Needlework As Art Part 13

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 14.

Radiated Pattern.]

I would venture here to find fault with a very common method of converting a natural object into a conventional pattern, by radiation.

Certain modes of repet.i.tion are very objectionable. A pattern, for instance, repeated four times round a centre, or a natural flower repeated exactly, but lying north, south, east, and west, are more or less inartistic, we may say vulgar. (Fig. 14.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 15.

Radiated Sunflower.]

A natural flower may be conventionalized and radiated by placing it in the centre of the composition facing you; and the leaves arranged surrounding it, so as to formalize the design, though there is nothing really unnatural in the way in which they are made to grow. The ill.u.s.tration of a radiated sunflower explains my meaning.

It has been already observed that by repet.i.tion almost any object may be reduced to a pattern, but taste must be exercised in the selection of what is appropriate and beautiful. Radiation is also really a useful factor in conventional art, but common sense must guide the artist here as well as taste. In radiating the forms of a flower, nature gives endless hints of beauty; but a radiating pattern of human figures would be ridiculous, and even the branches of a tree cannot be so treated.

The awning of the cla.s.sic hypaethral hall or court was often reproduced in Roman arabesques. Sometimes we find it in a cla.s.sical tomb, painted over the ceiling, and recalling its original use. This was revived in the Cinque-cento Renaissance; and again in Adams' "Eighteenth Century Decorations," it became an accepted pattern, called "the sh.e.l.l,"

losing its original motive, and descending to fill up the panels of tea-caddies and surround keyholes. When thus reduced to the appearance of a little ruff, it needs some thought to recognize it, and give it credit for its first motive.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 16.]

It is amusing to find how a form which it seems impossible to reduce to a pattern, will yet fall into one by a judicious arrangement of light and shadow, and by repet.i.tion. There is a little frieze in one of the Indian cases on the staircase in the British Museum, which is extremely pretty and effective. It consists of a repet.i.tion of little balconies with recesses and pillars and figures in pairs. I give it as ill.u.s.trating the way conventional patterns grow. This balcony pattern is of the sixth century, A.D.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 17.

Indian Balcony Pattern, from steps of tope of Jamal-Zartri, Afghanistan. British Museum.]

The ancient palmated pattern called Chrysoclavus, from the beginning of our era to the thirteenth century was partly a nail-headed design, and had become a Christian symbol. It was, probably, originally the primitive spot pattern; afterwards promoted to being an ornament of discs in colour or metal: this was a.s.syrian, Etruscan, and Mycenaean.[128] (Pl. 70.)

Among the conventional patterns which have apparently no hidden meaning, but which clearly show their descent, are the Chinese and j.a.panese wicker and lattice-work designs. The beauty of these is wonderful.

Semper shows that wicker (including bamboo work) was the foundation of all Chinese civilized life, for constructing houses, bridges, utensils, and for decoration. He gives this wicker-work origin to the universal key pattern, which may, however, have a double source--the wave, and the wicker-work.

We find the Key pattern in a tomb at Essiout, in Egypt, painted perhaps about 1600 B.C., in company with some other very old friends,[129] the Tuscan border, the Egg and Tongue, and the Bead, the Daisy, and the Wave. (Pl. 17, No. 2.) We meet it everywhere in ancient and modern decoration. There are several forms of it on a large terra-cotta vase in the British Museum from Kameiros in Rhodes, and on Chinese fictiles and embroideries. It is found also on garments in Iceland, whither the Greek patterns must have drifted through Norway, and, as they could go no further, there they remained.

I have often spoken of the extraordinary survival of a pattern. This is easy to account for when fashion, "the disturber," had not yet existed. Then the ancient motive told its own tale, and its great age was its claim to perpetual youth; but it is more remarkable where we meet with revivals at distant periods, and apparently without any connecting link of ancestry or style.

For instance, the women of Genoa wore large cotton veils, printed with the Indian conventional tree and beast pattern, down to thirty years ago, when the fashion changed, and winter bonnets and summer muslin veils displaced the old costume. These patterns are now being printed in England on scores of cotton curtains for beds and windows.

GEOMETRICAL.

Geometrical patterns may be reduced to a very few primitive elements.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 18.

Varied adjustments of Square and Circle.]

1. The Line, including straight and wavy lines.

2. The Angular Forms, including squares, oblongs, cubes, &c.

3. The Triangular, including zigzags, diamonds, &c.

4. The Circular, including all spots, discs, and radiations.

All these can be blended or mixed so as to form endless varieties. For instance, the square and the circle can intersect each other in different proportions, so as to give an entirely new effect to the pattern, each time the balance is altered or the phase of the repet.i.tion varied. The ill.u.s.tration will explain this. (Fig. 18.)

Right angles may intersect each other so as to produce the whole gamut of Chinese lattice-work decoration, and all the Celtic and Scandinavian entwined patterns, from which so many of the embroideries in the Italian pictures of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are probably descended.

The Moorish patterns are geometrical, and are created on the principle of avoiding in art the representation of any created thing. They show much ingenuity in keeping clear of any possible meaning. Most of these conventional patterns are founded on the ogee-arch and a kind of honeycomb pattern, involved and inverted. Their tiles, which nearest approach textile design, have, indeed, certain vegetable forms added to the others, but always geometrically arranged as no vegetables ever grew.

Geometrical patterns begin with primitive forms, and come down to the floor-cloth designs of to-day. They can be extracted in endless variety from the combinations of the kaleidoscope. This style is well suited for pavements in mosaic--either secular or ecclesiastical.

The Opus Alexandrinum furnishes us with most beautiful examples and adaptations for large or small s.p.a.ces, so as to form the richest or the simplest floor decorations. How worthily a church may be thus adorned may be seen on the vast area of the floor of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, or that of the Church of St. Mark in Venice.

The nearest approach to the Opus Alexandrinum in textiles has been in Patchwork, of which a more artistic use may yet be made. We might exercise ingenuity in this direction, giving really fine and effective designs to our workers in patches, whose productions are, in general, simply alarming.

The fine quilting patterns of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are almost always geometrical, and make the best background to more resplendent embroideries overlying them, which is partly owing to their being only forms, and conveying no idea or inherited meaning.

These expressionless designs are well fitted for s.p.a.ces and borders in which the centres are elaborated, and require enclosing or framing; likewise, they are suited for large areas, which must not be perfectly plain, and yet not too disturbing to the eye, so as to distract it from the more important ornaments on the wall or ceiling. They suit carpets in pa.s.sages or on staircases much better than any other kind of design, and form the best figured backgrounds for pictures. Both eye and mind often need repose, and therefore the simpler the geometrical pattern is, the better. Complicated and too ingenious combinations are painfully fatiguing. Simplicity and flatness are the greatest merits in such forms, as in shadowless patterns for textiles, and especially for embroideries.

If we turn to nature to a.s.sist us with new geometrical patterns, we shall find the most exquisite forms in the crystals of every newly-fallen snowflake, and in the nodal-points on a plate of metal or gla.s.s, covered with sand, and struck by sound. We shall hardly ever find in these a repet.i.tion of exactly the same combination, and their variety is only equalled by their beauty.

FOOTNOTES:

[96] Sir G. Birdwood tells us of patterns of an Indian brocade called "Chundtara" (moon and stars), figured all over with representations of heavenly bodies.

[97] Pliny, "Natural History," lib. x.x.x. c. 8, -- 34.

[98] There is a sh.e.l.l pattern in gold on a twelfth century fragment of a Bishop's garment at Worcester.

[99] See Wilkinson's "Ancient Egyptians," vol. iii. pp.

132, 133, 350, 553.

[100] Botticher, in his "Tektonik," will allow of but one origin for the "egg and tongue" pattern. I cannot give up the evident descent from the lotus flower and bud; but I have said before that a pattern has sometimes a double parentage, and it may be so in this case.

[101] The lotus is almost entirely lost as a native growth in India, and is fast disappearing in Egypt. The lotus blossom in Egypt was not only a sacred emblem, but also an _objet de luxe_. At their feasts, the honoured guests were presented with the flowers, and as they faded, slaves carried round baskets of fresh blossoms.

See Wilkinson's "Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians."

[102] See the Book of Lindisfarne, and the two Celtic bronze shields in the British Museum. These last are very curious. The long involved lines show their origin, and the shields are enriched with enamel and corals, in repet.i.tions of the prehistoric cross.

[103] See "Alb.u.m of Photographs of the Marien-Kirche, Dantzic," Taf. 31.

[104] Woltmann and Woermann, Eng. Trans., p. 202.

[105] Charlemagne's dress, in his tomb, was covered with golden elephants. This must have been Indian. His mantle was "_pa.r.s.eme_" with golden bees.

[106] Elsewhere there is a notice of Miss Morritt's really beautifully embroidered landscapes at Rokeby; and all who saw them will remember the extremely clever and effective pictures in crewels by an accomplished American lady, Mrs. Oliver Wendell Holmes, exhibited in London a few years ago. These exceptional cases do not, however, disprove the objections against employing the most unfit and unmanageable materials for producing subjects alien to the art of embroidery.

[107] See Redgrave's "Manual of Design," pp. 50-61.

[108] See Appendix 21, by Ch. T. Newton, to the first edition of Ruskin's "Stones of Venice." He gives, as instances of this pattern, certain coins from Priene, where the River Maeander is symbolized by the angular key pattern. Appendix, No. 1.

[109] "(Euripides _loquitur_) Not horse-c.o.c.ks, nor yet goat-stags, such as they depict on Persian carpets"