Fig. 8.
Persian Carpet.
Many conventional patterns of to-day are descendants of the lattice-work of Chinese art, and of the zigzags, lines, and discs of barbarous primitive ornamentation.
The traceries in Indian stone windows show some of the most charming geometrical forms, and are akin to the Persian and Russian modes of composing conventional patterns. They appear on very ancient metal work, and are the motives of all the embroideries in the Greek islands and the principalities, and of the linen embroideries of Russia. Their Byzantine origin gave its impress to the European schools of the Middle Ages, and the pattern-books of Germany and Venice of the sixteenth century are full of them. They are best suited for the mosaic stitches, and, kept in their places as decoration, they are useful for carpets and borders.
It should be impressed on our young artists, that, in composing their designs, they must be influenced by the materials to be employed, and the purpose for which the decoration is intended. Thus in textile design for dress and hangings (excepting for tapestries) the fact must never be lost sight of that they will be subject to disturbance by crossing folds and crumplings, which will break up the lines of the pattern. It is therefore evident that a design fitted for a rigid material in a fixed place, such as an architectural decoration in wood, stone, or stucco, must be subject to a treatment different from that which befits an embroidered curtain or panel.
Stone and wood, being materials of uniform colour, require all the help of recessed shadows and projections to catch the light; whereas in textiles, form is assisted by colour, and smoothness of surface is a primary consideration. The strongly accentuated design for wood-carving becomes poor and lifeless when deprived of its essential conditions and raison d’être, and the pattern which looks charming, outlined and filled in with colour, could be hardly seen incised on a flat stone surface. This seems a truism, but the neglect of these plain axioms causes many mistakes in decorative art. Mr. Redgrave says: “A design must be bad which applies the same treatment to different materials.” He further says: “The position of the ornament requires special consideration. The varied quantities, bolder relief, and coarser execution are not only allowable, but absolutely necessary, at heights considerably above the eye. Moreover, each fabric has its own peculiar lustre, texture, &c. Thus, in the use of hangings, curtains, &c., the design might be suitable in silk, and coarse or dull in woollen.”[91]
Here I venture to differ from Mr. Redgrave. Perspective is as much to be respected in decoration as in pictures, near to the eye; and the gradation in size and colour, as the ornament travels up into height or fades into distance, is a phase of pleasure which should not be checked by enlargement of form or reinforcement of colouring.
It is hardly necessary to warn our artists against a sort of design which is conventional, yet had its own meaning in the beginning. This is to be found in Indian carvings and embroideries of a certain date, or imitating the works of that distant period. It proceeded from a hideous worship of monstrous Dravidian divinities. Their statues are to be found, surrounded by coarsely designed patterns, in the temple architecture of the first and second centuries. Its characteristics are idols in niches or shrines, distorted in form or attitude; foliage of unnatural, twisted plants, added to the recurring of the lotus and tree of life; or animals destroying each other, or kneeling in worship to the idols. These ugly designs are purely conventional. Fergusson suggests that they were introduced into Mexico in the fourth or fifth centuries A.D. by Buddhism.[92]
Those many-armed, sometimes many-faced divinities drove out the beautiful Aryan types, which, however, resumed their sway when the wave of the Renaissance flowed back to India, and was remodelled by Oriental taste to the lovely designs we find in the Taj Mahal.