Principles of Decorative Design / Fourth Edition

by Christopher Dresser

There are other principles governing the production and application of ornament which we must now notice, the first of which is utility, for the first aim of the designer of any article must be to render the object which he produces useful. I may go further, and say that an article must be made not only useful, but as perfectly suited to the purpose for which it is intended as it can be. It matters not how beautiful the object is intended to be, it must first be formed as though it were a mere work of utility, and after it has been carefully created with this end in view it may then be rendered as beautiful as you please.

There are special reasons why our works should be useful as well as beautiful, for if an object, however beautiful it may be in shape, however richly covered with beautiful ornaments, or however harmoniously coloured, be unpleasant to use, it will ultimately be set aside, and that which is more convenient for use will replace it, even if the latter be without beauty. As an illustration of this fact, let us suppose the balustrade railings of a staircase very beautiful, and yet furnished with such projections as render it almost impossible that we walk up or down the stairs without tearing the dress, or injuring the person, and how soon will our admiration of the beautiful railing disappear, and even be replaced by hate! In like manner let the handle of a door, or the head of a poker, be so formed as to hurt the hand, and the simple round knob, or round head, will be preferred to it, however ornamentally or beautifully formed.

In relation to this subject, Professor George Wilson has said: "The conviction seems ineradicable from some minds, that a beautiful thing cannot be a useful thing, and that the more you increase the beauty of the necessary furniture or the implements of every-day life the more you lessen their utility. Make the Queen's sceptre as beautiful as you please, but don't try to beautify a poker, especially in cold weather. My lady's vinaigrette carve and gild as you will, but leave untouched my pewter ink-bottle. Put fine furniture, if you choose, into my drawing-room; but I am a plain man, and like useful things in my parlour, and so on. Good folks of this sort seem to labour under the impression that the secret desire of art is to rob them of all comfort. Its unconfessed but actual aim, they believe, is to realise the faith of their childhood, when it was understood that a monarch always wore his crown, held an orb in one hand and a sceptre in the other, and a literal interpretation was put upon Shakespeare's words,

'Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.'

Were art to prosper, farewell to fire-proof, shapeless slippers, which bask like salamanders unharmed in the hottest blaze. An æsthetic pair, modelled upon Cinderella's foot, and covered with snow-white embroidery, must take their place, and dispense chilblains and frost-bite to miserable toes. Farewell to shooting-coats out a little at the elbows, to patched dressing-gowns, and hair-cloth sofas. Nothing but full-dress, varnished boots, spider-legged chairs, white satin chair-covers, alabaster ink-bottles, velvet door-mats, and scrapers of silver or gold. It is astonishing how many people think that a thing cannot be comfortable if it is beautiful. . . . If there be one truth which the Author of all has taught us in his works more clearly than another, it is the perfect compatibility of the highest utility with the greatest beauty. I offer you one example. All are familiar with the beautiful shell of the nautilus. Give the nautilus itself to a mathematician, and he will show you that one secret of its gracefulness lies in its following in its volute or whorl a particular geometrical curve with rigid precision. Pass it from the mathematician to the natural philosopher, and he will show you how the simple superposition of a great number of very thin transparent plates, and the close approximation of a multitude of very fine engraved lines, are the cause of its exquisite pearly lustre. Pass it from the natural philosopher to the engineer, and he will show you that this fairy shell is a most perfect practical machine, at once a sailing vessel and a diving-bell, in which its living possessor had, centuries before Archimedes, applied to utilitarian ends the law of specific gravity, and centuries before Halley had dived in his bell to the bottom of the sea. Pass it from the engineer to the anatomist, and he will show you how, without marring its beauty, it is occupied during its lifetime with a most orderly system of rowing and sailing tackle, chambers for food, pumps to keep blood circulating, ventilating apparatus, and hands to control all, so that it is a model ship with a model mariner on board. Pass it lastly from the anatomist to the chemist, and he will show you that every part of the shell and the creature is compounded of elements, the relative weights of which follow in each individual nautilus the same numerically identical ratio.

"Such is the nautilus, a thing so graceful, that when we look at it we are content to say with Keats—

'A thing of beauty is a joy for ever;'

and yet a thing so thoroughly utilitarian, and fulfilling with the utmost perfection the purely practical aim of its construction, that our shipbuilders would be only too thankful if, though sacrificing all beauty, they could make their vessels fulfil their business ends half so well."

Viewing our subject in another light, and with special reference to architecture, we notice that unless a building is fitted for the purpose intended, or, in other words, answers utilitarian ends, it cannot be esteemed as it otherwise might be, even though it be of great æsthetic beauty. In respect to this subject, Mr. Owen Jones has said: "The nave and aisles of a Gothic church become absurd when filled with pews for Protestant worship, where all are required to see and hear. The columns of the nave which impede sight and sound, the aisles for processions which no longer exist, rood screens, and deep chancels for the concealment of mysteries, now no longer such, are all so many useless reproductions which must be thrown aside." Further, "As architecture, so all works of the decorative arts, should possess fitness, proportion, harmony; the result of all which is repose." Sir M. Digby Wyatt has said: "Infinite variety and unerring fitness govern all forms in Nature." Vitruvius, that "The perfection of all works depends on their fitness to answer the end proposed, and on principles resulting from a consideration of Nature itself." Sir Charles L. Eastlake, that "In every case in Nature where fitness or utility can be traced, the characteristic quality, or relative beauty, is found to be identical with that of fitness." A. W. Pugin (the father): "How many objects of ordinary use are rendered monstrous and ridiculous simply because the artist, instead of seeking the most convenient form, and then decorating it, has embodied some extravagance to conceal the real purpose for which the article has been made." And with the view of pointing out how fitness for, or adaptation to, the end proposed is manifested in the structure and disposition upon the earth of plants, I have written in a little work now out of print: "The trees which grow highest upon the mountains, and the plants which grow upon the unsheltered plain, have usually long, narrow, and rigid leaves, which, owing to their form, are enabled to bear the fury of the tempest, to which they are exposed, without injury. This is seen in the ease of the species of fir which grow at great altitudes, where the leaves are more like needles than leaves such as commonly occur; and also in the species of heath which grow upon exposed moors: in both cases the plants are, owing to the form of the leaf, enabled to defy the blast, while those with broad leaves would be shattered and destroyed.