Piece

“ It is so seldom that an artist is able to take in hand what may be termed the entire decoration of a book—including in that phrase cover, illustration, colophon, head- and tail-pieces, initial letters, and borders—that it is a pleasure to find in the subject of our paper a lady who may be said to be capable of taking all these points into consideration in the embellishment of a volume. ”

“ There are seventy-five pieces in prose and verse, narrative and descriptive.—The price and pretensions would not allow costly engravings; and, with the exception of a beautiful architectural frontispiece, by Mr. ”

“ It builds a garment cut to the pattern of an Idea, and trusts that Nature will model a material shape to fit it. There is a prophecy in every seam, and its pockets are full of inspiration.—Now hear the verses. ”

“ Just as when we look upon the completed work of the sculptor, or the finished touch of the painter, it is not of the marble, or the canvas and the material laid upon it that we think, but of the figure before us, as we note perfection in every line, and see life in the seeming light of the eye, and apparent movement of muscle. ”

“ I have three or four rings on every finger, I can caress a beautiful woman's hair in any color, I can ride a week in any direction and find my statue erected and feared, and I can hear any melody or see any play at my command. I possess or can do or enjoy everything I can imagine, and everything that the most creative of my servants can imagine. ”

“ And when the folk of that ward sighted such mighty fine sight and marvelous spectacle, all stood at gaze and they considered the forms and figures of the handmaids, marveling at their beauty and loveliness, for each and every wore robes inwrought with gold and studded with jewels, no dress being worth less than a thousand dinars. They stared as intently at the bowls, and albeit these were covered with pieces of brocade, also orfrayed and dubbed with precious stones, yet the sheen outshot from them dulled the shine of sun. ”

“ Next there came a vast number of children decently and quietly dressed, some singing, some repeating prayers, all carrying, dragging or supporting between them a strange and varied number of objects–books, dresses, pictures, statues, masks, false hair, boxes and cases of perfume, lutes, viols, mirrors, ornaments, gauds, manuscripts, cards, dice, cosmetics, chess-boards, cups and balls of gold, and all manner of rich, precious trifles and beautiful gorgeous examples of art. ”

“ But if, on the other hand, the work of art has for its object the adornment of a surface of any sort, as a weapon, a utensil, an article of costume, and if the natural objects represented or suggested are used only as suggestions to furnish pretty lines and pleasant tints, which lines and tints might have been after all represented apart from the object were man’s mind more creative than it is,—that is art of decoration. ”

“ The artist or the art-critic, discriminating still, even among these raw materials of human creation, derives an elaborate and subtle delight from the suggestiveness of their colours, their odours, and their fabrics—conscious all the while of wondrous and visionary evocations, wherein they take their place. ”

“ Whether we are discussing music, poetry, painting, sculpture or architecture, we are forced to speak as though certain physical objects—vibrations of strings and of columns of air, marks printed on paper, canvasses and pigments, masses of marble, fabrics of freestone, are what we are talking about. ”

“ If therefore you find some tales in one collection bearing a close resemblance with those you have read in another, you should make it a matter of interest to observe what is individual in the character of each, and to trace the points both of diversity and analogy in the mode of expression in which they are clothed, and which will be found just as marked as the difference in costume of the respective peoples who have told them each after their own fashion. ”

“ Each of our crafts is exercised upon some special matter—the art of the smith upon iron, that of the carpenter on wood. In all, there is the subject, the form and the work which results from the form. Matter is taken from without—art gives the form—and the work is composed at the same time of form and of matter. ”

“ Composition, the balance of mass and arrangement of line, with all their various possibilities, may be learned from all forms and styles of art, pictorial as well as ornamental, that is itself based on sound principles. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The perfection of these minute chasings is beyond all description, each is a finished statuette; curious, too, is the elegance with which they are employed, so as to fall naturally into the curvature required by their position. ”

“ For I say this is their use, that as often as any one may wish to assign fulness to empty things, ornament to base things, speech to dumb things, and reason to senseless things, he may, from a little book of emblems, as from an excellently well-prepared hand-book, have what he may be able to impress on the walls of houses, on windows of glass, on tapestry, on hangings, on tablets, vases, ensigns, seals, garments, the table, the couch, the arms, the sword, and lastly, furniture of every kind. ”

“ The more rigid objects, in common with the individuals of other useful arts, while their shape still accords with their functional office, exhibit attributes of form generally recognized as pleasing to the mind, which are expressed by the terms grace, elegance, symmetry, and the like. ”

“ Thus, if when one paints an image or carves it of wood there are, in the name of artistic licence, some stylized parts in a work otherwise resembling the real form; this is, after all, what people love in art. ”

“ A work on Art, I think, bears less of ornament than any other kind of book (non bis in idem is a good motto) ; again, a book that must have illustrations, more or less utilitarian, should, I think, have no actual ornament at all, because the ornament and the illustration must almost certainly fight.” He designed all his ornaments with his own hand, from the minute leaves and flowers which took the place of periods on his page, to the full-page borders, titles, and elaborate initials. ”

“ Innumerable motives are represented, in painting, in sculpture, in lacquer and in metal work, and though the details are so varied and multitudinous that their description would fill a large volume, the arrangements and congruity are so perfect that no sense of confusion or bewilderment is ever suggested. ”

“ We find ourselves putting our minds into the attitude of the artist who conceived those figures with arms conventionally growing out of the encasing garment; conventionally holding a book, and giving a blessing with a conventional twist, not entirely ungraceful, nor devoid of a certain dignity, rather felt than perceived. ”

“ Good proportion and the right arrangement of light and dark values will often make an object beautiful, without the addition of ornament. In the chapter on still life, the objects you studied were not decorated, but they were well designed in their beauty of proportions, their color, and their contrast in values.
Many familiar objects such as envelopes, boxes, and book-covers, depend for beauty on these simple elements. The sketch of the portfolio on this page is beautiful because it has a fine proportion of parts, and because the gray values of these parts are harmonious. ”

“ My Lord, the Decorations of Style are formed out of those several Schemes and Figures, which are contrived to express the Passions and Motions of our Minds in our Speech; to give Life and Ornament, Grace and Beauty, to our Expressions. I shall not undertake the Rhetoricians Province, in giving Your Lordship an Account of all the Figures they have invented, and those several Ornaments of Writing, whose Grace and Commendation lie in being used with judgment and Propriety. ”

“ We may recall that in the sixteenth century this extension of ornament to the leaves of a book was very prevalent, and was only one of many indications that the workman spent ungrudging time and thought on the details of what was intended to be a work of art throughout. ”

“ The figure is full of life, the pose expresses vigor, action, pride, the head, round in form, indicates intellect. The eyes are crystal, in a setting of bronze, giving a startling look of life to the regard. ”

“ In certain epochs of art we notice a similarity of accessories, as of dress, house furnishings, styles, fabrics, et cetera, and the differences tell us pretty clearly of the country that claimed the artist or the sitter. ”

“ We shall proceed, therefore, to act upon it, and choose for our work only such material as in some way indicates life, either directly, as in trees, animals, or figures, or by association, and as explanation thereof, as in drapery and other accessories—never choosing a subject like those known to painters as "still life," such as bowls, fiddles, weapons, etc., unless, as I have said, they are associated with the more important element. ”

“ Each little detail of costume, each fold of material, all the differences in texture—everything is given its own special character; everything is perceptible, tangible, so to speak. Science of draftsmanship, eloquence of line, could not possibly be carried farther. ”

“ A figure, for example, in a plastic work of art, requires in this or that situation a body, hands, feet, bust, a head with a given expression, a given pose, other figures, or other aspects to which it is related as a whole, etc., and all these aspects presuppose the others, in making collectively essentially complete work. ”

“ The fact that we use the word “style” in speaking of architecture and sculpture, painting and music, dancing, play-acting, and cricket, that we can apply it to the careful achievements of the housebreaker and the poisoner, and to the spontaneous animal movements of the limbs of man or beast, is the noblest of p. 2unconscious tributes to the faculty of letters. The pen, scratching on wax or paper, has become the symbol of all that is expressive, all that is intimate, in human nature; not only arms and arts, but man himself, has yielded to it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It requires, therefore, ornament and the possession of form, that it may not be merely body, but a body with a certain particular quality; as for instance, a fiery, or earthly, body, and, in short, body adorned and invested with a particular quality. ”

“ On one side, and sometimes on two opposite sides, stands a human figure in high relief, always looking toward one of the cardinal points. Upon these personages is displayed such a wealth of ornament and insignia that the figures look overburdened and encumbered, giving the idea that the chief object of the artist was the display of such adornment. ”

“ For instance, I have not spoken of the way in which you ought to look for those artificers in various manual trades, who, without possessing the order of genius which you would desire to devote to higher purposes, yet possess wit, and humour, and sense of colour, and fancy for form—all commercially valuable as quantities of intellect, and all more or less expressible in the lower arts of iron-work, pottery, decorative sculpture, and such like. ”

“ Man's inclination to decorate his belongings has always been one of the earliest signs of civilisation. Art had its beginning in the lines indented in clay, perhaps, or hollowed in the wood of family utensils; after that came crude colouring and drawing. ”

“ Art.—The art side also may receive due attention in the general proportioning and arrangement of the stores, in the modeling of certain features from clay, as enumerated above, in the making of labels for boxes and cans, in the writing of signs and advertisements, and in the color combinations. These features are to a great extent incidental to other problems just as the use of good [Pg 74] taste is incidental to all the affairs of life and should receive corresponding emphasis. ”

“ All the subjects are large, and within quatrefoils; as much of the body of our Lord as is uncovered on the Cross, and the heads, hands, and feet in the other figures, as well as those parts of the draperies not gold, are wrought by needle, while the golden garments of the personages are woven in the loom. ”

“ It appears, by the names which are inserted at the bottom of the pages, that several artists were employed in the composition and combination of these ornaments, one for the landscape, another for the animals, and a third for the human figures, all of whom have given proofs of superior merit. ”

“ The objects we have to consider fall into two classes, according as they are either substantial articles for use or ornament in daily life, or mere flimsy imitations of them made only to be buried with the dead. ”

“ To look upon a replica of the work of an artist is like reading a sermon or an oration from a printed page. One may gather much of the teaching but the personal note, the tone and gesture, must be lost. ”

“ The result is, therefore, that the decorative art of any period is an indication of that which gives pleasure at the moment, and an absolute reflex of the artistic wishes, desires, and tastes of the cultivated classes to whom executive art must appeal. ”

“ Being ourselves desirous to promote the adoption of the appropriate as well as the simple beauty of truth in ornament, we will first inquire how far these figures are in accordance with those general principles of arrangement of form which in all ages and countries have constituted the truly beautiful in art. ”

“ Somewhat later in the history of fiction, as in the history of figure painting, we find instances in which the element of setting is used for a decorative purpose, and is brought into an artistic relation with the elements of action and character. ”