The Bases of Design

by Walter Crane

The illustrations given exemplify different varieties of treatment, and also show how design in iron-work, in addition to the influence of the material, is controlled by the spirit and period of the architecture of which it becomes part.

We see this in comparing the free Gothic and rather fantastic forms of the gates of the south porch of S. Laurence at Nuremberg with the symmetric and formal screen from S. Thomas's, Salisbury (seventeenth or eighteenth century), or both with the flowing Renascence scroll balustrade from Rothenburg.

A most important branch of design is that of textiles, whether we regard it in its close association with daily life and the wants of humanity, with domestic comfort, personal adornment, or ecclesiastical splendour. It is, perhaps, the most intimate of the arts of design, and here again we shall find the control of material and method always asserting themselves.

Textile designing may be broadly divided into two main kinds: (1) that which is an incorporated part of the textile itself, as in woven patterns, carpets, and tapestry; and (2) that which is designed as a surface decoration to be printed or worked on the textile, as in cotton, cloth, cretonne, silk, velvet, and embroidery.

Into the many technicalities and complexities of the modern power-loom it is not now necessary to enter; but the main essential conditions it is always necessary for the textile designer to have in mind are that his design has to be produced by the crossing of threads in the loom, by warp and weft, as the sets of threads are called—the warp being the vertical threads, forming the web and foundation of the fabric; the woof or weft being the horizontal thread woven through it at right angles.

LADY AT A HAND LOOM, from Erasmus's "Praise of Folly" (1676).

DIAGRAMS SHOWING THE PRINCIPLES OF THE LOOM.

RECTANGULAR BASIC CONDITIONS GOVERNING THE STRUCTURE OF ALL TEXTILE PATTERN.
ELEMENTARY PRINCIPAL OF THE FORMATION OF PATTERN IN WEAVING.
THE REED OR COMB USED TO DRIVE HOME THE THREADS.
DIAGRAMS TO SHOW ACTION OF THE HEDDLES WHICH LIFT THE HORIZONTAL SETS OF THREADS ALTERNATELY TO ALLOW THE SHUTTLE TO PASS TO & FRO WITH THE WEFT.

In the simple low warp hand-loom, the warp being in two sets, the alternate threads are lifted by the heddles alternately. These heddles are connected with treadles worked by the feet of the weaver, who, with his hand, passes his shuttle with the woof backwards and forwards through the interstices thus left, and weaves the plain cloth. To make patterns, various wefts in different colours are added. This is the fundamental simple principle of weaving, which in a still simpler form may be seen in the making of tapestry and carpets in the high warp loom, where the threads of the warp are stretched vertically upon rollers in a framework, at which the worker sits and works in by his hands the different colours of the pattern horizontally, twisting and knotting the threads in through the warps on which the pattern has been marked, and pressing it together by a sort of comb to make it firm and solid; as the fabric is completed it is rolled up upon the roller.