10

SUPPLEMENTARY REPORT ON DESIGN.

[Class NXN.

stantly urgent, there has arisen a new species of ornament Iof the most objectionable kind, which it is desirable at ■once to deprecate on account of its complete departurefrom just taste and true principles. This may be calledthe natural or merely imitative style, and it is seen in itsworst development in some of the articles of form.

Thus 've have metal imitations of plants and dowers,with an attempt to make them a strict resemblance, for-getting that natural objects are rendered into ornament bysubordinating the details to the general idea, and that theendeavour ought to be to seize the simplest expression ofa thing rather than to imitate it. This is the case withline art also : in its highest effort mere imitation is anerror and au impertinence, and true ornamental art iseven more opposed to the merely imitative treatment nowso largely adopted. Let any one examine doral or foliated iornament produced in metal by electrotyping the naturalobject, whereby every venation and striation of the plantis reproduced, and compare it with a well and simplymodelled treatment, where only the general features ofthe form are given and all the minutest details purposelyomitted; and if this latter has been done with a truesense of the characteristics of the plant, the meanness andlittleness of the one mode will be perfectly evident, com-pared with the larger manner of the other. But thisimitative style is carried much further : or-molu stemsand leaves bear porcelain flowers painted to imitate na-ture, and candles are made to rise out of tulips and Chinaasters, while gas jets gush forth from opal Arums. Stems,bearing flowers for various uses, arise from groups ofmetal leaves standing tiptoe on their points, and everyconstructive truth, and just adaptation to use, is disre-garded for a senseless imitative naturalism. In the sameway, and doubtless supported by great authority, past andpresent, enormous wreaths of flowers, fish, game, fruits,&c., imitated « merveille, dangle round sideboards, beds,and picture-frames. Glass is tortured out of its truequality to make it into the cup of a lily or an anemone:not that we may be supposed to drink nectar from theflower, but that novelty may catch those for whom goodtaste is not piquant enough, and chaste forms not suffi-ciently showy. In fabrics where flatness would seemmost essential, this imitative treatment is often carried tothe greatest excess; and carpets are ornamented withwater-lilies floating on their natural bed, with fruits andflowers poured forth in overwhelming abundance in allthe glory of their shades and hues ; or we are startled bya lion at our hearth, or a leopard on our rug, bis spottedcoat imitated even to its relief as well as to its colour,while palm-trees and landscapes are used as the ornamentsof muslin curtains. Though far from saying that imita-tive ornament is not sometimes allowable, still it will atonce be felt that the manner wants a determined regula-tion to exclude it in most of the above-mentioned easesfrom all works aspiring to be considered in just taste, andto leave it to be adopted by those only who think noveltybetter than chaste design, and show preferable to truth.

The constant search after novelty has just been alludedto as one of the sources of bad taste in modern ornament.Manufacturers are eager to obtain it at any sacrifice oftruth and at any cost. The efforts of those past ages,when taste was most indisputable, appear to have beendirected rather to the continually perfecting ami refiningtheir designs and inventions, than to creating new ones.Thus in architecture the robust simplicity and grandeurof the Doric order remained unchanged from age to age,architect after architect striving only to perfect its justproportions and the symmetry of its parts, rather than toadd any novelty of feature or ornament, until, in the Par-thenon , it seems to have arrived at the most perfect deve-lopment that taste, science, and art could unitedly effect.Even among the more voluptuous inhabitants of AsiaMinor , at least until the age when their artists becameservants and pamlerers to the coarser magnificence ofHome, the details of ornamentation were few, and thoseuniversally received. The volute, the acanthus, the an-themion, the echinus, and a few frets and guilloches,seemed to pass the ordeal of criticism, not that they mightbe rejected for more novel treatments, but that the sym-metry of their parts might be more justly balanced, the

commoner curves rejected for those more varied, beau-tiful, and refined, and the true import given to their pro-jections. Proportion and symmetry being thus soughtafter instead of novelty, their ornament has come downto us with authority like that of Scripture, rather than oftradition, and all the after efforts of artists, who haveadopted and adapted it, have failed to improve its ele-gance, or to add to its beauty. Even in the easternnations we find the same usage prevail 5 and to this dayIndian ornament is composed of the same forms as it wasin the earliest known works: the principles that governedornamental practice in those works seem still to be a tra-dition with the artist and the workman, and still to pro-duce the same beautiful results, as is abundantly seen inthe fabrics and tissues of the Indian department in theGreat Exhibition . Now, however, our efforts are of anentirely different nature, and the hunger after novelty isquite insatiable; heaven and earth are racked for novelinventions, and happy is the man who lights upon some-thing, however outre, that shall strike the vulgar mind,and obtain the “run of the season.” Such patterns asoften result from the caprice of accident as from anyeffort of thought -witness what is called the dioramapattern in cotton printing, which was very popular, yetwas the result of an accidental folding of the stuff on thecylinder in printing. Accepted for the season, these fan-tasies 110 sooner pass away than the world wonders howit could ever have looked upon them with satisfaction, ortolerated for an instant such solecisms in taste, suchstrange incongruities, or gross absurdities.

The ornament of past ages was chiefly the offspring ofhandicraft labour, that of the present age is of the engineand the machine. This great difference in the mode ofproduction causes a like difference in the results. In oldtimes the artist was at once designer, ornamentist, andcraftsman, and to him was indifferent the use of the pencilor the brush, of the hammer, the chisel, or the punch:his hand and his mind wrought together, not only in thedesign, but in every stage of its completion, and thusthere entered a portion of that mind into every minutedetail, and into every stage of finish, and many a beau-tiful after-thought was embodied by the hand of the“cunning artificer,” many a grace added to the work byhis mastery and skill. lie worked, not to produce a rigidsameness, but as Nature works:—she produces nothingexactly similar to its fellow, in every turn of every stageof growth, in every flower, and in every leaf, adding achanging grace, a differing beauty; so he varied hislabours with every feeling of bis overflowing mind. Butthis is not possible with the stamp, the mould, the press,and the die, the ornamental agents of our days: after thet\pe or model is made, all the products are rigidly thesame, whence arises a sickening monotony, a tiresomesameness, unknown in the works of nature and peculiarto these artificial works of man: the varying mind hasno share in their production, and man himself becomesonly the servant of the machine.

Moreover, the old ornamentist worked generally fromfeelings of piety, from love of his labours, or from thedesire of fame, motives hardly known to the artist of thisclass in our days, at least in this country. Who seeksfame from the ephemera of a season ? Who loves alabour that is so soon to pass away ? Who cares for awork that is not to be the child of his own hand, but tobe produced in thousands by the aid of machinery? Thetoil of him of old times was spent upon the thing itself,and not upon a mere model for it: the chalice, the cup,the lock and key, the reliquary, were to be without repe-tition, and without rivals: he sought to give them theirhighest excellence, and, labouring from one of the feel-ings we have described, threw his whole soul into hiswork, so that it became a thing for future ages to lookupon and to prize. Not that handicraft or art-workman-ship is utterly excluded from our manufactures; it is onlypartially so, making more painfully evident how greatlyornamental art has suffered from its new union with ma-chinery. Wherever ornament is wholly effected bymachinery, it is certainly the most degraded in style andexecution: and the best workmanship and the best tasteare to be found in those manufactures and fabrics wherein