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THE PENNSYLVANIA
STATE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
ATET
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VIVER
TE PEN
LISO
QISAL.
1855
THE ARTS LIBRARY
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காலை

















TEXT BOOKS OF ORNAMENTAL DESIGN.
By LEWIS F. DAY.
NATURE IN ORNAMENT.


TEXT BOOKS OF ORNAMENTAL DESIGN
By LEWIS F. DAY.
Price Three-and-Sixpence each, bound in Cloth.
Introductory Volume.
SOME PRINCIPLES OF EVERY-DAY ART.
Second Edition, revised, with further Illustrations.
With numerous Illustrations in the text.
THE ANATOMY OF PATTERN.
Third Edition.
With Thirty-five full page Illustrations.
THE PLANNING OF ORNAMENT.
Third edition.
With Thirty-eight full page Illustrations.
THE APPLICATION OF ORNAMENT.
Second Edition.
With Forty-two full page Illustrations.
The three Text Books, bound in one
volume, cloth gilt, price Ten and Sixpence.





Plate 1.

512
SEN
CA
62
52
522
J Akerman, Photo lith London,
Fleur-de-Luce


TEXT BOOKS OF ORNAMENTAL DESIGN.
NATURE IN ORNAMENT.
BY
LEWIS F. DAY,
AUTHOR
OF
“EVERY-DAY
ART.'
WITH 123 PLATES AND 192
ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT.
SECOND EDITION, THIRD THOUSAND.
LONDON:
B. T. BATSFORD, 94 HIGH HOLBORN.
1894.
10008


P1+0. 4 .
D339
1894


PREFACE.
0.96: 338
The scope of my subject explains, and
justifies I hope, a volume exceeding in bulk
the three former text-books of this series
rolled into one.
That scope is perhaps sufficiently expressed
in the words “Nature in Ornament.” It may,
however, be as well to say here that my aim
has been, not so much to show the obvious
adaptability of plant form to the purpose of
ornament (which has been done already, more
than once, and more or less adequately), as
to demonstrate the natural development of
ornament from nature, to show its constant
relation to natural form, and to deduce from
the practice of past-masters of the craft of
design something like principles, which may
put the student in the way of turning nature
to account in ornament of his own.
LEWIS F. DAY.
13, Mecklenburg Square, London,
September 7th, 1891.
NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
LITTLE alteration beyond verbal correction has been
made in this edition; but some few illustrations, which
in the first came out unsatisfactorily, have been drawn
anew.
L. F. D.


NOTE.
I have to thank my friend Mr. Walter Crane for
my frontispiece, Mr. William Morris for Plate 87,
and Mr. Heywood Sumner for Plate 56 and illus-
tration 49. I am further indebted to various gentle-
men for permission to reproduce designs belonging to
them; to the proprietors of the 'Art Journal for
Plate 22; to Mr. Alfred Carpenter for Plate 58;
to Messrs. Erskine Beveridge & Co. for illustra-
tion III; to Mr. Edmund Evans for illustration
191; to Messrs. Heaton, Butler, & Bayne and the
Editor of the Journal of Decorative Art' for,
illustration 66; to Messrs. Jeffrey & Co. for Plates
14, 23, 37, 38, 72, 86, and illustrations 132, 135,
142; to Messrs. Maw Ô Co. for Plates 39 and
102; to Messrs. Turnbull & Stockdale for Plates
48, 61, and 106; and to Mr. John Wilson for
Plate 89 and illustrations 133 and 134.
L. F. D.


TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PAGE
:
1.- INTRODUCTORY .. .. .. .. .. .. .. I
II.-ORNAMENT IN NATURE .. .. .. .. ..
III.-NATURE IN ORNAMENT .. ..
IV.-THE SIMPLIFICATION OF NATURAL FORMS
V.—THE ELABORATION OF NATURAL FORMS .. 69
VI.-CONSISTENCY IN THE MODIFICATION OF
NATURE .. .. .. .. .. ...
VII.- PARALLEL RENDERINGS .. .. .. .. ..
VIII.—MORE PARALLELS .. .. .. .. ...
· IX.-TRADITION IN DESIGN ...
X.-TREATMENT .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 165
XI.-ANIMALS IN ORNAMENT . .... .. 177
XII.—THE ELEMENT OF THE GROTESQUE
XIII.-STILL LIFE IN ORNAMENT .. .. ..
XIV.-SYMBOLIC ORNAMENT .. .. .. .. ..
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LIST OF PLATES.
I. FLEUR DE LUCE--treatment of the Iris by Walter
Crane.
2. JAPANESE ROSES--from various Japanese printed books.
3. BUDDING BRANCHIES-drawn from nature.
4. NATURAL LEAF-SHEATHS—from a Japanese botany
book.
5. VARIOUS BERRIES-drawn from nature.
6. SOME SEED-VESSELS—from a Japanese botany book.
7. PODS—drawn from nature.
8. FLOWER AND LEAF BUDS-drawn from nature.
9. OAK AND OAK GALLS—tile panel, L.F.D.
10. NATURAL GROWTH-from a Japanese botany book.
II. GREEK SCROLLS.
12. ROMAN SCROLLS.
13. ACANTHUS SCULPTURE AND BRUSH-WORK-illustra-
tive diagram.
14. TWO VERSIONS OF THE SAME FRIEZE DESIGN, L.F.D.
TJ. DETAILS OF ROMAN MOSAIC—from Carthage, B.M.
16. TRANSITIONAL SCROLL-German, by D. Hopfer.
17. PAINTED WALL PANEL—from the Palazzo det-T, hy
Giulio Romano.


List of Plates.
18. LUSTRE DISHES—of the sixteenth century-S.K.M.
19. GERMAN GOTHIC SCROLL—from tapestry in the museum
at Nuremberg.
20. ARAB-ESQUE RENAISSANCE ORNAMENT-German.
21. ORNAMENTAL BOUQUET—of the seventeenth century-
design for goldsmith's work.
22. BOOK-COVER—designed by Owen Jones.
23. SUNFLOWERS AND ROSES-wall-paper by B. J. Talbert.
24. DETAILS OF GREEK TERRA-COTTA—from vases at
Naples and at the B.M.
25. DETAILS OF ANCIENT COPTIC EMBROIDERIES-S.K.M.
26. DETAIL FROM AN INDIAN KINKAUB-modern tradi-
tional design.
27. DETAILS FROM POMPEII--wall painting and mosaic.
28. CARVED CABINET DOOR—from Cairo,S.K.M.
29. ENGLISH GOTHIC DETAILS—from various sources.
30. INDIAN RENDERINGS OF THE IRIS—painting and
damascening.
31. INLAID FLOWER-PANELS—L.F.D.
32. LYONS SILK-WEAVING OF THE SEVENTEENTH OR
- EIGHTEENTH CENTURY-Dresden Museum.
33. DETAILS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY FOLIAGE-from
old English silks.
34. SILK DAMASK OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY-Italian.
35. OLD LACE-ivory point, Munich Museum.
36. DETAILS OF HAMMERED WORK-German Gothic.
37. WALL-PAPER-—conventional growth—L.F.D.
38. WALL-PAPER FOUNDED UPON NATURE-L.F.D.


List of Plates.
xi
39. TILE PANEL BASED ON THE LILY-L.F.D.
40. CHRYSANTHEMUM PATTERN-comparatively natural-
L.F.D.
41. ARCHAIC GREEK FOLIAGE—from a bronze cup-B.M.
42. MODERN GOTHIC LILY PANEL-B. J. Talbert.
43. LILY ORNAMENT—Italian inlay, Siena.
44. EIGHTEENTH CENTURY FLOWER RENDERINGS-from
old English silks.
45. A RENAISSANCE MEDLEY-S. Croce, Florence.
46. PEA-POD ORNAMENT—pilaster by Brunellesco.
47. DUTCH AND GERMAN CONVENTIONS—of the seven-
teenth century.
48. SCROLL AND FOLIAGE-L.F.D.
49. ANCIENT COPTIC EMBROIDERY-S.K.M.
50. VINE AND OLIVE PANEL-Lateran Museum, Rome.
51. ITALIAN GOTHIC VINE—from Giotto's Tower, Florence.
52. VINE AND APPLE-TREE FRIEZE-L.F.D.
53. CLASSIC RENDERINGS OF THE VINE-B.M.
54. ARAB VINE PANEL-showing one-half of the design.
55. VINE SCULPTURE-Lateran Museum.
56. STENCILLED VINE DECORATION-Heywood Sumner.
57. COPTIC VINE ORNAMENT—from ancient embroideries-
S.K.M.
58. ENGLISH GOTHIC VINE-stall-end, from Christchurch
Priory.
59. VINE IN STAINED GLASS-L.F.D.
60. VINE BY DÜRER—from a woodcut.
61. CONVENTIONAL VINE-LEAF PATTERN-L.F.D.


хіі
List of Plates.
62. ARTIFICIAL RENDERINGS OF THE ROSE—from English
silks of the eighteenth century.
63. TUDOR ROSE—from the bronze doors to Henry VII.'s
chapel.
64. TUDOR ROSE—from a stall-arm, Henry VII.'s chapel.
65. ITALIAN VERSION OF A PERSIAN CARPET--rose and
tulip-S.K.M.
66. MARBLE INLAY—from the Taj Mahal, India.
67. INDIAN LOTUS PANEL-stone-carving, from the Buddhist
Tope at Amarivati.
68. DETAILS OF BUDDHIST STONE-CARVING-lotus flowers,
&c., from Amarivati.
69. THE PINK—various renderings of the flower.
70. EIGHTEENTH CENTURY VERSIONS OF THE PINK-
English.
71. POPPY BY GHIBERTI—from the bronze doors of the
Baptistery at Florence.
72. POPPY PATTERN-wall-paper, L.F.D.
73. POMEGRANATES—Chinese colour-printing and German
incising.
74. GOTHIC OAK ORNAMENT~after Pugin.
75. COMPARATIVELY NATURAL LILY PANEL-L.F.D.
76. ORCHID AND FUNGUS PATTERN-old Chinese em-
broidery.
77. CONVENTIONAL TREE WORK--Indian stone carving.
78. PERSIAN FOLIAGE-silk-weaving of the sixteenth cen-
tury, Lyons Museum.
79. DETAILS OF EGYPTIAN SCULPTURE-B.M.
O. DETAILS OF NINEVITE SCULPTURE-B.M.


List of Plates.
xiii
81. DETAILS OF GREEK VASE-PAINTING-B.M.
82. ROMAN SCULPTURE--lemon and apple trees--Lateran
Museum.
83. SIXTEENTH CENTURY GERMAN DESIGN-Peter Quentel.
84. LATE GOTHIC “PINE” ORNAMENTS—from various
textiles.
85. CONVENTIONAL TULIP FRIEZE-L.F.D.
86. PEONY FRIEZE—by W. J. Muckley.
87. FRUIT PATTERN-wall-paper by Wm. Morris.
88. CHINESE LOTUS-porcelain painting.
89. COBEA SCANDENS—linen damask—L.F.D.
90. CONVENTIONAL DANDELION-L.F.D.
91. GERMAN GOTHIC THISTLE-SCROLL - wood-carving,
S.K.M.
92. JAPANESE CRANES—from a printed book.
93. JAPANESE TORTOISES—from a printed book.
94. PERUVIAN ECCENTRICITIES—from fragments of stuffs. .
95. SICILIAN SILK PATTERNS-of about the thirteenth
century.
96. SIXTEENTH CENTURY WOOD-CARVING - S. Pietro,
Perugia.
97. CONVENTIONAL BUTTERFLIES—Chinese and Japanese.
98. MODERN GERMAN RENAISSANCE-by Anton Seder.
99. SEVENTEENTH CENTURY SCROLL-WORK-from a book
of designs, published 1682, by S. Gribelin.
100. SIXTEENTH CENTURY ARABESQUE—Italian.
101. LATE GOTHIC ILLUMINATION — The Annunciation.


xiv
List of Plates.
102. LUSTRE PLAQUES—L.F.D.
103. STUDIES IN ORNAMENTAL FIGURE-WORK-by Holbein.
104. GROTESQUE PANEL-by Sansovino.
105. GROTESQUE FIGURE—by Marco Dente da Ravenna.
106. GROTESQUE SCROLL-cretonne, L.F.D.
107. KELTIC INTERLACED ORNAMENT—from a MS. in the
B.M.
108. CONVENTIONAL WING FORMS — sixteenth century
Italian carving.
109. DIAPERS WITH A MEANING—Japanese.
IIO. EARLY GREEK WAVE AND LOTUS DIAPER—twelfth or
thirteenth century B.C.
III. SEAWEED BORDERS-L.F.D.
112. SEAWEED PATTERN-L.F.D.
113. PEACOCK-FEATHER PATTERN-Japanese.
114. PEACOCK-FEATHER DIAPERS—from various sources.
115. PEACOCK-FEATHER PATTERN—Turkish embroidery.
116. ROCOCO SCROLL-WORK-by Philippo Passarini.
117. SEVENTEENTH CENTURY SCROLL-WORK — German,
by Nicolaus Drusse.
118. POMPEIAN WALL PAINTING.
119. INDIAN NAJA-stone-carving from the Amarivati Tope.
120. CONVENTIONAL TREES-- from various sources.
121. LATE GOTHIC FLEUR-DE-LIS TRACERY—from wood.
carvings at S.K.M.
122. MARGUERITE PANELS-wood-carving.
123. SYMBOLIC ORNAMENT-book-cover-L.F.D.


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
IN THE TEXT.
PAGE
:
1. Various tendrils .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 14
2. Vine tendrils .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 15
3. Romanesque ornamentation of the stem-Ely ..
4. Part of a Pompeian candelabrum--B.M. .. .. 19
5. Renaissance use of pea-pods (Prato Cathedral) . 20
6. Unequally divided oak-leaf .. .. .. ..
7. Chinese rendering of Wistaria-old embroidery ..
8. Acanthus leaves reduced to brush-work .. .. 34
9. Simple acanthus leafage .. .. .. .. .. ..
10. Step between wave and acanthus scroll-Roman
mosaic, B.M. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 36
11. Olive-like leafage .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 37
12. Oak-like leafage .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 37
13. Vine-like acanthus leafage, from the Jubé
Limoges .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 38
14. Crocket-like foliage, from Limoges . .
15. Modern modification of Classic leafage .. ..
16. Seventeenth century scroll—Boulle .. .. .. 41
17. Details of Romanesque ornament .. .. .. .. 42
18. Details of early Gothic ornament-stained glass ..
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xvi List of Illustrations in the Text.
PAGE
19. Spiral Persian scroll .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 44
20. Iris-like details of Persian ornament-sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries .. .. .. .. .. .. 45
21. Details of early Persian ornament-tenth to
twelfth century .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 46
22. Sixteenth century arabesque details—German .. 47
23. Rosette in Rouen faïence .. .. .. .. .. ..
24. Chinese foliage, not easy to identify .. .. .
25. Bouquet of conventional ornament-Persian porce-
lain, S.K.M. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 48
26. Abstract ornament, not free from foliation
27. Conventional Chinese flower forms .. .. .. .. 50
28. Conventional Chinese foliage .. .. .. .. ..
29. Rectangular acorn patterns-old German .. .. 53
30. Simplified thistle—by the late G. E. Street, R.A. 54
31. Gothic leaf border, wood-carving—Maidstone ..
32. Rosette or rose ?-German Gothic .. .. .. ..
33. Gothic leaf-and-flower border-wood-carving 55
34. Seed-vessels from nature .. .. .. .. .. ..
35. Conventional buds, or seed-vessels ?-marble inlay,
Florence .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
36. Conventional Greek ivy leaves and berries ..... 57
37. Japanese border, buds or fruits ? .. .. .. .. 58
38. Conventional tree-from a Sicilian silk .. .. .. 58
39. Simple Roman tree-mosaic, B.M. .. ..
40. Hawthorn crocket .. .. .. .. ..
41. Vine crocket .. .. .. .. .. ...
42. Late Gothic pomegranate-stencil pattern
43-4. Indian renderings of the poppy-niello
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List of Illustrations in the Text. xvii
61
PAGE
45. Greek border with lily buds .. .. .. .. ..
46. Early Gothic foliated ornament-pavement tiles .. 62
47. Natural and ornamental foliage-Early French .. 63
48. Bud-like ornamental forms-Gothic wood-carving .. 63
49. Peony simplified to form a stencil—by H. Sumner 64
50. Indian wood-carving .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 65
51. Gothic wood-carving .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
52. Greek that might be Gothic-stone-carving .. ..
53. Persian details which might be Gothic-porcelain of
the sixteenth or seventeenth century .. .. ..
54. Japanese treatment of the iris-embroidery .. .. 66
55. Wheat-ears, simplified or elaborated ?-seventeenth
century Italian silk .. .. .. .. .. .. . 68
56. Floral forms within floral forms—Italian velvet,
Persian design .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
57. Pomegranate berries arranged in bud-form-Per-
sian silk .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 74
58. Ornamental pomegranates—Italian velvet .. .. 75
59. Ornamental pomegranate-eighteenth century silk 76
60. Ornamental pomegranate-old German embroi-
dery .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 77
61. Foliated forms geometrically diapered-Japanese .. 78
62. Elaborated flower—from an embroidered Gothic
altar frontal .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 79
63. Elaborated flower—from a table-cover of German
embroidery, 1598 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 80
64. Bulbous hop-leaves--German Gothic wood-carving
65. Indian corn adapted to ornament-Italian wood-
carving .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 88


xviii
List of Illustrations in the Text.
PAGE
91
92
66. Rigid lines of the growth of corn turned to orna.
mental account-by the late C. Heaton .. .. 89
67. Artificial grace of line-Italian .. .. .. ..
68. Quasi-natural rendering of the lily—by Sammicheli
69. Quattro-cento lily-S. Bernardino, Perugia .. ..
70. Narcissus compelled into the way of ornament-
L.F.D. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 93
71. Incongruous treatment of the oak-Roman .. ..
72. Characterless design-Albertolli .. .. . .
73. Inconsistency between flower and leaf-Japanese 96
74. Graceful artificiality-Lyons silk, about 1700 ..
75. De-naturalised floral details—by Gribelin, 1682 ...
76. Confusion of effect without confusion of growth,
Persian tiles, S.K.M. .. .. .. .. .. .. 101
77. The vine in Assyrian sculpture-B.M. .. .. .. 106
78. Vine from a Greek vase—B.M. .. .. .. .. 108
79. Pompeian vine border-silver on bronze_Naples 109
80. Italian wood-carving—hop or vine ?–S.K.M. ...
81. Conventional Gothic vine and grapes—York .. III
82. Gothic vine with mulberry-like grape-bunches-
York .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 112
83. Conventional vine, from Toledo — more or less
Moorish .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 113
84. Moorish vine, from Toledo . .. ... .. 114
85. Naïve Byzantine vine-Ravenna .. .. .. .. 115
86. Early French Gothic vine-Notre Dame, Paris ..
87. Square-shaped vine-leaves — scratched earthen-
ware, B.M. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
88. Diamond-shaped vine-leaves —Gothic .. .. ..
IIO
*
116
117
118


List of Illustrations in the Text.
xix
PAGE
134
89. Vesica-shaped vine-leaves – York .. .. .. .. 119
90. Diagram of Italian Gothic treatment–Padua .. 120
91. Transitional vine scroll—German linen damask .. "121
92. Italian quattro-cento vine scroll—Venice .. .. 123
93. German Renaissance foliage—by Aldegrever .. 124
94. Vine in Gothic glass-painting-Malvern . . 126
95. Quasi-Persian rose — Italian velvet, sixteenth
century.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 130
96. Oriental rose border—embroidered in silk and
gold on linen .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 131
97. Rhodian rose--from a faïence dish .. .. .. 132
98. Roman lily forms—a candelabrum . .. .. 133
99. Indian lotus—Buddhist stone-carving, B.M. .
100. Seventeenth century iris--appliqué embroidery,
Italian, S.K.M. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 135
101. Renaissance pinks-needlework .. .. .. .. 136
102. Modern Gothic pomegranate—by the late B. J.
Talbert.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 139
103. Pomegranate—Spanish brocatelle.. .. .. ..
104. Oak-from the Cathedral of Toledo . .. .. 141
105. Assyrian tree of life .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 142
106. Oak—from a Sicilian silk .. .. .. .. .. 142
107. Romanesque tree of life—from a painted roof at
Hildesheim .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 143
108. Renaissance silk-showing Persian influence .
109. Egyptian symbolic papyrus . . . . . 150
110. Assyrian symbolic ornament-glazed earthenware,
B.M. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 151
III. Abstract Greek ornament—from a vase .. .. 152
140


xx
List of Illustrations in the Text.
160
162
PAGE
112. Later Greek ornament-from a vase .. .. .. 153
113. Assyrian rosette of lotus flowers and buds .. .. 155
114. Gothic ornament—from Notre Dame, Paris .. 156
115. Fifteenth century fir-cone ornaments .. .. .. 157
116. Chinese flower forms .. .. .. .. .. .. 157
117. Etruscan and Greek anthemion shapes .. ..
118. Japanese diaper .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 159
119. Japanese diaper .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 159
120. Lily-like Greek details—from various sources .. 160
121. Romanesque detail approaching to the fleur-de-lis
122. Gothic pattern-Early fleur-de-lis .. .. .. бо
123. Concentric forms-seaweed .. .. .. .. ..
124. Gothic-anthemion shape—from the nimbus of
a figure in one of the stained-glass windows at
Fairford .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 162
125. Gothic diaper-radiating-from a painted screen 162
126.6
127.5^
» Renaissance ornament-Italian wood-carving .. 163
128. Renaissance anthemion-by Mino da Fiesole,
Florence .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
129. Abstract foliage-Persian inlay, S.K.M. .. ..
130. Would-be ornamental celandine - Albertolli ..
131. Chinese rendering of “kiss-me-quick” – em-
broidery .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 171
132. Comparatively natural treatment of poppy-
L.F.D. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
133. Comparatively natural treatment of fig—L.F.D...
134. Ornamental treatment of strawberry-L.F.D. ...
135. Dolphins used as ornament-by George Fox .. 180


List of Illustrations in the Text. xxi
PAGE
136. Circular bird (and flower) crest .. .. .. .. 181
137. Circular bird crest
ar bird crest ..
.. ..
.. .. .. .. .. .. 181
138. Ornamental indication of birds in flight
139. Diaper of storks and chrysanthemum flowers
combined .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
140. Dragon-fly diaper-Japanese .. .. .. .. 183
141. Diaper of conventional bats .. .. .. .. .. 184
142. Bird diaper by the late Wm. Burgess, A.R.A. ..
143. Repeating figure pattern .. .. .. .. .. ..
144. Conventional peacock border-Indian embroidery
145. Egyptian wing treatment—vultures . .. ..
146. Egyptian wing treatment—hawk in cloisonné
enamel .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 189
147. Bat diaper-old Japanese .. .. .. .. .
148. Embroidered bat—Chinese .. .. .. .. .. 194
149. Pilaster by Signorelli- Orvieto .. .. .. .. 202
150. Grotesque iron grille—German .. .. .. .. 204
151. Wings reduced to ornament—Italian wood-carving 209
152. Ornamental dragon-Japanese .. .. .. .. 210
153. Arctic American grotesquerie-embroidered cloth 211
154. Spring blossoms on the stream-J.ipanese: .. .. 213
155. Diaper of spiders' webs .. .. .. .. .. .. 214
156. Diaper of flames . ..
157. Cloud and bat pattern .. .. .. .. .. .. 216
158. Cloud pattern .. .. ..
216
159. Wave pattern .. .. ..
160. Water and water-lilies .. .. .. .. .. .. 217
161. Wave pattern and water-fowl . ..
218
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215
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216
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xxii
List of Illustrations in the Text.
PAGE
:
218
219
:
220
162. Wave pattern-Japanese porcelain ..
163. Wave pattern-Japanese lacquer .. ..
164. Wave ornament .. .. .. .. .. .. ... 219
165. Wave ornament .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 219
166. Wave and spray pattern.. ... ... .. . ...
167. Decorative rendering of incoming wave-Japanese
168. Shell ornament.. ... .. .. .. .. .. .. 222
169. Seaweed ornament .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 222
170. Heraldic mantling-part of a painted frieze-
L.F.D. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 223
171. Heraldic mantling – German Gothic wood.
carving .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
172. Inlaid peacock-feather ornament-by B. J. Talbert 226
173. Coptic feather border-S.K.M. .. .. .. .. 227
174. Coptic feather diaper-S.K.M. .. .. .. .. 227
175. Persian peacock feather pattern-painted tiles,
S.K.M. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 228
176. Trophy panel-Renaissance .. .. .. .. .. 229
177. François Ier skull ornament-wood-carving, Fon-
tainebleau .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 230
178. Early Phænician wreath .. .. .. .. .. 231
179. Swag of fruit-bunches .. .. .. .. .. .. 233
180. Egyptian sacred beetle .. .. .. .. .. .. 237
181. Diaper of waves, clouds, and sacred birds .. ..
182. Cross of fleurs-de-lis—thirteenth century .. ..
183. Assyrian sacred tree .. .. .. .. .. .. 239
184. Assyrian sacred tree-B.C. 885-860 . ....
185. Iris or fleur-de-lis ?-Seventeenth century Vene-
tian velvet .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 240
<38


List of Illustrations in the Text. xxiii
bols
.
.
..
PAGE
186. Egyptian symbols .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 240
187. Gothic fleurs-de-lis—from old glass, Lincoln . 241
188. Heraldic badges-Sixteenth century, Mantua ... 242
189. Symbolic eye-Egyptian .. .. .. .. .. 243
190. Segment of Greek border of eyes-painted terra-
cotta .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 243
191. Symbolic burder of seed-vessels-L.F.D. .. .. 245
192. Heraldic oak-Italian Renaissance .. .. .. 246
ABBREVIATIONS.
B.M.-British Museum.
S.K.M.-South Kensington Museum.
L.F.D.-Lewis F. Day.





NATURE IN ORNAMENT.
I.
INTRODUCTORY.
The bias of the natural man is not un-
naturally in the direction of nature. Almost
alone in the history of art, the Greeks and
the Moors appear to have been content with
ornament which was ornament pure and
simple. It is not too much to say, even in
these days of supposed interest in things deco-
rative, that the Englishman generally speaking
neither knows nor cares anything about the
subject. He is in most cases absolutely out of
sympathy with it. Possibly he has even a sort
of contempt for the “ornamental,” as some-
thing opposed to that utility which he so
highly esteems-never so much as appre-
hending the fact that ornamental art is art
applied to some useful purpose.
The forms of ornament he most admires
are those most nearly resembling something


Nature in Ornament.
in nature, and it is because of that resemblance
he admires them : abstract ornament is quite
outside his sympathies and beyond his under-
standing. He begins, for example, to take a
feeble interest in Greek pattern-work only
when he sees in it a likeness to the honey-
suckle. Show him some purely ornamental
form, and it is neither its beauty, nor its
character, nor its fitness that strikes him; he
is perplexed only to know what it is meant
to represent. To him every form of orna-
ment must have its definite relation to some
natural object, and therein lies all its interest.
Relation to nature there must be indeed, and
every one will acknowledge the interest with
which we trace such relationship; but no one
who really cares for ornament at all will allow
that it depends upon that for its charm.
" When ornament has gone astray, it has
been more often in the direction of what I
may call rusticity than of that artificiality
which is at the other end of the scale.
Art passes through periods of affectation,
when it becomes before all things urgent that
opinion should be led back again to the for-
gotten, grass-grown paths of nature. That
is not our urgency just now. If there was at
one time within our memory some fear of
artificiality in art, the danger now lies in the


Introductory.
opposite direction of literalism ; a literalism
which assumes a copy of nature to be not
only art, but the highest form of art; which
ignores, if it does not in so many words deny,
the necessity of anything like imagination or
invention on the part of the artist, and accepts
the imitative faculty for all in all.
To venture upon the sweeping assertion
that all art whatsoever is, and must be, con-
ventional, would be very likely to lay oneself
open to the rebuke of judging all art by the
decorative standard ; but with regard to orna-
ment, I have no hesitation in saying that
more or less conventional it must be, or it
would not be ornamental.
Not, of course, that the ornamentist denies
in the least the supreme beauty of natural form
and colour, or thinks for a moment to improve
upon it, as some seem to imagine, who insinu-
ate that he proposes to surpass nature, pre-
sumes to “paint the lily,” and so on. On the
contrary, he is modest enough to recognise the
impossibility of even approximately copying
anything without the sacrifice of something
which is more immediately to his purpose
than any fact of nature—consistency namely,
fitness, breadth, repose ; and is content, there-
fore, to take only so much of natural beauty
as he can turn to use. He regulates his
B 2


Nature in Ornament.
appetite, that is to say, according to his
digestion.
Such self-denial on his part is not by any
means a shirking of the difficulties of the situa-
tion. In art nothing is easy, except to such
as have a natural faculty that way. It is not
every one who finds it easy to make a striking
study from nature; but that comparatively
elementary accomplishment does demand
ability of a lesser kind than the production of
a picture in which there is design, unity, style,
and whatever else may distinguish a master-
work of the Renaissance from a study of
to-day.
In like manner, the mere painting or carving
of a sprig of foliage is within the reach of every
amateur ; but to adapt such foliage to a given
position and purpose, to design it into its place,
to treat it after the manner of wood, stone,
glass, metal, textile fabric, earthenware, or
what not, demands not only intelligence and
inborn aptitude, but training and experience
too.
It is the easiest thing in the world to ridicule
such decorative treatment; but it would puzzle
the scoffer if he were asked to pause a moment
in his merriment and point out a single
instance of even moderately satisfactory de-
coration in which a more or less non-natural


Introductory.
treatment has not been adopted. The fact is,
the artist has not yet arrived at a point where
he is able to dispense altogether with art.
It is his misfortune (more so nowadays
than ever it was) that it is extremely difficult
for him to make up his mind precisely as to
the relation of art to nature. That it is
dependent upon nature, more or less, is
obvious. Only by way of paradox is it
possible to contend, like Mr. Whistler, that
“nature is very seldom right.” Nature is
our one and constant model. The question
is as to how freely or how painfully, how
broadly or how literally, how individually or
how slavishly, we shall render the model
before us, how much of it, and what of it, we
shall depict. And this is a question which,
if not quite beyond solution, must be solved
by each man according to his idiosyncrasy,
and that only after much anxiety and doubt
and difficult self-questioning.
It is the good fortune of the decorator,
the ornamentist, the worker in any of the
more dependent arts, to be comparatively free
from such incubus of doubt. In his art there
is much less room for hesitation. For him
to adopt the realistic creed would be to deny
his calling, and to cut himself off from the
art of his adoption : for the very idea of


Nature in Ornament.
ornament implies something to be ornamented,
and accordingly to be taken into account.
By the adoption of any one of the applied
arts, a man is bound to draw the line at
realism so soon as ever it is opposed to the
application of his art. In other words, the
purpose to which his art is put indicates to
him the limits of possible realism. And so,
while the dispute about realism is still at its
height so far as literature, the drama, and even
painting are concerned, the question as to the
adaptation of natural forms to ornamental
design has resolved itself, for all who know
anything of the subject, into inquiry as to the
degree and kind of modification calculated
to render natural forms applicable to orna-
ment and the various purposes to which it
is put.
This modification of natural form to orna-
mental purpose we are accustomed to call
conventional. In accepting this term, how-
ever, we must be careful to distinguish con-
vention from convention, and especially from
that academic acceptation of the term which
would give us to understand that the modi-
fication of nature has been done for us, and
that we have only to accept the Classic,
Mediæval, Renaissance, or other more or less
obsolete rendering at hand. As though the


Introductory.
tombs of buried peoples were heaven-sent
habitations for live men !
The one thing to be insisted upon in refer-
ence to convention is that it has not been
done for us once and for all, that we have to
do our own conventionalising; and not only
that, but that we have to do it again and
again, each time afresh, according to the work
in hand. It is only by this means that art in
ornament subsists and grows: when it ceases
to grow, decay sets in of course.
To accept a convention ready-made is to
compromise your own invention; to go on
copying the accepted types, be they never so
beautiful, is just to stifle it. But one must
be familiar with them : one must be aware of
what has been already done in the way of art,
as well as conversant with nature. Simply
to study nature is not enough. We have to
know how artists of all times have interpreted
nature; how the same artist, or artists of the
same period, treated natural form differently,
according to the material employed, conform-
ably with the position of the work, in view of
the use it was to serve. Knowing all this,
and being perfectly at home in the world of
nature, one may set to work to conventionalise
on one's own account. There is some chance
of success then, not otherwise.


Nature in Ornament.
Those who most keenly feel the need in
ornament of a quality which the modern
nature-worshipper delights to disparage, will
be inclined to pray that they may be pre-
served from some of their allies. There is,
or was not long ago, a class of ornament in
vogue, which appears to have originated in
the idea that you have only to flatten out
any kind of natural detail, and arrange it
symmetrically upon arbitrary lines, and the
end of ornament is achieved.
Decorative design is not so easy as all that.
To emasculate a natural form is not to fit it
for ornamental use, and to distribute detail
according to diagram is not to design. The
result may be conventional, but it is not the
kind of convention I am upholding ; one touch
of nature is worth all the mechanical and life-
less stuff of that kind that ever was done.
One hopes, and tries to think, that this
sort of thing is dying out, if not quite dead
already ; but then one flatters oneself so
readily that what has been proved absurd
must be extinct, or moribund at least; until,
perhaps, an enforced stay among the Philis-
tines brings us face to face with the evidence
how very much it is alive. We have only
weeded it out of our little garden plot ; about
us is a wide world where it is rampant. There


Introductory.
is no hiding it from ourselves, there is life in
the old dogma yet; and, alas, in many another.
It is still as necessary as ever to deny the
claim of merely geometric reconstruction to
represent the due adaptation of natural forms
to decorative needs. It is no more fair to
take this ridiculously childish work to repre-
sent conventional design than it would be to
instance the immature studies of some raw
student as examples of naturalistic treatment.
Compare the best with the best. Compare
the ceramic painting of Sèvres with that of
ancient Greece, China, or Japan; compare
the work of Palissy with that of the potters
of Persia and Moresque Spain; compare the
finest Aubusson carpet with a Persian rug of
the best period ; compare the earlier Arras
(such as we have at Hampton Court) with the
most illusive of modern Gobelins tapestry ;
compare the traditional Swiss wood-carving
on the châlet fronts at Meyringen and there-
abouts with the most ingenious model pro-
duced in the same district for the English
and American tourist; compare the peasant
jewellery of almost any country except our
own (we never seem to have had any) with
the modern gewgaws which have taken its
place; and who would hesitate to choose the
more conventional art ?


Nature in Ornament.
Conventional treatment, it will be seen, is
no mere stopping short of perfect rendering,
no bald excuse for incompetence. It will
be my task to show that, if it does not on the
one hand consist in the substitution of the
diagram of a thing instead of its life and
growth, neither does it mean the mere distor-
tion of natural details, nor yet that mechanical
repetition of ancient conventions which is a
weariness to every one concerned in it. Our
rendering of natural form must be our own,
natural to us; but without some sort of con-
ventionality (if we must use the word) deco-
ration is impossible. There is no art without
convention; and your most determined realist
is in his way as conventional as the best, or
worst, of us.
It is not the word conventional for which
I am contending, but that fit treatment of
ornament which folk seem agreed to call by
the title, more especially when they want to
abuse it. By whatever name it is called, we
cannot afford to let go our hold of that some-
thing which distinguishes the decorative art
of every country, period, and master, from the
crude attempts of such as have not so much
as grasped the idea that there is in art some-
thing more than a dishing up of the raw facts
of nature.


Introductory.
II
Work as nearly natural as man can make
it, though not in itself decorative, may be at
times available in decoration. But forms de-
naturalised by men alike ignorant of the
principles and unskilled in the practice of
ornament, and more than half contemptuous
of design to boot, are of no interest to any
one but their authors, if even to them. Nature
and art are not on such bad terms that to be
unnatural is to be ornamental.


I 2
Nature in Ornament.
II.
ORNAMENT IN NATURE.
NATURE being admittedly the primal source
of all our inspiration, it is rather curious to
observe the limited range within which we
have been content to seek ideas, how we have
gone on reflecting reflections of reflections, as
though we dared not face the naked light of
nature.
With all the wealth of suggestion in the
world about us and the never-ending variety
of natural detail, the types which have sufficed
for the ancient and mediæval world, and for
that matter for ourselves too, are, compara-
tively speaking, very few indeed. How largely
the ornament of Egypt and Assyria is based
upon the lotus, the papyrus, and the palm !
The vine, the ivy, and the olive, the fir-tree
and the oak, together with the merest remin-
iscence of the acanthus, went far to satisfy
not only the Greeks but their Roman and
Renaissance imitators as well.
Gothic art went further afield, and gathered


Plate 2.

APANESE
ROSES
"PHOTO-TINT, by James Akerman London WC
Japanese Roses.





Ornament 13
an
in Nature.
into its posy the lily and the rose, the pome-
granate and the passion flower, the maple and
the trefoil, but still only a comparatively small
selection of the plants a-growing and a-blowing
within sight of the village church. Oriental
art is more conservative still ; in it a very
few types recur continually, with a monotony
which becomes at last tedious. One wonders
what Chinese art would have been without the
aster and the peony, or Japanese without the
almond blossom and bamboo, what Arab
ornament would be but for the un-leaf-like
leaf peculiar to it.
One is struck sometimes by the degree of
variety in the treatment which a single type
may undergo in different hands; more often
it is the sameness of the renderings which
impresses us.
Probably in the case of no single plant have
the possibles in the way of ornamental adapta-
tion been exhausted, and in many instances
the very plainest hints in the way of design
have not been taken.
The rose, for example, has been very
variously treated ; but comparatively little use
has been made of the fruit, or of the thorns,
or of the broad stipules at the base of the
leaves. We have to be grateful when the
buds, with their boldly pronounced sepals, are,


14 :
Nature in Ornament.
Lato
breros
<a
22
P/ Condta
canden
y
X
Bryony
TENDRILS
1. Various tendrils, from nature.
once in a way, turned to ornamental account
(Plate 65 and pp. 131, 132).
The Japanese roses on Plate 2 are some-
what directly inspired by nature, but then
they are not very ornamentally treated. They
might almost have been drawn directly from
nature. It is mainly the simplicity and direct-
ness with which they are rendered which gives
them some decorative quality.
Take the conventional vine again, with its
stereotyped leaves and prim grapes. And its
tendrils, how seldom they have suggested more
than a rather meaningless wriggle, useful, no
doubt, to fill an awkward gap in the composi-
tion, but without either character or beauty.
Probably no feature of flower growth has
been more badly treated than the tendril.
Artists have thought themselves free to add a
tendril to any plant whatsoever, and whereso-


Ornament in Nature.
15
VINE
TENURILS
2. Vine tendrils, from nature.
ever it pleased them. The clinging character
of the bindweed, the hop, and plants of that
kind, has suggested to artists who look with-
out their eyes the necessity of support of some
kind, and they have accordingly provided the
tendrils nature has denied, neglecting all the
while the peculiarly decorative character of
the twining stem. Designers have seldom
taken much account of the essentially orna-
mental way in which plants like the nasturtium
and the clematis attach themselves to what-
ever they can lay hold on by their leaf-stalks ;
nor have they rendered in design the suckers
by which the ivy and the Virginia creeper
adhere to the wall. It is so much simpler to
provide convenient tendrils than to study
nature.
And what tendrils they have provided !
All of one pattern ; whereas in nature they are


16
Nature in Ornament.
delightfully diverse. How vigorously the
mature and woody tendril contrasts with the
silky growth of the young shoots groping for
something to support them! How different
the branched tendril of the pea from the simple
bryony tendril, and both from that of the
vine! Certain poets of a past generation
thought fit to compare the tresses of their
lady-loves to this last; and there was, perhaps,
a certain suggestion of the corkscrew in both
to warrant the comparison ; but what a lively
corkscrew the tendril is, how friskily it twists
and twirls about, and how gaily it starts off, as
it were, on a fresh lease of life !
It is too exclusively in the leaf, the flower,
and the fruit, that the ornamentist seems to
have sought his model. The leaf-bud, for ex-
ample, whether as giving character to the bare
twigs (Plates 3 and 8) or conveniently softening
the angle between the leaf-stalk and the stem,
has been comparatively neglected : one type
of bud at all events has usually done duty for
all. The thickening of the leaf-stalk, again, at
the joint with the stem, has rarely been made
use of; nor yet the quite young shoot, which
not only fills the empty space about the stalk,
but gives an opportunity, most invaluable in
design, of contrasting smaller detail with the
larger forms of the general design.


Plate 3.
Elm
Huthurn
Iblar
Sycamof
Silver Birch
Limes
bestnut
"PHOTO-TANT", by James Akerman, London W.C.
Budding branches, from Nature.





Ornament in Nature.
17
The stipules of the leaves, which also enrich
the meagre joint, have been equally left out
of ornament, characteristically ornamental as
they are in the pea, for example, the sow
thistle, and the passion flower. But even in
the less marked form in which they appear
in the hop, the medlar, the common nettle,
and numberless wayside plants, they are worth
an attention which they have not often
received.
Nature seems to neglect no opportunity ;
the very scars left on the stems of certain
trees, such as the horse-chestnut, form a kind
of decoration. Even in the scarred stalk of
an old cabbage you may see pattern. In the
case of the palm, the remains of the leaves of
years past resolve themselves still more plainly
into ornament; and for once the Roman
sculptors, who saw palm-trees growing about
them, adopted the idea in the decoration of
their columns. The Indian rendering of the
same notion, on Plate 77, is yet more conven-
tional; but there is no doubt as to the origin
of that zigzag. Was it so, perhaps, that the
idea of decorating columns in zigzag, common
enough in Norman architecture, originated ?
In Greek ornament and its derivatives
(Plates 11, 12, &c.), use is made of the sheath
to clothe the branching of the spiral stems, but


Nature in Ornanent.



3. Romanesque ornainentation of the stem.
there is still much to be learnt from the way
in which nature wraps round a stalk with
leaves, sheaths it, hides it, discreetly discloses
it (Plate 4). The leaf seems sometimes to
close round the stem so that that has almost
the appearance of growing through ; so much
so that the “thorough-wax" (same plate),
owes its name to that appearance. Still more
plainly does the stem seem to grow through
where the leaves are opposite and grow
together round it, as in the teasel and the
honeysuckle.
The arbitrary ornamentation of the stem
in the Romanesque details above, indicates
a feeling on the part of the artist that some-
thing is needed to relieve the baldness of a
stem. That something Nature is very ready
to suggest, as the Pompeian bronze-worker


Plate 4.

Leaves
clothing stem
“THOROUGH-WAX
Leaves sheathing stem
Stem growing through"
The Leaves
Sheathes
TUBE ROSE
CANNA
Ste12
wrapped round
by leaves
Sheath
J. Akerman, Photo-lith. London.
Natural leaf sheaths.





Ornament in Nature,
19
realised when he went to the river-
side for a reed as “motif” for the
ornamentation of his candelabrum.
Certain fruits have, as I said,
been made use of in design, either
as affording convenient masses in
the composition or, like the grape
and the pomegranate, for reasons
of symbolism. The smaller fruits
have seldom had justice done to
them. Bunches of berries are com-
mon enough in ornament, but they
are just berries, without as a rule
the character of any particular
plant. Yet how various they are
in nature, and how differently they
grow! This is indicated, however
inadequately, on Plate 5. Space
will not permit me to illustrate
this part of my subject at all
fully; but only compare the bryony
with the spindle-berry, the snow-
berry with the privet, the solanum
with the laurel, the aucuba-berry
with the barberry, and you will
see that neither are. berries all of
one shape, nor do they grow
always in one way-in nature, that
is to say.
4. Part of a
Pompeian
candelabrum.
C2


20
Nature in Ornament.
In the seed-vessel there is yet greater
variety of natural design, in many cases most
ornamental. The pea-pod has been slightly
used in Renaissance ornament, in the anthe-
mion for example below, and on Plates 45
and 46, where it is most effectively and
characteristically treated.
On Plate 6 are a variety of cressworts in
seed, indicating how
in a single and un-
pretending family of
plants there may yet
be considerable va-
riety and character
in the seed vessels.
Again, on Plate
7 are some studies
of the open pods of
the common broom
curling up as they dry
in the sun, strictly 5. Renaissance use of pea-pods in
copied from nature,
but almost ready-made, as it seems to me, to
the hand of the ornamentist.
The dried husks out of which flowers and
seeds alike have fallen are often delightfully
ornamental, as for example in the salvias,
where they form at intervals a sort of crown
round the stalk just above the starting point

ornament.


Plate 5




POTO - TINE, Iyy James Alerta an London WC.
Various berries from Nature.





Ornament in Nature.
21
of the leaves. In certain thistles and kindred
plants, the balls of seed-down are scarcely
more beautiful than the silver-lined calices,
from which the feathery seed has flown;
they shine in the sun like stars.
Very considerable ornamental use has been
made of the bursting of the full pomegranate
fruit (Plates 73 and 87 and pp. 74, 75, 76, 77,
139, 140). It is strange that the effective
treatment of this symbol has not suggested
the availability of other opening seed-vessels,
the horse-chestnut for example and other
nuts, the pod of the iris, and so on.
In the representation of fruits it is usually
the ripe fruit that is given ; but there is often
quite as much if not more character in the
unripe ; and some variety of form and size is
very desirable.
The leaf in ornament is usually attached
in a rather arbitrary way to the stalk, without
sufficient heed to the twist and turn of the
natural leaf, or to the angle at which it leaves
the stem, to the length and thickness of its
stalk, and to the way alternate leaves, say
those of the lime, pull the stem out of the
straight and give a zigzag line-in all of
which there is character, and possibly a hint
in design.
Look at the poppies in the corn. Scarce


22
Nature in Ornament.
one of them ever gets over the crick in the
neck, which comes of hanging down its heavy
head so long when it is a bud (see p. 172).
There is always a tell-tale nick in the stalk of
the full-blown flower, hidden it may be by
drooping petals, but plain enough when they
have dropped off and the seed-urn is left
naked. It does not stand up straight and
stiff like a barrel on a
pole, but is poised with
a subtlety characteristic
always of the natural
line as distinguished
from the mechanical.
Notice how the
apple-tree blossoms
(Plate 8). In each
bunch a single topmost
flower always opens
first, so that it is
6. Unequally divided oak-leaf,
quite a common thing
to see a white flower
nestling among its five pink buds. In the case
of the oak again, the empty cup (see Plates
9 and 74) is a characteristic variation on the
acorn shape, and there is usually at the end
of the fruit-stalk a withered button or two,
never to arrive at due development, which may
be turned to account in design (Plate 9).

from nature.


Plate 6.

Cressworts
in seed
Borageworte
J Akerman Photo-lith London
Some seed vessels from Nature.





Ornament in Nature.
23
The gall-fly, again (same plates), comes to
the help of the artist, and furnishes him with
a further variety of forms more or less fruit-
like in appearance, growing often in places
where fruits would never be, on the unequal
leaf for example. I have counted rosy clusters
of a dozen and more on a single leaf. Besides
the soft oak-apple, associated in our boyish
minds with King Charles, and the hard ink-
gall which decorates the bare boughs in winter,
there is a canker which attacks the leaf-bud
and results in something rather like a small
fir-cone.
Every one is familiar with the beautiful
feathery burr of the rose : there are other rose-
galls peculiar to the leaves, and looking like
little beads of coral on their surface.
In the poplar too, the prominent gall-knob
at the base of the leaf-stalk is distinctly
characteristic. Almost every plant, in short,
is attacked by its hereditary enemy, that
seldom fails to leave his mark behind him,
suggestive, it may very likely be, of orna-
ment. And so with great part of the vicissi-
tudes to which vegetation of all kinds is
subject—the ceasing of the sap to flow, the
drying of the leaves, the spread of some
parasitic growth, and so on.
Historian and poet find in the misfortunes


24
Nature in Ornament.
and death of their characters a pathetic
interest : the ornamentist may discover in
the very decay of vegetation, apart from
any sentimental interest, at least incident,
character, and colour.
The vicissitudes of plant life, it may be
said, are accidental, and what has accident to
do with design? The very word implies, no
doubt, the total absence of design. For all
that, it is in some measure owing to the
elimination of whatever is accidental in nature,
that conventional ornament is apt to be so
tame, and that the orthodox seems doomed
to be dreary.
There is nothing, strictly speaking, acci-
dental in design ; but the designer is bound,
nevertheless, to take every possible advantage
of accident, not of course in order to incorpo-
rate into his work, after the manner of the
realist as he calls himself, the awkward or ugly
traits of nature which others have for obvious
reasons left out of account, but that he may
seize upon every freak of nature suggestive of
characteristic and beautiful design.
Strict attention to botanic accuracy has
resulted too frequently in ornament much
more mechanically exact than anything in
nature. If natural leaves grow at ordered
intervals, they do grow, vigorously and vari-


Plate 7

Broon
B
C.F. KELL, PHOTO-LITHO.B.FURNIVAL ST HOLIDAN.E.O.
Pods from Nature.





Ornament in Nature.
25
ously, as if they had something like a will of
their own.
The ideal of the horticulturist is a flower-
head as even as if it had been struck geometri-
cally, a spike of blossoms as trim as a clipped
yew-tree or a French poodle. That is not
Nature's way. Regularly as a natural flower-
spike may be planned, the actual blossoms
have a way of shooting out in the most casual
manner. You see this very plainly in the
salvias, for all the gardener's pains with them ;
and everywhere, in the woods and in the
meadows, by the wayside and the river bank,
Nature never wearies of playing variations
upon the symmetric plan of plant growth.
Certain plants, says the gardener, have a bad ·
habit of “sporting.” Truly there is nothing
at all sportive in his reduction of all nature
to one dead level of sameness.
Ornament might fairly be compared to
the growth of a garden, not of a wilderness.
But if, on the one hand, nature cannot be
allowed to run wild over this garden, neither,
on the other, should it be clipped and trimmed
and formalised until there is no character of
its own left in it.
I have alluded to the method of the florist
because it affords a perfect example of what
not to do in the way of modifying natural


26
Nature in Ornament.
form. His plan is to eliminate whatever is
wayward, occasional, uncommon, character-
istic. Look at his hyacinth, and compare it
with the wild bluebells. Look at his double
dahlia : the flower was prim enough in the
simple single form, with its obviously even-
numbered petals insisting upon your count-
ing them ; but what a bunch of ribbons it has
become in his hands! To reduce a flower to
the likeness of a rosette is not to make it the
more ornamental; and every accident indica-
tive of a return to nature is a welcome relief
from such unmeaning evenness of form.
Those who would limit us to a hard and
fast rule of growth, betray perhaps their own
ignorance of the latitude Nature allows her-
self. We have to acquaint ourselves with the
anatomy of plants, and especially with their
growth; and where it comes to anything like
natural treatment, we have further to take
into account the habits of a plant, its manners
and customs, so to speak—for which there is,
of course, if we enquire into the matter,
good structural reason always. It is, how-
ever, with the outward form of things that
the art of the ornamentist has to do, and for
the most part it will be sufficient for him to
confine his studies to the visible side of
nature. Very slight observation will show


Plate 8.
Apple
See
ild Onion
Elm
Hornliean
Beech
Tulip Tree
Larch
"PHOTO-TINT", by James Akerman. London, W.C.
Flower & leaf buds





Ornament in Nature.
27
him that Nature is not so careful always
to emphasise botanical points as are some of
us, and that she appears often to break her own
laws : or perhaps it would be more accurate
to say, she breaks the laws we have been bold
to make for her.
At all events plants very often seem to
grow differently from what science has taught
us to expect. Against a wall, for example,
where leaves cannot grow in the orthodox
spiral fashion, they will arrange themselves
quite contentedly on two sides of the stem
or on one side of it. If that may be so in
nature, why not also in art? There is only
one caution necessary against it: that the
designer must not let it seem as though he
were ignorant of the normal way in which a
thing grows.
To do full justice to a plant it is not
enough for the designer to make a drawing
of it. One has to watch it through the year,
perhaps through several years, in order to
seize the moment when it reveals all the possi-
bilities that are in it. Certain seasons are
peculiarly favourable to the development of
certain plants in the direction of ornament.
In a wet summer, for example, when things
grow quickly, the apparently confused way
some plants have of growing is made clear.


28
Nature in Ornament.
The stalks are so much longer than usual, and
the leaves so much further apart, that they
disclose for once the way the plant grows ; .
and this opening-out of natural growth goes
some way towards fitting it for the purposes
of ornament.
Again, it depends in some cases very much
upon the season whether the sepals of the
withered Aower remain intact on the ripened
fruit, and whether the stipules at the base of
the leaf-stalk and the bracts at the axes of
the flower-stalks adhere or not. In excep-
tional seasons, also, fruit-trees begin to bloom
ågain whilst the ripe fruit is on the tree.
And what a vast difference all that makes
to the designer who would found himself
always upon nature !
Many a happy inspiration of design is no
more than the turning to account some fortu-
nate accident in nature. You notice, as you
walk through a clearing in the woods, where an
oak-tree has been cut down close to the root ;
and it has sent out a ring of young shoots all
round it, so as to form a perfect garland of
oak-leaves on the ground. A few days later
and you would seek in vain a living, growing
model for your oak wreath.
The conventions of artists are not so far
removed from nature as we are apt to think.


Plate 9.

"PHOTO-TINT", by James Akerman, London.W.C.
Tile papel, Oak Galls.





Ornament in Nature.
29
Trees do grow in Umbria as Perugino, and Raf-
faelle after him, painted them. The artist did
not altogether imagine those graceful sprays
of leafage, any
more than Ve-
ronese evolved
his lovely green-
blue skies from
his imagina-
tion. You see
just such skies
in Italy; as
you see also in
Titian's country
the purple hills
and quasi-con-
ventional land-
scapes he put in-
to his pictures.
Apropos of
colour, we are
too much dis-
posed to take it
for granted that
red, blue, purple,
and yellow are 7. Chinese rendering of wistaria-
colours nature
has reserved for flowers, and that leaves,
stalks, and so on are only green. But as a

old embroidery.


30
Nature in Ornament.
matter of fact, the flower-stalk is often more
in harmony with the flowers than with the
leaves, as in the begonia, salvia, sea holly,
and other plants. The leaf-stalk, also, is
sometimes bright crimson, as in the little
wild cranesbill and in the sycamore; or
vivid yellow, as in the case of some poplar-
leaves.
Leaves themselves, again, are sometimes
anything but green. I do not mean that
they are merely greyish, as they often are,
or olive, which they seldom are, or that they
merely change colour in the autumn, but
that the foliage is of a delicate brown, as in
the young growth of the wistaria (which the
Chinese embroiderer (see p. 29) has meta-
morphosed into something more like tendrils),
or madder-coloured, as in the late shoots of
the oak, briar, hornbeam, and other trees.
And then what variety of tint there is in the
backs of leaves : purple as in the wild lettuce,
rich red-brown as in some magnolias and
rhododendrons, silver grey as in the alder, the
poplar, the willow, and some garden plants.
The Japanese have made admirable use
of the contrast in colour between the back
and front of leaves. They will make the
leaf solid black with white veins, and sketch
its reverse in outline only with black veins,


Plate 10

SA
Asparagus
ORNAMENT in NATURE
Buckwheat
Ipea
J. Akerman, Photo-lith. London
Natural Growth.





Ornament in Nature.
31
counter-changing the colour as frankly as a
mediæval herald did in his treatment of the
mantling about a shield.
Whether, then, it is form that we seek or
colour, everywhere in nature there is material
for the ornamentist, often, as it seems, almost
ready made to his hand (Plate 10); but,
promising as it may be, it is not yet orna-
ment—it lacks always adaptation to our
especial purpose. It is by our treatment of
nature that we justify our use of its forms.


32
Nature in Ornament.
III.
NATURE IN ORNAMENT.
It is not at first sight obvious how much all
ornament owes to nature. There is even a still
surviving superstition that it is designed by
the aid of the kaleidoscope.
True it is that the “itch to make patterns”
was one of the very earliest symptoms of
that artistic fever to which the human race
has from the first been liable. Man may or
may not have begun by scratching animals
on bones of other animals, he very soon began
to scratch ornamental devices. The English
race scarcely suffers from the malady nowa-
days. When it does break out in us it may
be traced probably to some Welsh or other
Celtic ancestor. But to certain of us, however
few, it is every bit as natural to trace patterns
as to draw animals or to kill them.
For all that, even the born pattern-designer
is necessarily, as man, and more especially as
artist, so intimately acquainted with nature
that his work is inevitably imbued with it.


Plate 11.

LETTRIBUTE
AL
E TTRODOMESTIMATION
TURIUO
META
5.
STAHL
SA
TATRIN
U
RMARITO MAHTU
engel
sul
U
C.F KELL, PHOTO-LITHO.G.FURNIVAL SI HOIDORN, L.O.
Greek Scrolls.





Nature in Ornament.
33
In almost every detail of design there is,
whether he be conscious of it or no, a re-
miniscence of nature. In the most abstract
design he is accustomed to obey instinctively
the natural laws of construction and growth,
so much so that we resent his departure from
them, and take exception, for example, to the
scroll, even the most arbitrary, which violates
the rule and presumes to grow, so to speak,
both ways at once.
I have explained at length elsewhere * how
the Greek honeysuckle ornament, as it is
called, originated in no attempt to imitate
natural bud forms, but grew, as one may say,
out of the use of the brush. The fact remains,
notwithstanding, that the brush-strokes came
to range themselves very much on the lines of
natural growth—all the more readily, of course,
because of the memories or impressions of
plant form stored away in men's brains. The
fact is those memories, vague as they may
be, prompt the ornamentist at every turn in
design.
What we call the acanthus scroll grew, I
suppose, simply out of the desire to clothe
with some sort of leafage the mere spiral
lines with which archaic ornament, whether
in Greece, or Northern Europe, or the Fiji
* •Some principles of Every-day Art,' p. 104 et seq.


34
Nature in Ornament.
Islands, invariably set out; which spiral line
not only occurs in many shells and in the horns
of animals, but results inevitably from a cer-
tain natural action of the draughtsman's wrist.
The Greek scrolls on Plate II consist
practically of little more than branching
spirals, with just a husk of something like
foliage to mask the dividing of the stem : the
lilies and the like are minor features obviously
put in to fill up; they form no integral part
of the main purpose.
The Roman scroll (Plate 12) is plainly
more full of sap; it seems to be bursting
out into leafage ; but it remains only a de-
velopment of the Greek idea : it is simply a
spiral clothed in conventional leafage, devised
primarily to disguise its lines, and especially
the branching of the lines. That is the root
and origin of the acanthus scroll—not any
attempt to reduce the acanthus to ornament,
but a desire to clothe
the lines of the scroll.
NUN
Archaic Greek orna-
ment is made up mainly
of spiral lines and groups
of brush-strokes. On
Plate 13 I have re-
duced two typical acan-
thus leaves to brush-
8. Acanthus leaves reducid
work, in order to show

to brushwork.


Plate 12

Roman Scroll





Plate 13.



O. F. KELL, PHOTO-LITHO, 8.FURNIVAL ST HOLBORN, E.C.
Acanthus Sculpture & brushwork.





Plate 14

"PHOTO-TINT", by Jones Akerman. London.W.C.
2 Versions of the same Frieze design.





Nature in Ornament.
35
AK
how, starting with
the idea of deco-
rating bald lines
with brushwork, a
painter, haunted as
we all must be by
the ghosts of natu-
ral growth, might
have arrived at
something uncom-
moniy like the con-
ventional Classic
leafage. And
again, on Plate 14,
I have translated a
Renaissance scroll
of my own into the
same language of
the brush. It is not,
of course, meant to
imply that that is,
as a matter of fact,
how the acanthus
scroll came about,
but that it might
have been deve-
loped in that way.
The fable about
Calliinachus and
the Corinthian
9. Simple acanthus leafage.
D 2


36
Nature in Ornament.

11
ANUNTUTETTIIN RETE
Jo. Step between wave and acanthus scroll-Roman mosaic.
capital is the invention of a poet, not of a
practical ornamentist.
Again, on the Roman pedestal on p. 35,
where there is no scroll and no branching
and no great variety of foliation, one may see,
I think, very plainly how the familiar type of
foliation may have grown out of the very
simplest idea of clothing a straight line. It
is one step, just one step, beyond the Greek
bay-leaf pattern (Plate 81): instead of simple
bay-leaves in pairs we have opposite groups


Plate 15.

"PHOTO-TINT, by Jamer Akerman, London,W.C.
Details of Mosaic from Carthage.





Nature in Ornament.
37
of five, not separate leaves, but massed together
sculpturesquely, forming at the junction of
the groups the “pipes” so conspicuous in the
full-grown Classic scroll.
In the Roman mosaic border on p. 36 is
an indication of the growth of a very similar
idea ; a simple wave stem is supplied with
a spiral offshoot, and both are clothed with
leaflets of the very simplest description.
Serrate or subdivide such leaflets, and we
should not be far from
the familiar arabesque.
Something of the
kind does in fact occur
in the mosaic detail
from Carthage on
11. Olive-like leafage. Plate 15, which looks
almost like the next
step forward in the
development of the
scroll.
Such a system of foli-
ation once invented,
it was easy and natu-
ral enough to make
the detail more or less
12. Oak-like leafage.
like some natural leaf.
It has been made to resemble the acanthus and
the olive ; and it is clear, by the acorns accom-


08
Nature in Ornament.
Limoges.
panying it,
that it was
used also to
represent the
oak. The
quasi - Classic
scroll of the
Renaissance
assumes at
times also a
distinct re-
semblance to
the vine. This
13. Vine-like acanthus leafage, from the Jubé at is very plainly
seen in the
leafage from the famous Jubé at Limoges
(above). Judging by this particular instance,
one might pretend that the stock pattern of
conventional foliage
was suggested by the
vine. The vine-leaf is
here as unmistakable
as the relation of the
ornament to the An-
tique. The detail in
question belongs of
course to a transition
period. It halts be-
tween two opinions.


14. Crocket-like foliage, from
Limoges.


Plate 16.

WY
CL. A Polo Lid..8 Fumival .E.C.
Transitional Scroll, D. Hopfer.





Nature in Ornament.
39

15. Modern modification of Classic leafage.
You see the hesitation, perhaps, more plainly
still in the bracket from the same source
(No. 14). That was plainly inspired by Classic
art; but the sculptor was more accustomed
to carve Gothic crockets than Roman scrolls.
The result is ornament which, but for associa-
tion of ideas, would never suggest the notion
of the acanthus. A very characteristic and
individual modern rendering of the old theme
is given above, the design, I imagine, of the
late Godfrey Sykes.
Had the Classic scroll really been only a
conventional treatment of the acanthus, it
would have been difficult to understand how
the sculptors stopped short at that one type,
and did not attempt to manipulate other forms
of leafage in the same way. That merely
abstract leafage should, on the other hand,
eventually remind us of olive, oak, or acanthus
leaves, is readily understood.
The Gothic scrollery of Hopfer (Plate 16)
is very remote indeed from the acanthus.
The spirit of the Renaissance was already in


40
Nature in Ornament.
the air in the time of Hopfer, and probably
influenced his work. If it did so to any extent,
it shows how differently men could interpret
the same notion. If it did not, it shows how
from different directions they arrived at some-
thing of the same kind. There is nothing of
the acanthus here—the foliation is more sug-
gestive of the thistle—but yet there is in the
design a family likeness to Classic and Re-
naissance types. The more naturalistic flowers
introduced to fill up remind one distantly of
the lily-like additions to the Greek scroll
(Plate II), and even the too natural birds
have their counterparts in Roman and Renais-
sance arabesque.
In the typical Renaissance arabesque the
idea is still to clothe lines in themselves merely
ornamental; and in the best work these lines
remain always apparent through the clothing
(Plates 96 and 105). But that the Italians of
the Cinque Cento did not allow themselves to
be hampered by any consideration of natural
possibility, still less of probability, is shown
by their indulgence in the absurdities which
deface many of their most graceful compo-
sitions—such for example as da Udine's in the
Loggie of the Vatican, and those of Giulio
Romano at the Palazzo del T at Mantua, one
of which is given on Plate 17.


Plate 17.

"PHOTO-TINT", by Jame. Akerman, London, W.C.
Painted Wall Panel, by Giulio Romano.





Nature in Ornament.
41
The Italian of the sixteenth century was
seldom very particular how he arrived at his
effect, so he arrived at it—the end justified
the means with him ; but, little as he cared
for natural growth, he
could not do without
it, and his most un-
natural ornament
bristles with natural
details.
The ornament
round the faïence
dishes on Plate 18
(a class of ornament
commonly distin-
guished as Raffael-
lesque) begins plainly
with the idea of purely
ornamental lines. It
is another develop-
ment of the foliated
line. Both lines and
masses are here ob-
16. Seventeenth century scroll-
i viously quite arbi-
Boulle.
trary, suggested by
ornamental considerations ; but, almost in spite
of the artist, they take the form of winged head,
dolphin, leaf, flower. That fault already re-
ferred to of growing two ways at once, which


42
Nature in Ornament.

1300
16.9
Romanesque
Leafage
17. Details of Romanesque ornament.
may be here observed, is a very common de-
fect of Italian arabesque (as of Arab art also,
although in the latter case the detail is so
much farther removed from life that the defect
is less apparent). Even in its degradation
however, the Renaissance arabesque never
quite let go the thread of nature ; and in the
hands of Boulle (p. 41) it blossomed out into
something more distinctly floral than the purer
scroll of the Cinque Cento.
In Romanesque ornament, which is in the
first instance only a rude rendering of Roman
detail, there is, towards the twelfth century,
some return to nature. The details above,
for example, are not to be traced to any
natural type, but they are alive with remi-
niscences of nature. It is plain, nevertheless,
always, from the freedom of the rendering,
that the primitive idea was not to reproduce


Plate 18.

Wallan
CE
"PHOTO-TINY", by James Akerman London. W.C.
Lustre Dishes 16" Century.





Nature in Ornament.
43

y Gothic
13 Centyd
18. Details of Early Gothic ornament. ·
nature, still less to represent it naturally, but
only to find a starting-point for design.
The same may be said with regard to Early
Gothic ornament, originally little more than a
carrying on of the Romanesque idea, and
reminding us at times, even in the thirteenth
century, unmistakably of Classic detail.
In some of the details at the head of the
page may be seen how, eventually, the artist
went more directly to nature; but though
you might trace these home, they are as
yet very arbitrary renderings. And for my
part I think the earlier and more arbitrary
Gothic forms by far the more ornamental :
the stone budding into crockets or other sculp-
turesque foliation, is to me far more beautiful
than the would-be natural leaves and flowers
spread over the architecture of the fourteenth
century. In other words, the more strict


4+
Nature in Ornament.

19. Spiral Persian scroll.
adherence to the natural type has resulted in
the less satisfactory ornament.
The artists of the latest Gothic period seem
to have realised that themselves. In the
German tapestry on Plate 19 there is, properly
speaking, neither leaf nor flower, but only
ornamental detail corresponding to both.
The lines are in a way ornamental ; but the
growth is of more account with the designer
than the line of his ornament. In this respect
it is interesting to compare it with more
deliberately ornamental arabesque. In its
vigorous Gothic way it too is a model of the
use that may be made of nature in ornament.


Plate 19

han
...
UW
wa
That
7
ith
D
.
the last
new
MID
0
.
Ali
C.F. KELL, PHOTO-LITHO.8.FURNIVAL ST HOLBORN,E.O.
Gothic Scroll





Nature in Ornament.

WARNA
An Iris
ys
Persian ( 16M 17" Canis
20. Iris-like details of Persian ornamen
In the Persian pattern on p. 44, the spiral
line is decorated in a quite different manner
from the Classical : it is not so much clothed
in leafage as relieved by leaf-like touches and
broken by daisy-like rosettes. It is quite
certain that no natural type ever suggested
the design; it was in seeking ornamental
forms that the painter happened upon some-
thing which suggests, but only suggests,
nature. On the other hand, there are forms
above, which, though scarcely recognisable
at first, are distinctly formed upon the flower
of the iris.
Still more remote from actuality are the
details of Arab and older Persian ornament.
And yet the most frequent feature in it is


40
Nature in Ornament.
21. Details of early Persian ornament.
not altogether unlike a folded leaf in profile ;
and in other shapes (above) a likeness has
been traced to the unfolding fronds of the
young fern. If these forms are indeed founded
upon nature, it only goes to show how far one
may, perhaps unconsciously, stray from one's
starting-point. If they are not, it indicates
how impossible it is to invent forms which
shall not in some degree recall the life and
growth about us.
Mohammedan design, we know, purposed
deliberately to avoid the natural ; but, for all
that, the forms it borrowed from nature are
perpetually betraying themselves, reminding
us, if not of leaf or stalk, then of flower and
bud. It looks as though, try as they might to


Plate 20.

VEVAQUVCGAEDT@:
Aral-esque Renaissance ornament.





Nature in Ornament.

Hans Kolbein
Flortner
22. Sixteenth century arabesque details.
evolve ornament out of their inner conscious-
ness, the Arabs could not altogether silence
their memories, even though conscience for-
bade them to represent anything “on the earth
beneath.” Doubtless they sinned often un-
consciously ; but they were foredoomed to sin.
And so with their Renaissance imitators,
German or Italian. Whenever they strayed
from the source of
Eastern inspira-
tion, it was in-
variably in the
direction of na-
ture. There is
sometimes growth
enough in the abs-
tract Orientalism
of Flötner and
23. Rosette in Rouen faïence. Holbein to make


48
Nature in Ornament.

VI-Iwow
20
24. Chinese foliage, not easy to identify.
us wish it were more thoroughly consistent.
One feels the lack of some controlling con-
science in the growth.
It is curious to note how, on Plate 20,
the deliberately ornamental lines of strapwork
break out into something like foliation—as

25. Bouquet of conventional ornament.


Plate 21.
I
poti
CF KELL MOTO-LITHO B FURNIVAL ST MOLWOINE.C.
Ornamental bouquet 17" Century





Nature in Ornament.

26. Abstract ornament, not free from
foliation.
for the undergrowth
of filigree it does
grow. Even Nicho-
laus Drusse (Plate
117) does not man-
age to get clear of
natural influence,
though it must be
admitted that he
treated nature with
very scant respect.
So in the arbitrary 20. AO
inlay pattern above,
the abstract lines of ornament must needs
break out incontinently into something like
foliation.
And again, in the faïence pattern on p. 47,
the painter, working on radiating lines in-
dicated by the shape of his dish, seems to
have arrived as a matter of course at a
rosette suggesting a flower, and calling for
something like a leaf in connection with it.
It is not by any means in the scroll alone
that we trace the influence of nature in orna-
ment. It is quite a common thing in Oriental
art to find bouquets of quite conventional
flower forms. There is an ingenious example
of this in the Persian plaque on p. 48, in
which the ornament consists almost entirely


50
Nature in Ornament.

Sin
Chinese
Flowers
27. Conventional Chinese flower forms.
of flower forms, evenly diapered over the dish,
and yet conforming to the idea of growth.
The Oriental influence is seen again in
Plate 21, where the ornament, far removed
as it is from nature, conveys quite clearly
the idea of a nosegay. Forms only remotely
resembling flowers are arranged, with due
regard to balance, I will not say in imitation,
but in recollection, of a bunch of flowers, and
lines are found to connect and support them,
and give them a sort of artistic coherence.
The artificiality of the design is obvious, but
it is the artifice of an artist, and a very
accomplished one too. It represents a type
of ornament suggested by a wealth of flowers,
where the stalks and especially the leaves go
for very little.
There is a considerable amount of tradi-
tional ornament which was founded, no doubt,



Plate 22.
J. Akerman, Photo-lith London
Book Cover by Owen Jones.





Nature in Ornament.
51

oy
28. Conventional Chinese foliage.
originally upón natural types lost in the mists
of long ago; artists have repeated the form
so often, and at last so perfunctorily, that in
the end it is as difficult to decipher as a man's
signature. One has almost to take it on faith
that the flowers on p. 50 are asters, peonies,
and so on. So with the border above, the
flower is, I suppose, an aster, but what goes
for leafage belongs to no flower that ever
grew.
Even Owen Jones, who laid it down as an
axiom that the recurrence to a natural type
was by so much a degradation of design,
could not do without foliation and growth,
more or less according to nature. This is
very plainly shown in the typical example
of his work on Plate 22. He had the
strictest views as to the lines on which orna-
ment should grow, but he insisted that it
should grow; and his theory led him in
practice to something always more or less
suggestive of nature—because the logical way
in which he went to work was indeed the way
of nature.
E 2


52
Nature in Ornament.
IV.
THE SIMPLIFICATION OF NATURAL FORMS.
To conventionalise is in some cases scarcely
more than to simplify. So plainly is this so
that the frequent occurrence of certain floral
forms in decorative design is in part at least
accounted for by the fact that they could be
very considerably simplified without losing
their clear identity. The sunflower, for ex-
ample (Plate. 23) came into fashion not
entirely because of the whimsical folly of a
few so-called æsthetes, but because its hand-
some and massive head was such an unmis-
takably ornamental feature. Foliage and
flower alike lent themselves to, and indeed
almost compelled, a broad and simple treat-
ment; whilst the character of the plant was
so well defined, that it was difficult by any
kind of rendering or any degree of conven-
tionality of expression to eliminate it. It was
never in danger of being reduced to the
mere abstraction of a flower, that might have
been suggested equally by any one of a dozen
different natural types.




Plate 23.
UN
ON
IN
m
C.F. KELL, PHOTO-LITHO. O.FURNIVAL ST HOLBORN, E.C.
Sunflowers & Roses by B. J. Talbert.





Simplification of Natural Forms. 53
29. Rectangular acorn patterns.
So also the acorn asserts its identity even
in the rudimentary form in which it occurs in
the old German stitching above.
You may see again in the late George
Edmund Street's cleverly contrived panel
overleaf how a really characteristic and ener-
getic shape will hold its own. Shorn as it is
altogether of its leaves, its prickles, the very
featheriness of its flower-heads, there rcsts not
the least doubt that it is a thistle.
Less emphatic forms lose, when simpli-
fied, all individual character ; and indeed you
have only to carry such simplification far
enough, to reduce the greater part of natural
forms to one level—I might say perhaps one
dead level—of convention.
It is remarkable how slight a modification
will remove a flower from recognition. An
alteration of scale is sometimes enough to
puzzle us. To magnify a flower is in most
cases to disguise its identity. Draw the
pimpernel the size of a flax blossom, or the
flax blossom the size of a mallow, and who


54
Nature in Ornament.
is to recognise it, especially when the subtler
characteristics of texture and the individual
turn of the petals are conventionalised away?
One can never be quite certain that any con-
ventional five-petalled flower, such as the
German Gothic rosette on p. 55 for example,
is not meant
for a rose.
Even in the
case of more
characteristic
blossoms, like
the speedwell,
with its pe-
tals three and
one, we are
put off the
scent at first
by unaccus-
tomed pro-
portions in
30. Simplified thistle. G. E. Street, R.A.
the flower.
And so, with leaves. Failing anything like
strict accuracy as to their growth-very rarely
indeed observed in ornament—it is more
than difficult to distinguish between one
lanceolate leaf and another : the same shape
may stand just as well for willow as for bay
or olive. The heart-shaped leaves in the


Plate 24

TV
Orion
CONVEN
TIONAL
GRECKY GREE
Illa
CONVENTIONAL FLORAL
ORNAMENT FROM
GREEK VASES
100
oran
Como
Kama
GREEK
VINE
arina:
un
iring
DOLTOOLILOODULIDU
TT
O ROCCORD
IOLCONEGOLDOGODILOCOTOORT
Details of Greek Terra Cotta painting





Simplification of Natural Forms. 55
LALO
Sur
HORIAL
.
WED,
ca
ca
VONS
ODD
AMW
W
AVO
LA..See
PETV24WD
Oriyasu
MAILLE
31. Gothic leaf border-wood carving.
border above may indicate the poplar or the
lilac: possibly the carver had in his mind no
leaf in particular.
It cannot be said that the danger of mis-
take in the identity of
natural forms has de-
terred the designer
from simplifying them.
We find in every period
of art floral or foliated
forms which may be
meant for this or that,
but which it is quite
32. Rosette or rose ?
impossible to identify
with any degree of certainty. The Gothic
border below may stand for a rose, for all we
know; the Greek border A on Plate 24 may
stand for a convolvulus; and B, I feel pretty
certain, consists of birch-leaves and catkins.
The strange leaf in border C on the same
plate used to puzzle me until I discovered

cm
33. Gothic leaf and flower border-wood carving.


56
Nature in Ornament.
its source in
nature. It
proves, as
you will see
at a glance
on this page,
to be no leaf
but a seed-
vessel : soften
theangularity
of the stem,
pulled out of
the straight
by the pods,
and you have
the starting-
point of the
Greek design.
There is
sometimes in
this Greek
pattern an
indication of
the way the
seed - vessels
split asunder
and shed the
34. Seed-vessels from nature. seeds. The
identification of this peculiar two-lobed feature


Plate 25.


DDRESS
MOUNTAIN
WESTERSE
VIHAR
BROWN
CELDCOCODDDDDDSGDGCCBUSEGGGGGESCEGECCGDEGGGGGECUGGGGGGES
GRRPPGECAGRRRRRRRREPRERROReearePQUBOOL Necdecreuar
IGANG
RELAW.28
Ceturins
"PHOTO-TINT" by James Akerman London. W.C
Details of Ancient Captic Embroideries.





Simplification of Natural Forms.
Ms57
. 
35. Conventional buds, or seed-vessels ?-marble inlay.
was all the more difficult, because you see
in other Greek vases something like the same
shape doing obvious duty for a leaf.
The conventional tree, on the same plate,
is quite impossible to name; the ivy in the
border above it, on the other hand, is for once
very clearly indicated; the berries, in par-
ticular, are very characteristically given.
Compare them with the more usual Greek
ivy-berries below.
Again, in the Coptic embroideries on
Plate 25, we have
heart - shaped
leaves and tre-
foils and fruit
and flower, all
alike symbolic
no doubt, but
without any
meaning in par-
ticular to us.

In the Floren-
36. Conventional Greek ivy-
tine border above,
leaves and berries.


Nature in Ornament.
AM
TUM
buds or fruits ?
as in the Japanese bor-
der here given, we can
please ourselves as to
whether they are buds or
seed-vessels that are repre-
sented.
Again, the Sicilian tree,
below, may stand for any-
thing with a serrated leaf.
Simplicity could not much
further go than in the
Roman version of a tree
37. Japanese border-
on p. 59. In the Indian
kinkaub pattern, on Plate 26, the character
of the flowers and leaves, no less than
the growth of the plant, are part and parcel
of the process of
weaving employed;
there is a dis-
tinct reminiscence
of some plant with
large foot-leaves
and small stalk-
leaves, but it would
be rash to say more
than that.
The Pompeian
details on Plate
38. Conventional tree, from a
27 betray more or


Sicilian silk.



Plate 26.
Detail from
an Indian "Kinkaub?





Simplification of Natural Forms. 59
less a natural source of
inspiration, but with the
exception of a tendril
and something like a
passion flower, there is
not much in the mosaic
that one can identify;
whilst in the painted
panel the various details
are so remote from lily
or campanula, or what-
ever may have been their
starting points, that one
accepts even the arbi-
trary way in which they
are put together. Com 39. Simple Roman tree.
pare this Pompeian panel
with the Roman candelabrum on
p. 133.
Again, in the carved door from
Cairo, Plate 28, the details of the
flowers are reduced to something
very nearly approaching to chip-
carving ; the details consist not so
much of leaves and flowers as of
cuts of the chisel, an effect all the
more satisfactory in as much as
the types, as far as one can make
Crocket them out, are rather mixed. Even

O-Dco3 7-mm D
40. Hawthorn
crocket.
41. Vine


60
Nature in 'Ornament.
so, by the way, they are
exceptionally natural
for Arab work.
In Gothic art, as
elsewhere, we identify
a plant in many in-
stances only because
we expect to find it
there. Whatever can
by any stretch of ima-
gination pass for a
vine-leaf (Plate 29) we
accept as such-any
bunch of berries we
take for grapes.
In very many cases, 42. Late Gothic pomegranate.
it is only by the flower
or fruit that the definite relation of the leaf
to nature is recognised. The crockets on the
plate referred to are more like crockets than
leaves; it is only by the berries and the winged
seeds that one knows them to do duty for
hawthorn and maple. One guesses that one of
the crockets on p. 59 may also be a hawthorn
leaf. It is only the tendril which gives us to
suppose that the other is a vine. And so with
the foliage from Henry the VII.'s Chapel on
Plate 29. But for the acorn cups, no one
would ever have suspected the carver of having


Plate 27.

Details
of
Mosaic
Painted V Panel
Naples
Museuin
O
“PHOTO-TINT", by James Akerman. London.W.C.
Details from Pompeii.





Simplification of Natural Forms. 61
-
MOOTH.DONDOSE
!
10...........
43, 44. Indian renderings of the poppy.
BARA
had any thought of oak-leaves ; and with
regard to the sprig of painted decoration
on p. 60, we make up our minds that it stands
for the pomegranate only be-
cause it comes nearer to that
than to any other symbolic
fruit.
It is all the more difficult,
sometimes, to identify the
plant which is meant, because
one can never be sure of the
knowledge, or of the con-
scientiousness, of the artist.
The two damascened patterns
above presumably represent
the poppy, but, in the one
case at least, the artist has
supplied the flower with five
petals and a calyx-details
which, if one had perfect faith
in the artist, would complete-
ly put one off the scent.
· One is puzzled also by the
wiry shoots between the lily- *with lily-buds.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
4
ΑΑΑΑΑΑΑΑΑΑΑΑΑΑΑΑΑΑΑ
.
Sic
NAAAAAAAAAAAAA
POWINNO


62
Nature in Ornament.

NA
பாரியாகவும்
RUDROS
46. Early Gothic foliated ornament.
like flowers in the admirably severe Greek
border on p. 61, and wonders as to the source
of its inspiration—the Solomon's seal per-
haps ?
Any trefoil or cinquefoil may have in-
Aluenced, in its turn, the shape of early Gothic
foliage, such as that above, which is founded,
as we know, directly upon no natural type at
all, but is a recollection of a recollection of
a recollection going centuries back. It grew
out of Byzantine or Romanesque forms, them-
selves derived from Classic foliage ; and it
was only when the sculptor had arrived,
through symbolism, at something reminding
him of clover, or wood sorrel, or hepatica, that
he began to think of making it more nearly
like nature.
It is clear that the carver of the detail
on p. 63, had in his mind some natural leaf;
what that leaf is, is not so certain. One of


Plate 28.

AN
"PHOTO-TINT", by James Akerman London.W.C.
Carved Cabinet Door froid Cairo, S.K.M.






Simplification of Natural Forms. 63
47. Natural and ornamental foliage-Early French.
the charms of Early Gothic is that, conven-
tional as it is, and in the main of one type,
there is always a chance of our coming upon
some touch of nature which brings the work-
man nearer to us. You can see sometimes,
in Early French Gothic, how the detail was
niin
HA
WDDM
48. Bud-like ornamental forms.


64.
rname
Nature 212
.
in Ornament
inspired, as
Viollet le
Duc points
out, by the
fronds of
the bracken
and other
plants; but
the sculptor
49. Peony simplified to form a stencil - H. Sumner. leaves out
so much, that it is not always easy, even with
the assistance of Viollet le Duc, to detect the
natural type. Whether of set purpose or by
instinct, too, the sculptor chose persistently
the simplest floral forms, which lent themselves
to breadth and dignity of treatment. It is
not surprising that, magnified in stone, they
should appear to us abstractions.
In many instances, it is tolerably clear that
no leaf was intended, but only foliation, no
particular plant, but growth. And it is
marvellous how the early Mediæval sculptor
contrived to convey that idea of vitality in
the stone. In the crockets so peculiarly
characteristic of early French Gothic, for
example, he imitated no particular bud, but
the stone itself seems budding into life. A
later Gothic instance of that bud-like ornament
in wood is given on p. 63.


Plate 29.

uns SAV
UMUM
Vine. Arques Normandy.
Winchester
Rose
Carved To
Wood
Rosette
Beauchamp Chapel
Hawthorn
Beverley 2000
SIV
U
A
> Maple
Beverley
Oak West quinster
1)
Vine?
Oxford
Hawthorn
Knapton...
Nut Winchester
Vine
Beddington
Christchurch
Vine
Beddington
J. Akerman, Photo-lith London
English Gothic Details





Simplification of Natural Forms.
1565
. · How far the
primitive Gothic
sculptor could, if
he had been so
minded, have
rendered nature
in the coarse
stone in which he
50. Indian wood-carving.
worked, is doubt-
ful; happily he
seized that in
nature which he
could express,
and expressed it
like an artist. It
is of the very
quality of an
ornamentist, that
he should be 51. Gothic wood-carving.
willing to omit much that
he could have put into his
work had it been to the
purpose. In the peony pat-
tern on p. 64 Mr. Sumner
has had the courage to
leave out whatever could
not conveniently be ren-
dered în stencilling.
dif-
52. Greek that might be Goihic. It is curious how


-


66
Nature in Ornament.
53. Persian
be Gothic.
ferent artists, working at different
times in different countries, have
arrived sometimes at results not so
very different. There seems to me
a curious correspondence between
the detail of the Indian scroll
and the late Gothic rosette on
p. 65, the result, presumably, in each
that might case, of a sympathetic use of the
othic. tools the carver had.
So, again, the fragment of archaic-Greek
sculpture on the same page is so like certain
rude stone carving of the Gothic period that
one would have taken it almost for Mediæval
work. That bulging midrib is characteristic
of a certain form of Perpendicular carving,
derived no doubt from beaten metalwork.
Did Greek and
Gothic work-
man alike refer
for inspiration
to goldsmiths'
work, and so
arrive at some-
thing like the
same form?
Once more, 694
in the Persian
details above, 54. Japanese treatment of the iris.

can
ALDEN
ALA
us
M
MESELLER


Plate 30.

Www
WMWWWW
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Inhalt
.
um
DIR
RI
VANDRU
min Herne
Pain2 tema
COD
DOO
SonNELLS
SMO!
SWAG.
Memes
TO
1721
O
G F KELL PHOTO-LITHO.8.FURNIVAL ST HOLBORNEO
Indian renderings of the Iris.





Simplification of Natural Forms. 67
there is a most marked resemblance to certain
Decorated Gothic crocket forms—especially
as they are rendered in stained glass—the play
of the brush accounting no doubt partly for
the likeness.
At other times one is struck by the variety
in the sundry simplified versions of the same
plant. There is a wide difference between
the painted iris and that in niello, on Plate 30 ;
and between these Indian renderings, again,
and the characteristic adaptation of the plant
in the Japanese embroidery on p. 66, in which
nature is reduced to extreme simplicity with-
out any loss of character.
Again, in the panels on Plate 31, modifi-
cation consists mainly in simplifying the
natural forms. The leaves indeed are elon-
gated and refined, and, like the flowers,
arranged to suit the ornamental scheme. But
the liberties taken with the growth of crown-
imperial, fritillary, bluebell, and Lent lily, are
such as would not greatly shock the botanist.
The lines on which they grow are (organi-
cally) not altogether impossible.
At times the simplification resolves itself
into something very different indeed from
the actual thing, as in the Italian silk over-
leaf, in which the ears of corn take the form
of a distinct pattern; from which we may
F 2


68
Nature in Ornament.
apprehend how easily, from the simplification
of natural form, the ornamentist glided imper-
ceptibly into its elaboration. But that will
form the subject of a separate chapter.

WONIN
III
TIN
55. Wheat-ears, simplified or elaborated ?


Plate 31.


L.F.D.


C.F. KELL, PHOTO-LITHO.B.FURNIVAL ST HOLLOAN, E.O
· Inlaid
flower Panels.





THE ELABORATION OF NATURAL FORMS.
It has been shown in a preceding chapter,
how the necessity of simplifying natural forms
led as a matter of course to conventional
treatment. It will be seen presently, that
there is sometimes sufficient technical reason
for the elaboration of the type before us.
The omission of the superfluous in orna-
ment is indisputably right. How far it may
be desirable or permissible to elaborate the
simple forms of nature, is more open to
question. It rather suggests to us painting
the lily or gilding gold. There is a strong
flavour of artificiality about it.
As a matter of fact, the practice flourished,
though indeed it existed long before, in arti-
ficial times, that is to say during the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries. It would be
scarcely fair, however, to take everything of
the kind as an indication of decadence. We
are bound in justice, no less than in reason,
to inquire if such elaboration may not have


70
Nature in Ornament.
led to some satisfactory results, and what
those results were.
It may possibly prove that what was best
in the later French styles, for example, was
more or less of the artificially elaborate type.
The rockwork and the broken scrolls, the gar-
lands and the trellises, the bows and ribbons,
and all such frivolities of the later French
monarchy, have much less to recommend
them than the patterns of the silks of the
period. Restraint was out of the question.
Licence was the order of the day, and kings'
mistresses reigned over art. Granting, how-
ever, the absence of restraint in design, more
objectionable to us than in French eyes, there
is in the Lyons silks of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries not only considerable
beauty of colour, but quite exceptional inge-
nuity of design, especially in its relation to
the technique of weaving; and it will be time
well spent to seek out the method, artificial
though it may be, by which results so beauti-
ful are arrived at.
The effect may be so far from nature as to
be quite characteristically artificial, and yet it
may turn out that almost every detail in the
design is directly borrowed from reality. One
might say, for instance, that in Plate 32
natural forms are mainly removed from nature


Plate 32.

PHOTO TINT, by James Akerman London WC
Lyons Silk of the 17th or 18th Centy





The Elaboration of Natural Forms. 71
by diapering them over with other details
borrowed equally from the same source. And
this was quite the current way of design.
Forms more or less natural were adopted,
probably because they occurred most readily.
But the natural veining of leaves and petals
did not present sufficient variety and interest
of surface for the artists' purpose ; and so they
supplied its place by a subsidiary growth of
smaller foliage. By the judicious alterna-
tion of light on dark and dark on light, they
even went so far as to produce an effect
equivalent to—not at all resembling, but
equivalent to—that of shading. Something
of the same kind is seen again on Plate 33,
where a sort of shading resolves itself into
fresh forms of ornament. Those leaves are
characteristically of the eighteenth century.
This is a device at all events much more
appropriate to silk weaving than the futile
attempts at natural shading which have also
had their vogue. Besides, in the rendering of
the details themselves—observe the orna-
mental serration of the large leaf on Plate 32,
the cresting of the fruit, its calyx, the diaper-
ing of the forms generally, and the rendering
of the smaller foliage—there is such consistent
artificiality throughout as to give a distinctly
ornamental character to the design.


72
Nature in Ornament.
If the artists of the artificial periods were
not always tasteful or intelligent, all the more
opportunity for us to show how, by the exer-
cise of intelligence and taste, it may be
possible to turn their expedients to new and
better account.
It was not they, however, who first hit
upon the expedient. A simpler, bolder, and
altogether nobler example of the saine kind
of thing is shown on Plate 34, an Italian
damask of distinctly earlier date. Such a
design loses very much by reduction to the
scale of the illustration, and it depends also
very much for its effect on its fitness to the
simpler kind of weaving ; but on the scale of
the original, in single-colour damask, it is
simply perfect for breadth and richness—a
model of appropriate treatment. That is at
all events one way of proceeding, namely,
to design big, bold masses of foliage, and
to break these again with smaller foliated
detail.
That this should be done consistently
would hardly need to be pointed out, were it
not that in old work consistency has so fre-
quently been lost sight of. There is no de-
fending flowers and fruits which agree neither
with one another nor with the leaves in asso-
ciation with them; but if the pattern be but


Plate 33

2
)
Conrentional
Greator
from Old Silks 7750-75
"PHOTO-Tomt", dy domes Akerman. London. WC
Details of 18th Century Foliage.





The Elaboration of Natural Forms. 73
Open
TE
homogeneous, it would be absurd to say that
it should not be constructed on the principle
exemplified in Plate 34.
That principle, indeed, dates farther back
than the Renaissance. The Italians borrowed
it from the Persians, as the French borrowed
it from them. The bro-
cade here illustrated
(56) is of old Italian
manufacture, but the
design is pretty literally
taken from a Persian
source. The way in
which the broad surface
of the main design,
itself floral, is broken
up with smaller floral
detail, is distinctively
Eastern. Precisely the
same principle is in-
volved in the design
of the Persian silk on
56. Floral forms within floral
Plate 78. You see
it, too, on the pottery of Damascus, and in
all manner of Oriental ornament.
A characteristic Persian treatment of the
pomegranate is shown overleaf, where the
bursting of the fruit takes a peculiarly
ornamental bud shape. Other elaborately

itself floral, is broken
forms.


74
Nature in Ornament.

VW
OS
57. Pomegranate-berries arranged in bud-form.
ornamental variations are shown on pp. 75,
76, 77, 139, 140, and on Plates 73 and 87,
The Italian version (58) is ornamental
enough, but the artist has not realised that
the crown of the pomegranate represents the
sepals of the flower, and has added a sort of
calyx beneath the fruit. In the eighteenth cen-
tury version, the seeds are more fantastically
rendered than ever—they are represented not
merely by diaper as on p. 77, but by diapers
as on p. 76. Observe also the ornamental
scalloping of the rents in the fruit. Natural



Plate 34.
9366633
TADANA,
SAAD
120SAADA
C. KELL, PHOTO-LITHO.B. FURNIVAL ST HOLBORNEO
Silk Damask of the 16! Century





The Elaboration of Natural Forms. 75
hong
form is used, indeed, only
as a means of getting
variety of texture in the
silk.
One great advantage in
the method of thus break-
ing up broad surfaces is,
that the introduction of the
smaller detail does away
with any possible appear-
ance of baldness in the
design; whilst yet, at a
sufficient distance from the
eye, the broad masses
alone assert themselves.
You get, in short, breadth
at a distance, and detail
on close inspection, each
without interfering with
the other. Leaves and
fruits are very naïvely
diapered in the Japanese
pattern on page 78, de-
signed presumably for
58. Ornamental pome-
weaving.
With the larger floral
forms in French silks are usually associated
(see once more Plate 32) subordinate floral
details, more on the scale of the detail within



Anninn
"100 TTT
VUMUUR
color
.2.
2
wa
W
2.
monumuhimu
CE
Amal
granates.


76
Nature in Ornament.
11
.
IMA
...
....
.
the larger detail,
introduced mainly
for the purpose of
breaking the back-
ground. It is ob-
vious that such
undergrowth must
be ornamentalised
accordingly.
59. Ornamental pomegranate-
By this means you
18th century silk.
get a further advan-
tage in the opportunity it affords of mingling
in the same design effects of light on dark and
dark on light. If, for example, the ground
is dark and the larger details light, and the
smaller details breaking these dark again, any
smaller details in light on the dark ground
will contrast with the dark details on the
same scale, and create a certain mystery in
the design, which is of very distinct artistic
value.
The substitution of geometric diaper in
place of subordinate foliation, which occurs,
for example, in the Japanese pattern on
p. 78, is less absolutely satisfactory-least
of all so when, as is often the case in silk
(Plate 32), it takes the form of imitation
lace. In actual lace there is perhaps more
excuse than anywhere for elaborately orna-


Plate 35.

PHOTO-TINT, by James Akerman London WC
Old Lace, Ivory Point."





The Elaboration of Natural Forms. 77
certain artificiality in
JnnOA
German embroidery.
mental treatment,
and there geometry
seems not to come
so much amiss. A
certain artificiality in
the material seems
to justify something
very much like fri-
volity in the design.
This refers more 60. Ornamental pomegranate-old
especially to the
fanciful patterns of the lighter and flimsier lace
of pre-revolutionary frills and flounces.
A more dignified example of lacework, also
elaborately artificial in its way, is given on
Plate 35. It is open to the objection of
combining in one growth flowers of various
families, but in the general richness this
effect of discrepancy is to some extent lost.
The lily, the heartsease, and the picotee do
not assert their individuality.
In lace and in certain kinds of embroidery
ultra elaboration of detail is accounted for by
the process of work. In stitching there seems
some reason in making much of the stitches ;
and this is what lace-workers and embroiderers
have continually done.
An equally characteristic; but very different
kind of elaboration grew out of the conditions


78
Nature in Ornament.
of smiths' work. Given the idea of foliated
ironwork, and the facilities of cutting, hammer-
ing, and twisting, it was only natural it should
take something like the late Gothic forms on
Plate 36. Some such excuse for elaboration
makes a confessedly dangerous practice more
tolerable if no
safer.
Another good
excuse for ela-
boration is when,
in what may be
called fictitious
detail, the fiction
is founded upon
fact, when it is
the development
of some natural
form or effect,
when the hint
has been given
by nature, and 61. Foliated forms geometrically
diapered.
the ornamental
character is only an exaggeration of natural
characteristics.
The seeds of the pomegranate already
referred to are a case in point. In the em-
broidered fruit on Plate 73 they are repre-
sented by a diaper of chequers. In the


Plate 36.

GE
Gothic
german
Ironwork
"PHOTO-TINť, by Jumes Akermon. London WC.
Details of Hammered Work





The Elaboration of Natural Forms. 79
23
German embroidery on p. 77 they are indicated
by a lattice of silk cord, with here and there
a spangle.
The most impossible development of the
Gothic ornaments below and overleaf is par-
tially accounted
for as a remini-
scence of some
flower in which
the pistil was
very strongly
pronounced.
No such ex-
cuse can be
pleaded for the
treatment of the
leaves in the
design for wall
paper on Plate
37. The more
or less natu-
62. Elaborated Aower.
rally drawn
leaves are just
enriched with pattern, which takes the place
of natural veining, and gives variety of sur-
face. That personally I think such a proceed-
ing not altogether unjustifiable, is shown by
my adopting it.
Another form of elaboration very common


80
Nature in Ornament.
.
in fifteenth and sixteenth century ornament,
consists in the turning over and curling up of
the ends and edges of foliation of all kinds.
Something of the kind occurs indeed in Greek
and Roman scrollwork; but it is not until
late Gothic
times that
it becomes
a marked
and charac-
teristic fea-
ture in de
sign, partly,
perhaps,
owing to
the influ-
ence of the
worker in
iron, just as
a certain
Coarse
bossy cha German
worsted
racterin Per- Table-
Embroidery
pendicular
Cover
1598 Cloth
carving is
63. Elaborated flower.
derived from
goldsmiths' work. You see that bossy cha-
racter in the rendering of the hop on p. 81,
and in the leaves on pp. III, 112, 118, 119.
The limits, within which the character of

Cercler
072



2.
onu
UM
MO
Nach
Wall paper, conventional growth.





The Elaboration of Natural Forms. 81
one material may fairly be given to another
are soon reached. It is clearly a mistake in
taste to give, as Gothic carvers did, to leaves
in wood or stone the bulbous look of beaten
metal, or to give to an embroidered scroll the
character of forging. But one would be loth
to give up that very valuable and practical
device in design,
the “ turn-over,"
whatever its origin.
What indeed
would Perpendi-
cular and Flam-
boyant ornament
be without it? The
Gothic scroll would
be robbed of half
its energy, the
Tudor rose would
64. Bulbous hop leaves-German
Gothic.
flat rosette, the
leafage of Aldegrever (p. 124) would lose all
its crispness. I have resorted freely to the
use of overlapping in Plate 38, a wall pattern
founded upon the artichoke. Taking the
plant only as a motif of ornament, and attach-
ing no significance to it, I felt comparatively
free to be-decorate nature.
There would seem to be in nature some


82
Nature in Ornament.
sort of precedent even for the be-frilling
of floral growth. Certain ferns grow with
every appearance of artificiality. There is a
particular kind of cabbage, much in favour
with Mediæval illuminators, which grows very
much as though the milliner had taken it in
hand; and there is a wild flower, not un-
common in marshy places, which looks for all
the world as if it must have been designed
somewhere about A.D. 1500.
The excellent rendering of the gooseberry-
leaf on Plate 98 is a further application of
the manner of the sixteenth century, to new
forms. It reminds one of the vine-leaves of
Aldegrever, and I have a recollection of the
leaves of the clematis treated in the same
way in some Renaissance carving at Brescia.
Professor Anton Seder has worked out the
problem of treating vegetable form à la
Renaissance very thoroughly in that sumptu-
ous work '“ Die Pflanze.” It might be sug-
gested that the growth of the gooseberry
in the example given is rather too rustic for
the extremely ornamental turn of the leaves.
The danger of such discrepancy is inherent in
such treatment, and is seldom completely
overcome. As it is, this is a most competent
and indeed accomplished piece of work.
Once more, to presume to elaborate natural


Plate 38.

"PHOTO-TINT" by James Akerman. London W.C.
Wall paper, founded upon Nature.





The Elaboration of Natural Forms. 83
form is to trench upon very difficult ground;
but we cannot afford to shut ourselves off
from any opportunity in design. It is easy
enough to dismiss whole schools of thought
and treatment with a word of contempt. We
have most of us done so in our time. As we
grow older we become, let us hope, more just,
and confess to ourselves that there are more
things in art and ornament than were dreamt
of in our phiļosophy of a while ago.
G
2


SA
Nature in Ornament.
VI.
CONSISTENCY IN THE MODIFICATION
OF NATURE.
ACCORDING to the use we make of natural
form, it helps or hinders us in design. The
flow of line, the grace, the growth, the tender-
ness of colour, the subtlety of suggestion,
which so delight us in ornament, would never
have been evolved from man's imagination
apart from natural influences; but nature
does not provide for us ornament ready
made; were that so, our occupation would
be gone. Nature is the starting-point, by
no means the end of ornament.
When Owen Jones went so far as to say
that in proportion as ornament approached
natural form it had less claim on us as orna-
ment, he overstated his case quite as much as
they who contend, on the contrary, that only
in so far as it approaches nature has it any
claim on our sympathy at all. The two
opposite contentions may be taken to balance
one another. The truth lies midway between.


Plate 39.

OBLONG PANEL FOR FIGVRE SVBJECT
SSR
ON
32
SIA
UBYT
SOUS
PS
VPRIGHT
PANEL FOR
FIGVRE
SVBJECT
RE
Te
11---centre line.com
ORNAMENT
founded upon
the L
wis Day
"PHOTO-Tunt, by James Akerman. London W.C.
Tile Panel





Consistency in Modification of Nature. 85
To reconcile the rival claims of nature and
art it needs only the artist.
But how, it may be asked, can nature be,
in any case, a hindrance to design?
Whatever diverts for a moment the atten-
tion of the artist from his artistic purpose, is
distinctly a hindrance. The purpose of the
ornamentist is ornament. Nature has a way
of claiming too much attention to herself;
and the artist, in his frailty, is only too likely
to yield to the seductions of a mistress,
worthier, it may be, than all others, but not
the one he has, so to speak, sworn to love
and cherish, if not to obey.
The designer can hardly make too many
studies from nature, but he can easily make
bad use of those he has made, and easily
encumber himself with them. A man can
design quite freely only when the burden of
natural fact is so familiar that to him it
ceases to be a burden. Refreshing as it may
be to refer to his studies, or to Nature herself,
he cannot design with either in front of him.
The actual thing is not malleable enough
for his purpose, whereas an impression or a
memory of it accommodates itself in the
most surprising manner to the conditions of
the case, and the necessary modification
occurs as though it were a matter of course.


86
Nature in Ornament.
In our happiest moments that is so. At
other times the question as to the necessary
modification has to be deliberately decided.
It is not possible to lay down any limit
as to the degree of naturalism permissible in
ornament, or to say that the most natural
rendering may not sometimes be the best.
The conditions of the case may determine
the elimination of the natural element in
design altogether, or permit it to rule para-
mount: they determine the degree of modifi-
cation necessary, or the degree of naturalness
permissible.
And even where they leave the artist free,
as soon as ever he begins to design he sets
himself his own limits. He pledges himself
by what he has done, and is bound in con-
sistency to carry his idea logically through.
A formal arrangement of lines involves an
equally formal kind of foliation, and free
growth pledges him to equally natural foliage.
So also natural detail prescribes free lines
of growth, and conventional detail implies
lines proportionately conventional.
If, that is to say, it is proposed to clothe a
geometric skeleton with foliage, it is quite
easy to make the turn of the leaves too
natural; the danger in the case of a more
natural skeleton would be in making them


Plate 40.

10
WHY
"PHOTO-Tint", by wames Akerman London WC
Chrysanthemum Pattern.





Consistency in Modification of Nature. 87
too hard and formal. On Plate 39 the sym-
metric lines on which the design is set out
logically determined a certain restraint in the
rendering of the lily, and it is reduced accord-
ingly to what might be called mere ornament.
On the other hand, the free growth of the
chrysanthemum, on Plate 40, not only per-
mitted, but demanded detail more in accord-
ance with nature. It was possible, therefore,
to proceed altogether on the lines of nature,
only modifying natural form in the direction
of symmetry and ornament:
One of the most irritating things in design
is to see flowers like catherine-wheels, or
other such prim rosettes, on stems suggesting
growth, or to find naturalistic flowers spring-
ing from quite arbitrary and mechanical lines.
In the otherwise masterly design on Plate
23, by the late B. J. Talbert (an artist who
deserved better than to be so soon forgotten),
there is just that flaw, that the eyes of the
sunflowers, in comparison with the freer
growth of the leaves and petals, are so
formal as to stare out of the pattern at you.
This effect is to a great extent obviated in
the wall-paper by judiciously soft colouring,
but the fault in design is still there.
This point of consistency needs the more
to be insisted upon, because it has at no


88
Nature in Ornament.
65. Indian corn, adapted to ornament
time been strictly enough observed. Every-
where, in Greek no less than in Gothic art,
we find the artist (weak creatures that we
are) lapsing into inconsistency. The border,
in particular, is a pitfall in his path. In it
arbitrary arrangement is, one may say, a
necessity; and it is only with difficulty, often,
that he brings himself to reduce leaves and
flowers to consistency with the waves or
spirals or other symmetrical lines on which
they grow.
In the border at the top of the page the
adaptation of the Indian corn to its place is
perfect : that is ornament. On Plate 81 there
are sundry instances of much less successful
treatment, where the ivy-leaf is natural enough
in shape to make us want it to grow more
naturally; which is the case also in the
borders on Plate 83. On Plate 41 the leaves
and their arrangement are equally remote
from nature, and the result is correspondingly
satisfactory. The happy mean of conven-
tionality is found also in the borders on
pp. 55, 57, 58, 61, &c.
The arrangement of wave or other scroll


Plate 41

重重黑園園國國題國國風圈圓圈圈圓国国国I国I国I国III
自愿意观國國圍爾魔風圈圈圈圈剧照照留剧想国
​以上
​-
強​。
(组图因国画國國風國剧照會回到国會出面力​!
CF.K., Photo Leth., 8Furnival 2.1.bor, E.C.
Archaic Foliage.





Consistency in Modification of Nature. 89

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with leaves alternately on either side of it
(or leaves and
flowers, or leaves
and berries) is
objectionable
(Plates 24, 25,
41, 68, 81) just
in proportion
to the natural-
istic rendering
of leaf, flower,
berry, or what-
ever it may be.
There are two
separate start-
ing-points in
ornamental de-
sign. Natural
form, once mo-
dified, may re-
solve itself into
ornament pure
and simple; and,
on the other
hand, ornament
has always a
88 Coin F
tendency to as-
sume familiar
66. Rigid lines of growth turned to
natural shapes.
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ornamental account.


90
Nature in Ornament.
But, though somewhat similar results may be
arrived at from such different directions, nature
modified by considerations of ornamental pro-
priety is one thing, ornament modified by
memories of nature is quite another.
If you start with nature, the difficulty is
in making natural forms subserve decoration
without eliminating
too entirely the
natural element.
When the lines of
growth peculiar to a
plant are not in the
direction of orna-
ment, what is to be
done ?
The better plan
is not, if you can
help it, to go against
nature, but to per-
suade, if possible, the 67. Artificial grace of line.
natural and charac-
teristic growth into lines more in accordance
with the purpose of ornament. Even the
Greeks, as I have said, when they resorted
to arbitrary lines in connection with natural
forms, did not succeed.
It must not too readily be taken for
granted that a certain rigidity of growth may


Plate 42

SAUN
Ila
C.F KELL, PHOTO-LITHO.8.FURNIVAL ST HOLBORN,E.C
Modern Gothic Lily panel.





Consistency in Modification of Nature. 91
not possibly be turned to account in orna-
ment. There is evidence of the availability

72cm
68. Quasi-natural rendering of lily.


92
Nature in Ornament,
of rigid lines of
growth in the in-
genious composi-
tion of the late
Clement Heaton
on p. 89, com-
pared with which
the admittedly
more graceful
Italian version of
the bearded wheat
on p. 90 is not
without a sug-
gestion of sick-
liness. What is
fanciful in this
last design makes
for ornament, no
doubt; but there
is something al-
most discordant
in the association
of lines so sweet
with the growth
of corn.
Sanmicheli's
quasi-natural lily
(p. 91), with its
five impossible

69. Quattro-cento lily.


Plate 43

Conventional
Lily
Italian
anaissance
Cya, Date Lath. Furnival 2.1
..C.
Inlaid Lily Ornament.





Nature in Ornament.

71. Incongruous treatment of the oak.
bush or twine like a creeper; nor need he
wish it. It is quite possible, to one suf-
ficiently at home in nature and in design, to
indue any such refractory plant with a grace
of line and a general suavity of form which,
though by no means characteristic of the
natural growth, do not, at all events, bluntly
contradict it.
The graceful character of the growth on
Plate 43 is not precisely that of the lily ; but
one is hardly disposed to quarrel with a com-
position in itself so satisfactory. The detail
is not so natural that you miss the natural
growth. As a rendering of the lily, the
design may not be all that one could wish ;
as ornament there is not much fault to find
with it: the deviation from nature is all in
the direction of design. It is evident, too,



Plate 44
Honeysuckle
(Love-in-a-Mist
from
old Silks
about 1740-50
ARE
Kiss-me-quick
Wild Flag
"PHOTO-TINT", by J. Akerman, 6. Queen Square W.C.
18th Century flower rendering.


--
--
---
-
-
-
-
-
-


Consistency in Modification of Nature. 95
that the artist looked at the lily for himself,
and conventionalised it according to his
needs. It almost seems as though the plant
might have been trained to grow so.
This is the natural evolution of ornament,
and not the mere distortion of nature which
is sometimes mistaken for ornamental treat-
ment. In the panel on p. 93 it has been at-
tempted to subject the narcissus to somewhat
similar ornamental treatment.
In the eighteenth century version of the
wild flag on Plate 44 there is a certain ap-
pearance of naturalness, or, more properly
speaking, of picturesqueness ; but it grows
with a grace and elegance absolutely arti-
ficial. That same affectation belonged indeed
to the period (see Plates 32, 33, 62, 70); but
it is at least a graceful
affectation, and con-
sistent with itself.
That can hardly be
said for the rendering
of the oak on p. 94,
which has the unfor-
tunate appearance of
being either too natu-
ral or not natural
enough. And even
72. Characterless design.
were the lines more


96
Nature in Ornament.

73. Inconsistency between flower and leaf.
satisfactory than they are, one would still
feel that there was something incongruous
in the combination of lines so suave and
slender with the oak. And so again in the
case of the still more timid treatment of
the leaves by Albertolli on p. 95. This par-
ticular tree is, more than all others, associated
always in our minds with the idea of sturdy
angularity.
The rendering of a plant may be by no
means very natural, and yet by far too much
so. In the ornament above, the flower is too
distinctly an orchid to go with foliage dis-
tinctly belonging to another family. This is
a fault rather exceptional in Japanese design,
where the rendering of nature is usually either
frankly natural or deliberately and uncompro-
misingly conventional.
In the art of the Renaissance the fault of
inconsistency is of the commonest occur-


Plate 45.

MEGA
CAREERS
"PHOTO-TINT", by J. Akerman, 6. Queen Square,W.C.
A Renaissance Medley.





Consistency in Modification of Nature. 97
rence: the nuts, the pods, and the five-petalled
flowers on Plate
45, are not espe-
cially life-like; but
that forms so im-
mediately recog-
nisable as nuts
and pea - pods
should grow from
the same stalk as
a flower of five
petals, to say no-
thing of their con-
junction with ab-
solutely artificial
lines, and with
foliage of the usual
Renaissance type,
is enough very con-
siderably to dis-
count the charm
of an exceptionally
graceful and well-
balanced composi-
tion. A rather
more coherent, and
in some ways ad-
74. Graceful artificiality.
mirable, version of
the pea-pod is given on Plate 46.

KaL
H


98
Nature in Ornament.
In the example on p. 97 the offence of
incoherence is somewhat mitigated, inasmuch
as the detail is not very real. All sorts of
different flowers grow from a single stem
indeed, but the stem is not very obvious.
There is a kind of natural confusion in the
foliage, and the types are not strongly pro-
nounced. Everything is uniformly graceful

75. De-naturalised floral details.
and artificial, and the unreality of the detail
prepares one for the violation of natural
growth. Even then it is hard to forgive it.
Much the same criticism might be passed
on the less graceful panel in the centre of
Plate 47. The manner in which flowers of
various kinds grow from a common stem is


Plate 46.

2498
TONI
A
SR
2
leht
LONGUEUR
SA
10
PETER
YA
25
ONDON
ER
ols
COS
C
122989
NE
"PHOTO-TINT" by James Akerman London W.C
Pea-pod Ornament, Renaissance.





Consistency in Modification of Nature. 99
of the eighteenth century, not of nature. In
the panel at the top of the plate there is less
shock to us, inasmuch as the details are more
distinctly ornamental : the danger in design
of this kind is in proportion as the details
assert their natural identity. Better de-
naturalise them altogether, as in the orna-
ment on p. 98, than jumble up all manner of
detail into a quite heterogeneous whole.
It is easily understood why eighteenth
century designers mixed their types so reck-
lessly. They aimed at effect, at any price;
and consistency was, in their eyes, a very
small price to pay for it. By making lilies
and roses and daisies and pomegranates all
branch from one stem, it was easy to get
variety and contrast. The more consistent
way would have been, of course, to intertwine
one stem with another, and so account
logically for the variety in detail.
It would be comparatively easy for us to
get the qualities of eighteenth century orna-
ment, if we were willing to pay the same
price for it. Art and puritanism have not
much in common, but even the artist may
well be puritan enough to sacrifice some-
thing of effect for the sake, I will not say of
honesty, but of consistency. He is quite
free to efface, as I said, the natural type;
H 2


100
Nature in Ornament.
but, once it asserts itself, it binds him to a
certain adherence to natural growth and de-
tail. He is not justified in pocketing his
conscience. His details may bear, if it so
please him, but the vaguest resemblance to
leaves and flowers and fruits; but if they are
recognisable as such, they must grow as
such : a stem, for example, has no business to
grow two ways at once.
Moreover, the artist will instinctively select
his types : he will not associate compound
leaves with lily flowers, or simple leaves with
pea blossoms. If the growth of his ornament
suggest a forest tree he will not fill-up with
tendrils. If the fruit suggest an acorn he will
not decorate the stalk with thorns. Where
the flowers occur singly he will not make
berries in clusters; or if the flowers form a
spike he will not make the fruits droop. He
will not make apple blossoms develope into
acacia pods or daisies into gooseberries.
According to his acquaintance with nature,
and to his artistic sense of fitness, he will
abstain instinctively from incongruity, and
conform at least so far to the law of order,
that there shall be in his design no suggestion
of conglomeration ; it shall be one growth,
reminding you of nature or not, but in any
case consistent with itself.
If several flowers are used in combination,


Plate 47

GUAN
WAN
2
.
2 Y
TOVU
IL
CONCE
US
nnnn
C.F KELL, PHOTO-LITHO.O.FURNIVAL ST HOLBOAN, E.O.
Dutch & German Conventions of the 17th Century





Consistency in Modification of Nature. IOI
e101
. 
Com
76. Confusion of effect without confusion of growth.
each should have its identity. The orna-
mentist chooses naturally, where he can, the
types in nature most amenable to ornament.
But, apart from the fact that many of the
most accommodating have been long since,
as one may say, appropriated, there are cases
in which he is bound to use such or such a
plant, which may possibly be very awkward
to deal with in the way of ornament; and
one very obvious and convenient way out of
the difficulty is, to associate with it some
other plant or plants complementary to it, by
help of which the qualities lacking in the
original plant are supplied.
Yet there is no necessity that the various
flowers, fruits, and what not, should all grow
from one stem. In the side borders on Plate
47, mere disjointed sprays of flowers are
fitted together, without producing any very
unpleasant effect of disjointedness, which of
two evils would certainly be the lesser.
In the detail of Damascus tilework above,


102
Nature in Ornament.
the separate flowers have separate stalks.
It may not be easy always to get rid of so
many stalks in the composition, but in the
intertwining of them there arise fresh pos-
sibilities in design—if you are man enough
to seize the opportunity.
Another way out of the difficulty of com-
bining various floral forms is to introduce the
one only as the undergrowth to the other, as
shown on Plate 48. By this means it is pos-
sible to contrast bold with delicate detail,
broad masses with broken surface, without
doing violence to natural laws.
How far one is bound to adhere strictly to
the lines on which a plant grows, and to the
character of its detail, depends to some
extent always upon the purpose of the artist;
only in strict fidelity to that purpose lie the
possibilities of perfect art.
What if even great artists have been guilty
of all manner of inconsequence in design?
They are so much the less to be trusted as
safe guides in the matter of taste. One may
find authority for any kind of ill-doing. The
accepted precedents are not all of them sound
by any means. I would have every precedent
stripped of its prestige, and scrutinised as
carefully as the newest of recruits; and the
ricketty among them I would dismiss once
and for all.


Plate 48.

la
SA
"PHOTO-TINT", by James Akerman, London, W.C.
Scroll & Foliage





103
VII.
PARALLEL RENDERINGS.
THE study of ornament should proceed, I
think, pari passu with the study of vegetable
forms—not botany necessarily.
The scientific study of botany is quite a
thing apart. The ornamentist has no more
occasion for exact scientific knowledge than
the painter has need to know surgically about
anatomy, no more occasion and no less. We
want, in either case, just science enough to
enable us to see the surface of things, and no
more. The classification of a plant according
to its hidden organs is as nothing to us com-
pared with its character, its beauty, the hint
in it of ornament. Its order and its family
concern us only as they affect its outward
development and growth. We need not
greatly concern ourselves in pulling flowers to
pieces. An artist can do with comparatively
little science, if only he make full use of his
eyes.
Suppose the student in ornamental design


104
Nature in Ornament.
to have begun by being thoroughly well
grounded in practical geometry; soon he
might proceed to put together, somewhat on
the kinder-garten systein, geometric patterns,
simpler or more complex according to the
degree of his ingenuity. Then, as he grew
beyond this elementary stage, he might exer-
cise himself in drawing freer and more flow-
ing forms—say, until he acquired the facility
of sketching off (with the brush) ornament of
the kind the Greek pot-painters drew with
such freedom (p. 152).
Simultaneously with this he should be
making intelligent studies of leaves, flowers,
fruits, and all manner of details of plant-form
and plant-growth. With equal diligence he
should be studying the masterpieces of applied
design, especially noting the way the masters
treated those same natural forms, and always
choosing his model, whether of plant form or
of ornament, for the definite reason that it
meant something to him.
His studies should be carried just so far as
their purpose warranted : there should be no
attempt to make pictures of them, or show-
drawings, or to make them even presentable.
What the student has to do is to make notes
serviceable to himself, sufficient in every case
to impress upon his memory what the original



Plate 49.
SORTER
VINE
from
Tombs
in Upper
Egypt
200
:
3roto9*) Centuries
"PHOTO-TINT') by Jones Akerman, London ,W.C.
Ancient Coptic Embroidery.





Parallel Renderings.
105
conveyed to him, records of what he wanted
to record, that is all.
The urgent need of choosing each example
needs the more to be insisted upon, because
the designer cannot too early begin to culti-
vate the selective faculty. Judgment is one-
half the battle in decoration.
The closer the relation between a man's
studies from nature and his studies from old
work the better. Take, for instance, any flower
you like and study it from nature carefully
-its form, its structure, its growth, its colour,
its character; then see how it is rendered
in Classic art, in Gothic, in Renaissance, in
Japanese, in Persian, and so on. Observe
again its treatment in sculpture, in inlay, in
metalwork, in textile fabrics, and what not.
A series of such exercises conscientiously and
thoroughly done, would be an education in
itself, and would in some degree fit one to
conventionalise on his own account — all
"without the aid of a master.”
The already mentioned partiality of each
particular period and country for a certain
few, usually symbolic, types (p. 12), makes it
impossible to trace any one single natural
form through all history; but you can trace
most forms through a variety of historical
developments.


106
Nature in Ornament.

77. The vine in Assyrian sculpture-B.C. 705–626.
The type of most universal occurrence in
ornament is probably the vine, symbol of
philosophies as wide apart as the poles. We
find it in the bas-reliefs of Nineveh, and the
painted decoration of Egypt; on Etruscan
vases, and Greek and Roman altars; on
Byzantine sarcophagi, in Coptic embroideries,
and in early Sicilian silks ; it recurs in every
form of Gothic art, and throughout all phases
of the Renaissance.
In the Assyrian treatment of the vine above
one finds, of course, the archaic formality
of the age of Sennacherib, but at the same
time a certain adherence to the natural type
which has not varied from that day to this.
If the leaves are all spread flat against the
wall, they are quite unmistakable in shape.
If the branches are symmetrically displayed


(Plate 50.

M
வலம்
காலைக்
பாருங்
பா
பாவoriental
பாகலாவைpatities யையாகவியலைன்
manamங்கை
கவலையான
வாயாகபratasanam
காதuman accorpi
SN
*
-
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|
RRENT
தியாக
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neNானவதியவாமையாலODINAMANI
VAge
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NaaTRIDANGAL
RS
நாதா
பாக
கனமாலா
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பாட்டியை SHREE
maRREN
mae
பாக
POE
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-
'PHOTO -TIRT, by James Akerman London.w.C-
Vine & Olive Panel,





Parallel Renderings.
107
there is a suggestion in that of the way fruit-
trees are still trained in modern orchard houses.
Again, there is a sort of natural spring in
the lines themselves; and in the arrangement
of the five branches (which is not according
to nature) I seem to see a reference to the
veining of the vine-leaf. At all events, this
arbitrary grouping is so characteristic of the
Ninevite sculptures that it can scarcely be
accidental, and must almost certainly have
some symbolic meaning. The irregular shape
of the Assyrian grape bunches is a curious
concession to nature, seeing that some of them
stand up on end, and that the grapes are
just square. It will be noticed that leaves
and fruits do not occur in the order in which
a botanist would place them, and that the
tendrils are made use of only as a convenient
means of ending off the branches.
On Plate 49 is a Coptic rendering from
a tomb in Upper Egypt, which is equally
archaic, but infinitely more ornamental. Ob-
serve the reticent use of grapes, their syste-
matic arrangement, and the fact that they
also stand on end. The vine-leaf on the same
plate, veined, as it were, with a growth of
vine, is also extremely curious. The way in
which the tendrils ornament the stem is worth
noticing


108
Nature in Ornament.

78. Vine from a Greek se.
The Greek treatment above
is, if not more natural, at least
more florid. The stem indeed
diminishes in thickness towards
its extremity, and is clothed
at the same time with smaller
leaves ; but the stem itself is a
mere wave-line, and the leaves, though founded
on a more graceful natural variety than
the Assyrian, are less unmistakably vine-
leaves.
It is a rather curious thing in the decorative
treatment of the vine in early art, that although
there is no plant growing which varies more as
to the shape of its leaves-heart-shaped, round,
angular in outline, divided into three or five,
the divisions deeply cut or scarcely noticeable,
sometimes not seen at all—it is yet the rarest
thing in the world to find in any ornamental
version of the plant more than a single type of
leaf. That is one point at least in which there
is opportunity for a new departure in design,
and to considerably ornamental purpose.



Plate 51.
sti
RET
THESE
when
PAY
LA
SUR
SR
RE
ine
Wine
we
rah
and
GROS
HE
"PHOTO-TINT" by James Akerman London WC.
Italian Gothic Vine.





Parallel Renderings.
109

79. Pompeian vine border.
The tendrils in the Greek vase painting
are, for the most part, more obviously twirls of
the brush than transcripts from nature ; even
when they are branched they take the lines of
our old friend the spiral scroll, and are graceful
where in nature they would be vigorous ;
there is never anything like clutch in them.
The artist seems sometimes just to have
realised that leaf and tendril grew from some-
where about the same point on the stem, but
no more. If he had any definite idea at all
of the relation between leaf and tendril, it
would appear to have been the erroneous
notion that the leaf grew from a point of
junction between the tendril and the stalk.
Perhaps the most natural thing in the
design is the way in which it is composed,
very much in the way of the trellis—another
method of training that has survived without
change from the beginning of vine culture.
The bunches, besides, do hang down, obedient
to the law of gravity.
A more formal Greek rendering occurs in
the disc on Plate 24, but in both cases the


IIO
Nature in Ornament.

80. Italian wood-carving-hop or vine ?
grape bunches are much the same in out-
line.
In later Classic sculpture, especially in
Roman work, the vine-leaf is often repre-
sented naturally, only again without the
variety of nature, one shape doing duty
throughout. And here also we find the ten-
drils always deliberately made softer than in
the living plant. They have no inclination
to twine themselves round anything; they
are not much more than graceful scroll lines.
What growth there may be in them is certainly
not studied from the particular plant. Leaves,
tendrils, fruits, occur wherever the artist has
occasion for them. There is a touch of nature
in the thickening of the leaf-stalk at its base,
but this feature also is softened down to
gracefulness; it is rather suggested than ex-
pressed. The very grapes are frequently
reduced to bunches of five or seven.
They are rather fuller on Plate 50. The


Plate 52

Vine & Apple Tree Frieze.
'li
OF KELL, PHOTO-LITHO. 8.FURNIVAL ST HOLBORN, E





Parallel Renderings.
111

DIAMOND 1
81. Conventional Gothic vine and grapes.
disregard of natural scale in this design is as
frank as in the Assyrian treatment. It is
strange to find, in connection with such an
arbitrary rendering, anything so realistic as
the knobby bowls of the olive trunks, which
are as cavernous as you see them in naturc.
Again, in the vine from Giotto's Tower, at
Florence (Plate 51), the artist, contrary to the
usual Gothic practice, has thought fit to sup-
port the vine, perhaps because the leafage,
distinctly ornamental as it is, is intended to
represent a vineyard. It forms a sort of
canopy over the subject of Noah's drunken-
ness.
In the more natural frieze of my own, on
Plate 52, the vine is supported by apple-
boughs: the upright trunks of the trees, cor-
responding in position to the beams in the
ceiling, form a marked feature in the design.
Among the Græco-Roman details on Plate
53, the grapes are rather more natural than
the leaves, which are in one case just the
reverse of natural. The leaf cut in cameo


II 2
Ņature in Ornament.

cui
82. Gothic vine, with mulberry-lige grape-bunches.
is, however, at once natural and ornamental.
In the embossed silverwork a distinctly orna-
mental character results from the employment
of the stems, tendrils, and fruits only: the
same thing occurs in later Classic sculpture.
In the border from a Pompeian bronze in
the museum at Naples, on p. 109, the thick-
ening of the leaf-stalk is indicated; but the
growth is again absolutely arbitrary. The leaf,
though like enough to nature, could not be
identified with any degree of certainty, were
it not for the accompanying grapes and ten-
drils : but for that evidence it might just as
well pass for maple, or cranesbill, or hibiscus.
leaf.
Such corroborative evidence of identity is
often needed. In the process of adaptation to
ornamental conditions the unmistakable cha-
racter of a plant is not uncommonly eliminated.
One is perplexed, for example, by the Italian
wood-carving on p. 110. According to its
tendrils it should be a vine, but its fruits are
more like hops. In Gothic ornament one has
as I said, frequently to take the vine-leaf on


Plate 53.

VINE
modelled in
Stucco
Greek
Gold
Stucco
A.
VINE
& Ivy
cut in
ameo
ASOS
Glass
Embossed
Silver
"PHOTO-TINT', by James Akormon London, W.C.
Clasical rendering of the Vine.






Parallel Renderings.
113
faith, failing grapes, and more particularly
tendrils (p. 59 and Plate 29).
The grapes are sometimes as remote from
nature as the leaves, and the scale to which
the bunches are reduced often removes them
ana
IM
3
83. Conventional vine, from Toledo.
still further from recognition. It is possible
that the mulberry is sometimes mistaken for
the vine. Many a conventional vine leaf (as
for example on p. 111) is much more like the
leaf of the white mulberry of Lombardy


114
Nature in Ornament.
than it is like a vine-leaf; whilst the compact
little bunches of diminutive berries look
occasionally much more like mulberries
than any grapes one has seen. In the
border on p. 112 they might almost be
blackberries. It is possible also in Gothic
work to
confound
them with
the berry-
spike of the
wild arum.
It is only
our famili-
arity with
similar con-
ventions
which en-
ables us to
understand
that the
Gothico-
Moresque
foliage on
84. Moorish vine.
p. 113 stands
for the vine. For growth the Moorish sculptor
has simply branched a spiral line. His vine-
leaves would answer at least as well for bry-
ony leaves, and his berries would do as well
for bryony berries. His reason for bunches of


Plate 54

allery
OI
SOY
T7a
KO
Arab Vine panel





116
Nature in Ornament.
nature, whilst professedly avoiding it. The
treatment of
the tendrils is
a peculiarly
happy feature
in a most satis-
factory design.
As a repre-
sentation of
the vine it may
not be alto-
gether ade-
quate—it pre-
tends to no-
thing of the
kind—but as a
piece of sur-
face ornament
suggested by
a natural type,
it is in its way
about perfect.
The Byzan-
tine vine from
Ravenna, on
86. Early French Gothic.
p. 115, is not
without a cer
tain grace, rudely as it is carved. Its growth
is distinctly ornamental ; and the way in


Plate 55.

"PHOTO-TINT", by James Akerman London W.C.
Vine Sculpture





118
Nature in Ornament.

88. Diamond-shaped vine-leaves-Gothic.
of the twisted stems form the necessary ties in
his stencil-plate is most artful.
The berries may be taken as evidence that
the thirteenth century Gothic scroll from
Notre Dame at Paris, on p. 116, is meant for
the vine; and there is some likeness in the
leaves, when one looks for it.
We may take it also, I suppose, that the
still more conventional scrollwork of the
early Gothic period did symbolic duty for
the vine. In the pre-Gothic circular design
on Plate 57, one sees the five-pointed vine-leaf
dwindling away to quite a conventional trefoil.
It is only in the comparatively uninteresting
middle period of Gothic art that we have
leaves as much as possible in imitation of
nature.
In later Gothic we get design again. The
Mediæval sculptors deliberately designed their
leaves, as it were, into set spaces—taking a
square, a diamond, a circle, a vesica, and
so on, as its general outline. The Assy-
rians did so before them (p. 106), and the
Italians after them, as may be seen in the



Plate 56.
J. Akerman, Photo-lith London
Stencilled Vine Decoration, H. Sumner.





Parallel Renderings.
119

89. Vesica-shaped vine-leaves, York.
vine border on p. 117, with the odd shell-like
tendrils.
This would come about in a very simple
way. They would begin by blocking out the
leaf mass, then. they would hollow out the
main divisions, and finally they would notch
the edges. In roughing out the design it
would occasionally happen that some other
inass—square, diamond-shaped, or what not-
came more happily; they would accordingly
adopt it, and the leaf needs must follow suit.
Hence such treatment of the leaf as we find
on pp. III, 112, 118, and above, where it is
designed to conform to an outline of diamond
or vesica shape, or made, together with the
berries, to fit the spaces formed by the waved
stem and the margins of the border. In Plate 58
also it is plain how the leaves are designed, so
to speak, into the corners of the panel. It is
curious to see just such a system of composi-
tion in the Coptic borders of centuries before
(Plate 57).
The Gothic sculptor sometimes went so far
as to rough out the foliations of his scroll in


I 111
120
20
.
Nature in Ornament
90. Diagram of Italian Gothic treatment.
the form of trefoils (A, above), leaving it ap-
parently to the inspiration of the moment to
determine afterwards which of these should
be finished as leaves (B), and which as grape-
bunches (C). In a certain case at Padua he
went much farther than that, and even turned
over here and there a part of the leaf (D and
E), without in any way altering its general
outline. It came more naturally to him to
do obvious violence to possibility than to
modify his predetermined outline. This is
not mentioned as a thing worthy of imitation,
but as an instance of simple-mindedness not
without its charm in old work.
In Plate 59, part of the design for a Gothic
window, I have endeavoured to follow, more
strictly than I have ever seen it followed in
old Gothic work, the actual growth of the
vine, whilst at the same time very scrupu-
lously fulfilling the conditions of stained glass.
Much as there is to be learnt from the
breadth and simplicity of the Gothic treat-
ment of the vine (as of other foliage), it by no
means solves for us the problem of treatment.


Plate 57

BOM
Vine
Upper
Egypt
Centuries
9
"PHOTO-TINT", by James Akerman Jondon WC.
Coptic Vine Ornament.






Parallel Renderings.
121
It is seldom that it shows much appreciation
of the essentially characteristic vine forms.
One wearies of the regularity of the “ecclesi-
astical" grape-clusters, and resents their stand-
ing up like bunches of privet-berries. Why
should we be content with the continual recur-
D
IRDIRIWWW.LAHATHI
ren
91. Transitional vine scroll.
rence of one stereotyped pattern, when nature
is so varied and that variety is so ornamental ?
In later Gothic ornament, and especially
as it began to be influenced by the spirit of
the Renaissance, it is no uncommon thing to
see a scroll that halts between two opinions,


122
Nature in Ornament.
clearly showing that the artist did not quite
see how to reconcile the one with the other.
In the instance of this given on p. 121, the
rather loosely drawn leaves contrast curiously
with the purely conventional foliation pro-
ceeding from the same stem ; and yet, for all
the hesitation of the artist, the general effect
is that of direct and accomplished workman-
ship. Here the main lines of the stem remind
one more of fifteenth century Gothic window
tracery than of growth. The ornamental
arrangement of the tendrils is ingenious,
and so is the way the grapes form a sort of
diaper on the background. This is a device
not uncommon in late Gothic work, especially
German work—that, for example, of Albrecht
Dürer.
Dürer, to tell the truth, had but a poor
invention in ornament—his facile pen is con-
tinually running away with him ; his flourishes
remind one too much of the writing-master of
a more recent generation. The vine scroll on
Plate 60 is an exceptionally good specimen
of the great draughtsman's ornament, but it
misses at once the grace of nature and the
dignity of ornament. Only in respect to
the variety in the size of the grapes, and the
looseness of the bunches, does it approach
more nearly to nature than the earlier


Plate 58.

"PHOTO-TINT", by James Akerman London W.C.
English Gothic Vine.





Parallel Renderings.
123

92. Italian Quattro-cento vine scroll.
work. It is, indeed, picturesque rather than
decorative; and the picturesqueness seems
almost like a foreshadowing of the then still
distant Rococo.
- The artists of the Renaissance followed
pretty closely in the footsteps of ancient
precedent, and when they departed from the
scroll and branched out into something more
like natural growth, adopted by preference a
form of leaf plainly recalling the vine. It was
less a rendering of nature than an ornamental
leaf more or less in its likeness.
Italian, French, or German rendering was
modified always in some degree by national
character. In the François premier foliage
(p. 38), there is always a certain severity,
showing that the carver had not quite thrown
off the Gothic yoke, under which Italian
ornament (above) never passed. The German
version was still more determinedly, national
-indeed it was always more clearly Teutonic
than Renaissance—witness the ornament of


124
. Nature in Ornament.
Aldegrever on this
page. Before our days
of archæological pre-
tence, there was in all
ornament an under-
tone of national feel-
ing, telling of the
country to which it
belonged. There was
no need then of a
Trade-marks Act to
identify it as carved
in France or Ger-
many.
At the risk of
trenching upon a
subject discussed at
length in a previ-
ous text-book (“The
Application of Orna-
ment') it is necessary
to allude briefly to
the influence exer-
cised by material and
manner of workman-
ship on the modifica-
tion of natural form.
This is really half the
secret of convention-

93. German Renaissance.


Plate 59.

"PHOTO-TINT by James Akerman London.W.C.
Vine, Stained Glass.


Parallel Renderings.
125
alism, the other half being in the fitness of
the form to its place and purpose.
The sculptor has thus been a powerful
factor in the development of the ornamental
vine.
You can see, as I said, in the Assyrian
example (p. 106) how he blocked out his five-
pointed shapes, scooped out the main divisions,
and notched the serrations round the edges,
much as the Gothic carvers did, and how he
just chiselled two series of lines across his
bunches to suggest the grapes.
In the Greek vine (p. 108) the leaves are
this time serrated by brush touches : in
designing his tendrils the painter just played
with the brush ; whilst in the case of the grapes,
he first washed in the mass of his cluster in
two shades of colour, and then, with little
blots of white, indicated the grapes upon it.
The Græco-Roman border (p. 109) is inlaid
in silver on bronze, and the serrations of the
leaves are produced by so many digs of the
graver. The stiffness of the zigzag stem, I
should mention, is modified, in the actual
bronze, by the fact that it is on a curved
moulding..
The severe simplicity of the Byzantine
design (p. 115) fits it for its intended purpose
of a pilaster.


126
Nature in Ornament.
The breadth of the leaves in the example
from Toledo (p. 113) is calculated to contrast
well with the broken background. On a
smooth ground it would have been desirable

inco
0]),
2009
TOD
94. Vine in Gothic glass-painting.
to mark the subdivisions of the leaves more
emphatically.
In the Arab leaf (Plate 54) the need of
something like veins was felt by the sculptor ;


Plate 60.

2u16
tru
JE
ALUMNI
AN
KA
)
))))
calci
R
CA
CELLPhoto Lith., 8.Fueniral 2.1 lben, E.C.
Vine by Albrecht Dürer.





Parallel Renderings.
127
and the ingeniously ornamental tracery by
which he has supplied their place is a lesson
in design.
In Plate 61 I have taken a hint from some
sixteenth century damascening, and diapered
the leaves with arabesque in the place of
veining. The idea was to break the surface of
the leaf whilst preserving an effect of flatness.
Dürer's leaves (p. 60) are pen-work, and
had they been drawn with any other imple-
ment they would never have been just so."
The resolute avoidance of modelling in the
German damask napkin (p. 121) is in order to
show off the quality of the linen.
In the various Gothic renderings of the leaf
the tool is plainly to be traced. There is
considerable difference between the convention
of the wood-carver and that of the carver
in stone. In the wood-carving on p. 110, the
veining is indicated and a certain effect of
modelling obtained by leaving the gouge
marks—but then the gouging was done to
that end, and with intelligence.
The greater delicacy of the Quattro-cento
leaves (p. 123) shows how the finer marble led
to altogether more delicate workmanship. The
coarser stone employed in English Gothic
buildings made it absolutely necessary to
mass the tendrils together, if only for the sake



Plate 61.
BA
329
VENIA
owoche
wewe
Bin
á
Vaccini
CI KELL, PHOTO-LITHO. 8.FURNIVAL ST HOLBORN,E.C
Conventional Vine leaf pattern.





129
VIII.
MORE PARALLELS.
Not to depend too entirely upon a single
illustration, it will be as well to compare, as
briefly as possible, the various renderings of
certain other plants which occur by way of
illustration throughout this volume, and which
have been chosen partly with a view to such
comparison.
The Japanese treatment of the rose, on
Plate 2, is only in so far decorative as the
detail and the point of view are carefully
chosen, and as the execution is simple and
direct. Compare the energy of its growth
with the sweeter lines on Plate 62. This last
expression of the decadent Renaissance is not
nearly so accurate as it somehow pretends to
be. The stipules of the leaves, for example,
are very inadequately acknowledged ; and
what at first sight looks like picturesque
shading of the leaves, turns out to be quite
arbitrary. Indeed, it is only as ornament that


130
ZAL
Nature in Ornament.

M
111
1
MITIMIN
TOTO
பலியாயமா
KI SIIMTI
UVOD
OTO
inium
muni!
IMMUNITET
1111
I
95. Quasi-Persian rose-Italian velvet.
this quasi-natural treatment has claim at all
to our respect; as nature it has none.
As a model of conventional treatment, the
Tudor rose must always hold a very high
place. What could be better in its way than
the dignified simplicity of the Gothic rose and
crown on Plate 63? How good the lines are,
and how well the panel is occupied ! A
certain breadth is gained by the reduction of
the compound leaf to the simple form, and a
certain character is given by the exaggeration
of the stipules, unlike as they are in form to
the natural type.
In the other Tudor rose from the stalls of
Henry VII.'s chapel (Plate 64), the treat-
ment is at once traditional and distinctly
individual. It was something of an inspira-
tion to twist the leaves and stalks encircling





Plate 62

Various renderings of
the ROSE
designed for Silk wearing
date about 1750
STERONA
"PHOTO-TINT, by J. Akorman,6, Qusan Square.W.C.
Artificial rendering of the Rose.


Plate 63.

LONDON
"PHOTO-TINT", by James Akerman London WC
Tudor. Rose Bronze.





Plate 64
LE

Tudor
Rose
from the stalls of
Henry II t'a :
Chapel
Westminster
"PHOTO-TINT', by J. Akerman, 6. Queen Squan,W.C
Tudor Rose, Wood Carving


Plate 65

ERUNDA
RE
C.F KELL, PHOTO-LITHO.B.FURNIVAL ST HOLBORN, E.O.
Italian version of a Persian Carpet:











Plate 67.

000OOOOOOOOOO
Tommmmm
CO
22
ООООООООООООО
ОООООООООООООО
"PHOTO-TUNT, by James Akerman, London.W.C.
Indian Lotus Panel.


Plate 68.

SEMARANG
SC
BS
"PHOTO-TINT by Jamee Akerman, London.W.C.
Details of Stone Carving, (Buddhist.)





132
Nature in Ornament.
ing the square web of the linen on which it is
worked.
The Rhodian example below would
hardly be taken for a rose, but for the un-
mistakable bud once more: the open flower
is more like a marigold. The broken stem is
a convenient, and in Rho-
dian pottery not an un-
common, means of bend-
ing the lines in the way
it is desirable they should
go. Once in a way that
may pass, but it is not
a device upon which it
would be well to rely in
design.
Comparison has already
been drawn (p. 93) be-
tween the Quattro-cento
lily on p. 92, the Cinque-
97. Rhodian rose.
cento lilies on p. 91 and
on Plate 43, my own
lily ornament on Plate 39, Talbert's Gothic
lily panel on Plate 42 (something like, and
yet unlike, the panel from the Taj Mahal
at Agra, on Plate 66), and the more natural
growth on Plate 75. These may further
be compared with the more or less lily-
shaped flowers occurring in Greek scroll-work


More Parallels.
133
HP
(Plate 11 and
p. 160), with the
Greek pattern on
p. 61, and with
the Roman cande-
labrum opposite,
a characteristically
clumsy way not so
much of designing
as of compiling
ornament.
In the Greek
lilies already re-
ferred to, and still
more in those on
p. 158, the relation
to the anthemion
is obvious, and to
the lotus, that other
form of lily So
conspicuous in
Egyptian and As-
syrian art (Plates
79 and 80 and pp.
150, 151, 155, 240).
The Hindoo ren-
dering of the water-
lily on Plate 67 is
very much like the
i
98. Roman lily forms,


134
Nałure in Ornament.

99. Indian lotus-Buddhist.
Egyptian, but it is sometimes looser, as on
Plate 68. A very characteristic treatment is
shown above.
The Chinese rendering on Plate 88 is yet
freer, but still essentially ornamental.
Referring once more to the Greek shapes
on p. 158, one may see in some of them a
resemblance to the young growth of the lily
as it bursts from the ground in spring. That
is seen still more plainly in the Assyrian
ornament on the lower part of Plate 80.


More Parallels.
135
There is something most natural in that very
stiff conventional upright growth—reminding
one rather of the young iris shoots.
The iris flower is, as I have already said,
the origin of the fleur-de-lis. Compare the
flamboyant fleurs-de-lis on Plate 121 with the
earlier Gothic renderings on pp. 238 and 241,
with the renderings on p. 160, and with the
Romanesque ornament on p. 18. The flowers
in the central ornament
(p. 18) are remarkably
like the iris. In the Re-
naissance ornament on
p. 240, the characteristics
of the iris are reconciled
somewhat to the shape
of the fleur-de-lis.
In the Indian damas-
100. Seventeenth century iris. cened pattern on Plate
30, there is distinct re-
semblance to the fleur-de-lis. The painted
version above it, whilst pretending to be
more pictorial, is altogether less characteristic
of nature.
In the Persian examples on p. 45, the flower
is reduced to ornament, as it is also in the
ingenious border of the frontispiece which
Mr. Crane has designed for me. The figure
of Iris in the centre is designed in a vein


136
Nature in Ornament.

peculiarly the artist's own.
His “Flora's Feast" is a
very feast of ingenious
and fanciful and alto-
gether delightful design
of the same kind.
Ornamentally as the
flowers are treated in the
Damascus tiles on p. 101,
they are still most cha-
racteristic — as are the
equally abstract forms in
the Japanese embroidery
on p. 66. These are quite
unmistakably wild flags.
The sixteenth century
Italian embroidery, on p.
135, is scarcely far enough
removed from nature to be
effectively ornamental.
In the eighteenth cen-
tury silk weaving (Plate
101. Renaissance pinks. 44). there is a certain
suavity of line which goes towards ornament,



Plate 69
German
Embroidery
Incisecl-work'
Elizabetha Broidery
Zarious
Italian
carring
of the patiens
PINK
Persian
textile
Italian
Inlay
panese
c. F KELL, PHOTO-LITHO.FURNTVÁL ST HOLBORNEC
The Pink


Plate 70.

Various renderings of
the Pink
JAVOR
GRAT
RAZS PLUS
designed for
Silk wearing
clate about
1750
BOCU
LOREM
"PHOTO-TINT by stes Akerman London WC
18th Century, Versions of the Pink.





138
Nature in Ornament.
Mahal (Plate 66) the poppy is trained de-
liberately in the way it should goma delicate
and graceful way, for all its formality; and,
for all its symmetry, varied.
The damascened patterns on p. 61 are
more distinctly Indian. In one of these, the
occurrence of sepals, which the bud naturally
sheds as it bursts, has already been pointed
out; in the other the severe lines within
which the growth is compactly grouped, result
in distinct dignity of design.
Ghiberti's poppy on Plate 71 is one of
the most satisfactory of the flower-groups
bordering the celebrated doors at Florence.
The leaves are just conventional enough, and
the seed-vessel or poppy-head tells for what
it is, at once a characteristic and an admirably
ornamental feature.
In my own poppy-pattern on Plate 72, the
brush touches are such as could most conve-
niently be reproduced in block printing. It
is meant for pattern first and poppy after-
wards.
In the border on p. 172, the growth is
comparatively natural. The flowers are
arranged in the order indicated by the
necessities of composition, and the growth
is made to accommodate itself, with as little
violation of nature as possible, to them.





Plate 71.

"PHOTO-TINY", by James Akerman London.W.C
Poppies by Ghiberti, Bronze


Plate 72.

"PHOTO-TINT", by James Akerman.London.W.C.
Poppy pattern.


---
---
-
-
-
…
………
……


More Parallels.
139
Wheat ears are a favourite symbol in
Gothic work, but the rather intractable growth
of corn seems to be against any great variety
in its treatment. The stiffness of the design

UDO
on
OR
102. Modern Gothic pomegranate. B. J. Talbert.
on p. 89, which belongs to the period of the
Gothic revival, is likely to be more noticed
than its ingenuity, which is all the artist's own.
In the Italian silk on p. 68, the wheat ear


140
Nature in Ornament.
is reduced to a pattern ; in the carving on
p. 90, it is the leaf-blades that are manipu-
lated. To adapt the rather rank growth of
the Indian corn to the purpose of a simple
and satisfactory border, as on p. 88, is some-
thing like a triumph of ornamental modifica-
tion.
It is mainly in Gothic art that the thistle
has been taken as a motif ; but there is a wide
difference between Hopfer's scroll on Plate 16,
and that on Plates 83 and 91, and between
any of these and the late G. E. Street's bold
experiment in modern Gothic on p. 54. My
own pattern on Plate 38 is thistle-like it
was in fact suggested by the artichoke, the
king of thistles), but the natural characteristics
of the plant are deliberately sacrificed to the
purposes of pattern.
In the representation of the pomegranate,
the bursting of the fruit (as
already mentioned on p. 74),
has been very variously
rendered. The late B. J.
Talbert, too (p. 139), turned
the seeds to ornamental
account. Mr. Morris's fruits
on Plate 87 burst natu-
rally. In the Chinese pattern
103. Pomegranate. on Plate 73 the bursting

ODOBO 600 apa
Canon ODOBOY


More Parallels.:
141
of the fruit is indicated only by a change of
colour: no seeds are revealed. The sixteenth
century German treatment (same plate) is
equally arbitrary.

Ornamental
treatment of
the Oak
ishano)
,104. Oak from the cathedral of Toledo.
Persian influence is seen again in the Italian
rendering on p. 149. One assumes that the
pear-shaped fruit on p. 140 is meant for a
pomegranate. The Gothic ornament on p. 60


142
Nature in Ornament.
Life.
stands also, no doubt, for
the pomegranate ; but it is
quite a traditional rendering,
by a man who probably
never saw the fruit. Com-
pare this also with the pine
IN
patterns on Plate 84 and on
p. 157.
The various renderings of
the oak, Classic on p. 94,
Gothic on Plates 29 and 74,
Italian on p. 247, Sicilian
below, and other examples
105. Assyrian Tree of
on p. 53 and on Plates 9
and 83, have none of them
any resemblance to
the characteristic
Hispano-Mauresque
oak scroll on p. 141,
which is akin rather
to the vines on pp.
113 and 114.
Reference is made
elsewhere (p. 246)
to the daisies on
Plates 122 and 123,
and (p. 88) to the
examples of the ivy
occurring on Plates


106. Oak-from a Sicilian silk.


Plate 74,

Mas
Late Gothic
renderings of
thе да

Puigen
SA
"PHOTO-Tunt, by Jameo Akermon. London .W.C.
Gothic Oak Ornament.





More Parallels.
143
24 and 81 and on
p. 57. The ver-
sions of the olive
on Plates 50 and
81 need only just
be alluded to.
There is some-
thing to be learnt
from a comparison
of the various con-
ventional trees, As-
syrian on pp. 142
and 239 and Plate
80, Greek on
Plates 24 and 81,
Roman on p. 59,
Indian on Plate 77,
Coptic on Plates
49 and 57, Sicilian
and Italian on
Plate 120 and
p. 58, Romanesque
opposite.
It is wonderful
with what unani-
mity ornamentists
have everywhere,
107. Romanesque Tree of Life.
and from the be-
ginning of time, resolved the growth of the


144
Nature in Ornament.
tree into its elements and made it into orna-
ment, reducing its outline in many cases to
the shape of a single leaf, and its branches
to something like smaller leaves. Those to
whom such rendering of natural form does
not come easily, by instinct as it were, were
not born for ornamentists; let them turn
their attention to work for which nature has
fitted them.
Comparison may further be made between
the works of modern men (Plates 1, 22, 23,
42, 56, 86, 87, and 98, and pp. 39, 54, 64, 89,
139, 180, 185, and 226); and, lastly, reference
to my own design (Plates 9, 14, 31, 38, 39, 40,
48, 52, 59, 61, 72, 75, 85, 89, 90, 102, 106, III,
112, and 123, and pp. 93, 172, 173, 174, 223,
and 245) will help to explain more clearly
than words, not what I think necessarily good,
but the degree of naturalism on the one hand,
and of convention on the other, which seem
to me personally permissible in ornament.
To any one in the least susceptible to
natural beauty, it is not difficult to under-
stand the resentment which some persons
feel towards any interference with nature.
To disturb it is to deform it, no doubt; but
in the interest of cultivation it has to be done.
Brier, and bracken, and yellow gorse must
give place to rose gardens, apple orchards,


Plate 75.

OF KELL, PHOTO-LITHO, O,FURNIVAL ST HOLYOAN, E.O.
Comparatively natural Lily Panel.





More Parallels.
145
and fields of corn. They too are beautiful ;
not the less so that they owe something to
the hand of man. It is, after all, a false and
rather a cowardly sentiment which makes us
afraid of disturbing what is beautiful, when
the end is a beauty better worth having.
Those who profess to follow nature seem
sometimes rather to be dragging her in the
dust. There is a wider view of nature, which
includes human nature and that selective and
idealising instinct which is natural to man.
It is a long way from being yet proved that
the naturalistic designer is more “true to
nature” than another. It is one thing to study
nature, and another to pretend that studies
are works of art. In no branch of design
has it ever been held by the masters (least of
all could it be held by the masters of orna-
ment) that nature was enough. It is only the
very callow student who opens his mouth to
swallow all nature whole; the older bird
knows better. “Lor, how natural !” bursts
out the admiring rustic: the artist in like case
thinks to himself, “What perfect art !”
L


146
Nature in Ornament.
IX.
TRADITION IN DESIGN.
THERE have been times, perhaps, when art
ran too much in the ruts of tradition : there
is no danger of that just now—inore likeli-
hood of our wandering so far from any beaten
track as to lose our bearings altogether.
Whatever the danger of merely traditional
treatment in design (and I am the last to
deny that danger), it is time we bethought
ourselves that traditions are not inherently
pernicious. They represent, when all is said,
the sum of past experience. The past masters
of the crafts must be presumed to have known
something. The course of art ran, at all
events, more evenly along the broad smooth
ruts aforesaid.
Whatever the traditions of his art, and
whether he mean to follow them or not, the
student must acquaint himself with them. It
is not until he is acquainted with the traditional
ways of doing a thing that he is in a position
to form an opinion as to the relative merits


Plate 76.

*PHOTO-TINT", by james Akerman, London, WC
Orchid & Fungus pattern - Chinese.





148
Nature in Ornament.
It is not meant to suggest for a moment
that Japanese ornament is in every way per-
fect : it lacks qualities indispensable to any
really dignified and noble style of design ; but
in the mere treatment of natural form as
naturally as possible and yet ornamentally,
there is probably more to be learnt from Japan
than from any other source.
Although the traditions of the Japanese
are inherited directly from the Chinese, the
work of the younger race is characterised by
a vigour and spontaneity of design, with which
we are not accustomed to credit the elder.
But the floral element of design is character-
istic of Mongolian art from the first, so much
so that its prevalence in Persian and Indian
art betrays, one may say, the Mongolian
conqueror.
If at its best Chinese ornament is less
characteristically natural than Japanese, it is
more characteristically ornamental. Whatever
modification there may be of natural form is
all in the direction of design. Orchis, fungus,
and butterfly (Plate 76), each is designed into
its place, and is, moreover, made to conform
to the necessity of ornament. Musicians
have no very high opinion of what they call
'tuney” music. Chinese ornament may be
“tuney” perhaps, but at least it is in tune.


Plate 77

Om
ID
KELL, PHOTO-LITHO 3.FURNIVAL ST HOLBORNEC
Conventional Tree work





Tradition in Design,
149
That is even more true of the kindred art
of India (Plate 77). There also everything
is doubtless inspired by nature, but every-
thing is compelled into ornament. The very
luxuriance of the design is suggestive of
tropical vegetation, but the ornament never
runs wild. The date-palm is there with its

108. Renaissance silk showing Persian influence.
scarred trunk, but the scars are made into a
pattern. So with the branched stem contrast-
ing with it, it branches into distinctly orna-
mental lines, and breaks out into equally
ornamental foliation.
The man who carved the lattice of which
a portion is given on Plate 77 loved nature, no
doubt, but he was an ornamentist to the tips


150
Nature in Ornament.
of his fingers; and the superiority of Oriental
art in respect to rhythm, harmony, sweetness,
is the immediate result of working on the
lines of tradition, of devoting trained faculties
to the perfection of an accepted method, of
refining upon refinement until the acme of
easy grace is reached.
The Persian rendering of natural forms is
more free : there is more of the variety of
nature in it; but its starting point is always
nature, whatever liberties the artist may take
with it: it must be confessed he does not
stand upon ceremony. One favourite freak
of his (Plate 78) was to break the surface of
a leaf by diapering it over with other foliated
or floral detail. He was enabled thus to
introduce amidst the smaller forms bolder
shapes, contrasting most usefully with them,
and yet not forming unbroken patches in the
design.
The artists of the
Renaissance bor-
rowed this idea and
made considerable
use of it. The way
in which the big
pomegranate shape
on the piece of six-
teenth century silk, 109. Egyptian symbolic papyrus.

WO
PREBENBERG
20 TS
மரப்பப்படியானாய
BARAT
MER
CRAFT
GRUBE
COM
AINU


Plate 78.

02
Perai
C. K
ho Lith., FurialX Hobe E.C.
Persian foliage.





Tradition in Design.
151

ANCONA
110. Assyrian symbolic ornament.
shown on p. 149, is enlivened by the introduc-
tion of smaller floral details, betrays distinctly
the influence of stuffs imported from Persia
(compare it with the velvet on p. 73); the
design is Renaissance, but with a difference.
A similar influence is apparent in the
damask design on Plate 34 ; indeed, there
was a period when European silk designers
worked habitually on those lines.
Tracing tradition back to its beginnings, we
find that the art of ancient Egypt was con-
fined within very narrow lines; but within
those lines it fulfilled admirably what it pur-
posed to do. It is worth study, if only to see
how the symbolism which was at the root of
it was made to subserve to ornament, how
orderly arrangement and restraint in treat-
ment went far towards decoration, and how
the most severe simplicity resulted in in-
variable dignity (p. 150 and Plate 79).
Much the same may be said of Assyrian
design. It does not afford, it need scarcely be
said, any more than Egyptian, a fit model for


152
Nature in Ornament.
nineteenth century ornament; and the re-
straint which we observe in either (p. 151 and
Plate 80) was, perhaps, if we inquire into it,
not so much a matter of restraint as of neces-
sity ; but none the less it shows us what may
be done by self-control ; and, working as we
do under conditions which make it almost
necessary for us to assert ourselves, it is as
well that
we should
be remind-
ed from
time to
time that
if the world
went on
the whole
no better
then, at
least it 111. Abstract Greek ornament
permitted a naïve and simple-hearted kind of
art, from which the most advanced of us have
much to learn.
Greek ornament is in the first instance
quite abstract in character (above), consisting
of curling lines and touches of the brush; but,
such abstract forms assuming by chance (or,
as I should say, of necessity) some resem-
blance to floral forms, it occurred to the artist


Plate 79.

SES
"PHOTO-TINT', by James Akerman, London.W.C.
Details of Egyptian Sculpture.





Tradition in Design.
153

112. Later Greek ornament.
to develop the naturalistic idea—much, as it
proved, at the expense of beauty and design.
This is plainly to be seen in the ornament of
the later period (above), in which the spirals
in perspective and the scrolls which look like
wood-shavings, mark a very distinct step
downwards in design.
When it came to the rendering of the
natural shapes of leaves, berries, and so on,
the Greek continued to arrange such details
arbitrarily, with a view to composition and
without regard to natural growth. There is
no objection to that so long as the leaves are
not so natural as to call for something like
natural connection ; but in Greek ornament
the growth was not always consistent with
the detail.
In the lower border of ivy on Plate 81,
leaves, berries, and growth are alike conven-


154
Nature in Ornament.
tional; in the upper border the three-pointed
leaves are more natural than the berries, and
the stalks are too natural for the arbitrary
order in which these are arranged.
Again, in the borders of olive, there is a
sort of naturalism about the fruits inconsis-
tent with their arrangement two and two
along the stem. Moreover, the flower intro-
duced into the lower example is a quite incon-
gruous feature.
The altogether abstract rendering of the
bay at the bottom of the plate—so abstract
that one cannot be quite certain it is meant
for the bay—is more absolutely satisfactory.
The earlier Greek traditions were the best.
Eventually, in Classic sculpture, bay, olive,
ivy, and other plants were rendered almost
naturally.
In the fragment of Roman carving on
Plate 82 we have quite a different kind of
thing: natural growth, that is 'to say, is
twisted into ornamental lines, the tree is
made to grow as the ornamentist would have
it. There is a certain decorative treatment in
that (as there was almost invariably in ancient
art), but it is not ornament, and it is orna-
mental only to the extent that all sculpture
was, until in recent times it broke loose alto-
gether from tradition.


Plate 80

OT

CF KELL, PHOTO-LITHD, 8.FURNIVAL ST HOLBORN, E.C.
Details of Ninevite Sculpture.





Tradition in Design.
155
ANAA
That idea of making natural things grow
unnaturally is continually cropping up in
ornament. It is illustrated again in Plate 83.
There is no mistaking Master Peter Quentel's
types. The nightshade, the columbine, the
pea, the oak, the thistle, are natural enough-
too natural almost for the impossible lines on
which they grow: the oak branches, for
example, are shown to
have each two separate
starting-points.
However much we
may prefer the vigour
of the Gothic work-
man to the somewhat
effeminate grace of the
Oriental, in that one
113. Assyrian rosette.
respect Eastern art is
more consistent by far : detail and its distribu-
tion go together, and are one growth, however
artificial it may be. The difficulty in adapting
comparatively natural forms to artificial growth
is very great; only a master ever quite gets
over it.
I have already explained (p. 33) the de-
velopment of the Classic scroll. The tradi-
tion was taken up again by the Italians of
the Renaissance. The arabesques of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are Classic


156
Nature in Ornament.
with a difference; and down to the period of
the French Revolution, if not indeed of the
Exhibition of 1851, through all the changes
which it underwent, we can trace in the scroll
the development, or it may be the degradation,
of Classic tradition.
Examples in point occur in Plates 96,
99, 105; and
whether the
deviation
from the ori-
ginal idea
be in the
direction
of nature
(Plates 17,
45, and 46),
or of abs-
tract orna-
ment (Pls.
18, 116, and 114. Gothic ornament from Notre Dame,
117), the
descent of the design is always easily to be
traced. For better or for worse, one style
grew, that is to say, out of the other. As
certainly as the Assyrian rosette on p. 155
was influenced by Egyptian tradition, so
certainly did the tradition of such work
influence the Greeks.

Paris.





Tradition in Design.
157
And so it was with Gothic art. We can
trace it through its various phases back to the
Romanesque, and so find a connection with
the Classic. Indeed, in some details of early
115. Fifteenth century fir-cone or pine-apple ornaments.
Gothic ornament one can trace a distinct
resemblance to Greek art, from which in
important particulars it is most remote.
In the detail from Notre Dame at Paris,
on p. 156, there is a distinct relationship to
the painted ornament on Greek vases, and the
typical “Early English” detail assumes at
times in the hands of the glass painter some-
thing of the same character.
Not only may one historic
style of ornament be traced
from another, but the very
details' of ornament are in
many instances traditional,
and survive long after they
have lost any significance
they may originally have had ;
so much so, that what is
traced
57723

116. Chinese flower
strange and unaccountable
forms.


158
Nature in Ornament.

117. Etruscan.
Greek.
Greek.
Greek.
in ornamental design, proves often to be only
the survival of some long lost tradition.
The fir-cone, or, as the French call it, the
pine-apple, which figures in nearly all fifteenth
century pattern-work (see Plate 84 and p. 157),
figures not only on the thyrsus of the Greek
god, but in Assyrian ornament (p. 151), and
in still earlier Egyptian sculpture (Plate 79).
On Plate 80 the Assyrian fir-trees are regu-
larly cone-shaped.
It is possible, no doubt, to work oneself
into a state of mind in which it seems
plausible enough, if not quite proven, that all
ornament is derived from a single source, the
“hom” or date-palm, to wit. But without
going quite so far as Sir George Birdwood in
his ingenious theory as to the development of
the knop-and-flower pattern, one cannot but
admit that the unanimity with which, from
the days of the Pharaohs to the days of Eliza-
beth, ornamentists have put together similar
forms on similar lines, leaves no possible


Plate 82

"PHOTO-TINT, by James Akermon. London W.C.
Roman Sculpture,





Tradition in Design.
159

WI
118. Japanese diaper.
doubt as to the lingering influence of tradition
upon design through all that time.
It is especially curious, also, to notice how
on very similar lines very different and yet
clearly related forms are developed.
Whatever may have been the origin of the
characteristic form popularly known as the
honeysuckle ornament of the Greeks,* there
is no mistaking
its relation to
the Egyptian lotus
and papyrus or-
naments, pp. 150
RID
and 240, and to
the Assyrian palm
ornament, p. 151.
See also Plate 110.
IA
In Chinese
flower forms, also
(p. 157), one seems
to see very much
the same lines ; 119. Japanese diaper.
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161 Century German design.





Tradition in Design.
161
The resemblance of the Japanese diapers
on p. 159 to Greek brushwork is explained
somewhat by the fact that they also are
brushwork.
Other Greek details, especially some of
those on p. 160, take, as I said before, dis-
tinctly the form of lilies.
In the Romanesque development of the
anthemion (p. 160) we have, indeed, leaves of
the most conventional, but there is no mistake
about its source ; and, strangely enough, the
leaves spring from a semicircular feature
resembling that from which the separate
serpents' heads issue in Plate 119.
Here, too, as in the Early Gothic tile pattern
on. p. 160, is foreshadowed the fleur-de-lis,
which assumes a more distinctive shape in
the Gothic cross on p. 238. Fully developed
instances of the fleur-de-lis occur on p. 241.
The fleur-de-lis, says Voltaire, was obvi-
ously derived from the top of a halberd ;
but whence, then, the form of the halberd ?
There is not much room for doubt that the
actual form of the fleur-de-lis was suggested
by the iris ; but for all that the ornamental
shape is only a development of the old idea
in a somewhat new direction.
It seems as though, whether because of the
perpetual recurrence in nature of radiating and
M


162
Nature in Ornament.
ri
.
.
concentric forms, or
whether because of
the inherently orna-
mental disposition
of the old lines, the
ornamentist could
123. Concentric forms, seaweed.
never get quite
away from them
for long at a time; their influence appears
even in the comparatively
natural design on Plate 85.
Certainly the glass painter
in designing a cruciform
niinbus, the detail of which
is given (124), had no idea
that he was following Clas-
sic precedent at all ; nor
he who stencilled the diaper 124. Got
of rays on the screen of a Norfolk church
(below). The rays of light
arrange themselves more or
less in the familiar order ;
as do the lines of a cockle-
shell (p. 222),—so much so
that it has been contended
that the Renaissance shell
ornament is only a varia-
tion of the anthemion.
125. Gothic diaper. In the Renaissance or-


Plate 84.


$
15b certy
1579
Cenly rm
an
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TO
16mb.
Centy.
als
15th
J Akermann
Late Gothic' Pine Ornaments.





Tradition in Design.
163
ornament.
naments below, distinctly
founded upon the ancient
lines, the introduction of the
oak-leaf and of the pods is
not altogether happy; the
designs are too plainly made
up; on the other hand, the
serrating of the leaves (p. 164),
and the substitution of pods
(p. 20) in their stead, are
new departures, quite justi- 726. Renaissance
fied by success.
It is only by such departure that success
is possible. What has been done is done
with, so far as design is concerned. Its teach-
ing is what is valuable, if only we would learn
from it the way it was done. We waste our
time in copying the
forms of ancient art in-
stead of trying to pene-
trate its secret.
It is by virtue of its
eclecticism, not of its
archæological accuracy
that the work of such a
man as the late William
Burgess has any hold
upon us. He founded
127. Renaissance ornament. himself, indeed, upon


M 2


164
Nature in Ornament.
Early French Gothic, and he was inclined to
like anything answering to that title, but he
did not scruple to borrow from Oriental or
Classic art what suited his purpose. And
although his manner was archaic, his ideas
were his own. He found room in his deco-
ration even for a
joke now and then,
the very surest
sign that he was
quite at his ease
in the habit of
mediævalism he
chose to assume.
Such assump-
tion may not be
altogether affecta-
tion in some men.
Yet our art must
be ours, whatever
else it may be.
128. Renaissance anthemion.
A man may confine himself to the lines of
tradition and follow them, if he will, or if
he must ; but why follow traditional forms?
there is no good tradition for that.


(Plate 85.

Conventional Tulip Frieze.
"PHOTO-TURT', by James Akerman, London, W.C.
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165
.
TREATMENT.
The obvious fitness of certain natural forms
to certain purposes of ornament, and to
certain processes of work, needs no pointing
out.
Some simple leaves suggest of themselves
how easily they could be rendered in painting.
One stroke of the brush is enough to indicate
a blade of grass or a willow-leaf; a series of
touches will express at once the compound
leaves of the acacia, tare, or other pod-bearing
plants—or such leaves are used indefinitely
(Plate 118), to suggest indeterminate foliage.
Again, the petals of many flowers may be
painted with so many dabs of the brush.
With the finger-tip one can indicate a bunch
of berries, a berry at each touch. And not only
in painting is this so ; each particular craftsman
sees in nature the chance for his particular
craft, and, if he is worth his salt, seizes it.
It is clearly the business of the ornamentist
to select the natural types which lend them-


166
Nature in Ornament.
selves to his purpose; not to take things as
they come, but to choose for painting, forms
which are paintable ; for carving, what is
carvable ; for metal, malleable shapes; and
so on.
It would be absurd to adopt for any process
of conventionalism a model of which the
character is inevitably lost in such a process.
You would not choose for rendering in coarse
material a type characteristically delicate,
for a colourless substance one depending
altogether on its tint, for a dull material
forms characteristically crisp, or for one diffi-
cult to manipulate forms full of intricate and
subtle detail. That would be at best only
bravado. Ordinarily it comes of sheer ignor-
ance. In design, as elsewhere, brains count
for something
We have, then, to seek in nature, not only
beautiful types, but types amenable to our
artistic purpose and the means by which we
intend to carry it out. The very mention
of a material is often enough to suggest avail-
able types in nature.
Indeed, it would be time well spent by the
student if he were to ask himself from time to
time a question or two of this kind :-To what
decorative purpose are such and such plants
fit? or, what plants are adapted to such and


Plate 86.

"PHOTO-TINT, by James Akorman. London W.C.
Peony Frieze, -W.J. Muckley.


Treatment.
167
W
IL.
such materials, to such and such treatment?—
and so on.
And it should be noted that, just as it is
not in the most romantic, or what is called
picturesque, scenery that the landscape painter
finds subject matter for his pictures," so it is
not in the most obviously elegant and grace-
ful forms of growth that the designer seeks
his inspiration. The convolvulus, the passion-
flower, and the birch tree, do not lend them-
selves especially to ornament.
The experienced designer gets to know how
useful some forms are, and how hopeless
others. He knows, too, that nature, kind as
she is to those who approach her in the spirit
of conciliation, never does his work for him.
Natural form is resolved into ornament, that
is to say, only by treatment.
This is a point on which dogmatism is
peculiarly dangerous, and advice of practi-
cally no value. An artist must settle for
himself what he shall render, and how he shall
render it. No one but himself can determine
for the individual what he can do. He may
take by assault the position we pronounced
impregnable. The conditions of success are
that he should form a just estimate of his own
powers, and regulate his ambition accordingly.
· His treatment of a natural type is his


168
Nature in Ornament.
justification for choosing it. Having selected
a type, he should have no great difficulty in
treating it. Technical difficulties suggest to
him fresh expedients in design. And if he
really belongs to the “natural order” of
designers, he works with perfect ease under
all manner of limitations as to space, line,
colour, and so on. The weight of conditions
only steadies him.
Between the treatment which consists in
merely composing natural forms with such
regard to decorative needs as may constitute
what by a stretch of terms is called orna-
mental arrangement, and the reduction of
such forms to ornament pure and simple,
there is the widest possible range, the whole
range of design in fact. The merely pictorial
treatment, on the one hand, seems as remote
from ornament as the absolutely abstract
invention, on the other, is removed from
nature. And yet it is impossible to deny
that a painter, for example, may combine with
a very natural rendering such regard to the
conditions of design as will constitute a
decidedly decorative, if not precisely orna-
mental treatment.
Such a treatment is exemplified in Plate
86, part of a frieze by Mr. Muckley. This
is flower-painting, if you like, and not orna-


Plate 87

"PHOTO-TINT", by James Akerman London .W.C.
Fruit pattern, William Morris.





170 .
Nature in Ornament.
130. Would-be ornamental
celandine.
been derived from any
one of a hundred dif-
ferent plants, designed
by a man who probably
could not have painted a
natural flower to save his
life, fulfils almost per-
fectly the conditions of
ornament. Albertolli's
feeble celandine opposite
fails, on the other hand,
precisely for lack of treat 130. Would-be ornamental
ment.
One great charm in more conventional
treatment is that it reveals the individuality of
the artist. Mr. William Morris is very plainly
recognised in the design of the wall-paper on
Plate 87. It is not often that one sees in
design the considerations of nature and of
ornament so evenly balanced as they are here.
The straight lines of the stems, for instance,
are characteristically natural ; but by the
direction they are made to take in the design
they give diagonal bands, which fulfil a dis-
tinct decorative purpose, preventing the eye
from wandering away in the direction of other
lines which would be less pleasing. The
rendering of the fruits again, whilst it is dis-
tinctly like nature, is emphatically ornamental.





Treatment.
171
The balance between natural form and
ornamental design is sometimes very evenly
adjusted in Chinese art. In Plate 88, for ex-
ample, forms of leaf and flower are given with
considerable fidelity to nature. The art has
consisted mainly in their systematic distri-
bution. Light-coloured water-lilies occur at
regular intervals, backed each by a leaf in
middle tint, with leaves in reverse of still
darker tint connecting them, the light ground
being diapered over with wave lines (appro-
priate enough to the water-lily), so as to give
value to the whiteness of the flowers. The
scheme is here very simple, but it results
in extremely beautiful
colour, and nature is not
outraged.
There is a wonderful
look of nature, too, in the
quite ornamental render-
ing of the “kiss-me-
quick” below. Compare
it with the more artificial
flower on Plate 44.
Other instances of
Chinese treatment occur
on Plate 76, and on
P: 29.
The ornamentist arrives

131. Chinese rendering of
“kiss-me-quick.”


172
Nature in Ornament.

on
t his
werey Dee
132. Comparatively natural treatment of poppy.
very soon at the conviction that it is of no
use entering into any kind of competition
with nature. He is not impressed by the
antiquity of the old, old theory that what is
fittest in nature is without more ado most fit
for ornament.
In the design on Plate 89, the form goes
about as far in the direction of nature as I am
personally inclined to go. The growth is
strictly according to nature. A cobæa scandens
might grow so. All that has been done is to
make it take lines which conform to the very
arbitrary demands of the Jacquard loom, and
to choose details which were not merely
graceful and characteristic, but capable of
being rendered in two flat tints, or I should
say textures, upon the ground.
The border of field poppies above, con-
forms in an equal degree to nature. The
flowers are not only chosen and composed,
they are made to grow as they were wanted.





Treatment.
173

LOKA
133. Comparatively natural treatment of fig.
And again, in the fig border, above, the growth
is as natural as I could bring myself to make
it for the purpose for which it was designed.
The next plate illustrates, on the other
hand, how far I think it fit to go in departing
from nature when it is desired to retain
something of the character of the plant. The
dandelion on Plate 90 is systematically re-
duced to ornament. The lines it takes are,
if not actually systematical, very carefully
balanced. The jagged edge of the leaf
assumes almost the form of a Greek wave-
line. The bracts develop into radiating lines
of ornament. But though the growth is thus
made formal, the serration of the leaves thus
simplified, the bracts thus exaggerated—the
idea is yet to suggest the dandelion, and no
other thing in nature.


Plate 90.

EXE
Lewist. Day 1890
"PHOTO-TINT" by James Akerman.London.W.C.
Conventional Dandelion.





Treatment.
175
That is really the spirit in which to accept
tradition. It is not something to be religiously
preserved, but handed on.
We are too much in the habit of adopting
traditional forms, as though all necessary
modification had been done for us. That is
not how the good old work was done. It was
the result of constant reference, if not to
nature, at least to the conditions of the case ;
and our modern essays in what is called
"style” prove us often more Gothic than the
Goth, more Classic than ever Greek was.
The result of adopting any ready-made
selection of types and details, the very signifi-
cance of which is nowadays a thing of the
past, is inevitable common-place and dreari-
ness. Our treatment should be not only
modern but individual.
The adoption of the old lines is pardonable
only on the assumption that the perfect
rendering has been found and cannot be
bettered. That may be so occasionally.
And one readily admits there are render-
ings so perfect in their way that they must
always influence us; but even though the
old rendering were perfect, what was perfect
then is rarely quite 'what is wanted now ;
and so it cannot fairly be contended that
tradition, powerful as it is, has any right





XI.
ANIMALS IN ORNAMENT.
No doubt the most amenable model for orna-
ment is to be found in vegetable growth.
This is not because it is without order—the
anatomy of plants needs, indeed, as careful
study as that of bones and muscles—but
because in vegetation the proportions of the
parts are naturally subject to such infinite
variety, that, so long as one obeys the general
law of growth, there is no great fear of over-
stepping the bounds of verisimilitude ; and
verisimilitude, not "truth to nature,” is the
law to which ornament owes obedience.
The forms of birds and beasts lend them-
selves less kindly, but still more kindly than
the human form, to ornamental manipulation.
The less, that is to say, one is likely to resent
a liberty with the normal proportions of a
thing, the more readily it can be turned to
account.
It is not surprising, then, that the orna-
mentist has sought his inspiration mainly in
N


Plate 92

SAN
Japanese Cranes.





Animals in Ornament.
179
something like sheer perversity on the part of
the artist.
Whatever may be the temptation to intro-
duce into a design anything which will occupy
an empty space and complete the composi-
tion, without regard to natural fitness at all,
it is really as absurd, when you think of it,
to put together night moths and daisies, or
butterflies and evening primroses, as it would
be to paint peacocks strutting about on our
northern shores, or polar bears prowling in
the jungle.
It is not meant to say, of course, that in
ornament only the particular creature which
preys upon a plant should ever be associated
with it. But it is an additional source of
interest when such creatures have some ex-
cuse over and above that of filling a vacant
space. Here, as everywhere, nature herself
will often furnish the designer with a valuable
hint. Notice the bronze-green beetles forag-
ing in the full-blown rose. See the bees on
the sunflower : I have found them diapering
its plain disc in the most interesting manner;
but I never remember to have seen that inci-
dent made use of in ornament, not even when
the sunflower reigned for a brief moment of
fashion over all English ornament.
You may have noticed also how the common
N 2


180
Nature in Ornament.

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135. Dolphins used as ornament. George Fox.
broom, of which the foliage is so insignificant
as to go for little, is sometimes dotted over
after a shower of rain with the daintiest little
snails, whose delicately-marked shells form
quite a feature in the pattern of the shrub.
It is a very common fault in modern orna-
ment to introduce into it animals or human
figures for the sake of bringing them in-
as though merely by their introduction the
design gained an additional artistic value. It
is only when such figure or animal serves
some distinctly ornamental purpose that it
does so, only then that it ceases to detract
from the value of the design. Figures or
animals in ornament should themselves be part
of the ornament—as they are in the designs of
Signorelli and Holbein (p. 202 and Plate 103),
and as they are in the frieze above. The
dolphins there are not mere porpoises but


Plate 93.
0
0
Japanese Tortoises





182
Nature in Ornament.

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......
139. Diaper of storks and chrysanthemuin flowers combined.
natural action are rendered, is such as to make
us feel that the graphic power of the artist
was well under the control of his decorative
sense or instinct.
Their remarkable appreciation of what is
characteristic in natural form enabled the
Japanese the more effectively to reduce such
natural form to absolute ornament.
To adapt a bird shape to the circular shape,
as on p. 181, or to express the action of flight
in a few strokes of the brush, as on the same
page, appears to be as easy to a Japanese as
it would be difficult to us. His ornamental
faculty is still more plainly shown in a diaper
such as that above. Are they storks or
chrysanthemums of which it is made up? He
has so successfully combined the character-
istics alike of bird and flower that you are left
in wonder as to which it was he adapted to





Animals in Ornament.
183
140. Dragon-fly diaper-Japanese.
the likeness of the other. It is so essentially
and so simply a diaper, that it seems not so
much to have been designed, as to have
grown out of a natural likeness between the
flower in profile and the bird in flight—which
likeness would, however, never by any chance
have occurred to us but for the designer.
Similarly, the diaper of insects, above, is
so obvious, when we see it done, that we
scarcely appreciate the ingenuity with which
the dragon-flies range themselves in hexagonal
order. The crested bird, by the way, on p. 181,
forms once again something very like a flower.
Absolutely archaic or non-natural creatures
lend themselves very readily to diaper work.
This is illustrated in the diaper of bats over-
leaf and in the primitive patterns from Peru
on Plate 94. The Peruvian attempts at human
or semi-human form strike us only by their
comicality ; but the nondescript creatures in


Plate 95

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Animals in Ornament. 185
SEEMSE SESU

W
ulle
142. Bird diaper by Wm. Burges.
imitators of Lucca and elsewhere in Italy,
made considerable use of animal form in
their patterns—carrying it, indeed, to the
extremest limit in actual pattern-work.
There was usually, one may presume, some
heraldic significance in the creatures they
represented (Plate 95); but there is a lesson
in the way they are introduced, and in their
treatment, especially in the way their broad
masses contrast with the smaller foliage and
other such detail associated with them. Fan-
tastic they often are, but still they are quite
natural enough. The continual recurrence of
creatures more like life would be intolerable.
The fault in the otherwise amusing pattern
overleaf is that one cannot put up with the
same little twins ad infinitum.


186
Nature in Ornament.
Birds are very frequently to be found
amidst the arabesques of the Renaissance,
with which they are not, it must be confessed,
always in keeping. The introduction of a bird
is rather a cheap solution of the difficulty
there may be in occupying any awkward
interval in the scroll itself without in any way
interfering with the grace of its lines or the
ease of its curves. It was quite a common
practice to terminate a pilaster or other tall
panel with an eagle taken bodily from the
Imperial Roman standard, its feet planted
firmly on the rim of a vase, its wings amply
and very conveniently filling those topmost
angles of the
panel so diffi-
cult in many
instances satis-
factorily to oc-
cupy. This is
well enough,
once in a way,
if only the
eagle be not
too much of
an eagle for
its place. Or-
dinarily the
birds pecking 143. Repeating figure pattern.

its place or R
$60


Plate 96.

SAS
LOUCUN
WUUHUO
DENUMIRANTAU
"PHOTO-TINT, by james Akerman London W.C.
16th Century Wood Carving.





Animals in Ornament.
187

.
00000000000000000000000
.
144. Conventional peacock border-Indian.
at berries or what not in Renaissance ara-
besque, as on Plate 96 (and in the Roman
work from which they are borrowed), are
comparatively too real. They would be more
in place had they been modified in conformity
with the ornament about them.
The Oriental ornamentists were invariably
more careful in this respect. The peacocks,
for example, at the head of the page, whilst
like enough to nature to be recognised at a
glance, are quite conventional enough to
correspond with the foliage ; and their value
as masses of solid colour amidst the smaller
and more broken detail is none the less on
that account.
As a rendering of the bird, and especially
of the bird's wing, the Indian example
leaves much to be desired-how much will
be seen if you compare it with the ancient
Egyptian renderings. The vultures over-
leaf, and the hawk on p. 189, afford types of


Animals in Ornament.
189
tiny cupid's wing, for example, just budding
from his chubby shoulders, the mere germ of
a wing, seems to belong more intimately to
his body than any other form of wing yet
invented.
Still more difficult is it satisfactorily to
arrange the wings about a cherub's head.
One remembers in certain old windows a
glory of colour resolving itself, as you look,
into a mystery of mingled wings and angel
faces; but the attachment of the wings is
best not too closely inquired into. Neither
is it well to consider too accurately the
mechanique of the wings in which Della
Robbia embeds his sweetest of child faces.
One is too thankful for their beauty to
blame him for not having accomplished what
is after all impossible.
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146. Egyptian wing treatment-hawk.


190
Nature in Ornament.
The idea of wings in the place of arms
(a common occurrence enough) or in the place
of ears (as may be seen in the beautiful bronze
head of Hypnos, in the British Museum),
seems more anatomically possible, and may
be most ornamentally rendered.
In dealing with quadrupeds a single
device has for the most part sufficed : alike
in the winged bull of Assyria, in the Greek
gryphon, and in the Evangelistic symbols of
early Christian art, the wing is made usually
to grow from the shoulder so as to form, as it
were, one member with the fore leg-remov-
ing the creature, indeed, by so much from
nature, but not bringing it anywhere near to
the ideal winged creature. The mechanism
of the trick is too apparent. There is none of
that mystery by which alone we might pos-
sibly be impressed. In Sansovino's griffins,
on Plate 104, one misses the fore legs no
doubt, but the wings which take their place
seem on that very account to be anatomically
more possible.
The outspread bird's wing has always been
considered a most valuable "property” in
ornament; but although it is usually the
bird's wing that one meets with in design, the
bat's wing occurs also, more or less in associa-
tion with devils and dragons, as the bird's



Plate 97
GO
Chinese 8
sese
Butterflies
C.F. KELL, PHOTO-LITHO.O.FURNIVAL ST HOLIOAN, E.C.
Conventional Butterflies





Animals in Ornament.
191
es

147. Bat diaper.
wing with angels and cherubim. The bat
itself is a symbol very frequent in Chinese
art and its derivative Japanese (pp. 184, 194,
and above). It is represented, however, in
the gayest of gay colours, and in shape so
turned to ornament that it is difficult at first
to identify it. Were either form or colour
more naturally rendered the effect would cer-
tainly be less distinctly decorative..
The wing of the butterfly is so obviously
ornamental that one wonders how it is that
only the Celestials have turned it to any
good account. In their embroideries especially
the Chinese have made admirable use of it
(Plate 76)—ornamentalising it sometimes in
the most extravagant manner, as, for example
in the most important instance on Plate 97,
where the under-wings are fringed somewhat
in the manner of the tail of their sacred bird
which itself is a sight to see.
That the anatomy of the creatures found in


192
Nature in Ornament.
ornament is so seldom all that a naturalist
might desire (the creatures on Plate 98 are
more realistic than an ornamentist could wish),
is sometimes, and to some extent, owing to
the exigences of ornamental design; but it is
more often the fault of insufficient acquaint-
ance on the part of the designer with the
facts of zoology. .
Few men have even nowadays the chance
of studying nature from end to end; and in
the middle-ages the “Zoo" was not within a
shilling cab-fare of the church. The Medi-
æval sculptor, however, was, according to his
possibilities, more studious of nature than we
are accustomed to suppose : there is abundant
evidence of that in his work. His compara-
tive ignorance saved him at all events from
too directly recalling this or that zoological
type in the demon or dragon of his invention
-and presumably of his belief.
Of the decorative, as distinguished from the
ornamental rendering of animal form, this is
not the occasion to speak at length. The
Egyptian lion statues and the Assyrian bas-
reliefs show what may be done in adapting it
to decoration ; and these abstract renderings
come very near to perfection-nearer, at all
events, than any modern has come with his
zoological realism.


Plale 98.

"PHOTO-TINT, by James Akerman, London.W.C.
•
Modern German Repaisance- A. Seder.





Animals in Ornament.
193
The sculptors of these master-works had
no occasion very likely happy mortals !—to
concern themselves about treatment; their
manner was traditional, and art had not yet
“emancipated” itself from the control of fit-
ness. Possibly the sculptor exercised no sort
of conscious restraint over himself. He was
a slave, perhaps, and did as he was bid, or a
member of a caste content to work patiently
on in the accustomed way. It matters little
to us why he did thus and thus so long as he
did it. The moral of his work is the same.
It is a plea (even though the artist thought of
no such thing) for self-restraint on our part.
Where he stopped short instinctively, never
dreaming of realism, we may stay our hands
deliberately, knowing the value of restraint.
This we should do in decoration. In orna-
ment, the modification of all natural form
being inherently essential to it, even the
human form divine must step down from its
pedestal and submit itself to the lowly use to
which it is put. I have mentioned at least
two old masters who could, without offence to
nature, bend the human shape to ornamental
purposes. In our own day the late Alfred
Stevens and Walter Crane have shown them-
selves equal to the task. If others cannot
modify the human figure without degrading


194
Nature in Ornament.
it, that may be an argument for omitting it
from their scheme of ornament, it is no excuse
for the introduction of raw nature in the place
of art. It is one of the ill effects of compelling
every student of design to acquire a certain
acquaintance with the figure, that he is tempted
to introduce it in season and out of season
into his compositions, at the cost very often of
consistency and ornamental effect. One is
inclined to ask what the little Love on Plate
99 is doing amongst the scrollery. It would
be at least as satisfactory without him.
148. Embroidered bat-Chinese.





195
XII.
THE ELEMENT OF THE GROTESQUE.
THAT the element of the grotesque has been
abundantly abused in ornamental design is
no argument against the discreet use of it in
design. But if we would reconcile reasonable
persons to its use we must ourselves keep
within the bounds of reason—not of fact,
indeed, but of sober fancy.
One has a right to expect of creatures, how-
ever remote from natural possibility, a greater
degree of consistency than the artists of the
Renaissance appear to have thought necessary.
We are not satisfied, for example, that a
substantial beast should suddenly taper off
into wiry lines obviously and absurdly out of
relation to it, or that its neck should be so
inordinately lengthened that when one comes
upon the head at last it is with something of
a surprise : our dissatisfaction is aggravated
if that head should not after all tally with
the body, as when a human head is joined to
the trunk of a quadruped.
02


196
Nature in Ornament.
It is a peculiarly unpleasant shock to us to
find that a creature has not only two heads,
but one at each extremity of its body: even
of a myth we expect a beginning and an end.
A scroll may, so to speak, blossom into
creatures, just as a creature may develope into
foliage ; but it should be that-development;
it is not enough that the tail of a beast break
out into vegetation. We don't expect a
creature so far developed as to have what can
be called a tail, to make quite a new departure
in the direction of foliage or scrollery ; and we
resent such freaks, as evincing a want of taste
in the artist.
It would be mere pedantry to pretend to
define in so many words the precise limits
within which one may take liberties with
animal forms; but one may safely say that
the more familiar they are to us, and the
more realistically they are rendered, the more
dangerous it is to take them. The grotesque
which reminds us obviously of some par-
ticular animal, is apt to strike one as if it
changed into ornament instead of developing
into it; and wherever a creature has the
appearance of having been put together the
limits of discretion have been passed.
Those creations are happiest which seem to
belong entirely to the imagination of the artist,


Plate 100

!
"PHOTO-TINT", by James Akormon. London.W.C.
167 Century, Italian Arabesque.


The Element of the Grotesque. 197
to have been conceived in the spirit of grace.
We cease to judge them then by any standard
but that of fit design and beauty.
There is a peculiar difficulty in harmoniously
combining in one creature the characteristics
of various animals. The acceptable grotesque
must be less a combination of creatures than
their hybrid offspring in the artist's brain
-a dream, a remembrance, a fancy—any-
thing but a patchwork. There exist, no
doubt, in nature, impossible-looking animals
like the giraffe, with its preposterous neck and
absurd little misfit in the way of a head at the
end of it; but that is no excuse for dispropor-
tion in design.
It is not as with plant form, where we are
at perfect liberty to shorten or elongate the
stalks and branches, seeing that under certain
conditions nature will do much the same, modi-
fying them, indeed, almost out of our knowing.
She seldom takes such liberties with the limbs
of animals, and when she does we take excep-
tion to it, and find deformity in the abnormal
proportion.
The artist may, in short, only do what he
can make seem right. The romancer who
can imagine, like Dumas, impossible persons
involved in impossible adventures, and yet
interest you in them, make you for the


198
Nature in Ornament.
moment believe while you read—or at least
forget to doubt—has, so far as you are con-
cerned, created them. The ornamentist may
equally be permitted to invent what never
was or could be, if he can but persuade you,
while you look, I will not say to believe in
the impossible, but to accept it.
The taste of the artist and the prejudices
of the critic will not always go together. There
will always be risk of offending susceptibilities
in introducing the grotesque element into
design. On the other hand, to repudiate the
grotesque is to give up a valuable element
in design, one difficult to secure by means of
pure ornament—and worth having, as it seems
to me, even at some risk of offence.
Recognising the temptation to its abuse, and
the remarkable unanimity with which artists
of the Renaissance succumbed to temptation, I
am bold to assert the possibility, and the exis-
tence too, of such tasteful and artistic use of
the grotesque as only a purist could find it in
his uncomfortable conscience to reject.
To persons of a somewhat rigid way of
thinking, and they are not a few, the impossi-
bility of grotesque creatures is quite enough
to condemn them; they see only, as they
would say, the absurdity of it all; they would
pass over the grotesque as a mere blot upon


Plate 101.

un
CT. LIPhoto Litho, 8Furnival 8.1.lbon, .C.
Late Gothic lllumination.


The Element of the Grotesque.
199
Italian arabesque, of which it is so essential a
characteristic. I would maintain on the con-
trary, that something at least of the variety
and pregnancy of Quattro- and Cinque-cento
design is due to it, and accept it for what it
is, a most convenient and effective means
of counteracting the dangerous tendency of
mere ornament to lapse into monotony and
all-overishness.
Moreover, whatever we may think of it indi-
vidually, it would seem as though not only the
Cinque-centists, but artists before and after
them, came to the unanimous conclusion that
they could not well get on without something
of the sort—and he must be a marvellously
clever fellow who can do without it all that
the craftsmen of the Renaissance did with its
help.
An artist must obey his conscience. I
should be sorry if mine cut off from me a
resource so helpful in design, so near at hand,
so needful.
The fact is, a mere scrollwork of something
like vegetable form scarcely suffices. The
designer wants here and there certain masses,
or weight, which it is difficult to get in the
form of flowers, fruits, and such like. The
difficulty has been solved sometimes, or rather
shirked, by the introduction of actual figures,


200
Nature in Ornament.
human or animal, among the foliage, excusable
only when they are reduced, by their treat-
ment, to strict conformity with the surrounding
foliage.
The nearer such creatures approach to
reality, the more incongruous they appear in
the midst of non-natural foliage. You feel
that in the Italian decoration on Plate 100,
the masks and griffins belong, in a way, fairly
well there; and the goat-legged figures are not
so much amiss; but the life-studies below are
entirely out of place. So are the little birds
in the corners. As for the disproportionate
duck, it beats the record of absurdity. Dispro-
portion of this kind is a very common failing
in design. For, to tell the truth, the difficulty
of keeping figures, human or animal, at all in
scale with the surrounding ornament is very
considerable. In the Persian panel on p. 169,
the ducks are disproportionately small. And
again, in Plate for, the figures are for once
overpowered by the ornament. The artist
was no doubt naïvely pious : to us such an
“ Annunciation ” is simply grotesque.
In the case of creatures frankly ornamental,
with no claim to possibility, the danger of
disproportion is in great part avoided. You
are enabled by means of them riot only to get
just the weight and mass you require, but to


Plate 102

LON

AA
W
VAVAN
ARUSHA
"PHOTO-Tont, by James Akerman, London
Lustre Plaques.





202
Nature in Ornament.

mental lines, those
of the human
figure came natu-
rally to him, and
he was so familiar
with every turn of
it that it was easy
to him to bend it
absolutely to his
purpose — which
purpose was orna-
ment. It is sel-
dom indeed that
a master of the
figure cares enough
about ornament
to submit himself
to its conditions.
When he does, it
is probable that he
was well grounded
in it before ever
he took to the
figure. That was
certainly so in
Holbein's case.
You can see in
Holbein's work
(Plate 103), how
149. Pilaster by Signorelli.





The Element of the Grotesque. 203
every line and every pose was dictated by
considerations of ornament, for all the dra-
matic intention he managed often to combine
with it. It is pretty plain to the designer that
such dramatic quality grew out of the lines
of his ornament, and did not suggest it. It is
that extra something which the consummate
artist always throws in—it was not bargained
for in the ornament.
Signorelli's pilaster (p. 202), is more entirely
made up of the figure—and the upper portion
of it illustrates to some extent the dangers
which beset the painter. The lower half
illustrates how much can be done in figure-
work almost alone. Only a designer, per-
haps, can realise how studiously the lines of
the figures, actively engaged as these may be,
have been not merely controlled by decorative
requirements but suggested by them. The
figures were designed, not worked into orna-
ment; they are conceived or remembered, not
taken from his sketch-book. Like Holbein,
Signorelli too delights to find a reason for the
form dictated by ornament.
The work of these men does not go to show
that the figure is peculiarly amenable to orna-
mental use ; but it shows at least to what good
ornamental purpose it may be put by those
who have thoroughly mastered both the


204
Nature in Ornament.

150. Grotesque iron grille-German.
figure and ornament. They are not many-
and never were.
Sansovino's monsters on Plate 104 are ex-
travagant, but still ornamental. The lines are
so cleverly schemed, and the effect is so satis-
factorily decorative, that the strongest objec-
tion to such detail as that of the two-legged
quadrupeds at the top of the panel is swal-
lowed up in admiration of the composition as
a whole. But Sansovino's design is by no
means a model of what arabesque ornament
should be. It is an instance, rather, of what a
consummate artist may be excused for doing.
The artist begins by blotting in his design,
intent at first mainly upon the lines of his
composition and the distribution of its masses.
I take it that it was in order to get the
requisite weight of form that he roughed out
certain bolder masses, half accidental perhaps,
which suggested animals, much as one sees
faces in the fire. Once he has resolved upon
such masses in his composition, the designer
is bound to give them an interest worthy of


Mate 104

"PHOTO-Tont, by James Akormon, London.W.C.
Grotesque Panel, by Sansovino.





206
Nature in Ornament.
ment springs, as in Plate 105, or the outcome
of the scroll, as in my design on Plate 106,
the one essential thing is that it should be, not
merely in harmony with it, but part of it; gro-
tesque and arabesque must be one growth :
the least shock to our sense of congruity is
disenchantment.
Just so in Scandinavian and Celtic orna-
ment (Plate 107). Those strange and impos-
sible birds, beasts, and dragons, which you
discover in the interlacings whether of carving
or illumination, had doubtless a symbolic
origin ; but, so far as carver or penman was
concerned, he never conceived them first as
independent and then twisted them into knot-
work; it is perfectly plain to my mind that
he gladly accepted the symbol because he
knew the value of emphatic masses in orna-
ment, and found it most convenient to end
his strapwork with a head, to broaden it out
somewhere into a body, to make it branch
into legs or wings, as best suited his composi-
tion. In short, he invented his interlacings,
and then by the addition of legs, wings, head,
and so on, converted it into a sort of dragon.
Abuse of the grotesque, which goes far to
account for the disfavour with which any-
thing of the kind is by some regarded,
comes partly at least from the fact of the


Plate 105.

AA
*
Grotesque figure, Marco Dente da Ravenna.


208
Nature in Ornament.
will find the simplest solution of the difficulty
in removing his imagined creatures consider-
ably from nature. They should be fancies, not
misshapen or distorted facts. The foliation of
animal form, fantastic as it may be, should seem
to us almost a matter of course—what, under
certain impossible conditions, nature might
possibly have done. It is so in the land of
dreams.
The objection to the animals, grotesque or ·
natural, which figure among the scrollwork
with which the Loggie of the Vatican are deco-
rated, as also in the panel from Mantua by
Giulio Romano (Plate 17), is that they are
inconsistent with the ornament; it is too thin
to support them, too conventional to har-
monise with them ; they are not part of the
ornament but patches in it.
This is a common fault, more apparent in
painting than in sculpture. In colour other
than monochrome one expects something in
the direction of natural colour; and the
sphinx, for example, which is half flesh colour
and half fur colour, looks more than ever a
compound and not a creation. So also with
the texture which a painter is tempted to give.
The vaguer a monster the more possible he
appears. Realise him and he becomes ridicu-
lous. When hair and scales and feathers are


Plate 106.

PO.
S
eoseo
w
C.F. KELL, HOTO-LITHO. 8.FURNIVAL ST HOLBORNEO
Grotesque Scroll.





210
Nature in Ornament.

HOTUOTTAMUOTI
MINITALUNTEERS
HER
WI
152. Ornamental dragon-Japanese.
ornamental as to partake, as it often does,
more of the nature of foliage than of feathers.
Over and over again the sculptors of the
Renaissance have shown that it is possible to
endow a monster with members which are
neither arms nor wings, and yet something
more alive than mere scroll-work. The one
essential thing, of course, is that such members
should belong to the creature.
The Japanese dragon above conforms ad-
mirably to the conditions of ornament. He
does not even break out into scrollery—he is
the scroll. His construction is anatomically
impossible: from the curl of his mane to the
turn of his claws he is unlike any imaginable
creature. Yet he is full of life and go, grace-
ful without any loss of energy, and altogether
one with himself—a fantastically ornamental
creation.
I have confined my remarks on grotesques
.


Plate 107

un
ASIS
C.F KELL, PHOTO-LITHO. 6,FURNIVAL ST HOLIOAN, E.O.
Keltic interlaced ornament.





212
Nature in Ornament.
conscious aim at anything of the kind on our
part argues us wanting in that first essential
towards practical design, common-sense—if,
indeed, it might not justify a certificate of
insanity. As the work of Arctic American
Indians one recognises in the design on p. 211
qualities decidedly ornamental; as to founding
ourselves upon it in any way, we might as
well throw off at once the clothes of civilisation
and tatoo ourselves forthwith.


Plate 108

Ornamental
Wood-
Carving
"PHOTO-TINT, by James Aksman, London.W.C.
Conventional Wing Forms.


214
Nature in Ornament.
EIF RAFT

Ya
Aans
SA
155. Diaper of spiuers' webs.
by them alone would be much as if we
estimated tropical scenery by the botanical
specimens at Kew. The impression one gets
from a casual glance round any museum is
that Greek ornament is all very much alike;
so is Roman, and so is Renaissance; and still
more so is Gothic, Byzantine, Assyrian, or
Egyptian ornament.
Undoubtedly there is always a certain dis-
tinguishing character about the work of any
ancient period, which is the first thing that
strikes us about it. The family likeness
asserts itself before everything to our unac-
customed eyes. But as the shepherd knows
his flock, though to us they are just sheep, so
the artist detects, even in ancient art (which
was not to our ideas particularly individual)
the individuality of the craftsman ; and the
more familiar he becomes with it the more he
sees in it a variety of which at first he had no
suspicion.


Plate 109

lumromm
"PHOTO-TONT" by James Akertu on. London.W.C.
Japanese Diapers 8., with a meaning.





Still Life in Ornament.
215
فحملهعحا
156. Diaper of Aan.es.
On an ancient Roman tripod in the Louvre
is carved a crown-imperial, quite conventional
and yet quite unmistakable. The top-knot
of leaves is very like the Greek anthemion ;
at the top is a bee; two more bees attack
the flowers, and fill the gap where naturally
no leaves occur; and again there are two
others between the foot-leaves and the leaves
of the stem, where there would be in nature an
empty length of stalk. If an artist of our day
had introduced such a composition into Greek
work he would have been accused of seeking
inspiration rather from a Japanese than from
any Classic source.
The truth is that all ancient art was, as I
said, once alive, difficult as it seems to be to
us to realise that obvious fact.
Nevertheless it would appear that Japanese
art is not only more directly and spontaneously
natural than, for example, Classic art, but that
its range is wider and more varied. Japanese


216
Nature in Ornament.

157. Cloud and bat pattern.
art has been fashionable, and is now for the
moment under a cloud of disfavour, the inevit-
able consequence of reaction. When that is
dispersed we shall still perhaps continue to
over-estimate or to undervalue it, according
to our idiosyncrasy. But, whatever its short-
comings in the way of grace and purity and
dignity of form, there is no denying its dis-
tinctive charm of spontaneity, variety, and
freshness.
No one was ever more alert to everything
in the shape of ornament about him, more
ready to seize a suggestion from nature, than
the Japanese craftsman. The snow falls, the


158. Cloud pattern.
159. Wave pattern.





218
Nature in Ornament.

SEE
161. Wave pattern, and water-fowl.
purposes of art pretending to no serious aim,
such, for example, as that of the cotton
printer. It is not essential that ladies' dresses
or peasants' petticoats should be designed
strictly on architectural lines.
If, on the whole, inanimate nature has not
been turned to full account in ornamental
design, historic ornament exemplies pretty
well its fitness to our
purpose. The flames
of fire—to go beyond
still life—were only
very occasionally
made use of by the
Japanese (p. 215), 162. Wave pattern.

very
occasionally ALLA


Still Life in Ornament.
219

163. Wave pattern.
but they were a very common motif of orna-
ment in Gothic art, so common indeed as to
give its character and its very name to the
style we call Flamboyant.
In later times, William Blake founded his
wild style of ornament almost entirely upon
flames, and there has been even a later
sect, founding themselves upon him, whose
ornament is still more alive with tongues of
fire, still more restlessly flamboyant.
humperdin prill
plin
i
ith
w
164. Wave ornament.
165. Wave ornament.


220
Nature in Ornament.
In Gothic art, again, cloud patterns are of
quite common occurrence, although so remote
from anything aerial that it is only by the use
to which they are put (as borders round a halo,
for example) that one knows them to have
any reference to clouds. That may be said
also of Chinese
and Japanese
cloud patterns
(p. 216). The
bats certainly
help to reassure
one that these
odd forms do
stand for clouds.
The birds on p.
238 are of similar
service. At all
events, there is
some variety in
the various Jap-
anese renderings.
The lines of
166. Wave and spray pattern.
waves have from
the first been used as ornament. The
Egyptian zigzag, the Assyrian water-diaper,
and the Greek wave, are among the earliest
border patterns. There is a late Renaissance
rendering of the Classic wave on p. 41. ;

rijeru
TEGREP
LIIT


slav OUENSCHA
Plate 112.

.
ottic
MIT
S
hann
F
rance
C.F. KELL, PHOTO-LITHO.8.FURNIVAL ST HOLBORN,E.O.
Seaweed Pattern.





Still Life in Ornamient.
223

170. Heraldic mantling.
selves so beautiful in line and colour, that
they are quite sufficient to form the motif of
ornamental design.
It is, however, mainly the scallop shell
which has been turned to account in orna-
ment-for symbolic reasons, originally, no
doubt, but also because it is so obviously
ornamental. It falls, indeed, very nearly into
the lines of the anthemion, of which it has
been contended the Renaissance shell orna-
ment is only a variation. But, as in the days
of the Renaissance, and of the Roman Empire
before that, it was quite a common thing to
supplement decoration in mosaic or stucco
with actual cockle-shells embedded in the
walls and pillars, it is natural to conclude that


Plate 113.

oo
Oo oo
J Akermar Po'o lith London
Peacock Feather Pattern-Japanese.





228
Nature in Ornament.
Zuaza
pattern.
for example in the
Doria Chapel at Ge-
noa, shields, helmets,
breastplates, swords;
and other insignia of
war can scarcely be
called out of place ;
but the conditions of
ornament are not
fulfilled by stringing
such things together
175. Persian peacock feather
down the length of a
pilaster. The composition on p. 229 may or
may not be ornamental—but it is not orna-
ment. Whatever excuse there may be in
Ancient art for the sacrificial emblem which
occurs at the top of the pilaster, it has no
significance, and no excuse in work of the
Renaissance.
In work of our own day, the bull's head
reminds one too much of the butcher's shop,
and the Classic ox-skull is still more un-
pleasantly suggestive. Artists of the Renais-
sance, however, seem to have seen no reason
why they should not treat the skull orna-
mentally. To me the rather graceful detail
on p. 230 loses all its charm when one realises
that the cartouche is really a skull.
It is possible, of course, to dispose almost
any series of objects, natural or artificial, in





Still Life in Ornament.
229

such order as to present
what passes for an orna-
mental appearance; repeat
a shape several times over,
and it forms a sort of pat-
tern; but that is not ex-
actly ornamental design.
The occasional introduc-
tion of such a thing as a cor-
nucopia (Plate 99), or a vase
(Plates 15, 57, 96, &c.), is not
only useful sometimes as
affording a convenient start-
ing point for growth, but
it may be the means of in-
troducing a mass which is
very valuable in the com-
position. In that respect the
recurring vases in the centre
plaque on Plate 18, and in
the border on Plate 25, are
useful, casually as they occur
in the design.
The most satisfactory of
such vases are the least re-
alistic. In Persian art in
particular we see the thing
reduced to the mere outline
of a vase filled in with orna-
inent, which by its treat-
ca
176. Trophy panel.


230
Nature in Ornament.
ment contrasts with the floral ornament
springing from it. An equally arbitrary
rendering of the vase occurs on Plate 28, the
pattern on which must be taken to represent
the water in it.
The shield, the tablet, and the cartouche
are so conspicuously useful in ornamental
composition, that at certain periods of design
artists seem with one accord to have relied
MUTLU
IN
177. Renaissance skull ornament.
upon them, to the exclusion of other and more
fitting devices.
Used for its own sake, or merely for the
convenience of composition, shield, tablet, or
cartouche becomes a mere stock property, a
shift or stop-gap in design. Its introduc-
tion is quite happy only when it is called
for to bear a coat-of-arms, an inscription, a
cypher, an emblem, or whatever may form





Still Life in Ornament.
233

179. Swag of fruit bunches.
little more than a border of leaves and fruit,
strictly confined, it may be, within the lines of
parallel mouldings. It looks as though the
sculptor had felt the need of a break in this
border, and so had crossed it by a ribbon at
intervals. Perhaps he felt there should be
some beginning and some end to his border,
and so he finished it with bows and loose
ends. You cannot help seeing that his
starting point was not so much the idea of a
wreath as the idea of due enrichment. That
his design resolved itself into a wreath was
something in the nature of an accident. It
happened so.
In later Renaissance swags you are often
painfully aware how proud the artist was of his
fruit bunches, and especially of the masterly
way in which he could carve them. There
is, it must be owned, a certain dandified self-
sufficiency in the not ungraceful swag above,


Still Life in Ornament.
235
pared with the “canopies,” which were the
stock in trade of so many Gothic craftsmen ;
but it seems to me that, whether in true or
(what was more usual) false perspective, such
constructions are a very poor substitute for
design. They have been employed pretty
freely, and will be so again no doubt. But
the unprejudiced taste is so little likely to be
led astray by their attractions, it is hardly
necessary to point out that the device is really
banal beyond endurance.


Symbolic Ornament.
237

HUKOGUJALI
WINNAUME
lllllllllliii!
! !llllllll
180. Egyptian sacred beetle.
adequate craftsmanship. The rest of the
world finds craftsmanship inadequate, and
asks for something more.
We find accordingly that in ancient and
mediæval ornament there is usually an under-
current of symbolism. Indeed, one might
safely say it is always there, and that when we
do not see it, it is only the distance that dims its
meaning to us. There is probably no single
detail of ancient ornament to which a sym-
bolic origin could not plausibly be assigned
by those who give themselves up to the inter-
pretation of such mysteries.
Eastern ornament, in particular, is apt to em-
body some sentiment or meaning. Egyptian
art was, practically speaking, hieroglyphic
picture-writing (Plate 79) of the same kind
(only much more nobly developed) as the
totems of the North American Indians.
Persian ornament, again, is always inspired
by some poetic notion—it is, in fact, a sort of








Plate 122

52
GOO
RE

.
S
SP
PHOTO-TINT, by james Akerman London.W.C
Marguerite Panels, Wood Carving.





246
Nature in Ornament,
In my own rendering of the marguerite on
Plate 123, the idea was that the meaning
should be there (just as there is a meaning

192. Heraldic oak—Italian Renaissance.
in the arrangement of the flowers) for the
satisfaction of a personal sentiment, but that
it should not be too obvious. For one's own
sake and for those whom it may concern,











.



PADANIEMI
BILDE BORBEITE
Day
Nature in ornament
10008



A000009207851