Exercise in Background Pattern—Care as to Stability—Drilling and Sawing out the Spaces—Some Uses for Pierced Patterns.
The present exercises may be described as a kind of carved open fretwork—that is to say, the ground is entirely cut away, leaving the pattern standing free. This will form an excellent piece of discipline with regard to the design of background forms, because in such work as this, those forms assert themselves in a very marked manner; if they are in any way found to be conspicuously unequal in size or are awkwardly designed as to shape, the whole effect of the work is spoiled.
Fig. 24.
For your first effort make a design based upon No. 24, and please to observe these rules in its construction. The main or leading lines of the pattern are to run as much as possible without crossing each other. The holes are to be fairly equal in size, or rather in area, as they need not be at all like each other in shape. The amount of wood left standing to be of a width averaging never less than half the length of the average-sized hole. This is necessary for securing sufficient strength of material in the cross-grained pieces, which would be liable to split if made too long and narrow. The pattern should be formal in character, not necessarily symmetrical, but it should be well balanced. You may have one part of your design composed of large holes and another of small ones, provided the change is part of a definite design, as in Fig. 25. You may even leave the wood in some parts forming a solid background, or you may treat it as a separate piece of simple carving on the solid, as in Fig. 26, being careful to execute it in a consistently simple manner, as in this kind of work much change of manner in execution is inadvisable, although, at the same time, it is open to any amount of variety in design of outline and combination of contrasts.
Fig. 25.