A stone-carving from the end of a tomb in the same cathedral—that of Bishop John Morgan, 1504—of a griffin with a shield shows an emphatic repetition of the inclosing line of the arched recess in the curves of the wings which follow it.
There is also a charming corbel of a half-figure of an angel, which, though somewhat defaced, shows the architectural sense very strongly in its design—the vertical droop of the wing-feathers inclosing the figure repeating and continuing the vertical lines of the shafts and the subsidiary mouldings of the arrangement of the drapery, and its termination in crisp foliated forms, which pleasantly counterbalance the set of the scale feathers of the wings and break the semicircular mouldings of the base of the corbel, repeating those of the shafts above.
Adaptability in Design
Adaptation to spaces upon a flat surface is also illustrated in some tile patterns from the same place. They are simple and rude but very effective bits of spacing, and show a thorough grasp of the principles we have been considering—if, indeed, it is so far conscious work at all. But whether or not the outcome of a tradition which seemed to be almost instinctive with mediæval workmen—a tradition which yet left the individual free, and under which design was a thing of life and growth, ever adapting itself to new conditions, and grafting freely new inventions to flower in fresh phantasy upon the ancient stock—the movement in art in the Middle Ages, exhibiting as it does a gradual growth and a constant vitality, always accompanying and adapting itself to structural changes, to life and habit, was really more analogous to the development of mechanical science in our own day, where each new machine is allied to its predecessors, though it supplants them. The one law being adaptability, the one aim to apply means to ends, and more and more perfectly, inessentials and superfluities are shed, and invention triumphs. It is, too, a collective advance, since each engineer, each inventor, builds upon the experience of both his forerunners and his fellow-workers, and everything is brought to an immediately practical test.