A church dictionary

by Walter Farquhar Hook

fig.7.

The exclusive use of circles led to great sameness of character, and the first effort to avoid this was by the introduction of convex-sided triangles, sometimes alone (fig. 5.), sometimes enclosed in or accompanying circles (fig. 3). Later still this triangle is resolved into a three-lobed figure, of which, however, the triangle is still the ruling form (fig. 6.). All these characteristics belong to the earlier class of Geometrical tracery, which is called concentric, because each perfect figure is either itself a circle, or is composed of circles or parts of circles struck from centres within the resultant figure, and themselves in the circumference of a circle, whose centre is the centre of the whole system. Thus in fig. 2. eight circles are struck either from the same centre, or points in the circumference of a circle concentric with the containing circle. In figs. 3. and 5. the triangles are composed of parts of circles, of which the centres are the opposite angles, and as the triangles are equilateral, all the centres are in the circumference of the circle whose centre is the centre of the triangle. This may be called the first law of the concentric Geometrical. It has two corollaries, 1. that each line forms a part of one figure, only, and, 2. that each circle, or part of a circle, touches, or cuts, but never flows into, another. As this law is broken, its consequences also are reversed; and we get an excentric Geometrical, in which there is no one ruling centre within the figure; but, on the contrary, the spirit of the style consists in having curves struck from centres alternately within and without the resulting figure, as in the accompanying trilobate and tricuspidate triangle (fig. 7.); but still the lines cut or touch, and never flow into one another. In fig. 8. we have lines each forming parts of two figures, which is the same as fig. 5., with the omission of the lower side of each triangle, and the consequent rejection of a centre of construction, i. e. from concentric the figure has become excentric. This makes a very near approach to the flowing Decorated, which indeed it becomes by the reversal of the last remaining rule, i. e. by suffering the curves which are struck from circles within and without the resulting figure, and which already form part of two figures, to flow into another, instead of cutting or touching. By this process, fig. 4. is altered into the ordinary reticulated tracery of the flowing Decorated (fig. 9.); and fig. 10., instead of fig. 1., becomes a normal form.

fig. 8.

fig. 9.

fig. 10.

This introduction of curves of contrary flexure is the ruling principle of flowing tracery, and its results are far too various to be pursued here. We must, however, observe, that in England the resulting forms have a great tendency to become pear-shaped, i.e. with the lower end pointed and the upper round and turned downward; whereas, on the Continent, while our Decorated was stiffening into the Perpendicular, their Geometrical was waving upward in their Flamboyant, which differs, as to mere pattern of tracery, from our flowing, in having both ends of each figure acutely pointed, and the upper point with an additional curve upward. Our own Perpendicular is scarcely worthy to be called tracery; its normal form is represented by mere intersections of vertical and horizontal lines (fig. 11.).