Composite

“ For the movement of composite bodies is, as we said, determined by that simple body which preponderates in the composition. These premises clearly give the conclusion that there is in nature some bodily substance other than the formations we know, prior to them all and more divine than they. ”

“ For fluid and solid, hot and cold, form the material of all composite bodies; and all other differences are secondary to these, such differences, that is, as heaviness or lightness, density or rarity, roughness or smoothness, and any other such properties of matter as there may be. second degree of composition is that by which the homogeneous parts of animals, such as bone, flesh, and the like, are constituted out of the primary substances. ”

“ As the analysis of a substantial composite terminates only in a part which is not a whole, that is, in a simple part, so synthesis terminates only in a whole which is not a part, that is, the world. ”

“ It has been shown, that with every new process and with every new combination of processes, the materials also of the same were altered, ennobled, rendered more composite, and thereupon also more decomposible. Herein also nature advances consecutively and creates new materials for the organic world. ”

“ It is surprising with what excellent effect we can combine the features of persons who are not too dissimilar in their general appearance. We obtain from them a composite portrait that is identical with no one of the components, but which comprises all, each having its own fractional share in the total effect. I have made several composites from medals of historical personages ”

“ There are so many traits in common in all faces that the composite picture when made from many components is far from being a blur; it has altogether the look of an ideal composition.
It may be worth mentioning that when I take any small bundle of portraits, selected at hazard, I have generally found it easy to sort them into about five groups, four of which have enough resemblance among themselves to make as many fairly clear composites, while the fifth consists of faces that are too incongruous to be grouped in a single class. ”

“ My wage was three dollars a week. My task, to hang the thin sheets of composite, cut from three to fifteen hundredths of an inch in thickness, on metal clips to dry.
In the Composite Works I discovered a new world—the world of factory life.
I liked to be sent to the other departments on errands. There were whirling wheels and steadily recurring, ever-lapsing belts ... and men and women working and working in thin fine dust, or among a strong smell as of rubbed amber—the characteristic smell of composite when subjected to friction.... ”

“ The next is a series of four composites. The first consists of 57 hospital patients suffering under one or other of the many forms of consumption. I may say that, with the aid of Dr. Mahomed, I am endeavouring to utilise this process to elicit the physiognomy of disease. The composite I now show is what I call a hotch-pot composite; its use is to form a standard whence deviations towards any particular sub-type may be conveniently gauged. It will be observed that the face is strongly marked, and that it is quite idealised. ”

“ Compounds wherein one element is compound are called decomposites.
§ 370. There are a number of words which are never found by themselves; or, if so found, have never the same sense that they have in combination. Mark the word combination. The terms in question are points of combination, not of composition: since they form not the [271] parts of words, but the parts of phrases. Such are the expressions time and tide—might and main—rede me my riddle—pay your shot—rhyme and reason, &c. ”

“ All things that we consider to be essences are composites; nothing is simple or single, either in works of art, or in the products of nature.113 Works of art, indeed, contain metal, wood, stone, and are derived from these substances only by the labor of the artist, who, by giving matter its form makes of it a statue, or bed, or house. Among the products of nature, those that105 are compounds or mixtures may be analyzed into the form impressed on the elements of the compound; so, for instance, we may in a man, distinguish a soul and body, and in the body four elements. ”

“ The separation of form and function is an abstraction, as is that of matter and motion; we cannot suppose the connection of particular functions with particular forms,—particular organization,—to be accidental, any more than we can suppose the particular properties of particular inorganic composites and elements to be accidental or these particular properties to be without result in the organic matter into which the particular composites and elements are taken up. ”

“ For success and speed in making composites, the apparatus should be solidly made, chiefly of metal, and all the adjustments ought to work smoothly and accurately. Good composites cannot be made without very careful adjustment in scale and position. An off-hand way of working produces nothing but failures. ”

“ Though every Compositer by Custom is to provide himself a Composing-stick, yet our Master-Printer ought to furnish his House with these Tools also, and such a number of them as is suitable to the size of his House ”

“ It not seldom happens that two arrangements grade into one another on different parts of one and the same cone. Among other cases in which such spiral series are readily visible we have, for instance, the crowded leaves of the stone-crops and mesembryanthemums, and (as we have said) the crowded florets of the composites. ”

“ It is not so soon Low, (as Compositers say when the Case grows towards empty) and a Low Case is unconvenient for a Compositer to work at, partly because the Case standing shelving downwards towards them, the Letters that are in the Case tend towards the hither-side of the Case, and are shadowed by the hither side of that Box they lye in, so that they are not so easily seen by the Eye, or so ready to come at with the Fingers, as if they lay in the middle of the Box. ”

“ That you are using furniture and drapery or vases, flowers, and books, instead of men and women, does not affect the seriousness and usefulness of the problem; for the principles of composition and color do not have to do with the materials which you use to bring about the effect, but the effect itself.
It is practically impossible for the student and the amateur to make very advanced study of composition in line and mass with more than one or two living models; but with still life he may and should get all the practical knowledge possible. ”

“ In seeking forms to group together harmoniously—which is the whole object of composition—we shall find that much the same kind of principle holds good whether we are arranging a still-life group or designing a wall-paper or textile. It is only a difference of degree and scale. In the one case we are designing in the solid with the actual objects, before drawing or painting them as a harmonious pictorial composition ”

“ Still Life.—For practical study of composition, the most useful materials you can have are to be found in still life. Nowhere can you have so great [Pg 183] freedom of arrangement in the concrete. You can take as many actual objects as you please, and place them in all sorts of relations to each other, studying their effect as to grouping; and so study most tangibly the principles as well as the practice of bringing together line and mass and color as elements, through the means of actual objects. ”

“ Perhaps the design may be the figure of a man. Then he cuts away all the white of the stone except the figure; and the result is, that he has the figure of the man, or whatever else his design may be, in white, on a black ground, and the whole in one piece of stone, all solid. [Pg 77]
Besides stone, shell is often used for cameos; many shells being pink, or of some other such color on the inside, and white towards the outside. ”

“ You will first note that the definer has not declared what sort of composition. There is a great difference between one mode of composition and another; the mode must be specialized. Both flesh and bone may be defined — a composition of fire, earth, and water; but one mode of composition makes flesh, another makes bone, out of these same elements. You may also take the farther objection that to define a compound as composition is erroneous; the two are essentially disparate, one of them being abstract, the other concrete.339 ”

“ We feel the need of crisp leaves or flowers, perhaps, with our pottery form. We may safely go far, however, on the principle of grouping similar or allied forms, giving our composition as a whole either a curvilinear or angular character in its general lines, masses, and forms, on the principle of like to like. This will entirely depend upon our choice of grouping of form; but the more by our selection we make our composition tend distinctly in the one direction or the other, the more character it will be likely to possess. ”

“ In the first case, the physical components taken together constitute the adequate potential term or the compound nature; because, as they are all alike material constituents, they are all alike potential respecting their composition; and thus they are all equally liable to be tied together by physical action. The specific composition will be the act of the compound essence; for it is such a composition that formally binds together those physical components into one specific compound. ”

“ It is the one form of unity, which the material of sense, in its purely objective aspect, is capable of receiving. On this plane and under the above noted relation [256] the abstract purity of the materia in its form, colour, or tone constitutes what is most essential to it. Entirely straight drawn lines, which run without a shadow of difference in their straightness or strength, bare superficies and similar examples please us by virtue of their persistent regularity and their uniform homogeneousness. ”

“ Having traced the elementary principles of these figures to the first formation of a simple nucleus, we will proceed to the consideration of the more compound varieties, in which the nucleus is a conspicuous element of construction.
Fig. 28.
The figures we have been considering, although possessed of unity of design in a high degree, are found to exhibit no great perfection of structural detail when examined beneath a lens; those that we are about to inquire into belong to a more perfect order, much more minute and very compound.{144}
Fig. ”

“ One mistake in the pattern does not necessarily do away with the efficacy of a comb, as a Panggang man once said, “It is like a gap or hole in a bird-trap: the bird can hop through it, but it is always a question whether it sees the gap.” ”

“ Founded upon a strictly geometric base, and a uniform repetition of a certain concordant irregularity of parts, bound together in one harmonious unity by the laws of circular composition, which serve to lend beauty to their constructive details, and constitute the archeus of the figure, we are impressed with a conviction of their truth and conformity to the natural principles of beauty. ”

“ In the first place having explained that some contrast, some fillip of opposing colour, something which the artist calls snap, is absolutely required in every successful colour scheme, we shall see that if we are to get this by simple means of a carpet, we must choose one which carries more than one colour in its composition, and colour introduced as design must come under the laws of mechanical manufacture ”

“ In a higher organization, the material, or the elementary, need not be visible; the chemical color vanishes in the finer tints of the imaginative one. The material, however, has its peculiar effect, and may be included in an artistical composition. ”

“ The true ground of the mistake lies in the confounding mechanical regularity with organic form. The form is mechanic, when on any given material we impress a pre-determined form, not necessarily arising out of the properties of the material;—as when to a mass of wet clay we give whatever shape we wish it to retain when hardened. The organic form, on the other hand is innate; it [pg 055] shapes, as it developes, itself from within, and the fulness of its development is one and the same with the perfection of its outward form. Such as the life is, such is the form. ”

“ Similarly the word "Sculpture,"—though in ultimate accuracy it is to be limited to the development of form in hard substances by cutting away portions of their mass—in broad definition, must be held to signify the reduction of any shapeless mass of solid matter into an intended shape, whatever the consistence of the substance, or nature of the instrument employed ”

“ We have thus three characteristic kinds of surface resulting from the conditions of treatment, marking out three natural divisions of the art: and be it noted that questions of surface or texture are all-important in the arts; beauty is skin deep. First, the natural skin of the metal solidified in contact with the mould, and more or less closely imitative of the surface of the original model, usually for our purposes a plastic surface ”

“ The treatment and relief of figures and heads upon the plane surfaces of metals and coins, the composition controlled by the circular form, have always been a fine test of both modelling and decorative skill and taste. ”

“ The number four first shows the nature of a solid: for a point is reckoned in unity, a line by duality; when breadth is added, superficies pertains to the number three; for surface to become a solid body it lacks one thing ”

“ In other words, the elements of a good composition are homogeneous, and hold together well, so to speak. All the color should conform harmoniously with the one scheme and the flow of line should be complete and satisfying. ”