The Bases of Design

by Walter Crane

CHAPTER V.—OF THE CLIMATIC INFLUENCE IN DESIGN—CHIEFLY IN REGARD TO COLOUR AND PATTERN

WE have seen how largely Design in its manifold forms has been influenced by various physical conditions and necessities, and in pursuing the subject we can hardly fail to note that, outside those more strictly defined technical conditions we have been considering, there are certain broad controlling influences which have determined, and still determine, essential differences of character as between the products of one country and another; differences which, despite the complex network of international commerce and exchange, tending ever to obscure and confuse those native and natural differences by mixture and fusion, still persist. Indeed, as Manchester manufacturers and merchants well know, in the matter of pattern and colour they have to be taken into serious account, since we have unfortunately taken upon ourselves the responsibility of supplying Eastern markets, substituting our own ideas of pattern and colour in fabrics for the original native ones—or rather, sending back to the native Chinese and Indian second-hand notions of their own colours and patterns.

Now to what principal cause may we trace these broad differences in the choice and treatment of colour and design in different countries—those variations which enable us to assign each to its native home, north, south, east, or west, upon this parti-coloured globe of ours?

If we were to endeavour to mark upon a chart in some bright colour, say red or yellow, all those countries where, given a certain organized social life of civilization of some kind, bright sunshine was the rule, and indicate proportionally its lesser degrees in others, we should get a vivid notion of the general distribution of the colour sense: we should naturally come to the conclusion that it is to the source of all our life, light, and heat—to the sun—that we must also trace our colour sense, which is a part of the sense of sight itself. It is to the influence of sunlight, direct or indirect, and to its prevalence in a greater or lesser degree in different countries, then, that we may attribute the differences of taste and feeling for colour and pattern which mark the different quarters of the inhabited earth.

We know how we are affected by the absence or presence of sunlight in our own country, and by a heavy or light atmosphere, and are sensitive to the changes of the weather, which no doubt have their influence upon our work, and we know how different colours look in different degrees and qualities of light.

We have only to follow the pattern book of Nature herself, indeed, and see how distinctly she paints upon the globe the different zones of climate in different coloured flowers, birds, and animals corresponding with those differences; or follow her system of coloration in the ordinary procession of the seasons, without going out of our own country.

With the return of the sun and lengthening days and the new awakening of life in the spring, a delicate bloom overspreads the landscape, the dark wintry woodlands burst into blossoms and clouds of foliage, taking every tint, from the palest green to delicate amber and red; while the meadows show the rich moist green of new springing grass, embroidered with flowers, yellow, white, and blue; and the blue sky seems to repeat itself in the copses where the hyacinths grow. Gradually, as spring turns to summer, the colours deepen, the greens of trees and grass grow fuller, the flowers grow brighter and more varied in hue, crimsons and reds and purples are seen, and gardens become feasts of colour; and as the cornfields ripen scarlet poppies mingle with the gold, and the leaves of the trees, having reached their darkest tint, as autumn nears, become tinged with yellow and brown, and, before they fall, turn into wonderful harmonies of russet and gold, in part recalling, though in lower tones, some of the colours of spring.

The ripe fruit in the orchards gives a deeper note of richer and brighter colour, when the procession of flowers has reached the threshold of winter, bare and cold, though not colourless—its colours being more metallic—the silver of frost and mists, and the ruddy gold of the winter sun gilding the black trees, whereon mosses and lichens take the place of leaves and flowers, and sombre yews and hollies and firs, instead of the bright greens of spring, until the whole is veiled in ice and snow.

This drama of expressive colour is enacted before our eyes every year—those of us, at least, who are fortunate enough to live in the country, and are observers; and even to town dwellers the tale of colour to a certain extent is told by the importation of flowers, or even by the textiles in drapers' windows, or costumes in the street, as humanity responds to the approach of the sun by wearing lighter and fairer colours in the spring and summer, and getting darker and more sombre again in the autumn and winter.

We have only to glance at the various manifestations of our home arts to note these changes with the characteristic colours of our varied landscape reflected, not only in the works of our painters, but in the half-tones of our textiles and wall-papers, and throughout our decorative design, which for form, too, owes so much to the flora of our native land.