I once designed an inlaid floor for the centre of a picture gallery. The scale was rather large, and the work was bold. One kept to large, bold, and simple forms—water-lilies and broad leaves, swans, scallop shells, and zigzag borders. Forms which can be readily produced by the brush would generally answer well for inlay, since they would have simple and sweeping boundaries and flat silhouette. And for inlay one is practically designing in black, white, or tinted silhouette. This makes it very good practice for all designers, both for the invention it tends to call out, owing to the limited resources and restriction as to forms, and also as giving facility and readiness in blocking in the masses of pattern.
The water-colour painter, too, would find that blocking in in flat local colour all his forms and the colours of his background was an excellent method of preparatory work, and afforded good practice in direct painting, since he could add his secondary shades and tints in the same manner until the work was brought to completion, while preserving that fresh effect of the undisturbed washes which is the great charm of water-colour.
Grouping of Allied Forms
In seeking forms to group together harmoniously—which is the whole object of composition—we shall find that much the same kind of principle holds good whether we are arranging a still-life group or designing a wall-paper or textile. It is only a difference of degree and scale. In the one case we are designing in the solid with the actual objects, before drawing or painting them as a harmonious pictorial composition; in the other we are arranging forms upon the flat with a view to harmonious composition with a strictly decorative purpose in view. In the first we are dealing with concrete form in the round; in the second, generally speaking, with abstract form in the flat.
But in either case we want harmony. We cannot, therefore, throw together a number of forms unrelated to each in line, contour, or meaning. We seek in composing or designing not contradictions, but correspondences of form, with just an element of contrast to give flavour and point. In grouping pottery, for instance, we should not place big and little or squat and slender forms close together without connecting links of some kind. We want a series of good lines that help one another and lead up to one another in a kind of friendly co-operation. Broad smooth forms and rounded surfaces, again, require relief and a certain amount of contrast. We feel the need of crisp leaves or flowers, perhaps, with our pottery form. We may safely go far, however, on the principle of grouping similar or allied forms, giving our composition as a whole either a curvilinear or angular character in its general lines, masses, and forms, on the principle of like to like. This will entirely depend upon our choice of grouping of form; but the more by our selection we make our composition tend distinctly in the one direction or the other, the more character it will be likely to possess.
Grouping