The Bases of Design

by Walter Crane

This is one reason why a Gothic cathedral is so impressive. We see the growth of an organic style, starting, perhaps, with the round arch and massive Norman pier, and passing through the transition to the lancet arch of the early pointed to the moulded arch and the clustered shaft and foliated capital, with the ribbed, vaulted roof covering the long nave with a network of recurring constructive lines, and meeting overhead in carved bosses, or spreading into Tudor fans. Or we may mark the gradual evolution of the window from the round headed, deep-set loop-hole of the Byzantine and Norman period into the long lancet-pointed panel of geometric glass; and see then how by degrees the light, first divided into two by a shaft, suggested the clustering of many lights together, as in great western or eastern windows, dividing them by mullions breaking into geometric tracery in the pointed heads; and thus raising a beautiful pierced screen of stone to hold the coloured glass and reveal its splendour against the full light of the sky.

Can we name the inventors of these changes, the evolvers of these beauties of our constructive art? Do we not feel that by their very nature they could not have been claimed by any individual mind alone or have reached perfection in a single lifetime? They are the natural result of a free and vital condition in art, moved by the unity of faith and feeling, wherein men work together as brothers in unity, each free in his own sphere, but never isolated, and never losing his sense of relation to the rest.

Thus we get the harmonious effect of a great orchestra, where, though every variety of instrument may be played, all are subordinated, or co-ordinated, to the musical scheme, and produce that impression of power and sweetness by cadences that may be now soft as the whispers of the summer winds over a field of wheat, and anon sweep like a tempest with the fury of thundering waves upon the utmost shores of sound.

The emotions produced by such forms of collective art lift the mind out of the personal region altogether; they are akin, indeed, to the feelings awakened in the presence of wild nature. We seem to hear the voice of Time himself out of the caverns of the past, the song of life, like that of a child in the sunlight, and the half-articulate, pathetic murmur of the voices of birds and beasts; the hush of the wood at noon-tide, the transfiguration of the afterglow, and the mystery of night.

In the primitive ornament of all peoples we find the same or similar typical forms constantly recurring, the germs of pattern design afterwards developed, complicated, and refined upon: the chequer, the zigzag, the fret, the circle, the spiral volute, the twisting scroll—can we ascribe their invention to any individual mind or hand? Can the mechanician tell us who were the inventors of the wheel, the lever, the mode of producing fire, the canoe, the paddle, the spade, the plough, the vessel of clay, the axe, the hammer, the needle, or even spinning and weaving? Yet they are inventions of incalculable importance to human life, which without them could not maintain itself, much less build upon them, as it were, the vast and complex structure of modern invention, of science, and of art.

A form in ornament once found, however, is repeated. The eye grows accustomed to it, takes delight in it, and expects its recurrence. It becomes established by use and wont, and is often associated with fundamental ideas of life and the universe itself. Thus we get traditional ornament, handed on from generation to generation, its origin and meaning perhaps lost—like the pictorial significance of the individual letters of our alphabet, which everybody uses, but which require a special kind of study and research to explain their real meaning and original forms.

Side by side with this liking for the accustomed, this demand for the expected, appears to have grown up another feeling, a love of change and variety equally natural and human.

NATURAL VARIATION IN REPETITION OF ORNAMENTAL FORMS. PRIMARY SCHOOL CHILDREN DRAWING ON THE BLACKBOARD, PHILADELPHIA.