Chapter IV: Part 4

The verandahs also, of which there are so many in Piccadilly or Mayfair, with posts reeded and of delicate profiles, are of the same kind, confessedly cast iron, and never without the characterising dulness of the forms, so that they have no jutting members to be broken off, to expose a repulsive jagged fracture. The opposite of all these qualities may be found in the "expensive"-looking railing on the Embankment enclosing the gardens, whose tiny fretted and fretful forms invite an experiment often successful.

It must be understood that cast iron should be merely a flat lattice-like design, obviously cast _in panels_, or plain post and rail construction with cast uprights and terminal knops tenoned into rails, so that there is no doubt of straightforward unaffected fitting. The British Museum screen may be taken to instance how ample ability will not redeem false principles of design: the construction is not clear, nor are the forms sufficiently simple, the result being only a high order of commonplace grandeur.

Even the lamp-posts set up in the beginning of the century for oil lights, a few of which have not yet been improved away from back streets, show the same care for appropriate form. Some of the Pall Mall Clubs, again, have well-designed candelabra of a more pretentious kind; also London and Waterloo Bridges.

The fire-grates, both with hobs and close fronts, that came into use about the middle of the last century, are decorated all over the field with tiny flutings, beads, and leaf mouldings, sometimes even with little figure medallions, and carry delicacy to its limit. The better examples are entirely successful, both in form and in the ornamentation, which, adapted to this new purpose, does no more than gracefully acknowledge its debt to the past, just as the best ornament at all times is neither original nor copied: it must recognise tradition, and add something which shall be the tradition of the future. The method followed is to keep the general form quite simple and the areas flat, while the decoration, just an embroidery of the surface, is of one substance and in the slightest possible relief. Other larger grates there were with plain surfaces simply framed with mouldings.

Even the sculptor has not refused iron. Pliny says there were two statues in Rhodes, one of iron and copper, and the other, a Hercules, entirely of iron. In the palace at Prague there is a St. George horsed and armed, the work of the fourteenth century. The qualities natural to iron which it has to offer for sculpture may best be appreciated by seeing the examples at the Museum of Geology, in Jermyn Street. On the staircase there are two large dogs, two ornamental candelabra, and two figures; the dogs, although not fine as sculpture, are well treated, in mass and surface, for the metal. In the same museum there is a smaller statue still better for surface and finish, a French work signed and dated 1841, and, therefore, half an antique. But for ordinary foundry-work without surface finish--probably the most appropriate, certainly the most available, method--the little lions on the outer rail at the British Museum are proof of how sufficient feeling for design will dignify any material for any object; they are by the late Alfred Stevens, and are thoroughly iron beasts, so slightly modelled that they would be only blocked out for bronze. In the Geological Museum are also specimens of Berlin and Ilsenburg manufacture; they serve to point the moral that ingenuity is not art, nor tenuity refinement.

The question of rust is a difficult one, the oxide not being an added beauty like the patina acquired by bronze, yet the decay of cast iron is much less than is generally thought, especially on large smooth surfaces, if the casting has been once treated by an oil bath or a coating of hot tar: the celebrated iron pillar of Delhi, some twenty feet high, has stood for fourteen centuries, and shows, it is said, little evidence of decay. It would be interesting to see how cast spheres of good iron would be affected in our climate, if occasionally coated with a lacquer. In painting, the range of tints best approved is black through gray to white: the simple negative gray gives a pleasant unobtrusiveness to the well-designed iron-work of the Northern Station in Paris, whereas our almost universal Indian red is a very bad choice--a hot coarse colour, you must see it, and be irritated, and it is surely the only colour that gets worse as it bleaches in the sun. Gilding is suitable to a certain extent; but for internal work the homely black-leading cannot be bettered.

To put together the results obtained in our examination of examples.

(1) The metal must be both good and carefully manipulated.

(2) The design must be thought out through the material and its traditional methods.

(3) The pattern must have the ornament modelled, not carved, as is almost universally the case now, carving in wood being entirely unfit to give the soft suggestive relief required both by the nature of the sand-mould into which it is impressed, and the crystalline structure of the metal when cast.

(4) Flat surfaces like grate fronts may be decorated with some intricacy if the relief is delicate. But the relief must be less than the basis of attachment, so that the moulding may be easily practicable, and no portions invite one to test how easily they might be detached.

(5) Objects in the round must have a simple and substantial bounding form with but little ornament, and that only suggested. This applies equally to figures. In them homogeneous structure is of the first importance.

(6) When possible, the surface should be finished and left as a metal casting. It may, however, be entirely gilt. If painted, the colour must be neutral and gray.

Casting in iron has been so abased and abused that it is almost difficult to believe that the metal has anything to offer to the arts. At no other time and in no other country would a national staple commodity have been so degraded. Yet in its strength under pressure, but fragility to a blow, in certain qualities of texture and of required manipulation, it invites a specially characterised treatment in the design, and it offers one of the few materials naturally black available in the colour arrangement of interiors.

W. R. LETHABY.

OF DYEING AS AN ART

Dyeing is a very ancient art; from the earliest times of the ancient civilisations till within about forty years ago there had been no essential change in it, and not much change of any kind. Up to the time of the discovery of the process of Prussian-blue dyeing in about 1810 (it was known as a pigment thirty or forty years earlier), the only changes in the art were the result of the introduction of the American insect dye (cochineal), which gradually superseded the European one (kermes), and the American wood-dyes now known as logwood and Brazil-wood: the latter differs little from the Asiatic and African Red Saunders, and other red dye-woods; the former has cheapened and worsened black-dyeing, in so far as it has taken the place of the indigo-vat as a basis. The American quercitron bark gives us also a useful additional yellow dye.

These changes, and one or two others, however, did little towards revolutionising the art; that revolution was left for our own days, and resulted from the discovery of what are known as the Aniline dyes, deduced by a long process from the plants of the coal-measures. Of these dyes it must be enough to say that their discovery, while conferring the greatest honour on the abstract science of chemistry, and while doing great service to capitalists in their hunt after profits, has terribly injured the art of dyeing, and for the general public has nearly destroyed it as an art. Henceforward there is an absolute divorce between the _commercial process_ and the _art_ of dyeing. Anyone wanting to produce dyed textiles with any artistic quality in them must entirely forgo the modern and commercial methods in favour of those which are at least as old as Pliny, who speaks of them as being old in his time.

Now, in order to dye textiles in patterns or otherwise, we need four colours to start with--to wit, blue, red, yellow, and brown; green, purple, black, and all intermediate shades can be made from a mixture of these colours.

Blue is given us by indigo and woad, which do not differ in colour in the least, their chemical product being the same. Woad may be called northern indigo; and indigo tropical or sub-tropical woad.

Note that until the introduction of Prussian blue about 1810 there was _no_ other blue dye except this indigotine that could be called a dye; the other blue dyes were mere stains which would not bear the sun for more than a few days.

Red is yielded by the insect dyes kermes, lac-dye, and cochineal, and by the vegetable dye madder. Of these, kermes is the king; brighter than madder and at once more permanent and more beautiful than cochineal: the latter on an aluminous basis gives a rather cold crimson, and on a tin basis a rather hot scarlet (_e.g._ the dress-coat of a line officer). Madder yields on wool a deep-toned blood-red, somewhat bricky and tending to scarlet. On cotton and linen, all imaginable shades of red according to the process. It is not of much use in dyeing silk, which it is apt to "blind"; _i.e._ it takes off the gloss. Lac-dye gives a hot and not pleasant scarlet, as may be noted in a private militiaman's coat. The French liners' trousers, by the way, are, or were, dyed with madder, so that their countrymen sometimes call them the "Madder-wearers"; but their cloth is somewhat too cheaply dyed to do credit to the drysaltery.

Besides these permanent red dyes there are others produced from woods, called in the Middle Ages by the general name of "Brazil"; whence the name of the American country, because the conquerors found so much dyeing-wood growing there. Some of these wood-dyes are very beautiful in colour; but unluckily they are none of them permanent, as you may see by examining the beautiful stuffs of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries at the South Kensington Museum, in which you will scarcely find any red, but plenty of fawn-colour, which is in fact the wood-red of 500 years ago thus faded. If you turn from them to the Gothic tapestries, and note the reds in them, you will have the measure of the relative permanence of kermes and "Brazil," the tapestry reds being all dyed with kermes, and still retaining the greater part of their colour. The mediaeval dyers must be partly excused, however, because "Brazil" is especially a silk dye, kermes sharing somewhat in the ill qualities of madder for silk; though I have dyed silk in kermes and got very beautiful and powerful colours by means of it.

Yellow dyes are chiefly given us by weld (sometimes called wild mignonette), quercitron bark (above mentioned), and old fustic, an American dye-wood. Of these weld is much the prettiest, and is the yellow silk dye _par excellence_, though it dyes wool well enough. But yellow dyes are the commonest to be met with in nature, and our fields and hedgerows bear plenty of greening-weeds, as our forefathers called them, since they used them chiefly for greening blue woollen cloth; for, as you may well believe, they, being good colourists, had no great taste for yellow woollen stuff. Dyers'-broom, saw-wort, the twigs of the poplar, the osier, and the birch, heather, broom, flowers and twigs, will all of them give yellows of more or less permanence. Of these I have tried poplar and osier twigs, which both gave a strong yellow, but the former not a very permanent one.

Speaking generally, yellow dyes are the least permanent of all, as once more you may see by looking at an old tapestry, in which the greens have always faded more than the reds or blues; the best yellow dyes, however, lose only their brighter shade, the "lemon" colour, and leave a residuum of brownish yellow, which still makes a kind of a green over the blue.

Brown is best got from the roots of the walnut tree, or in their default from the green husks of the nuts. This material is especially best for "saddening," as the old dyers used to call it. The best and most enduring blacks also were done with this simple dye-stuff, the goods being first dyed in the indigo or woad-vat till they were a very dark blue and then browned into black by means of the walnut-root. Catechu, the inspissated juice of a plant or plants, which comes to us from India, also gives rich and useful permanent browns of various shades.

Green is obtained by dyeing a blue of the required shade in the indigo-vat, and then greening it with a good yellow dye, adding what else may be necessary (as, _e.g._, madder) to modify the colour according to taste.

Purple is got by blueing in the indigo-vat, and afterwards by a bath of cochineal, or kermes, or madder; all intermediate shades of claret and murrey and russet can be got by these drugs helped out by "saddening."

Black, as aforesaid, is best made by dyeing dark blue wool with brown; and walnut is better than iron for the brown part, because the iron-brown is apt to rot the fibre; as once more you will see in some pieces of old tapestry or old Persian carpets, where the black is quite perished, or at least in the case of the carpet gone down to the knots. All intermediate shades can, as aforesaid, be got by the blending of these prime colours, or by using weak baths of them. For instance, all shades of flesh colour can be got by means of weak baths of madder and walnut "saddening"; madder or cochineal mixed with weld gives us orange, and with saddening all imaginable shades between yellow and red, including the ambers, maize-colour, etc. The crimsons in Gothic tapestries must have been got by dyeing kermes over pale shades of blue, since the crimson red-dye, cochineal, had not yet come to Europe.

A word or two (entirely unscientific) about the processes of this old-fashioned or artistic dyeing.

In the first place, all _dyes_ must be soluble colours, differing in this respect from _pigments_; most of which are insoluble, and are only very finely divided, as, _e.g._, ultramarine, umber, terre-verte.

Next, dyes may be divided into those which need a mordant and those which do not; or, as the old chemist Bancroft very conveniently expresses it, into _adjective_ and _substantive_ dyes.

Indigo is the great substantive dye: the indigo has to be de-oxidised and thereby made soluble, in which state it loses its blue colour in proportion as the solution is complete; the goods are plunged into this solution and worked in it "between two waters," as the phrase goes, and when exposed to the air the indigo they have got on them is swiftly oxidised, and once more becomes insoluble. This process is repeated till the required shade is got. All shades of blue can be got by this means, from the pale "watchet," as our forefathers called it, up to the blue which the eighteenth-century French dyers called "Bleu d'enfer." Navy Blue is the politer name for it to-day in England. I must add that, though this seems an easy process, the setting of the blue-vat is a ticklish job, and requires, I should say, more experience than any other dyeing process.

The brown dyes, walnut and catechu, need no mordant, and are substantive dyes; some of the yellows also can be dyed without mordant, but are much improved by it. The red dyes, kermes and madder, and the yellow dye weld, are especially mordant or adjective dyes: they are all dyed on an aluminous basis. To put the matter plainly, the goods are worked in a solution of alum (usually with a little acid added), and after an interval of a day or two (ageing) are dyed in a bath of the dissolved dye-stuff.

A lake is thus formed on the fibre which is in most cases very durable. The effect of this "mordanting" of the fibre is clearest seen in the maddering of printed cotton goods, which are first printed with aluminous mordants of various degrees of strength (or with iron if black is needed, or a mixture of iron with alumina for purple), and then dyed wholesale in the madder-beck: the result being that the parts which have been mordanted come out various shades of red, etc., according to the strength or composition of the mordant, while the unmordanted parts remain a dirty pink, which has to be "cleared" into white by soaping and exposure to the sun and air; which process both brightens and fixes the dyed parts.

Pliny saw this going on in Egypt, and it puzzled him very much, that a cloth dyed in one colour should come out coloured diversely.

That reminds me to say a word on the fish-dye of the ancients: it was a substantive dye and behaved somewhat as indigo. It was very permanent. The colour was a real purple in the modern sense of the word, _i.e._ a colour or shades of a colour between red and blue. The real Byzantine books which are written on purple vellum give you some, at least, of its shades. The ancients, you must remember, used words for colours in a way that seems vague to us, because they were generally thinking of the tone rather than the _tint_. When they wanted to _specify_ a red dye they would not use the word purpureus, but coccineus, _i.e._ scarlet of kermes.

The art of dyeing, I am bound to say, is a difficult one, needing for its practice a good craftsman, with plenty of experience. Matching a colour by means of it is an agreeable but somewhat anxious game to play.

As to the artistic value of these dye-stuffs, most of which, together with the necessary mordant alumina, the world discovered in early times (I mean early _historical_ times), I must tell you that they all make in their simplest forms beautiful colours; they need no muddling into artistic usefulness, when you need your colours bright (as I hope you usually do), and they can be modified and toned without dirtying, as the foul blotches of the capitalist dyer cannot be. Like all dyes, they are not eternal; the sun in lighting them and beautifying them consumes them; yet gradually, and for the most part kindly, as (to use my example for the last time in this paper) you will see if you look at the Gothic tapestries in the drawing-room at Hampton Court. These colours in fading still remain beautiful, and never, even after long wear, pass into nothingness, through that stage of livid ugliness which distinguishes the commercial dyes as nuisances, even more than their short and by no means merry life.

I may also note that no textiles dyed blue or green, otherwise than by indigo, keep an agreeable colour by candle-light: many quite bright greens turning into sheer drab. A fashionable blue which simulates indigo turns into a slaty purple by candle-light; and Prussian blues are also much damaged by it. I except from this condemnation a commercial green known as gas-green, which is as abominable as its name, both by daylight and gaslight, and indeed one would almost expect it to make unlighted midnight hideous.

WILLIAM MORRIS.

OF EMBROIDERY

The technicalities of Embroidery are very simple and its tools few--practically consisting of a needle, and nothing else. The work can be wrought loose in the hand, or stretched in a frame, which latter mode is often advisable, always when smooth and minute work is aimed at. There are no mysteries of method beyond a few elementary rules that can be quickly learnt; no way to perfection except that of care and patience and love of the work itself. This being so, the more is demanded from design and execution: we look for complete triumph over the limitations of process and material, and, what is equally important, a certain judgment and self-restraint; and, in short, those mental qualities that distinguish mechanical from intelligent work. The latitude allowed to the worker; the lavishness and ingenuity displayed in the stitches employed; in short, the vivid expression of the worker's individuality, form a great part of the success of needlework.

The varieties of stitch are too many to be closely described without diagrams, but the chief are as follows:--

Chain-stitch consists of loops simulating the links of a simple chain. Some of the most famous work of the Middle Ages was worked in this stitch, which is enduring, and of its nature necessitates careful execution. We are more familiar with it in the dainty work of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in the airy brightness and simplicity of which lies a peculiar charm, contrasted with the more pompous and pretentious work of the same period. This stitch is also wrought with a hook on any loose material stretched in a tambour frame.

Tapestry-stitch consists of a building-up of stitches laid one beside another, and gives a surface slightly resembling that of tapestry. I give the name as it is so often used, but it is vague, and leads to the confusion that exists in people's minds between loom-tapestry and embroidery. The stitch is worked in a frame, and is particularly suitable for the drapery of figures and anything that requires skilful blending of several colours, or a certain amount of shading. This facility of "painting" with the needle is in itself a danger, for it tempts some people to produce a highly shaded imitation of a picture, an attempt which must be a failure both as a decorative and as a pictorial achievement. It cannot be said too often that the essential qualities of all good needlework are a broad surface, bold lines and pure, brilliant and, as a rule, simple colouring; all of which being qualities attainable through, and prescribed by, the limitations of this art.

Applique has been, and is still, a favourite method of work, which Vasari tells us Botticelli praised as being very suitable to processional banners and hangings used in the open air, as it is solid and enduring, also bold and effective in style. It is more accurately described as a _method_ of work in which various stitches are made use of, for it consists of designs embroidered on a stout ground and then cut out and laid on silk or velvet, and edged round with lines of gold or silk, and sometimes with pearls. It requires considerable deftness and judgment in applying, as the work could well be spoilt by clumsy and heavy finishing. It is now looked upon as solely ecclesiastical, I believe, and is associated in our minds with garish red, gold and white, and with dull geometric ornament, though there is absolutely no reason why church embroidery of to-day should be limited to ungraceful forms and staring colours. A certain period of work, thick and solid, but not very interesting, either as to method or design, has been stereotyped into what is known as Ecclesiastical Embroidery, the mechanical characteristics of the style being, of course, emphasised and exaggerated in the process. Church work will never be of the finest while these characteristics are insisted on; the more pity, as it is seemly that the richest and noblest work should be devoted to churches, and to all buildings that belong to and are an expression of the communal life of the people. Another and simpler form of applied work is to cut out the desired forms in one material and lay upon another, securing the applique with stitches round the outline, which are hidden by an edging cord. The work may be further enriched by light ornament of lines and flourishes laid directly on the ground material.

Couching is an effective method of work, in which broad masses of silk or gold thread are laid down and secured by a network or diaper of crossing threads, through which the under surface shines very prettily. It is often used in conjunction with applique. There are as many varieties of couching stitches as the worker has invention for; in some the threads are laid simply and flatly on the form to be covered, while in others a slight relief is obtained by layers of soft linen thread which form a kind of moulding or stuffing, and which are covered by the silk threads or whatever is to be the final decorative surface.

The ingenious patchwork coverlets of our grandmothers, formed of scraps of old gowns pieced together in certain symmetrical forms, constitute the romance of family history, but this method has an older origin than would be imagined. Queen Isis-em-Kheb's embalmed body went down the Nile to its burial-place under a canopy that was lately discovered, and is preserved in the Boulak Museum. It consists of many squares of gazelle-hide of different colours sewn together and ornamented with various devices. Under the name of patchwork, or mosaic-like piecing together of different coloured stuffs, comes also the Persian work made at Resht. Bits of fine cloth are cut out for leaves, flowers, and so forth, and neatly stitched together with great accuracy. This done, the work is further carried out and enriched by chain and other stitches. The result is perfectly smooth flat work, no easy feat when done on a large scale, as it often is.

Darning and running need little explanation. The former stitch is familiar to us in the well-known Cretan and Turkish cloths: the stitch here is used mechanically in parallel lines, and simulates weaving, so that these handsome borders in a deep rich red might as well have come from the loom as from the needle. Another method of darning is looser and coarser, and suitable only for cloths and hangings not subject to much wear and rubbing; the stitches follow the curves of the design, which the needle paints, as it were, shading and blending the colours. It is necessary to use this facility for shading temperately, however, or the flatness essential to decorative work is lost.

The foregoing is a rough list of stitches which could be copiously supplemented, but that I am obliged to pass on to another important point, that of design. If needlework is to be looked upon seriously, it is necessary to secure appropriate and practicable designs. Where the worker does not invent for herself, she should at least interpret her designer, just as the designer interprets and does not attempt to imitate nature. It follows from this, that it is better to avoid using designs of artists who know nothing of the capacities of needlework, and design beautiful and intricate forms without reference to the execution, the result being unsatisfactory and incomplete. Regarding the design itself, broad bold lines should be chosen, and broad harmonious colour (which should be roughly planned before setting to work), with as much minute work, and stitches introducing play of colour, as befits the purpose of the work and humour of the worker; there should be no scratching, no indefiniteness of form or colour, no vagueness that allows the eye to puzzle over the design--beyond that indefinable sense of mystery which arrests the attention and withholds the full charm of the work for a moment, to unfold it to those who stop to give it more than a glance. But there are so many different stitches and so many different modes of setting to work, that it will soon be seen that these few hints do not apply to all of them. One method, for instance, consists of trusting entirely to design, and leaves colour out of account: white work on white linen, white on dark ground, or black or dark blue upon white. Again, some work depends more on magnificence of colour than on form, as, for example, the handsome Italian hangings of the seventeenth century, worked in floss-silk, on linen sometimes, and sometimes on a dusky open canvas which makes the silks gleam and glow like precious stones.

In thus slightly describing the methods chiefly used in embroidery, I do so principally from old examples, as modern embroidery, being a dilettante pastime, has little distinct character, and is, in its best points, usually imitative. Eastern work still retains the old professional skill, but beauty of colour is rapidly disappearing, and little attention is paid to durability of the dyes used. In speaking rather slightingly of modern needlework, I must add that its non-success is often due more to the use of poor materials than to want of skill in working. It is surely folly to waste time over work that looks shabby in a month. The worker should use judgment and thought to procure materials, not necessarily rich, but each good and genuine of its kind. Lastly, she should not be sparing of her own handiwork, for, while a slightly executed piece of work depends wholly on design, in one where the actual stitchery is more elaborate, but the design less masterly, the patience and thought lavished on it render it in a different way equally pleasing, and bring it more within the scope of the amateur.

MAY MORRIS.

OF LACE

Lace is a term freely used at the present time to describe various sorts of open ornament in thread work, the successful effect of which depends very much upon the contrasting of more or less closely-textured forms with grounds or intervening spaces filled in with meshes of equal size or with cross-ties, bars, etc. Whence it has come to pass that fabrics having an appearance of this description, such as embroideries upon nets, cut linen works, drawn thread works, and machine-woven counterfeits of lace-like fabrics, are frequently called laces. But they differ in make from those productions of certain specialised handicrafts to which from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries lace owes its fame.

These specialised handicrafts are divisible into two branches. The one branch involves the employment of a needle to loop a continuous thread into varieties of shapes and devices; the other is in the nature of making corresponding or similar ornament by twisting and plaiting together a number of separate threads, the loose ends of which have to be fastened in a row on a cushion or pillow, the supply of the threads being wound around the heads of lengthened bobbins, so shaped for convenience in handling. The first-named branch is needlepoint lace-making; the second, bobbin or pillow lace-making. Needlepoint lace-making may be regarded as a species of embroidery, whilst bobbin or pillow lace-making is closely allied to the twisting and knotting together of threads for fringes. Embroidery, however, postulates a foundation of material to be enriched with needlework, whereas needlepoint and pillow lace are wrought independently of any corresponding foundation of material.

The production of slender needles and small metal pins is an important incident in the history of lace-making by hand. Broadly speaking, the manufacture for a widespread consumption of such metal pins and needles does not date earlier than the fourteenth century. Without small implements of this character delicate lace-making is not possible. It is therefore fair to assume that although historic nations like the Egyptian, Assyrian, Hebrew, Greek, and Roman, made use of fringes and knotted cords upon their hangings, cloaks, and tunics, lace was unknown to them. Their bone, wooden, or metal pins and needles were suited to certain classes of embroidery and to the making of nets, looped cords, etc., but not to such lace-making as we know it from the early days of the sixteenth century.

About the end of the fifteenth century, with the development in Europe of fine linen for underclothing, collars and cuffs just visible beyond the outer garments came into vogue, and a taste was speedily manifested for trimming linen undershirts, collars and cuffs, with insertions and borders of kindred material. This taste seems to have been first displayed in a marked manner by Venetian and Flemish women; for the earliest known books of engraved patterns for linen ornamental borders and insertions are those which were published during the commencement of the sixteenth century at Venice and Antwerp. But such patterns were designed in the first place for various sorts of embroidery upon a material, such as darning upon canvas (_punto fa su la rete a maglia quadra_), drawn thread work of reticulated patterns (_punto tirato_ or _punto a reticella_), and cut work (_punto tagliato_). Patterns for quite other sorts of work, such as point in the air (_punto in aere_) and thread work twisted and plaited by means of little leaden weights or bobbins (_merletti a piombini_), were about thirty years later in publication. These two last-named classes of work are respectively identifiable (_punto in aere_) with needlepoint and (_merletti a piombini_) with bobbin lace-making; and they seem to date from about 1540.

The sixteenth-century and earliest known needlepoint laces (_punto in aere_) are of narrow lengths or bands, the patterns of which are composed principally of repeated open squares filled in with circular, star, and other geometric shapes, set upon diagonal and cross lines which radiate from the centre of each square to its corners and sides. When the bands were to serve as borders they would have a dentated edging added to them; this edging might be made of either needlepoint or bobbin lace. As time went on the dimensions of both lace bands and lace vandykes increased so that, whilst these served as trimmings to linen, lace of considerable width and various shapes came to be made, and ruffs, collars, and cuffs were wholly made of it. Such lace was thin and wiry in appearance. The leading lines of the patterns formed squares and geometrical figures, amongst which were disposed small wheel and seed forms, little triangles, and such like. A few years later the details of these geometrically planned patterns became more varied, tiny human figures, fruits, vases and flowers, being used as ornamental details. But a more distinct change in character of pattern was effected when flowing scrolls with leaf and blossom devices, held together by means of little ties or bars, were adopted. Different portions of the scrolls and blossoms with their connecting links or bars would often be enriched with little loops or _picots_, with stitched reliefs, and varieties of close and open work. Then came a taste for arranging the bars or ties into trellis grounds, or grounds of hexagons, over which small ornamental devices would be scattered in balanced groups. At the same time, the bobbin or pillow lace-workers produced grounds of small equal-size meshes in plaited threads. This inventiveness on the part of the bobbin or pillow workers reacted upon the needlepoint workers, who in their turn produced still more delicate grounds with meshes of single and double twisted threads.

Lace, passing from stage to stage, thus became a filmy tissue or fabric, and its original use as a somewhat stiff, wiry-looking trimming to linen consequently changed. Larger articles than borders, collars, and cuffs were made of the new filmy material, and lace flounces, veils, loose sleeves, curtains, and bed-covers were produced. This transition may be traced through the first hundred and twenty years of lace-making. It culminated during the succeeding ninety years in a development of fanciful pattern-making, in which realistic representation of flowers, trees, cupids, warriors, sportsmen, animals of the chase, emblems of all sorts, rococo and architectural ornament, is typical. Whilst the eighteenth century may perhaps be regarded as a period of questionable propriety in the employment of ornament hardly appropriate to the twisting, plaiting, and looping together of threads, it is nevertheless notable for _tours de force_ in lace-making achieved without regard to cost or trouble. From this stage, the climax of which may be placed about 1760, the designing of lace patterns declined; and from the end of the eighteenth to the first twenty years or so of the nineteenth centuries, laces, although still made with the needle and bobbins, became little more than finely-meshed nets powdered over with dots or leaves, or single blossoms, or tiny sprays.

Within the limits of a brief note like the present, it is not possible to discuss local peculiarities in methods of work and styles of design which established the characters of the various Venetian and other Italian points, of the French points of Alencon and Argentan, of the cloudy Valenciennes, Mechlin, and Brussels laces. Neither can one touch upon the nurturing of the industry by nuns in convents, by workers subsidised by State grants, and so forth. It would require more space than is available to fairly discuss what styles of ornament are least or most suited to lace-making; or whether lace is less rightly employed as a tissue for the making of entire articles of costume or of household use, than as an ornamental accessory or trimming to costume.

Whilst very much lace is a fantastic adjunct to costume, serving a purpose sometimes like that of _appoggiature_ and _fioriture_ in music, other lace, such as the carved-ivory-looking scrolls of Venetian raised points, which are principally associated with the _jabots_ and ruffles of kings, ministers, and marshals, and with the ornamentation of priests' vestments, is certainly more dignified in character. The loops, twists, and plaits of threads are more noticeable in laces of comparatively small dimensions than they are in laces of great size. Size rather tempts the lace-worker to strive for ready effect, and to sacrifice the minuteness and finish of hand work, which give quality of preciousness to lace. The _via media_ to this quality lies between two extremes; namely, applying dainty threads to the interpretation of badly shaped and ill-grouped forms on the one hand, and on the other hand adopting a style of ornament which depends upon largeness of detail and massiveness in grouping, and is therefore unsuited to lace. Without finish of handicraft, producing beautiful ornament suited to the material in which it is expressed, lace worthy the name cannot be made.

The industry is still pursued in France, Belgium, Venice, Austria, Bohemia, and Ireland. Honiton has acquired a notoriety for its pillow laces, many of which some hundred years ago were as varied and well executed as Brussels pillow laces. Other English towns in the Midland counties followed the lead chiefly of Mechlin, Valenciennes, Lille, and Arras, but were rarely as successful as their leaders. Saxony, Russia, and the Auvergne produce quantities of pillow laces, having little pretence to design, though capable of pretty effects when artistically worn. There is no question that the want of a sustained intelligence in appreciating ingenious hand-made laces has told severely upon the industry; and as with other artistic handicrafts, so with lace-making, machinery has very considerably supplanted the hand. There is at present a limited revival in the demand for hand-made laces, and efforts are made at certain centres to give new life to the industry by infusing into it artistic feeling derived from a study of work done during the periods when the art flourished.

ALAN S. COLE.

OF BOOK ILLUSTRATION AND BOOK DECORATION

Book illustration is supposed to have made a great advance in the last few years. No doubt it has, but this advance has not been made on any definite principle, but, as it were, in and out of a network of cross-purposes. No attempt has been made to classify illustration in relation to the purpose it has to fulfil.

Broadly speaking, this purpose is threefold. It is either utilitarian, or partly utilitarian partly artistic, or purely artistic. The first may be dismissed at once. Such drawings as technical diagrams must be clear and accurate, but by their very nature they are non-artistic, and in regard to art it is a case of "hands off" to the draughtsman.

Illustration as an art, that is, book decoration, begins with the second class. From this standpoint an illustration involves something more than mere drawing. In the first place, the drawing must illustrate the subject, but as the drawing will not be set in a plain mount, but surrounded or bordered by printed type, there is the further problem of the relation of the drawing to the printed type. The relative importance attached to the printed type or the drawing is the crucial point for the illustrator. If all his thoughts are concentrated on his own drawing, one line to him will be much as another; but if he considers his illustration as going with the type to form one homogeneous design, each line becomes a matter of deliberate intention.

Now, in the early days of printing, when both type and illustration were printed off a single block, the latter standpoint was adopted as a matter of course, and as the art developed and men of genuine ability applied themselves to design, this intimate relation between printer and designer produced results of inimitable beauty. Each page of a fine Aldine is a work of art in itself. The eye can run over page after page for the simple pleasure of its decoration. No black blots in a sea of ignoble type break the quiet dignity of the page; each part of it works together with the rest for one premeditated harmony. But gradually, with the severance of the arts, the printer lost sight of the artist, and the latter cared only for himself; and there came the inevitable result which has followed this selfishness in all the other arts of design. Printing ceased to be an art at all, and the art of book decoration died of neglect; the illustrator made his drawing without thought of the type, and left it to the printer to pitch it into the text, and reproduce it as best he could.

The low-water mark in artistic illustration was reached perhaps in the early part of this century, and the greatest offender was Turner himself. The illustrations which Turner made for Rogers's Poems show no sort of modification of his habitual practice in painting. They may have been beautiful in themselves, but it evidently never entered into Turner's head that the method, which was admirable in a picture aided by all the resources of colour, was beside the mark when applied to the printed page with all the limitations of black and white and the simple line. One looks in vain in Turner's illustrations for any evidence that he was conscious of the existence of the rest of the page at all. Something more than a landscape painter's knowledge of drawing is necessary. The custom of getting illustrations from painters who have little knowledge of decorative design has led to the invention of all sorts of mechanical processes in order to transfer easel-work direct to the printed page. The effect of this upon book decoration has been deadly. Process-work of this sort has gone far to kill wood-engraving; and as to its result, instead of a uniform texture of line woven as it were over the entire page, the eye is arrested by harsh patches of black or gray which show a disregard of the printed type which is little less than brutal. Leaving recent work out of account, one exception only can be made, and that is in the case of William Blake.

The inherent conditions of book decoration point to the line drawn by hand, and reproduced, either by wood-engraving or by direct facsimile process, as its proper method. Indeed, the ideal of paginal beauty would be reached by leaving both the text and the illustrative design to hand, if not to one hand. This, however, is out of the question; the cost alone is prohibitive. The point for the book-decorator to consider is, what sort of line will range best with the type. In the case of the second division of our classification, which, in default of a better name, may be called "record work," it is impossible to apply to the line the amount of abstraction and selection which would be necessary in pure design. To do so, for instance, in the case of an architectural illustration, would destroy the "vraisemblance" which is of the essence of such a drawing. Even in this case, however, the line ought to be very carefully considered. It is important to recollect that the type establishes a sort of scale of its own, and, taking ordinary lettering, this would exclude very minute work where the lines are close together and there is much cross-hatching; and also simple outline work such as Retsch used to labour at, for the latter errs on the side of tenuity and meagreness as much as process-reproduction of brush-work sins in the opposite extreme. The line used in architectural illustration should be free, accurate, and unfaltering, drawn with sufficient technical knowledge of architecture to enable the draughtsman to know where he can stop without injury to his subject. The line should not be obstinate, but so light and subtle as to reflect without effort each thought that flits across the artist's mind. Vierge has shown how much can be done in this way. With a few free lines and the contrast of some dark piece of shading in exactly the right place, he will often tell you more of a subject than will the most elaborately finished picture. This is the method to aim at in architectural illustration. The poetry of architecture and its highest qualities of dignity of mass and outline are smothered by that laborious accuracy which covers every part of the drawing with a vain repetition of unfeeling lines.

Where, however, the illustration is purely imaginative, the decorative standpoint should be kept steadily in view, and the process of selection and abstraction carried very much farther. Here, at length, the illustrator can so order his design that the drawing and the printed type form a single piece of decoration, not disregarding the type, but using it as in itself a means of obtaining texture and scale and distributed effect. The type is, as it were, the technical datum of the design, which determines the scale of the line to be used with it. With a wiry type no doubt a wiry drawing is desirable, but the types of the great periods of printing are firm in outline and large and ample in distribution. Assuming, then, that one of these types can be used, the line of the accompanying design should be strongly drawn, and designed from end to end with full allowance for the white paper. No better model can be followed than Duerer's woodcuts. The amount of work which Duerer would get out of a single line is something extraordinary, and perhaps to us impossible; for in view of our complex modern ideas and total absence of tradition, probably no modern designer can hope to attain to the great German's magnificent directness and tremendous intensity of expression.

Deliberate selection, both in subject and treatment, becomes therefore a matter of the first importance. The designer should reject subjects which do not admit of a decorative treatment. His business is not with science, or morals, but with art for its own sake; he should, therefore, select his subject with a single eye to its artistic possibilities. As to the line itself, it is impossible to offer any suggestion, for the line used is as much a part of the designer's idea as the words of a poem are of a poet's poetry; and the invention of these must come of itself. But once in consciousness, the line must be put under rigid control as simply a means of expression. There is an insidious danger in the line. Designers sometimes seem to be inebriated with their own cunning; they go on drawing line after line, apparently for the simple pleasure of deftly placing them side by side, or at best to produce some spurious imitation of texture. As soon as the line is made an end in itself, it becomes a wearisome thing. The use of the line and the imitation of texture should be absolutely subordinated to the decorative purposes of the design, and the neglect of this rule is as bad art as if a musician, from perverse delight in the intricacies of a fugue, were to lose his theme in a chaos of counterpoint.

If, then, to conclude, we are to return to the best traditions of book decoration, the artist must abandon the selfish isolation in which he has hitherto worked. He must regard the printed type not as a necessary evil, but as a valuable material for the decoration of the page, and the type and the illustration should be considered in strict relation to each other. This will involve a self-restraint far more rigid than any required in etching, because the point to be aimed at is not so much the direct suggestion of nature, as the best decorative treatment of the line in relation to the entire page. Thus, to the skill of the draughtsman must be added the far-seeing imagination of the designer, which, instead of being content with a hole-and-corner success, involving disgrace to the rest of the page, embraces in its consciousness all the materials available for the beautification of the page as a whole. It is only by this severe intellectual effort, by this self-abnegation, by this ready acceptance of the union of the arts, that the art of book illustration can again attain to a permanent value.

REGINALD BLOMFIELD.

OF DESIGNS AND WORKING DRAWINGS

The drawings which most deeply interest the workman are working drawings--just the last to be appreciated by the public, because they are the last to be understood. The most admired of show drawings are to us craftsmen comparatively without interest. We recognise the "competition" drawing at once; we see how it was made in order to secure the commission, not with a view to its effect in execution (which is the true and only end of a design), and we do not wonder at the failure of competitions in general. For the man who cares least, if even he knows at all, how a design will appear in execution is the most likely to perpetrate a prettiness which may gain the favour of the inexpert, with whom the selection is likely to rest.

The general public, and all in fact who are technically ignorant on the subject, need to be warned that the most attractive and what are called "taking" drawings are just those which are least likely to be designs--still less _bona fide_ working drawings. The real workman has not the time, even if he had the inclination, to "finish up" his drawings to the point that is generally considered pleasing; the inventive spirit has not the patience. We have each of us the failings complementary to our faculties, and _vice versa_; and you will usually find--certainly it is my experience--that the makers of very elaborately finished drawings seldom do anything but what we have often seen before; and that men of any individuality, actual designers that is to say, have a way of considering a drawing finished as soon as ever it expresses what they mean.

You may take it, then, as a general rule that highly finished and elaborate drawings are got up for show, "finished for exhibition" as they say (in compliance with the supposed requirements of an exhibition rather than with a view to practical purposes), and that drawings completed only so far as is necessary, precise in their details, disfigured by notes in writing, sections, and so on, are at least genuine workaday designs.

If you ask what a design should be like--well, like a design. It is altogether a different thing from a picture; it is almost the reverse of it. Practically no man has, as I said, the leisure, even if he had the ability, to make an effective finished picture of a thing yet to be carried out--perhaps _not_ to be carried out. This last is a most serious consideration for him, and may have a sad effect upon his work. The artist who could afford thus to give himself away gratis would certainly not do so; the man who might be willing to do it could not; for if he has "got no work to do"--that is at least presumptive evidence that he is not precisely a master of his craft.

The design that looks like a picture is likely to be at best a reminiscence of something done before; and the more often it has been done the more likely it is to be pictorially successful--and by so much the less is it, strictly speaking, a design.

This applies especially to designs on a small scale, such as are usually submitted to catch the rare commission. To imitate in a full-sized cartoon the texture of material, the casualty of reflected light, and other such accidents of effect, is sheer nonsense, and no practical workman would think of such a thing. A painter put to the uncongenial task of decorative design might be excused for attempting to make his productions pass muster by workmanship excellent in itself, although not in the least to the point: one does what one can, or what one must; and if a man has a faculty he needs must show it. Only, the perfection of painting will not, for all that, make design.