Fig. E.—Reduction of similar ornament in different spaces.
Much might be said on the subject of materials, but I will only make a few remarks. In making a design, due consideration should be given to the material employed, so that the natural ornamentation of one material may not be put on another; pottery is turned on the wheel, and is adapted for painting, while hollow metal vessels are embossed, but it is common enough to see pottery embossed, which can, it is true, be accomplished by casting or by inlaying, yet this sort of ornamentation always looks inappropriate. Stone is usually of large and wood of small scantling, yet in the front of a stone building with arched openings the wooden door-head is often made a continuation of the stone impost, though the mouldings of the wood-work should be finer and the ornament different.
Although the young student should confine his attention to the best styles, the advanced one should have some acquaintance with all traditional ornament, even the styles of Louis XIV. and XV., a grafting of Chinese and Japanese ornament on the current classic, for they are the only modern styles, except the early Renaissance, that have complete unity. The same style runs through the whole building, down to the door furniture and the damask of the chairs; the handling, too, is often admirable, and the examples are full of hints to the advanced student, who is unlikely to be infected with the rococo style.
I have dwelt much on carving for several reasons; it is the most lasting of ornamental work, and as a rule the most important; it is susceptible of the greatest perfection when executed in marble, and all architectural ornament must eventually fall into the hands of the sculptor, since he has devoted his life to its study. I may add that the French architects look upon it as the weak point in English architecture.
To the young student I may say that he can never become an artist until he has mastered the fundamental principles of his art; and that nothing can deserve the name of ornament that is not both appropriate and beautiful, and has been evolved from nature by the mind of man. I would suggest to the young artist that the flora of the world is not confined to the lotus, the honeysuckle, and the acanthus; that if accident caused the original choice of these plants, it was the infinite pains bestowed on their treatment that caused their persistence. There are, too, thousands of beauties still to be culled from plants and flowers that now remain outside the domain of art. Let the student remember that knowledge, skill, truth, and sincerity are the main roads to real success, and that real success is, to have produced some beauty that has captivated or will captivate mankind.
THE
PRINCIPLES OF ORNAMENT
CHAPTER I
ORNAMENT is the proper enrichment of an object or surface with such forms, or forms and colours, as will give the thing decorated a new beauty, while strictly preserving its shape and character. It is the function of ornament to emphasize the forms of the object it decorates, not to hide them. Decoration is not necessarily ornament; for instance, the lovely sprays of plants with birds and cognate subjects, painted on Japanese pottery, may be called beautiful decoration, but cannot in our sense of the word be called ornament; for however realistic ornament may be, it must show that it has passed through the mind of man, and been acted on by it. This kind of decoration might be a literal transcript from nature, and neither emphasizes the boundaries of the decorated surface nor harmonizes with them. It possesses an exquisite beauty of its own, for the drawing and colour and the style of execution are good. With the exception of frets and diapers, true ornament is rare in Japanese art. [Fig. 1] is a Japanese decoration on an oblong surface. Such a design is pretty, but we can hardly call it ornament. Something must be done with it before we can give it that name.