Class XXX. j

SUPPLEMENTARY REPORT OX DESIGN.

743

certain design, dwelt upon, rather than the excellence ofthe design itself, and gaudiness and ugliness are esti-mated, if expensive and troublesome in production, ratherthan beautiful simplicity at small cost. As simplicity isone of the first constituents of beauty, it will often happenthat simple patterns are far the most beautiful, and thatone printing, or weaving in one colour, is in good taste,while every multiplied difficulty becomes further re-moved from it. It has before been said, that callingundue attention to the ornament is a great error indesigning for garment fabrics: there needs, in the largermasses of the dress, a sense of what a painter callsbreadth or repose, which is only attainable by great sim-plicity, by flat or diapered treatments of small forms, byuneontrasted light and dark, and delicate tints of colour:those difficult patterns of many parts are too apt tooffend against the above requirements, and to cause thefigure to stare upon the ground aud attract attention toitself, to the destruction of the true decoration of suchfabrics.

In examining the designs for garment fabrics, bothBritish and Foreign—many of them of great merit—twothings immediately strike the observer, namely, thatwhile there is great evidence of the interchange of ideasbetween European designers and manufacturers (the samepatterns or modifications of them being seen on bothsides of the Building), it is impossible to fix on anygeneral principle or principles that have circumscribedthe efforts or regulated the taste of European designersas a body, or of any one of them as an individual. Thuswe have the same artist exhibiting patterns consisting ofnatural imitations—patterns founded on symmetrical andgeometrical arrangements—flat and shaded treatments—trails dispersed over the surface—or sprigs diapering theground—minutely small or coarsely large forms—indeed,showing his abilities indiscriminately without any appa-rent preference, in any and all styles and in mannersmost opposite. The case is entirely different in theIndian fabrics exhibited (for there are no designs), whe-ther carpets, embroidery, or for garments; three or fourleading and governing principles being prominent in allsuch works. These appear the result of science, theother of chance; and it is singular, in this age of desirefor novelty, that no manufacturer or designer has thoughtof seeking excellence or singularity, and therefore cele-brity, by a rigid adherence to some fixed rules of design ;seeking beauty of form and arranging colour in com-pliance with their dictates, and repudiating that off-handlawlessness which is the universal practice. In view ofthis general dereliction, this equal indifference to prin-ciple, it becomes desirable to examine the causes offailure, and to endeavour to impress the value of theprinciples which have been neglected, rather than tooffer especial remarks upon the designs exhibited in thissection, and since, without the insertion of many illus-trations, it would be impossible to advert to the fabricsthemselves, to consider designs and ornamented fabricsat the same time.

In the section on the precious metals it has been statedthat imitation is not one of the principles of ornamentalart generally, but rather one of the elementary bases offine art, and it is now desirable to give another dis-tinctive difference between the two which will serve stillmore to define their respective provinces. It is, thatgeometry, not necessary as a principle of art, is essentiallyrequired as the basis of ornament; thus the grouping andarrangement of art is picturesque and dissymmetrical,and consists rather of unequal quantities, except in someof the works of the early artists, which had an orna-mental source. Ornament, on the contrary, has a geo-metrical distribution, and is subject to symmetry andcorrespondence of parts, and it may he truly said that itis confounding these provinces, and a departure from thistrue foundation on the part of the ornamentist, that hascaused so much bad ornament in the various manufacturesof the Exhibition, and in [none more than in the textilefabrics. Thus it is not possible to cover a large spacewith a repetition of small ornament, without some sym-metrical arrangement developing itself, however stu-diously we may endeavour to avoid it, the necessary

“repeats,” for instance, leading to the development of(he square. In such dispersed patterns, therefore, someamount of symmetry is produced by chance; thus thepattern (G F, fig. 2) has not been founded on any geo-metrical lines, yet a four or five-fold repetition woulddevelop a regular arrangement of parts, some determinaterecurrence of the berries, for instance, subject to a sym-metrical law of lines. In such a ease, then, the geometricallaw of recurrence is arrived at adventitiously, tlie neces-sity inducing it being ungoverned by the controlling willof the designer, who therefore lias neglected all the beautyresulting from a proper choice of the regulating form

Moreover, if a repetition by means of blocks or cylinderswholly without a symmetrical arrangement is an impos-sibility, would this not lead us to infer that symmetry isa law of nature not lightly to he broken through or dis-regarded; and should it not induce us to search for thosegeometrical figures which give the best distributions ofquantities, and the arrangements most pleasing to theeye? In fact, we ought not to attempt to overcome thislaw, but to accept it, and so regulate it as to give effectto other qualities essential to beauty, such as proportion,quantity, grace, and harmony of colour.

Having shown then that symmetry, regulated by geo-metrical forms, should govern the distribution of ornament,a little investigation would lead to the causes why certainsymmetrical arrangements please more than others; thusthe square of equal sides and equal angles (fig. 1) is thesimplest and least varied basis of distribution, the mostobvious regular figure, and at the same time the mostinelegant and commonplace; simply changing the direc-tion of the lines, however, and placing the square lozenge-wise, as in fig. 2, gives a decided improvement; varietyis partially joined to perfect symmetry, and a morepleasing arrangement of the forms and quantities is theresult (fig. 2). Then again, if we not only change thedirection of the governing lines, as in the last figure, buttheir angle also, as in fig. 3, and adopt the equilateraltriangle and the lozenge which is its plural, we have afurther variety, in the interchange between the uprightand perpendicular spaces of the quantities, and the resultis a still more elegant distribution arising from the merevariation of arrangement of thesamesimple details. Havingarrived at these facts as a starting point, viz., that sym-metry is a necessary condition of repetition, and thatsymmetrical beauty is largely influenced by the angle orcombination of angles which govern it, we may pass fromthe right angle, aud the angle of sixty degrees, whichforms the equilateral triangle, to study arrangementsunder various other geometrical combinations, foundedon other polvgons and on ordinate lines from the variousintersections of the sides of polygonal figures: such ashexagons, octagons, See., of an equal number of sides; or