Craft Restrictions
When any craft process is involved the design is only a means to the end, and convention is then imposed by the technical conditions of the craft in question. The designer has to keep these conditions in view, the desirable object being to make the greatest economic use of the process compatible with a good result. It would be a waste of both time and energy to depict effects that could not be realised.
In woven or printed fabrics it is impossible to produce natural effects; even if that were possible the inevitable repetition of the unit would be not merely unnatural but a gross absurdity. The great bulk of the public do not understand convention, hence the popularity of textiles and wall-papers in which the designs consist of flowers treated (however inconsistently) in natural aspect as far as possible; in particular the Rose which, like the poor, is ever with us.
Traditional ornament at its best has generally been conventional, the various details of foliage being æsthetic creations, with at times, perhaps, some suggestion derived from natural types. The scroll in the form of volutes as employed in the Ionic capital may have been suggested by the fossil known as the Ammonite
No. 228. Filagree Jewellery.
A. Hook for Jacket in Silver. Swedish, Mid. 18th Century.
B. Pendant Cross. Gold set with Garnets. Modern Italian.
C. Ear-ring. Gold. Modern French.
D. Ear-ring. Gold. Modern Italian.
E. Ear-ring. Gold. Modern Italian.
F. Pendant. Northern Portuguese. 17th or early 18th Century.
G. Ear-ring. Gold. Modern Italian.
H. Pendant. Gold. As worn by peasants in Etruria.
shell, so called because it resembles the ram’s horn of Jupiter Ammon. Its traditional employment in conjunction with the undulate stem, is certainly far from any natural suggestion in the way of growth, while the variety known as the evolute scroll is distinctly artificial.