Fig. 95.—Contrasting decoration on rectangular and circular borders.
effect, leaving the varieties to be discovered by closer inspection. One of the best examples of this, though it is not in diapers, is in the Medici Chapel at Florence. Michael Angelo enriched a string there with copies of antique masks; in looking at the sides of the chapel the masks seem all alike, but on going near them, each one is seen to be different. Innumerable examples of ornament within network, checkers, and diapers, maybe found in Saracenic, Moresque, Gothic, and Renaissance work.
Fig. 96.—Door case at the Erechtheum showing the pateræ on the fascia.
To adopt forms directly from nature for the shape of any article of use is rarely successful, though the best shapes have mostly been suggested by natural forms. The Orientals, especially those of the extreme East, have been very fond of this direct imitation, as in vessels made in imitation of a piece of bamboo, of gourds with both single and double bulbs, of eggs, cocoanuts, the horns and hoofs of animals including the horn of the rhinoceros, of shells, flowers, &c., but they mostly want stands or feet, which partly removes them from pure realism, except in the case of the bamboo, the form of which too is not particularly beautiful. When the ancient traditions had died out in England, and the proper application of ornament
