The Bases of Design

by Walter Crane

DELFT DISH.
CHINESE PLATE PATTERNS.

For these reasons, bearing in mind the constructive suggestion of their origin, the typical examples given of border systems have held their own from the earliest times as fundamentally adaptable to horizontal extension, while they also adapt themselves to endless variation in design and treatment.

Just as, for the same reasons, the systems of pattern adapted for indefinite extension over a surface (both vertically and horizontally), and represented by the plans I have termed persistent, have held, and still hold, their place in the world of design. These latter, too, it will be noticed, are all constructed upon, or controlled by, the same basis—the rectangular diaper.

There seems something fixed and fundamental about these linear constructive bases of pattern design from the point of view of what might be termed decorative or linear logic, and apart from their origin in actual constructive necessity before spoken of, and, as far as soundness of principle can guide us in designing, we cannot go wrong in obeying them, however various the superstructure of floral fancy we may build upon them. The acknowledgment of the principle alone, of course, will not make us successful designers, any more than the skeleton makes a living figure. We cannot do without thought, fancy, and vivifying imagination, guided by the sense of beauty, as well as of use, to produce design worth having in any direction.

To trace out this clue of utility fully and adequately through all the varieties of the vast province of artistic design would need, not a single chapter, but a large and amply illustrated volume. I have only attempted to call your attention to certain typical forms and instances where the bearings of the necessities of use and service have decided those forms, and must always influence the decorative designer, who should never forget them for a moment.

I. TYPICAL BORDER SYSTEMS.

2. PERSISTENT PATTERN PLANS, RECTANGULAR BASIS.

Nothing has degraded the form of common things so much as a mistaken love of ornament. The production of things of beauty for ordinary use has declined with the gradual separation of artist and craftsman. Decoration, or ornament, we have been too much accustomed to consider as accidental and unrelated addition to an object, not as an essential expression and organic part of it; not as a beauty which may satisfy us in simple line, form, or proportion, combined with fitness to purpose, even without any surface ornament at all. The more we are able to keep before our minds the place and purpose of any design we have to make, the more we realize the conditions of use and service of which it must be a part, as well as the capacities of the material of which it is to be made; and the more we understand its constructive necessities, the more successful our design is likely to be, and the nearer we shall approach to bridging the unfortunate gulf which too often exists between the designer and the craftsman.