen Jones went so far as to say that in proportion as ornament approached natural form it had less claim on us as orna- ment, he overstated his case quite as much as they who contend, on the contrary, that only in so far as it approaches nature has it any claim on our sympathy at all. The two opposite contentions may be taken to balance one another. The truth lies midway between.
LONG PA
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2h + GaN eras bots nase,
Si “Puoto-Timt, by James Akerman London W.C.
Tile Panel
Consistency in Modification of Nature. 85
To reconcile the rival claims of nature and art it needs only the artist.
But how, it may be asked, can nature be, in any case, a hindrance to design ?
Whatever diverts for a moment the atten- tion of the artist from his artistic purpose, is distinctly a hindrance. The purpose of the ornamentist is ornament. Nature has a way of claiming too much attention to herself; and the artist, in his frailty, is only too likely to yield to the seductions of a mistress, worthier, it may be, than all others, but not the one he has, so to speak, sworn to love and cherish, if not to obey.
The designer can hardly make too many studies from nature, but he can easily make bad use of those he has made, and easily encumber himself with them. A man can design quite freely only when the burden of natural fact is so familiar that to him it ceases to be a burden. Refreshing as it may be to refer to his studies, or to Nature herself, he cannot design with either in front of him. The actual thing is not malleable enough for his purpose, whereas an impression or a memory of it accommodates itself in the most surprising manner to the conditions of the case, and the necessary modification occurs as though it were a matter of course.
86 Nature in Ornament.
In our happiest moments that is so. At other times the question as to the necessary modification has to be deliberately decided.
It is not possible to lay down any limit as to the degree of naturalism permissible in ornament, or to say that the most natural rendering may not sometimes be the best. The conditions of the case may determine the elimination of the natural element in design altogether, or permit it to rule para- mount: they determine the degree of modifi- cation necessary, or the degree of naturalness allowable.
And even where they leave the artist free, as soon as ever he begins to design he sets himself his own limits. He pledges himself by what he has done, and is bound in con- sistency to carry his idea logically through. A formal arrangement of lines involves an equally formal kind of foliation, and free growth pledges him to equally natural foliage. So also natural detail prescribes free lines of growth, and conventional detail implies lines proportionately conventional.
If, that is to say, it is proposed to clothe a geometric skeleton with foliage, it is quite easy to make the turn of the leaves too natural; the danger in the case of a more natural skeleton would be in making them
“PHoto Tint, by James Akerman London WC
Chrysanthemum Pattern.
Consistency in Modification of Nature. 87
too hard and formal. On Plate 39 the sym- metric lines on which the design is set out logically determined a certain restraint in the rendering of the lily, and it is reduced accord- ingly to what might be called mere ornament.
On the other hand, the free growth of the chrysanthemum, on Plate 40, not only per- mitted, but demanded detail more in accord- ance with nature. It was possible, therefore, to proceed altogether on the lines of nature, only modifying natural form in the direction of symmetry and ornament.
One of the most irritating things in design is to see flowers like catherine-wheels, or other such prim rosettes, on stems suggesting growth, or to find naturalistic flowers spring- ing from quite arbitrary and mechanical lines.
In the otherwise masterly design on Plate 23, by the late B. J. Talbert (an artist who deserved better than to be so soon forgotten), there is just that flaw, that the eyes of the sunflowers, in comparison with the freer growth of the leaves and petals, are so formal as to stare out of the pattern at you. This effect is to a great extent obviated in the wall-paper by judiciously soft colouring, but the fault in design is still there.
This point of consistency needs the more to be insisted upon, because it has at no
88 Nature in Ornament.
65. Indian corn, adapted to ornament.
time been strictly enough observed. Every- where, in Greek no less than in Gothic art, we find the artist (weak creatures that we are) lapsing into inconsistency. The border, in particular isa pitiall im hisspaties toed arbitrary arrangement is, one may say, a necessity ; and it is only with difficulty, often, that he brings himself to reduce leaves and flowers to consistency with the waves or spirals or other symmetrical lines on which they grow.
In the border at the top of the pagemrie adaptation of the Indian corn to its place is perfect: that is ornament, ~@©n Ee late-siethene are sundry instances of much less successful treatment, where the ivy-leaf is natural enough in shape to make us want it to grow more naturally; which is the case also in the borders on Plate 83. On Plate 41 the leaves and their arrangement are equally remote from nature, and the result is correspondingly satisfactory. The happy mean of conven- tionality is found also in the borders on
Pp. 55, 57, 58, 61, &c.
The arrangement of wave or other scroll
Plate 4
CF Kell PhotoLithe,O Furnival %.Holbors,E.C
Arch aic foliage.
Consistency in Modification of Nature. 89
with leaves alternately on either side of it (or leaves and flowers, or leaves
———————————
ine
4 6
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a or
and berries) is Plates 24, 2 ANY: LON \OMAaA ( 4) 5, A X) N A CIS) AS le isi} 41, 68, 81) just A) Or ; WA Hef 7 WON, EA SKOAN) Ag CaN ay 1 p to the natural- |geyS Aa SN . . ~ vey ¢ % NS 7 SY N istic rendering POY ONY berry, or what- ever it may be.
objectionable ee Ue 4 Uy Vy Aa \ ss/ rf, f fi . \ (Od) 4 NW Sit , UK te in proportion KY WM! 3 a? LAN Ag NEA ANA A : A\ ANE Ae , 5 WK of leaf, flower, There are two
ic fel ta
NATIT TRT Tt pra . NONE GEL, eit
en
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separate _ start- i ing-points in ornamental de- sign. Natural
form, once mo- dified, may re- solve itself into Ornament pure and simple; and, om °the other hand, ornament has always a tendency to as- sume familiar
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66. Rigid lines of growth turned to natural shapes. ornamental account.
9O Nature in Ornament.
But, though somewhat similar results may be arrived at from such different directions, nature modified by considerations of ornamental pro- priety is one thing, ornament modified by memories of nature is quite another.
If you start with nature, the difficulty is in making natural forms subserve decoration without eliminating (OO Cauley wne natural element.
When the lines of erowth peculiar to a plant are not in the direction of orna- ment, what is to be done ?
ine loetier jolla 1S. MO, ii SOU Camm help it, to go against nature, but to jper- suade, if possible, the 67. Artificial grace of line. natural and charac- teristic growth into lines more in accordance with the purpose of ornament. Even the Greeks, as I have said, when they resorted to arbitrary lines in connection with natural forms, did not succeed.
It must not too readily be taken for granted that a certain rigidity of growth may
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C.F KELL, PHOTO-LITHO.8.FURNIVAL S? HOLBORN,E.C
Modern Gothic Lily panel.
Consistency in Modification of Nature. 9\
not possibly be turned to account in orna- ment. There is evidence of the availability
68. Quasi-natural rendering of lily.
92 Nature in Ornament.
of rigid lines of growth in the in- genious composi- moa GC Woe” leis Clement Heaton on p. 89, com- pared with which the "admittedly, more craceful Italian version of the bearded wheat On Pp: 90) 1s Mot without a sug- gestion of sick- liness.) What is fanciful in this last design makes for ornament, no doubt ; but there is something al- most discordant in the association of lines so sweet with the growth of corn. Sanmicheli’s
quasi-natural lily (p. 91), with its five impossible
22S REFN He nn nine nA VRE ESET EEN TAAMIA IAAL ATTEE TOTES PRS OO AIREY SEPM ON PHELAN NARERIRAD REO SORT HORN RN var omar
69. Quattro-cento lily.
z 2 3
Consistency in Modification of Nature. 93
petals, has not half the character of Talbert’s manlier lilyon Plate 42. Theearlier Quattro- cento example on p. 92 is equally guilty of five petals; although in the very rigidity and dignified simplicity of the composition there is some- thing that re- calls the natu- ral flower.
One may ad- mit, however, a certain charac- ter and beauty m.* the - stiff srowth of the lily, and even allow that it may be made use of in de- sign, without denying for a moment that it is ‘stiff. - The
ornamentist 70. Narcissus compelled into the way of ornament.
may quite fairly
seek lines more graceful. Still, unless he looks upon the lily merely as a motif of ornament (as shown on Plate 39) he is hardly at liberty to make it branch like a
94 Nature tn Ornament.
EZ, Zs Ufo), Dy ys
Mipy
FL cone Oe
71 Incorgruous trea'ment of the oak.
bush or twine like a creeper; nor need he wish it. It is quite possible, to one suf- ficiently at home in nature and in design, to indue any such refractory plant with a grace of line anda general suavity of form which, though by no means characteristic of the natural growth, do not, at all events, bluntly contradict it.
The graceful character of the growth on Plate 43 is not precisely that of the lily ; but one is hardly disposed to quarrel with a com- position in itself so satisfactory. The detail is not so natural that you miss the natural srowth. As a rendering of the lilamcae design may not be all that one could wish ; as ornament there is not much fault to find with it: the deviation from nature is all in the direction of design. It is evident, too,
By Crom
old Sills
Hiss- m7 e+ guint
SPR R a Cc eg STAR IG OR LETT RIT III TS
TO RL SN NS AER eee IEE SNS ADE OE DE SER if AS: “Puoto-Tint, by J. Akerman,6,Queen Square W.C.
18" Century flower rendering.
Consistency in Modification of Nature.95
that the artist looked at the lily for himself, and conventionalised it according to his needs. It almost seems as though the plant might have been trained to grow so.
This is the natural evolution of ornament, and not the mere distortion of nature which is sometimes mistaken for ornamental treat- ment. In the panel on p. 93 it has been at- tempted to subject the narcissus to somewhat similar ornamental treatment.
In the eighteenth century version of the wild flag on Plate 44 there is a certain ap- pearance of naturalness, or, more properly speaking, of picturesqueness; but it grows with a grace and elegance absolutely arti- ficial. That same affectation belonged indeed borthe period (see Plates 32, 33,62, 70); but it is at least a graceful affectation, and con- sistent with itself.
That can hardly be said for the rendering of the oak on p. 94, which has the unfor- tunate appearance of being either too natu- ral or not natural enough. And_ even 72. Characterless design. were the lines more
96 Nature in Ornament.
73- Inconsistency between flower and leaf.
satisfactory than they are, one would still feel that there was something incongruous in the combination of lines so suave and slender with the oak. And so again in the case of the still more timid treatment of the leaves by Albertolli on p.95. This par- ticular tree is, more than all others, associated always in our minds with the idea of sturdy ancularity.
The rendering of a plant may be by no means very natural, and yet by far too much so. In the ornament above, the flower is too distinctly an orchid to go with foliage dis- tinctly belonging to another family. This is a fault rather exceptional in Japanese design, where the rendering of nature is usually either frankly natural or deliberately and uncompro- misingly conventional.
In the art of the Renaissance the fault of inconsistency is of the commonest occur-
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rence : the nuts, the pods, and the five-petalled | flowers on Plate 45,. are’ Not espe- cially life-like ; but that forms so im- mediately recog- nisable as nuts and pea - pods should grow from the same stalk as a flower of five petals, to say no- thing of their con- junction with ab- solutely artificial lines, and with foliage of the usual Renaissance type, is enough very con- siderably to dis- count the charm of an exceptionally graceful and well- balanced composi- Liens - "Ak. + rakhier more coherent, and in some ways ad- mirable, version of the pea-pod is given on Plate 46.
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98 Nature in Ornament.
In the example on p. 97 the offence of ncoherence is somewhat mitigated, inasmuch as the detail is not very real.» All sortsvon different flowers grow from a single stem indeed, but the stem is not very obvious. There is a kind of natural confusion in the foliage, and the types are not strongly pro- nounced. Everything is uniformly graceful
75. De-naturalised floral details.
and artificial, and the unreality of the detail prepares one for the violation of natural srowth. Even then it is hard to forgive it. Much the same criticism might be passed on the Jess @raceful panel ain) the centnemon Plate 47. The manner in which flowers of various kinds grow from a common stem is
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Consistency in Modification of Nature. 99
of the eighteenth century, not of nature. In the panel at the top of the plate there is less shock to us, inasmuch as the details are more distinctly ornamental: the danger in design of this kind is in proportion as the details assert their natural identity. Better de- naturalise them altogether, as in the orna- ment on p. 98, than jumble up all manner of detail into a quite heterogeneous whole.
It is easily understood why eighteenth century designers mixed their types so reck- lessly. They aimed at effect, at any price; and consistency was, in their eyes, a very small price to pay for it. By making lilies and roses and daisies and pomegranates all branch from one stem, it was easy to get variety and contrast. The more consistent way would have been, of course, to intertwine one stem with another, and so account logically for the variety in detail.
It would be comparatively easy for us to get the qualities of eighteenth century orna- ment, if we were willing to pay the same price for it. Art and puritanism have not much in common, but even the artist may well be puritan enough to sacrifice some- thing of effect for the sake, I will not say ot honesty, but of consistency. He is quite free to efface, if he like, the natural type;
H 2
Ioo Nature in Ornament.
but, once it asserts itself, it binds him to a certain adherence to natural growth and de- tail. He is not justified in pocketing his conscience. His details may bear, -if it so please him, but the vaguest resemblance to leaves and flowers and fruits; but if they are recognisable as such, they must grow as such: a stem, for example, has no business to grow two ways at once. .
Moreover, the artist will instinctively select — his types: he will not associate compound leaves with lily flowers, or simple leaves with pea blossoms. If the growth of his ornament suggest a forest tree he will not fill-up with tendrils. If the fruit suggest an acorn he will not decorate the stalk with thorns. Where the flowers occur singly he will not make berries in clusters; or if the flowers form a spike he will not make the fruits droop. He will not make apple blossoms develop into acacia pods or daisies into gooseberries.
According to his acquaintance with nature, and to his artistic sense of fitness, he will abstain instinctively from incongruity, and conform at least so far to the law of order, that there shall be in his design no suggestion of conglomeration; it shall be one growth, reminding you of nature or not, but in any case consistent with itself.
If several flowers are used in combination
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Consistency in Modification of Nature. 101
76. Confusion of effect without confusion of growth.
each should have its identity. The orna- mentist chooses naturally, where he can, the types in nature most amenable to ornament. But, apart from the fact that many of the most accommodating have been long since, as one may say, appropriated, there are cases in which he is bound to use such or such a plant, which may possibly be very awkward to deal with in the way of ornament; and one very obvious and convenient way out of the difficulty is, to associate with it some other plant or plants complementary to it, by help of which the qualities lacking in the original plant are supplied.
Yet there is no necessity that the various flowers, fruits, and what not, should all grow from one stem. In the side borders on Plate 47, mere disjointed sprays of flowers are fitted together, without producing any very unpleasant effect of disjointedness, which of two evils would certainly be the lesser.
In the detail of Damascus tilework above,
102 Nature in Ornament.
the separate flowers have separate stalks. It may not be easy always to get rid of so many stalks in the composition, but in the intertwining of them there arise fresh pos- sibilities in design—if you are man se to seize the opportunity.
Another way out of the dificuley of com- bining various floral forms is to introduce the one only as the undergrowth to the other, as shown on Plate 48. By this means it-is ‘pos- sible to contrast bold with delicate detail, broad masses with broken surface, without doing violence to natural laws.
How far one is bound to adhere Ham to the lines on which a plant grows, and to the character of its detail, depends to some extent always upon the purpose of the artist ; only in strict fidelity to that purpose lie the possibilities of perfect art.
What if even great artists have been guilty of all manner of inconsequence in design? They are so much the less to be trusted as safe guides in the matter of taste. One may find authority for any kind of ill-doing. The accepted precedents are not all of them sound by any means. Every precedent should be stripped of its prestige, and serutinised as carefully as the newest of recruits, and the ricketty ones dismissed from the service of art, relentlessly.
Plate 48.
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“Puoro-Tint, by James Akerman.London.W.C
Scroll & Foliaée
103
VIL. PARALLEL RENDERINGS.
THE study of ornament should proceed pare passu with the study of vegetable forms—not botany necessarily.
The scientific study of botany is quite a thing apart. The ornamentist has no more occasion for exact scientific knowledge than the painter has need to know surgically about anatomy, no more occasion and no less. We want, in either case, just science enough to enable us to see the surface of things, and no more. The classification of a plant according to its hidden organs is as nothing to us com- pared with its character, its beauty, the hint in it of ornament. Its order and its family concern us only as they affect its outward development and growth. We need not greatly concern ourselves in pulling flowers to pieces. An artist can do with comparatively little science, if only he make full use of his eyes.
Suppose the student in ornamental design
104 Nature in Ornament.
to have begun by being thoroughly well grounded in practical geometry; soon he might proceed to put together, somewhat on the kinder-garten system, geometric patterns, simpler or more complex according to the degree of his ingenuity. Then, as he grew beyond this elementary stage, he might exer- cise himself in drawing freer and more flow- ing forms—say, until he acquired facility in sketching off (with the brush) ornament of the kind the Greek pot-painters drew with such freedom (p. 152).
Simultaneously with this he should be making intelligent studies of leaves, flowers, fruits, and all manner of details of plant-form and plant-growth. With equal diligence he should be studying the masterpieces of applied design, especially noting the way the masters treated those same natural forms, and always choosing his model, whether of plant form or of ornament, for the definite reason that it meant something to him.
His studies should be carried just so far as their purpose warranted: there should be no attempt to make pictures of them, or show- drawings, or to make them even presentable. What the student has to do is to make notes serviceable to himself, sufficient in every case to impress upon his memory what the original
“Puoto-Tint, by James Akerman Lendon W.C
Ancient Coptic Embroidery.
Parallel Renderings. 105
conveyed to him, records of what he wanted to record, that is all.
The urgent need of choosing each example needs the more to be insisted upon, because the designer cannot too early begin to culti- vate the selective faculty. Judgment is one- half the battle in decoration.
The closer the relation between a man’s - studies from nature and his studies from old work the better. Take, for instance, any flower you like and study it from nature carefully —its form, its structure, its growth, its colour, its character; then see how it is rendered in Classic art, in Gothic, in Renaissance, in Japanese, in Persian, and so on. Observe again its treatment in sculpture, in inlay, in metalwork, in textile fabrics, and what not. A series of such exercises conscientiously and thoroughly done, would be an education in itself, and would in some degree fit one to conventionalise on his own account —all “without the aid of a master.”
The already mentioned partiality of each particular period and country for a certain few, usually symbolic, types (p. 12), makes it impossible to trace any one single natural form through all history ; but you can trace most forms through a great variety of his- torical developments.
106 Nature in Ornament.
77- The vine in Assyrian sculpture—Rk.c. 705-626.
The type of most universal occurrence in ornament is probably the vine, symbol of philosophies as wide apart as the poles. We find it in the bas-reliefs of Nineveh, and the painted decoration of Egypt; on Etruscan vases, and Greek and Komamnm altars|.0m Byzantine sarcophagi, in Coptic embroideries, and in early Sicilian silks; it recurs in every form of Gothic art, and throughout all phases of the Renaissance.
In the Assyrian treatment of the vine above one finds, of course, the archaic formality of the age of Sennacherib, but at the same time a certain adherence to the natural type which has not varied from that day to this. If the leaves are all spread flat against the wall, they are quite unmistakable in shape. If the branches are symmetrically displayed
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Parallel Renderings. 107
there is a suggestion in that of the way fruit- trees are still trained in modern orchard houses. Again, there is a sort of natural spring in the lines themselves ; and in the arrangement of the five branches (which is not according to nature) one seems to see a reference to the veining of the vine-leaf. At all events, this arbitrary grouping is so characteristic of the Ninevite: sculptures that it can scarcely be accidental, and must almost certainly have some symbolic meaning. The irregular shape of the Assyrian grape bunches is a curious concession to nature, seeing that some of them stand up on end, and that the grapes are just square. It will be noticed that leaves and fruits do not occur in the order in which a botanist would place them, and that the tendrils are made use of only as a convenient means of ending off the branches.
On Plate 49 is a Coptic rendering from a tomb in Upper Egypt, which is equally archaic, but infinitely more ornamental. Ob- serve the reticent use of grapes, their syste- matic arrangement, and the fact that they alsostand on end. The vine-leaf onthe same plate, veined, as it were, with a growth of vine, is also extremely curious. The way in which the tendrils ornament the stem is worth noticing.
108 Nature in Ornament.
78. Vine from a Greek vase.
The Greek treatment above
‘is, if not more natural, at least more florid. The stem indeed diminishes in thickness towards its extremity, and is clothed at the same time with smaller leaves ; but the stem itself is: a mere wave-line, and the leaves, though founded on a more graceful natural variety than the Assyrian, are less unmistakably vine- leaves,
It is a rather curious thing in the decorative treatment of the vine in early art, that although there is no plant growing which varies more as to the shape of its leaves—heart-shaped, round, angular in outline, divided into three or five, the divisions deeply cut or scarcely noticeable, sometimes not seen at all—it is yet the rarest thing in the world to find in any ornamental version of the plant more than a single type of leaf. Thatis one point at least in which there is opportunity for a new departure in design, and to considerably ornamental purpose.
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“Proro-Tint, by Jamee Akerman
Halian Gothic Vine.
Parallel Renderings. 109
79. Pompeian vine border.
The tendrils in the Greek vase painting are, for the most part, more obviously twirls of the brush than transcripts from nature ; even when they are branched they take the lines of our old friend the spiral scroll, and are graceful where in nature they would be vigorous; there is never anything like clutch in them. The artist seems sometimes just to have realised that leaf and tendril grew from some- where about the same point on the stem, but no more. If he had any definite idea at all of the relation between leaf. and tendril, it would’ appear to have been the erroneous notion that the leaf grew from a point of junction between the tendril and the stalk.
Perhaps the most natural thing in the design is the way in which it is composed, very much in the way of the trellis—another method of training that has survived without change from the beginning of vine culture. The bunches, besides, do hang down, obedient to the law of gravity.
A more formal Greek rendering occurs in the disc on Plate 24, but in both cases the
IIO Nature in Ornament.
80. Italian wood-carving—hop or vine?
grape bunches are much the same in out- line. : a
In later Classic sculpture, especially in. Roman work, the vine-leaf is often repre- sented naturally, only again without the variety of nature, one shape doing duty throughout. And here also we find the ten- drils always deliberately made softer than in the living plant. They have no inclination to twine themselves round anything; they are not much more than graceful scroll lines. What growth there may be in them is certainly not studied from the particular plant. Leaves, tendrils, fruits, occur wherever the artist has occasion for them. There is a touch of nature in the thickening of the leaf-stalk at its base, but this feature also is softened down to eracefulness ; it is rather suggested than ex- pressed. The very grapes are frequently reduced to bunches of five or seven.
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81. Conventional Gothic vine and grapes.
disregard of natural scale in this design is as frank as in the Assyrian treatment. It is strange to find, in connection with such an arbitrary rendering, anything so realistic as the knobby bowls of the olive trunks, which are as cavernous as you see them in nature.
Again, in the vine from Giotto’s Tower, at Florence (Plate 51), the artist, contrary to the usual Gothic practice, has thought fit to sup- port the vine, perhaps because the leafage, distinctly ornamental as it is, is intended to represent. a vineyard. It forms a sort of canopy over the subject of Noah’s drunken- ness.
In the more natural frieze of my own, on Plate 52, the vine is supported by apple- boughs: the upright trunks of the trees, cor- responding in position to the beams in the ceiling, form a marked feature in the design.
Among the Greco-Roman details on Plate 53, the grapes are rather more natural than the leaves, which are in one case just the reverse of natural. The leaf cut in cameo
112 Nature in Ornament.
fig 82. Gothic vine, with mulberry-like grape-bunches.
is, however, at once natural and ornamental. In the embossed silverwork a distinctly orna- mental character results from the employment of the stems, tendrils, and fruits only: the same thing occurs in later Classic sculpture. In the border from a Pompeian bronze in the museum at Naples, on p. 109, the thick- ening of the leaf-stalk is indicated; but the srowth is again absolutely arbitrary. The leaf, though like enough to nature, could not be identified with any degree of certainty, were it not for the accompanying grapes and ten- drils: but for that evidence it might just as well pass for maple, or cranesbill, or hibiscus leaf. te Such corroborative evidence of identity is often needed. Inthe process of adaptation to ornamental conditions the unmistakable cha- racter of a plant is not uncommonly eliminated. One is perplexed, for example, by the Italian wood-carving on p. 110. According to its tendrils it should be a vine, but its fruits are more like hops. In Gothic ornament one has, once more, frequently to take the vine-leaf on
“Puoto-Tint, by James Akerman Londen W.C
Clasical rendering of the Vine.
Parallel Renderings. [12
faith, failing grapes, and more particularly tendrils (p. 59 and Plate 29).
The grapes are sometimes as remote from nature as the leaves, and the scale to which the bunches are reduced often removes them
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114 Nature in Ornament.
than it is like a vine-leaf; whilst the compact little bunches of diminutive berries look occasionally much more like mulberries than any gtapes one has seen. “In tse border on p. 112 they might almost “be blackberries. It is possible also in Gothic WO (nko O confound them with the berry- spike of the wild arum. It is only our famili- arity with similar con- ventions which en- ables us to understand that the Gothico- M oresque foliage on p. 113 stands for the vine. For growth the Moorish sculptor has simply branched a spiral line. His vine- leaves would answer at least as well for bry- ony leaves, and his berries would do as well for bryony berries. His reason for bunches of
84. Moorish vine.
Arab Vine panel
Parallel Renderings. 115 oe eee doubt: 1} a
less symbolic. Bi ere a He has not bo- : ls thered himself il bef , Et about tendrils at hs | | fis i 1 Me) all. Probably he MF ABE Wee | was happiest over |\||\f “i : ; woe g) ( his diaper behind | é a the foliage, which ) [though the illus- tration does not show it] is Moor- ish ornament pure and simple.
An equally arbitrary Moorish rendering is given emp: 114.” It -is clear the sculptor was more at home in Saracenic or- nament than in nature.
The more reso- lutely ornamental wine, of pure Arab carving, on Pinte 54,. is, curi- ously enough, far
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116 Nature in Ornament.
nature, whilst professedly avoiding it. The
86. Early French Gothic.
cezhsoneae = Ol the tendrils is a _— peculiarly happy feature in a most satis- factory design. NS 7a) epic. Sentation jamet the vine it may not be alto- gether 9 ade quate—it pre- tends to 7ime- thing Yo" tie kind—but as a piece of sur- face ornament suggested by a natural type, it is in its way about perfect.
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which the tendrils are used to fill the side spaces is a most ingenious adaptation of familiar Classic lines to a quite new purpose ; the objection to it is that it suggests the growth of the tendrils in two contrary direc-
87. Square-shaped vine-leaves.
tions. The charm of work like this lies to a great extent in its naivety.
The triangular grouping of the grapes, at once symbolic and ornamental, foreshadows a treatment very common indeed in Gothic work.
Compared to this the Romanesque’ vine, on Piate- 55, 1s fatural Conventional as the leaves may be in form, they grow from the stem, which has some of the cha- racter of the vine- stock. You see
even just a hint of that twist in its growth of which Mr. Heywood Sumner has made such admirable use in his stencilled decoration on Plate 56. The way in which the lines
118 Nature in Ornament.
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of the twisted stems form the necessary ties in his stencil-plate is most artful.
The berries may be taken as evidence that the thirteenth century Gothic scroll from Notre Dame at Paris, on p. 116, is meant for the vine; and there is some likeness in the leaves, when one looks for it.
We may take it also, probably, that the still more conventional scrollwork of the early Gothic period did symbolic duty for the vine. In the pre-Gothic circular design on Plate 57, one sees the five-pointed vine-leaf dwindling away to quite a conventional trefoil. It is only in the comparatively uninteresting middle period of Gothic art that we have leaves as much as possible in imitation of nature.
In later Gothic we get design again. The Medizval sculptors deliberately designed their leaves, as it were, into set spaces—taking a square, a diamond, a circle, a vesica, and so on, as its general outline. The Assy- rians did so before them (p. 106), and the Italians after them, as may be seen in the
Plate 56.
Stencilled Vine Decoration, H.Sumner.
Parallel Renderings. 119
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vine border on p. 117, with the odd shell-like tendrils.
This would come about in a very simple way. They would begin by blocking out the leaf mass, then they would hollow out the main divisions, and finally they would notch the edges. In roughing out the design it would occasionally happen that some other mass—square, diamond-shaped, or what not— came more happily ; they would accordingly adopt it, and the leaf needs must follow suit.
Hence such treatment of the leaf as we find on pp. III, 112, 118, and above, where it is designed to conform to an outline of diamond or vesica shape, or made, together with the berries, to fit the spaces formed by the waved stem and the margins of the border. In Plate 58 also it is plain how the leaves are designed, so to speak, into the corners of the panel. It is curious to see just such a system of composi- tion in the Coptic borders of centuries before (Plate 57).
The Gothic sculptor sometimes went so far as to rough out the foliations of his scroll in
120 Nature in Ornament.
go. Diagram of Italian Gothic treatment.
the form of trefoils (A, above), leaving it ap- parently to the inspiration of the moment to determine afterwards which of these should be finished as leaves (B), and which as grape- bunches (C). In a certain case at Padua he went much farther than that, and even turned over here and there a part of the leaf (D and E), without in any way altering its general outline. It came more naturally to him to do obvious violence to possibility than to modify his predetermined outline. This is not mentioned as a thing worthy of imitation, but as an instance of simple-mindedness not without its charm in old work.
In Plate 59, part of the design for a Gothic window, I have endeavoured to follow, more strictly than I have ever seen it followed in old Gothic work, the actual growth of the vine, whilst at the same time very scrupu- lously fulfilling the conditions of stained glass.
Much -as. there is to be? learni@trometite breadth and simplicity of the Gothic treat- ment of the vine (as of other foliage), it by no means solves for us the problem of treatment.
“Pore -Tint. by Jemec Akerman Jondon WC
Coptic Vine Ornament.
Parallel Renderings. 121
It is seldom that it shows much appreciation of the essentially characteristic vine forms. One wearies of the regularity of the “ ecclesi- astical” grape-clusters, and resents their stand- ing up like bunches of privet-berries. Why should we be content with the continual recur-
gt. Transitional vine scroll.
rence of one stereotyped pattern, when nature is so varied and that variety is so ornamental ?
In later Gothic ornament, and especially as it began to be influenced by the spirit ot the Renaissance, it is no uncommon thing to see a scroll that halts between two opinions,
122 Nature in Ornament.
clearly showing that the artist did not quite see how to reconcile the one with the other. In the instance of this given on p. 121, the rather loosely drawn leaves contrast curiously with the purely conventional foliation pro- ceeding from the same stem ; and yet, for all the hesitation of the artist, the general effect is that of direct and accomplished workman- ship. Here the main lines of the stem remind one more of fifteenth century Gothic window tracery than of growth. .The ornamental arrangement of the tendrils is ingenious, and so is the way the grapes form a sort of diaper on the background. This is a device not uncommon in late Gothic work, especially German work—that, for example, of Albrecht Diirer.
Durer, to tell the truth, had but vaspoer invention in ornament—his facile pen is con- tinually running away with him ; his flourishes remind one too much of the writing-master of a more recent generation. The vine scroll on Plate 60 is an exceptionally good specimen of the great draughtsman’s ornament, but it misses at once the grace of nature-and the dignity of ornament. Only in respect to the variety in the size of the grapes, and the looseness of the bunches, does it approach more nearly to nature than the “earlier
Puorto-Tint, by James Akerman London .W.C
English Gothic Vine.
Parallel Renderings. 123
92. Italian Quattro-cento vine scroll.
work. It is, indeed, pzcturesque rather than decorative; and the picturesqueness seems almost like a foreshadowing of the then still distant Rococo.
The artists of the Renaissance followed pretty closely in the footsteps of ancient precedent, and when they departed from the scroll and branched out into something more like natural growth, adopted by preference a form of leaf plainly recalling the vine. It was less a rendering of nature than an ornamental leaf more or less in its likeness,
Italian, French, or German rendering was modified always in some degree by national character. In the Francois premier foliage (p. 38), there is always a certain severity, showing that the carver had not quite thrown off the Gothic yoke, under which Italian ornament (above) never passed. The German version was still more determinedly national —indeed it was always more clearly Teutonic than’ Renaissance—witness the ornament of
124 Nature in Ornament.
93. German Renaissance.
Aldegrever on this. page. Before our days of archeological pre- tence, there was in all ornament an under- tone of national feel- Ine telling | olemulte country to which it belonged. There was no =need then ote Trade-marks Act to identify it as carved in) Mrance) On eGer many.
Ate the) snicker trenching upon a subject discussed at lensth” in Sa jpteui- ous text-book (‘The Application of Orna- ment’) it is necessary to allude briefly to the influence exer- cised by material and manner of .workman- ship on the modifica- tion of natural form. This is really half the secret of convention-
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“Puoto-Tint, by James Akerman.London.W.C.
Vine, Stained Glass.
Parallel Renderings. 125
alism, the other half being in the fitness of the form to its place and purpose.
The sculptor has thus been a _ powerful factor in the development of the ornamental vine.
You can see quite clearly in the Assyrian example (p. 106) how he blocked out his five- pointed shapes, scooped out the main divisions, and notched the serrations round the edges, much as the Gothic carvers did, and how he just chiselled two series of lines across his bunches to suggest the grapes.
In the Greek vine (p. 108) the leaves are this time serrated by brush touches: in designing his tendrils the painter just played with the brush ; whilst in the case of the grapes, he first washed in the mass of his cluster in two shades of colour, and then, with little blots of white, indicated the grapes upon it.
The Greco-Roman border (p. 109) is inlaid in silver on bronze, and the serrations of the leaves are produced by so many digs of the graver. The stiffness of the zigzag stem, it should be mentioned, is modified, in the actual bronze, by the fact that it is on the curved member of a moulding.
The severe simplicity of the Byzantine design (p. 115) fits it for its intended purpose of a pilaster.
126 Nature in Ornament.
The breadth of the leaves in the example from Toledo (p. 113) is calculated to contrast well with the broken background. On a smooth ground it would have been desirable
94. Vine in Gothic glass-painting.
to mark the subdivisions of the leaves more
emphatically. In the Arab leaf (Plate 54) thes necedmes something like veins was felt by the sculptor ;
Plate CO.
Albrecht Durer.
Vine by
4
Parallel Renderings. $27
and the ingeniously ornamental tracery by which he supplied their place is a lesson in design.
In Plate 61 I have taken a hint from some sixteenth century damascening, and diapered the leaves with arabesque in the place of veining. The idea was to break the surface of the leaf whilst preserving an effect of flatness.
Diirer’s leaves (p. 60) are pen-work, and had they been drawn with any other imple- ment they would never have been just so.
The resolute avoidance of modelling in the German damask napkin (p. 121) is in order to show off the quality of the linen.
In the various Gothic renderings of the leaf the tool is plainly to be traced. There is considerable difference between the convention of the wood-carver and that of the carver in stone. In the wood-carving on p. 110, the veining is indicated and a certain effect of modelling obtained by leaving the gouge marks—but then the gouging was done to that end, and with intelligence.
The greater delicacy of the Quattro-cento leaves (p. 123) shows how the finer marble led to altogether more delicate workmanship. The coarser stone employed in English Gothic buildings made it absolutely necessary to mass the tendrils together if only for the sake
128 Nature in Ornament.
of strength. The tendrils in the fragment of old glass on p. 126 owe their scratchy ap- pearance to the circumstance that they were actually scratched out of the solid pigment with the stick end of the brush; the serra- tions of the leaves are as the brush made them —and so on. In short, conventional form proves to be the net result of comparing the supply of natural shapes with the demands of ornament, and choosing the line of least resistance between them.
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129
VIO. MORE PARALLELS.
IT may be as well, lest the argument seem to rest upon a specially selected type, to com- pare, as briefly as possible, the various render- ings of certain other plants which occur by way of illustration throughout this volume, and which have been chosen partly with a view to such comparison.
The Japanese treatment of the rose, on Plate 2, is only in so far decorative as the detail and the point of view are carefully chosen, and as the execution is simple and direct. Compare the energy of its growth with the sweeter lines on Plate 62. This last expression of the decadent Renaissance is not nearly so accurate as it somehow pretends to be. The stipules of the leaves, for example, are very inadequately acknowledged; and what at first sight looks like picturesque shading of the leaves, turns out to be quite arbitrary. Indeed, it is only as ornament that
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130 Nature in Ornament.
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this quasi-natural treatment has claim at all to our respect: as nature it has none.
As a model of conventional treatment, the Tudor rose must always hold a very high place. What could be better in its way than the dignified simplicity of the Gothic rose and crown on Plate 63? How good the lines are, and how well the panel is occupied! A certain breadth is gained by the reduction of the compound leaf to the simple form, and a certain character is given by the exaggeration of the stipules, unlike as they are in form to the natural type.
In the other Tudor rose from the stalls of Henry VII.’s chapel (Plate 64), the treat- ment is at once traditional and distinctly individual. It was something of an inspira- tion to twist the leaves and stalks encircling
Plate 62.
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More Parallels. rat
the rose into a further suggestion of the five- petalled flower.
The monster roses at King’s College, Cambridge, are other splendid examples of Gothic treatment. B. J. Talbert’s modern rose on Plate 23 owes something, but by no means everything, to Gothic influence.
The rose-buds on p. 130 are from a velvet of Italian manufacture, but so distinctly Persian in design that it may be presumed to have been copied almost literally from an Oriental original. The eye or jewel of light €olour in the centre of the leaf, in place of veining, is essentially Persian. In Plate 65, from the same _ source, the rose-buds are at once more elegant and more typi- cal. Theexaggerated sepals in particular are ornamentally of extreme value.
In the ruder Oriental embroidery on this page, the buds and _ sepals are again very charac- teristically emphasised. The angularity of the ~ stalks comes of follow- 6. Oriental rose border.
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132 Nature in Ornament.
ing the square web of the linen on which it is worked.
The Rhodian example below would hardly be taken for a rose, but for the un- mistakable bud once more: the open flower is more like a marigold. The broken stem is a convenient, and in Rho- dian pottery not an un- common, means of bend- ing the lines in the way it is desirable they should go. Once in a way that may pass, but it is not a device upon which it would be well to rely in design.
Comparison has already been drawn (p. 93) be- tween the Quattro-cento lily on p. 92, the Cinque-
eR diatrcce: cento lilies on p. 91 and Plate 43, my own lily
ornament on Plate 39, Talbert’s Gothic lily panel on Plate 42 (something like, and yet unlike, the panel from the Taj Mahal at Agra, on Plate 66), and the more natural srowth on Plate) 75.0 hese smay animes be compared with the more or less lily- shaped flowers occurring in Greek scroll-work
More
[fFlate rt and p. 160), with the Greek pattern on p. 61, and with the Roman cande- labrum _ opposite, a characteristically clumsy way not so much of designing
as of compiling ornament. In the Greek
lilies already re- ferred to, and still more in those on p. 158, the relation to the anthemion is obvious, and to the lotus, that other form: of lily ‘so conspicuous in Egyptian and As- syrian art (Plates 79 and 80 and pp. 150, 151, 155, 240).
The Hindoo ren- dering of the water- lily von. Plate: 67 is very much like the
Parallels.
g8. Roman lily forms,
134 Nature in Ornament.
99: Indian lotus—Buddhist.
Egyptian, but it is sometimes looser, as on Plate 68. A very characteristic treatment is shown above.
The Chinese rendering on Plate 88 is yet freer, but still essentially ornamental.
Referring once more to the Greek shapes on p. 158, one may see in some of them a resemblance to the young growth of the lily as it bursts from the ground in spring. That is seen still more plainly in the Assyrian ornament on the lower part of Plate 8o.
More Parallels, F325
There is something most natural in that very stiff conventional upright growth—reminding one rather of the young iris shoots. _ The iris flower is, it has been already said, the origin of the fleur-de-lis. Compare the flamboyant fleurs-de-lis on Plate 121 with the earlier Gothic renderings on pp. 238 and 241, with the renderings on p. 160, and with the Romanesque ornament on p. 18. The flowers in the central ornament (p. 18) are remarkably like the iris. In the Re- naissance ornament on p. 240, the characteristics of the iris are reconciled somewhat to the shape of the fleur-de-lis. In the Indian damas- roo. Seventeenth century iris. cened pattern on Plate 30, there is distinct re- semblance to the fleur-de-lis. The painted version above it, whilst pretending to be more pictorial, is altogether less characteristic of nature.
In the Persian examples on p. 45, the flower is reduced to ornament, as it is also in the ingenious border of the frontispiece which Mr. Crane has designed for me. The figure of Iris in the centre is designed in a vein
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Nature in Ornament.
peculiarly the artist’s own. His “ Flora's Peast is a very feast of ingenious and fanciful and_ alto- gether delightful design of the same kind.
Ornamentally as the flowers are treated in the Damascus tiles on p. IOI, they are still most cha- racteristic—as are the equally abstract forms in the Japanese embroidery on p. 66. These are quite unmistakably flags.
The sixteenth century Italian embroidery, on p. 135, is scarcely far enough removed from nature to be effectively ornamental.
In the eighteenth cen- tury silk weaving (Plate 44), there is a certain
suavity of line which goes towards ornament
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More Parallels, tay
but such affectedly graceful growth is not quite in keeping with the quasi-natural ren- dering of the flowers.
Further parallels between the iris and the fleur-de-lis are drawn in the chapter on Tradi- tion, pp. 161, &c., and in that on Symbolism, p. 241.
The pink or picotee occurs frequently in Oriental ornament, whence probably the Italians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries borrowed it. In the Italo-Persian brocade on p. 149 the indebtedness of the weaver is obvious.
Among the comparatively late Renaissance flowers on p. 136, interesting as showing a variety of modifications all more or less ac- cording to the scheme of the embroiderer, only one instance occurs in which the curled horns of the pistil are made use of. In some examples on Plate 69 the horns, more or less modified, are a prominent feature. The modi- fication of nature in the various renderings there given is according to the material and mode of work, embroidery, incised work, inlay, carving, and so on.
As in the case of other plants alluded to, the late Renaissance renderings on Plate 7o are ultra-elegant and graceful.
In the very excellent panel from the Taj
138 Nature in Ornament.
Mahal (Plate 66) the poppy is trained de- liberately in the way it should go—a delicate and graceful way, for all its formality ; and, for all its symmetry, varied.
The damascened patterns on p. 61 are more distinctly Indian. In one of these, the occurrence of sepals, which the bud naturally sheds as it bursts, has already been pointed out; in the other the severe lines within which the growth is compactly grouped, result in distinct dignity of design.
Ghiberti’s poppy on Plate 71 is one of the most satisfactory of the flower-groups border- ing the celebrated doors at Florence. The leaves are just conventional enough, and the seed-vessel or poppy-head tells for what it is, at once a characteristic and an admirably ornamental feature.
In my own poppy-pattern on Plate 72, the brush touches are such as could most conve- niently be reproduced in block printing. It is meant for pattern first and poppy after- wards.
In the border on p. 172, the growth is comparatively natural. The flowers are arranged in the order indicated by the necessities of composition, and the growth is made to accommodate itself, with as little violation of nature as possible, to them.
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Wheat ears are a favourite symbol in Gothic work, but the rather intractable growth of corn seems to be against any great variety in its treatment. The stiffness of the design
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on p. 89, which belongs to the period of the Gothic revival, is likely to be more noticed than its ingenuity, which is all the artist’s own.
In the Italian silk on p. 68, the wheat ear
140 Nature in Ornament.
is reduced to a pattern; in the carving on p. 90, it is the leaf-blades that are manipu- lated; Do adapt the rather rank erowthon the Indian corn to the purpose of a simple and satisfactory border, as on p. 88, is some- thing like a triumph of ornamental modifica- tion.
It is mainly in Gothic art that the thistle has been taken as a motif ; but there is a wide difference between Hopfer’s scroll on Plate 16, and that on Plates 83 and 91, and between any of these and the late G. E. Street’s bold experiment in modern Gothic on p. 54. My own pattern on Plate 38 is thistle-like (it was in fact suggested by the artichoke, the king of thistles), but the natural characteristics of the plant are deliberately sacrificed to the purposes of pattern.
In the representation of the pomegranate, the bursting of the fruit (as already mentioned on p. 74); has been very variously rendered. ‘Dhe latem@ingar Talbert, too (p. 139), turned the seeds to ornamental account. Mr. Morris’s fruits on Plate “87 “bursty mato rally. In the Chinese pattern 103. Pomegranate. on Plate 73 the bursting
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More Parallels. 141
of the fruit is indicated only by a change of colour: no seeds are revealed. The sixteenth century German treatment (same plate) is equally arbitrary.
104. Oak from the cathedral of Toledo.
Persian influence is seen again in the Italian rendering on p. 149. One assumes that the pear-shaped fruit on p. 140 is meant for a pomegranate. The Gothic ornament on p. 60
142 Nature in Ornament.
stands also, no doubt, for the pomegranate ; but it is quite a traditional rendering, by a man who probably never saw the fruit. Com- pare this also with the pine patterns on Plate 84 and on Pp. 157.
The various renderings of the oak, Classic on p. 94, Gothic on Plates 29 and 74, Italian on p. 247, Sicilian below, and other examples
105. Assyrian Tree of
Life. on p. 53 and on Plates 9 and 83, have none of them
any resemblance to the — characteristic Hispano - Moresque oak scroll on p. 141, which is akin rather to the vines on pp. 113 and 114. Reference is made elsewhere (p. 246) to the daisies on Plates 122 and 123, and (p. 88) to the examples of the ivy === =— occurring on Plates 106. Oak—from a Sicilian silk.
Plate 74.
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Gothic Oak Ornament.
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More Parallels. 143
24 and 81 and on 27, The ver- sions of the olive on Plates 50 and
81 need only just Co \
be alluded to.
There is some-
thing to be learnt from a comparison of the various con- ventional trees, As- syrian on pp. 142 and 239 and Plate 30; Greek on Plates 24 and 81, Roman on p. 509, Indian on Plate 77, Coptic on Plates 49 and 57, Sicilian and Italian on Piste. £20 . aiid p. 58, Romanesque opposite,
It is wonderful with what unani- mity ornamentists have everywhere, and from the be-
107. Romanesque Tree of Life.
ginning of time, resolved the growth of the
144 Nature in Ornament.
tree into its elements and made it into orna- ment, reducing its outline in many cases to the shape of a single leaf, and its branches to something like smaller leaves. Those to whom such rendering of natural form does not come easily, by instinct as it were, were not bern fog ornamentists let) thems their attention to work for which nature has fitted them.
Comparison may further be made between the works of modern men (Plates 1, 22, 23, 42, 56, 86, 87, and 08, and pps 30, 54) O4%.c0; 130, 180, 185, and 226); and; lasth1eferemee to my own design (Plates 9, 14, 31, 38, 39, 40, AS, 52, 50; Oly 725 755205, 093,00; LOZ tO Onsigiap 112, and 123; and pp. 93) 172, 17371 /4e2zer and 245) will help to explain more clearly than words, not what I think necessarily good, but the degree of naturalism on the one hand, and of convention on the other, which seem to me personally permissible in ornament.
To any one in the least susceptllem re natural beauty, it is not difficult to under- stand the resentment which some persons feel towards any interference with nature. To disturb it is to deform it, no doubt; but in the interest of cultivation it has to be done. Brier, and bracken, and yellow gorse must give place to rose gardens, apple orchards,
Plate />.
Comparatively natural Lily Panel.
More Parallels. 145
and fields of corn. They too are beautiful ; not the less so that they owe something to the hand of man. It is, after all, a false and rather a cowardly sentiment which makes us afraid of disturbing what is beautiful, when the end is a beauty better worth having.
Those who profess to follow nature seem sometimes rather to be dragging her in the dust. There is a wider view of nature, which includes human nature and that selective and idealising instinct which is natural to man. It is a long way from being yet proved that the naturalistic designer is more “true to nature” than another. Itis one thing to study nature, and another to pretend that studies are works of art. In no branch of design has it ever been held by the masters (least of all could it be held by the masters of orna- iment) that nature was enough. It is only the very callow student who opens his mouth to swallow all nature whole; the older bird knows better. “Lor, how natural!” bursts out the admiring rustic: the artist in like case thinks to himself “ What perfect art!”
146 Nature in Ornament.
ae TRADITION IN DESIGN.
THERE have been times, perhaps, when art ran too much in the ruts of tradition: there is no danger of that just now—inore likeli- hood of our wandering so far from any beaten track as to lose our bearings altogether.
Whatever the danger of merely traditional treatment in design.(a danger less imminent than once it was), it is time we bethought ourselves that traditions are not inherently pernicious. They represent, when all is said, the sum of past experience. Past masters of their crafts must be presumed to have known something. The course oof art raneabeal events, more evenly along the broad smooth ruts aforesaid.
Whatever the traditions of his art, and whether he mean to follow them or not, the student must acquaint himself with them. It is not until he is acquainted with the traditional ways of doing a thing that he is in a position to form an opinion as to the relative merits
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of the divers ways of doing it: to presume to rely upon his unaided insight is sheer self-