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Page 48
Now the difficulty of the art was overcome in its earliest and best
days, and no care or pains were spared in making the most of its
special qualities, while for long and long no force was put upon the
material to make it imitate the qualities of brush-painting, either
in power of colour, in delicacy of gradation, or intricacy of
treating a subject; and, moreover, easy as it would have been to
minimise the jointing of the tesserae, no attempt was made at it.
But as time went on, men began to tire of the solemn simplicity of
the art, and began to aim at making it keep pace with the growing
complexity of picture painting, and, though still beautiful, it lost
colour without gaining form. From that point (say about 1460), it
went on from bad to worse, till at last men were set to work in it
merely because it was an intractable material in which to imitate
oil-painting, and by this time it was fallen from being a master
art, the crowning beauty of the most solemn buildings, to being a
mere tax on the craftsmen's patience, and a toy for people who no
longer cared for art. And just such a history may be told of every
art that deals with special material.
Under this head of order should be included something about the
structure of patterns, but time for dealing with such an intricate
question obviously fails me; so I will but note that, whereas it has
been said that a recurring pattern should be constructed on a
geometrical basis, it is clear that it cannot be constructed
otherwise; only the structure may be more or less masked, and some
designers take a great deal of pains to do so.
I cannot say that I think this always necessary. It may be so when
the pattern is on a very small scale, and meant to attract but
little attention. But it is sometimes the reverse of desirable in
large and important patterns, and, to my mind, all noble patterns
should at least LOOK large. Some of the finest and pleasantest of
these show their geometrical structure clearly enough; and if the
lines of them grow strongly and flow gracefully, I think they are
decidedly helped by their structure not being elaborately concealed.
At the same time in all patterns which are meant to fill the eye and
satisfy the mind, there should be a certain mystery. We should not
be able to read the whole thing at once, nor desire to do so, nor be
impelled by that desire to go on tracing line after line to find out
how the pattern is made, and I think that the obvious presence of a
geometrical order, if it be, as it should be, beautiful, tends
towards this end, and prevents our feeling restless over a pattern.
That every line in a pattern should have its due growth, and be
traceable to its beginning, this, which you have doubtless heard
before, is undoubtedly essential to the finest pattern work; equally
so is it that no stem should be so far from its parent stock as to
look weak or wavering. Mutual support and unceasing progress
distinguish real and natural order from its mockery, pedantic
tyranny.
Every one who has practised the designing of patterns knows the
necessity for covering the ground equably and richly. This is
really to a great extent the secret of obtaining the look of
satisfying mystery aforesaid, and it is the very test of capacity in
a designer.
Finally, no amount of delicacy is too great in drawing the curves of
a pattern, no amount of care in getting the leading lines right from
the first, can be thrown away, for beauty of detail cannot
afterwards cure any shortcoming in this. Remember that a pattern is
either right or wrong. It cannot be forgiven for blundering, as a
picture may be which has otherwise great qualities in it. It is
with a pattern as with a fortress, it is no stronger than its
weakest point. A failure for ever recurring torments the eye too
much to allow the mind to take any pleasure in suggestion and
intention.
As to the second moral quality of design, meaning, I include in that
the invention and imagination which forms the soul of this art, as
of all others, and which, when submitted to the bonds of order, has
a body and a visible existence.
Now you may well think that there is less to be said of this than
the other quality; for form may be taught, but the spirit that
breathes through it cannot be. So I will content myself with saying
this on these qualities, that though a designer may put all manner
of strangeness and surprise into his patterns, he must not do so at
the expense of beauty. You will never find a case in this kind of
work where ugliness and violence are not the result of barrenness,
and not of fertility of invention. The fertile man, he of resource,
has not to worry himself about invention. He need but think of
beauty and simplicity of expression; his work will grow on and on,
one thing leading to another, as it fares with a beautiful tree.
Whereas the laborious paste-and-scissors man goes hunting up and
down for oddities, sticks one in here and another there, and tries
to connect them with commonplace; and when it is all done, the
oddities are not more inventive than the commonplace, nor the
commonplace more graceful than the oddities.
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