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Page 47
Without order your work cannot even exist; without meaning, it were
better not to exist.
Now order imposes on us certain limitations, which partly spring
from the nature of the art itself, and partly from the materials in
which we have to work; and it is a sign of mere incompetence in
either a school or an individual to refuse to accept such
limitations, or even not to accept them joyfully and turn them to
special account, much as if a poet should complain of having to
write in measure and rhyme.
Now, in our craft the chief of the limitations that spring from the
essence of the art is that the decorator's art cannot be imitative
even to the limited extent that the picture-painter's art is.
This you have been told hundreds of times, and in theory it is
accepted everywhere, so I need not say much about it--chiefly this,
that it does not excuse want of observation of nature, or laziness
of drawing, as some people seem to think. On the contrary, unless
you know plenty about the natural form that you are
conventionalising, you will not only find it impossible to give
people a satisfactory impression of what is in your own mind about
it, but you will also be so hampered by your ignorance, that you
will not be able to make your conventionalised form ornamental. It
will not fill a space properly, or look crisp and sharp, or fulfil
any purpose you may strive to put it to.
It follows from this that your convention must be your own, and not
borrowed from other times and peoples; or, at the least, that you
must make it your own by thoroughly understanding both the nature
and the art you are dealing with. If you do not heed this, I do not
know but what you may not as well turn to and draw laborious
portraits of natural forms of flower and bird and beast, and stick
them on your walls anyhow. It is true you will not get ornament so,
but you may learn something for your trouble; whereas, using an
obviously true principle as a stalking-horse for laziness of purpose
and lack of invention, will but injure art all round, and blind
people to the truth of that very principle.
Limitations also, both as to imitation and exuberance, are imposed
on us by the office our pattern has to fulfil. A small and often-
recurring pattern of a subordinate kind will bear much less
naturalism than one in a freer space and more important position,
and the more obvious the geometrical structure of a pattern is, the
less its parts should tend toward naturalism. This has been well
understood from the earliest days of art to the very latest times
during which pattern-designing has clung to any wholesome tradition,
but is pretty generally unheeded at present.
As to the limitations that arise from the material we may be working
in, we must remember that all material offers certain difficulties
to be overcome, and certain facilities to be made the most of. Up
to a certain point you must be the master of your material, but you
must never be so much the master as to turn it surly, so to say.
You must not make it your slave, or presently you will be a slave
also. You must master it so far as to make it express a meaning,
and to serve your aim at beauty. You may go beyond that necessary
point for your own pleasure and amusement, and still be in the right
way; but if you go on after that merely to make people stare at your
dexterity in dealing with a difficult thing, you have forgotten art
along with the rights of your material, and you will make not a work
of art, but a mere toy; you are no longer an artist, but a juggler.
The history of the arts gives us abundant examples and warnings in
this matter. First clear steady principle, then playing with the
danger, and lastly falling into the snare, mark with the utmost
distinctness the times of the health, the decline, and the last
sickness of art.
Allow me to give you one example in the noble art of mosaic. The
difficulty in it necessary to be overcome was the making of a pure
and true flexible line, not over thick, with little bits of glass or
marble nearly rectangular. Its glory lay in its durability, the
lovely colour to be got in it, the play of light on its faceted and
gleaming surface, and the clearness mingled with softness, with
which forms were relieved on the lustrous gold which was so freely
used in its best days. Moreover, however bright were the colours
used, they were toned delightfully by the greyness which the
innumerable joints between the tesserae spread over the whole
surface.
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