These errors arise chiefly out of a want of consideration of the capabilities of the material. What can be done with this or that particular fabric, is a question that we should carefully ask ourselves before we think of preparing a design. Have we colour at our disposal, or texture merely? and if colour, can it be employed freely or only sparingly? and can any desired colours be placed in juxtaposition or only certain tints? These are questions of great importance, and they should be asked and carefully considered before the first step is taken towards the formation of a pattern. Having ascertained what can be done with the material at command, let us ever remember that we should always endeavour to so employ the capabilities of a material as to conceal its weakness and emphasise its more desirable effects. If this consideration were always given by designers to the power which the material has of yielding effects, we should see, in very many instances, effects strangely different from those which we often encounter; and this remark applies to no class of fabrics more fully than to damask table-linen and coloured damask window hangings.
No satisfactory effect can be got in light and shade upon any woven or printed fabric; besides, to attempt such a mode of treatment is absurd. Light and shade belong only to pictorial art. The ornamentist when enriching a fabric deals only with a surface, and has no thought of placing pictures thereon; he has simply to enrich or beautify that which without his art would be plain and unornamental. A picture will never bear repetition. Who ever heard of a man having two copies of one picture in a room? Yet how much more absurd is it to repeat a little picture—perhaps a pictorially rendered flower—a hundred times over one surface! Besides this, a surface must always be treated, for decorative purposes, as a surface, and not in a manner calculated to deceive by giving apparent relief, or thickness, to that which is essentially without thickness. Take a common damask table-cover. This is by custom almost always white, although it would be better if of a deep cream-colour, or soft buff; and the pattern which it bears results from a change of surface only (why a margin of "ingrain" colour is not added, I could never see); yet in nine cases out of ten the pattern which is presented by such a fabric is a miserable shaded attempt at a pictorial treatment, and is also a thorough failure.
Simplicity of pattern naturally accords with a simple mode of production, and the means of producing pattern in damasks is certainly most simple. That there is a natural harmony between simplicity of pattern and simple means of producing an art-effect is obvious, for of all patterns that I have ever seen upon damask table-linen the simple spot, or dot, is the most satisfactory. If, combined with this spot, we have a border formed of a simple Greek "key-pattern," or of mere lines (a very usual border to good cloths), the effect is perfectly satisfying, and, as far as it goes, is highly to be commended.
It is curious that this spot is only sold in the better quality of table-linen (at least so they tell me in the City), and this shows that the wealthy, or, in other words, the educated, buy such patterns, as they prefer the true to the meretricious, while the false and showy devices which we see on the common cloths please only the common people of vulgar taste. I am not sure, however, that many persons, whose means are limited, would not buy spots and other simple, but correctly treated, patterns, if such were to be got in common qualities of damask; but when the pocket must govern the purchase, it is hard to say that the false is preferred to the true, if the true is not procurable with the means at command.
While I cannot withhold praise from this little spot, it must not be thought that I thereby give to it a high place as an art-work. Little is here attempted, and that little is done well. But let us analyse this pattern. First, the spots are of one tint throughout, if I may thus express myself—a tint, shall we say, which is the reverse of that of the ground. It is not shaded so that it may appear as a ball or globe, and is not graduated in "colour" in any way (were it graduated or shaded, feebleness of effect must inevitably accrue), but is a simple, honest spot, treated as a surface ornament. Secondly, this spot is geometrically arranged, or, in other words, has an orderly arrangement.
If an attempt is made at rendering a pictorial, or light-and-shade effect, in damask, an absurd failure can alone result, for depth of shade is not obtainable in the material; and, besides this, what appears as shade, when the cloth is seen from one point of view, appears as light if seen from another point of view. Nothing could be more absurd, then, than seeking to produce shaded effects with such means as are here at our disposal. But were the fabric capable of rendering such effects, it would still be wrong to employ them, as we deal only with the surface, and are seeking to enhance the value of, or beautify, a fabric, and not to cover it with pictures. In our simple spot we have those elements which may be extended into the richest and most artistic damask patterns. We have order—as indicated by the geometrical plan of the pattern—and an honest and simple expression, or application, of the capabilities of the material.
All table-covers should certainly have a border. Any object which is to be used as a whole looks unsatisfactory if it appears as though it were part of a whole. If a cloth is without border it is impossible to avoid the impression that it is a part of a larger cloth, and in every respect the general effect is decidedly unsatisfactory.
It is perhaps well that we notice one peculiarity of a table-cover before we dismiss the consideration of such fabrics, which is this, that while the central portion is seen flat, the border portion is viewed in folds; and here we come to one of the great peculiarities of most draperies, that of their being viewed not as flat surfaces, but in waves or folds. One portion of a table-cloth is, however, seen flat, but this is almost an exception in the case of draperies. Another exception to this rule of hangings appearing in folds, and that of a very complete character, occurs in silk damasks which are used as a rich lining to the walls of palaces and some mansions; but of table-cloths we will speak for the present.
The central part of a table-cloth, that portion which is always to be viewed as a flat surface, may be enriched with any diaper pattern that is simply treated, and this diaper pattern may be full of design, provided the parts are not too large or too small. It may also be formed of gracefully curved parts, or of straight lines or circles, or of any combination of these elements; but, preferably, not wholly of straight lines.