Decorative arts

“ The brilliance of the mural paintings and richly coloured sculpture and mouldings was in harmony with the splendour of the oak-work—screens, stalls, and roofs—all decorated with gilding and painting, while the light, passing through stained glass, softened and helped to combine the whole into one mass of decorative effect. Colour was boldly applied everywhere, and thus the patchy effect was avoided which is so often the result of the modern timid and partial use of painted ornament. ”

“ And all the greatest art which the world has produced is thus fitted for a place, and subordinated to a purpose. There is no existing highest-order art but is decorative. The best sculpture yet produced has been the decoration of a temple front—the best painting, the decoration of a room. ”

“ When painted walls were in fashion, there existed, below the great creative artists, schools of decorative designers skilled in the art of fresco-decoration, from the simplest kind to the most ornate. ”

“ The power of the artist’s effects, the wonderful facility of his execution, the beauty of the colouring and delicacy of drawing, all combine to give what may pass for a marvellous transcript of nature, but taken separately and examined critically, the objects depicted, be they bird, flower, leaf, or insect, will be found incorrect in form, proportion, and construction, if judged by a European standard. Yet in these very failings are found their highest merits as decorative artists. Decorative art does not admit of absolute fidelity to nature ”

“ Decoration in color, in the shape of hieroglyphic inscriptions and paintings of all sorts, was profusely employed, and is executed with a truth of drawing and a beauty of coloring that have never been surpassed. Almost every object drawn is partly conventionalized, in the most skillful manner, so as to make it fit its place as a piece of a decorative system. ”

“ It is the principle or requirement, of geometric base in interior design which, coupled with our natural delight in yielding or growing forms, has maintained through all the long history of decoration what is called conventionalised flower design. We find this in every form or method of decorative art, from embroidery to sculpture, from the Lotus of Egypt to the Rose of England, and although it results in a sort of crucifixion of the natural beauty of the flower, in the hands of great designers it has become an authoritative style of art. ”

“ An added charm is given alike to the interior and exterior by the combined richness and quaintness of the decorative sculpture, in which is clearly illustrated the delight in symbolism of the mediæval craftsmen, who, working in close accord with architect and builder, supplemented effigies of heroes and heroines of the faith, royal patrons, &c., with emblematic animals, fruit, flowers, and foliage, welding the most incongruous forms into an elaborate and beautiful scheme of ornamentation. ”

“ And it is association, with this compound appeal, which again and again decides (over and above all questions of use) what material is the best, or the most delightful, to be employed for a given purpose. You choose a material because it makes a decorative covering to mere utility. That beauty of choice in material alone is the beginning of ornament. ”

“ A rule to be respected is that decoration should be reposing instead of exciting. The unexpected, which is an element in the enjoyment of what is new, should be such as to become the more agreeable the longer we are accustomed to it. Mr. Morris’s golden rule is this: “Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” [471] In decorative art, and therefore in embroidery, the first object to consider is beauty—beauty in conception, proportion, drawing, and colour. ”

“ Every age, too, has its own notions of decoration—indeed one might say even every decade now, or even a less period, we live so fast! No rules or canons of taste in art are of universal application or acceptable to all periods. As decoration is primarily fitness and harmony, with this central idea one may produce decorative effects with very different materials, and we have only to glance back to our historic periods to see how it was accomplished. ”

“ The reds and creams of the background, the lyres and harps and urns and skulls, the protuberances of plaster, the fringes of scarlet plush, the sinking and blazing of innumerable electric lights, could scarcely have been surpassed for decorative effect by any craftsman of the ancient or modern world. ”

“ Decoration, as in architectural sculpture and in patterns for carpets and wall-coverings, often draws its motives from nature, such as leaves, flowers, fruits, and animals; but when the function of the work is decorative and not representative, the naturalistic and graphic character of the subject is subordinated to the purposes of abstract and formal design. A picture, on the other hand, which is frankly representative in purpose, must submit its composition and color-harmony to the requirements of unity in design; in a sense it must make a pattern. ”

“ It is verily surprising what an important element ornament is in life. Is it, then, wonderful that man, striving everywhere to please the same eye by lines, should occasionally invent, independently, similar ornamental forms, or that decorative art should, in its beginning, evolve in the same direction in different countries? ”

“ But, the world over, woman, among savage tribes, not only makes ornamented pottery, but she spins and weaves, and makes and decorates clothes. She is, in fact, the primitive decorative artist. Even in civilized life she still loves to cover with beautiful, purely aesthetic forms every thing her hand touches, and it is through her influence, more than through that of man, that decorative art flourishes to-day. ”

“ THE DECORATIVE MOTIVE IN all ages sculpture has been intimately allied with architecture, somewhat as the blossom with the tree, reaching often its noblest expression as an efflorescence of decoration upon the surface of a building or as separate forms within it; springing up in statue, tomb or pulpit like bursts of flowery growth in the forest. ”

“ Ornamental painting embraces the execution of friezes and other decorative parts of architecture on walls and ceilings. The ornaments are drawn in outline with a black-lead pencil, and then painted and shaded, to give the proper effect. Some embellishments of this kind are executed in gold-leaf, in the same manner with gold letters on signs. This kind of work is called gilding in oil. ”

“ At every period it has been found that this taste is constantly changing, and as a consequence the examples of decorative art of any period are a reflex only of the artistic ideas current at the time the work was done. ”

“ Nor was it to architecture alone that the arts of the period were devoted: we find the same art expended on stained glass, on metal-work of all sorts, on enamels of the most magnificent character, on the illumination of manuscripts, the painted decoration of the buildings, on jewellery, on ivory-carving, on embroidery, on{204} woven fabrics, tapestry, seal-engraving—in fact, on every branch of decoration; every one of which arts were carried out with a degree of skill and instinctive taste truly amazing. ”

“ Although we should not agree with this arbitrary colour treatment of natural forms, it only emphasises the fact that the old designers looked upon their figure compositions as simply units or integral parts of the general colour scheme, and nothing more or less than legitimate decoration.
The decorator may design his ornamental forms on the bases of natural ones, and may, by colouring them in tints suggested by nature, produce a beautiful decorative work, which indeed has often been done. ”

“ The decorative designer certainly depends largely for freshness of inspiration and suggestion in design and colour upon growing plants and flowers, upon the sight of birds and animals, of the ever-changing sea and sky, and the colours of the landscape. If the sense from which is produced the very elements of decoration thus requires to be kept alive and in health, surely the sense which appreciates the product, which selects and uses, needs also similar access to nature to preserve a healthy tone. ”

“ The ornaments of the past reveal an elemental truth of art which it may be to the ultimate advantage of the decorative artificer of modern times to study and to imitate. They show, particularly in their most refined periods, that the simplest materials and the simplest modes of decoration can be associated with beauty of form and purity of design, and that the value of a personal ornament does not consist solely in the commercial cost of the materials, but rather in the artistic quality of its treatment. ”

“ To get rid of carpets, and put down rugs, to hang up rows of plates instead of family portraits—this also is “high art.” Likewise gowns lumped upon the shoulders, with all the folds drawn across, instead of hanging draperies. The term is never used when we speak of the great arts—painting, sculpture, and architecture. It is, in fact, only the slang of the cabinet-maker, the upholsterer, and milliner.
All true Art is very high indeed and apparent ”

“ Is not the flower the queen of ornaments, the inspiration of all races and ages, the very soul of artistic decoration? Have not the hands of genius contrived to employ the most durable as well as the most fragile material to express this delicate beauty in Greek and Gothic capitals, in the stone lacework of cathedrals, the fabrics of gold and silk, brocades, tapestries, wrought iron-work, old bindings? Is the splendor of stained-glass windows aught else than the splendor of a mass of beautiful flowers? ”

“ To establish rooms for the exhibition and sale of Sculptures, Paintings, Wood Carvings, Paintings upon Slate, Porcelain and Pottery, Lacework, Art and Ecclesiastical Needlework, Tapestries and Hangings, and, in short, decorative work of any description, done by women, and of sufficient excellence to meet the recently stimulated demand for such work. ”

“ As the stem and branches to the leaves, flowers, and fruit of a tree, so is design to painting. In decoration one cannot exist without the other, as the beauty of a figure depends upon the well-built and well-proportioned skeleton and its mechanism. You cannot separate a house from its plan and foundations. So it is in decoration; often thought of lightly as something trivial and superficial, a merely aimless combination of curves and colours, or a mere réchauffé of the dead languages of art, but really demanding the best thought and capacity of a man ”

“ The mural spaces available for fresco decoration having been gradually suppressed, and decorative painting limited to the illumination of certain subordinate members of the structure, the mediæval artists began to apply themselves to the decoration of the great screens of glass which, with their sculptured framework of stone, now filled the entire spaces between the piers. In this new art, or rather this incarnation of the spirit of decoration under a new form, we find a fresh illustration of that supple assimilative genius which already distinguished the French artist. ”

“ During the seventeenth century the power of design was growing rapidly weaker, the ornament became coarser in feeling and imitated the cumbersome and heavy traditions of classical art. Headpieces, tailpieces, and printers’ devices or marks were now more in fashion, rather than the consideration of the design of the page as a whole decorative scheme. ”

“ Metal, stone, clay, wood, bone, skins, and textiles are so varied in their structure that they require different artistic treatment, [111] and it has usually taken a considerable time for a people to discover what is the most suitable form of decoration for an object made of a particular substance.
(2.) The forms of decorated objects exercise a strong influence upon the decorative designs employed. An ornament, as Mr. Holmes remarks, applied originally to a vessel of a given form, accommodates itself to that form pretty much as a costume becomes adjusted to the individual. ”

“ One of their characteristics is that the decorations are largely functional, the object in the maker’s mind evidently having been to provide a firm grip for the operator and at the same time to produce a decorative effect. ”

“ Beauty, as already observed, is the object of taste. The primitive source, and, in a great measure, the ultimate and only criterion, of this beauty, is nature. For, in the arts over which taste presides, natural beauty receives new modifications, and is subjected to new laws. Yet, in their general tendency and design, poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, and even music, all contemplate one end,—to awaken associated emotion; while each employs the same means of direct or less obvious imitation of nature. ”

“ Decoration with primitive and pre-historic man may be considered chiefly personal and possible. The taste for decorative pattern was gratified upon his own skin in the form of tattoo or war-paint, or in strings of beads, feather head-dresses, and the carved handles of his weapons. Not that modern man—still less modern woman—has given up personal decoration, in fact, I suppose feathers and beads were never so much in demand, but it seems that modern painters and decorators having provided so much more elaborate and becoming backgrounds they have to be “lived up to.” ”

“ In color, as in relieved design, each species of constructive combination gives rise to more or less distinct groups of decorative results, which often become the distinguishing characteristics of the work of different peoples and the progenitors of long lines of distinctions in national decorative conceptions. ”

“ The size of the design and the kind of form used should be considered. Simple forms are the best for all decorative art work. In fact, there is great advantage in plain materials. They always work to greater economy than stripes or plaids. ”