The Bases of Design

by Walter Crane

Only about forty or fifty years ago Japan was practically in a mediæval condition, its arts and handicrafts in a most fertile and flourishing condition of living traditions; but that very quickness and alertness, that receptivity and artistic impressionableness which has enabled them to produce such a mass of wonderful work in so many branches of cunning craftsmanship, have exposed them to the modern European influences, which, however they may have, in the process of rapid assimilation, contributed to their material power as a nation in the modern capitalistic and industrial sense, have had most disastrous commercializing and deteriorating effects upon Japanese art and handicraft, leading to hasty work and cheap and gaudy production—merely to catch the demand.

PANEL IN CARVED AND INLAID WOOD FROM THE MOSQUE OF TOOLOON IN CAIRO. FOURTEENTH OR FIFTEENTH CENTURY SARACENIC.

Artistic and racial traditions, however, die hard. Even in Western Europe, in constant intercourse and intercommunication as we now are, and while international influence tends to soften and blend racial differences, and social relations to mix them, elements which differentiate the Teuton from the Latin, the Celt from the Saxon, still survive. In the process of the adoption of even the same ideas each race, each nation, gives a different interpretation to them, just as different individuals will give a different interpretation in drawing from the same model. The character is not changed by the new dress, and the dress becomes influenced by the wearer. Thus, in adopting ideas and forms of art, a new direction or character is developed owing to the racial instincts of the people adopting them.

German Renascence work, for instance, may be full of details, the forms of which come from Italy or Greece, but the combination and treatment, the application of them, become characteristically German—characteristically full of detail, and fantastic, with a tendency to be overloaded and restless, like their Gothic work. Such variations of the same type among different peoples may be likened to the variations of language in the same country, where the same language is spoken, but with a different accent.

It is this difference of accent now, under our complex modern life, which makes the chief difference in forms of art, and which betrays racial influence. The actual systems of building pattern, of pattern forms, methods of drawing and modelling figures, and the various handicrafts have all been discovered long ago, but it is in their recombination and adaptation—our interpretation and use of them, and in the power of variation and expression, that modern invention and predilection tell.

It would be interesting to endeavour to symbolize the fundamental racial characteristics and preferences by certain typical forms and colours in procession.

The races inhabiting the warm countries, southern and eastern, would be distinguished by emphatic contrasting colours and patterns. Just as the tiger owes his barred coat to his habit of hiding in coverts and jungles, where the bright sunlight falls through the tall grasses and palms in stripes; so where the contrast of light and shade is so sharp as in Africa, there appears to be a deeply-rooted preference for barred colours and striped patterns among the dark race, which they have carried with them to America, and which curiously reappears as a necessary part of the equipment of the sham Ethiopian serenader in our streets.

The black and white or red and white barred courses characteristic of Arabian and Moorish architecture have been alluded to before, and, though they have been used in other countries, they always suggest the country which seems to have given them birth.

Supposing, then, we wanted to express in a typical symbolical way the racial preferences and characteristics in ornamental art, a black and white barred shield and a palm might be appropriate pattern emblems for the African or the Moor; while the Egyptian would naturally bear a lotus and a scarabæus, with a winged globe for a standard; the Assyrian a tree of life; the Persian would bear the flame-shaped flower, and the device of Ormuzd and Ahrimanes contending for the mastery; the Indian would carry the palmette and a peacock, and would share with the Arab the geometric star-form and richly floriated robes; the Chinese would show the dragon blazon, and carry the peony; the Japanese the red disk of the rising sun, and a bough of plum blossom; the Turanian the crescent and the star; the Greek the anthemion, and the figure of Pallas Athene; the Roman an eagle standard, and an image of Mars; the Scandinavian a raven, and a runic knot. These might represent the ancient world of art. The modern and western races it would be more difficult to symbolize in so primitive and typical a manner, since all of them have borrowed so largely from the ancient sources, and are themselves composed of such mixed and complex elements.