Part 9 (1/2)
In the first small sketch-design, everything need not of course be expressed; but it should be indicated--for the purpose is simply to explain the scheme proposed: so much of pictorial representation as may be necessary to that is desirable, and no more. It should be in the nature of a diagram, specific enough to ill.u.s.trate the idea and how it is to be worked out. It ought by strict rights to commit one definitely to a certain method of execution, as a written specification would; and may often with advantage be helped out by written notes, which explain more definitely than any pictorial rendering just how this is to be wrought, that cast, the other chased, and so on, as the case may be.
Whatever the method of expression the artist may adopt, he should be perfectly clear in his own mind how his design is to be worked out; and he ought to make it clear also to any one with sufficient technical knowledge to understand a drawing.
In the first sketch for a window, for example, he need not show every lead and every piece of gla.s.s; but there should be no possible mistake as to how it is to be glazed, or which is ”painted” gla.s.s and which is ”mosaic.” To omit the necessary bars in a sketch for gla.s.s seems to me a weak concession to the prejudice of the public. One _may_ have to concede such points sometimes; but the concession is due less to necessity than to the--what shall we call it?--not perhaps exactly the cowardice, but at all events the timidity, of the artist.
In a full-sized working drawing or cartoon everything material to the design should be expressed, and that as definitely as possible. In a cartoon for gla.s.s (to take again the same example) every lead-line should be shown, as well as the saddle bars; to omit them is about as excusable as it would be to leave out the sections from a design for cabinet work. It is contended sometimes that such details are not necessary, that the artist can bear all that in mind. Doubtless he can, more or less; but I am inclined to believe more strongly in the _less_.
At any rate he will much more certainly have them in view whilst he keeps them visibly before his eyes. One thing that deters him is the fear of offending the client, who will not believe, when he sees leads and bars in a drawing, how little they are likely to a.s.sert themselves in the gla.s.s.
Very much the same thing applies to designs and working drawings generally. A thorough craftsman never suggests a form or colour without realising in his own mind how he will be able to get such form or colour in the actual work; and in his working drawing he explains that fully, making allowance even for some not impossible dulness of apprehension on the part of the executant. Thus, if a pattern is to be woven he indicates the cards to be employed, he arranges what parts are ”single,” what ”double,” as the weavers call it, what changes in the shuttle are proposed, and by the crossing of which threads certain intermediate tints are to be obtained.
Or again, if the design is for wall-paper printing, he arranges not only for the blocks, but the order in which they shall be printed; and provides for possible printing in ”flock,” or for the printing of one transparent colour over another, so as to get more colours than there are blocks used, and so on.
In either case, too, he shows quite plainly the limits of each colour, not so much seeking the softness of effect which is his ultimate aim, as the precision which will enable the block or card cutter to see at a glance what he means,--even at the risk of a certain hardness in his drawing; for the drawing is in itself of no account; it is only the means to an end; and his end is the stuff, the paper, or whatever it may be, in execution.
A workman intent on his design will sacrifice his drawing to it--harden it, as I said, for the sake of emphasis, annotate it, patch it, cut it up into pieces to prove it, if need be do anything to make his meaning clear to the workman who comes after him. It is as a rule only the dilettante who is dainty about preserving his drawings.
To an artist very much in repute there may be some temptation to be careful of his designs, and to elaborate them (himself, or by the hands of his a.s.sistants), because, so finished, they have a commercial value as drawings--but this is at best pot-boiling; and the only men who are subject to this temptation are just those who might be proof against it.
Men of such rank that even their working drawings are in demand have no very urgent need to work for the pot; and the working drawings of men to whom pounds and s.h.i.+llings must needs be a real consideration are not sought after.
In the case of very smart and highly finished drawings by comparatively unknown designers--of ninety-nine out of a hundred, that is to say, or nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand perhaps--elaboration implies either that, having little to say, a man fills up his time in saying it at unnecessary length, or that he is working for exhibition.
And why not work for exhibition? it may be asked. There is a simple answer to that: The exhibition pitch is in much too high a key, and in the long run it will ruin the faculty of the workman who adopts it.
It is only fair to admit that an exhibition of fragmentary and unfinished drawings, soiled, tattered, and torn, as they almost invariably come from the workshop or factory, would make a very poor show--which may be an argument against exhibiting them at all. Certainly it is a reason for mending, cleaning, and mounting them, and putting them in some sort of frame (for what is not worth the pains of making presentable is not worth showing), but that is a very different thing from working designs up to picture pitch.
When all is said, designs, if exhibited, appeal primarily to designers.
_We_ all want to see each other's work, and especially each other's way of working; but it should not be altogether uninteresting to the intelligent amateur to see what working drawings are, and to compare them with the kind of specious compet.i.tion drawings by which he is so apt to be misled.
LEWIS F. DAY.
FURNITURE AND THE ROOM
The art of furnis.h.i.+ng runs on two wheels--the room and the furniture. As in the bicycle, the inordinate development of one wheel at the expense of its colleague has been not without some great feats, yet too often has provoked catastrophe; so furnis.h.i.+ng makes safest progression when, with a juster proportion, its two wheels are kept to moderate and uniform diameters. The room should be for the furniture just as much as the furniture for the room.
Of late it has not been so; we have been indulging in the ”disproportionately wheeled” type, and the result has been to crowd our rooms, and reduce them to insignificance. Even locomotion in them is often embarra.s.sing, especially when the upholsterer has been allowed _carte blanche_. But, apart from this, there is a sense of repletion in these ma.s.ses of chattel--miscellanies brought together with no subordination to each other, or to the effect of the room as a whole.
Taken in the single piece, our furniture is sometimes not without its merit, but it is rarely exempt from self-a.s.sertion, or, to use a slang term, ”fussiness.” And an aggregation of ”fussinesses” becomes fatiguing. One is betrayed into uncivilised longings for the workhouse, or even the convict's cell, the simplicity of bare boards and tables!
But we must not use our dictum for aggressive purposes merely, faulty as modern systems may be. In the distinction of the two sides of the problem of furnis.h.i.+ng--the room for the furniture, and the furniture for the room--there is some historical significance. Under these t.i.tles might be written respectively the first and last chapters in the history of this art--its rise and its decadence.
Furniture in the embryonic state of chests, which held the possessions of early times, and served, as they moved from place to place, for tables, chairs, and wardrobes, may have been in existence while the tents and sheds which accommodated them were of less value. But furnis.h.i.+ng began with settled architecture, when the room grew first into importance, and overshadowed its contents. The art of the builder had soared far beyond the ambitions of the furnisher.
Later, the two const.i.tuents of our art came to be produced simultaneously, and under one impulse of design. The room, whether church or hall, had now its specific furniture. In the former this was adapted for ritual, in the latter for feasting; but in both the contents formed in idea an integral part of the interior in which they stood. And while these conditions endured, the art was in its palmy state.
Later, furniture came to be considered apart from its position. It grew fanciful and fortuitous. The problem of fitting it to the room was no problem at all while both sprang from a common conception: it became so when its independent design, at first a foible of luxury, grew to be a necessity of production. As long, however, as architecture remained dominant, and painting and sculpture were its acknowledged va.s.sals, furniture retained its legitimate position and shared in their triumphs.
But when these the elder sisters shook off their allegiance, furniture followed suit. It developed the self-a.s.sertion of which we have spoken, and, in the belief that it could stand alone, divorced itself from that support which was the final cause of its existence. There have been doubtless many slackenings and tightenings of the chain which links the arts of design together; but it is to be noted how with each slackening furniture grew gorgeous and artificial, failed to sympathise with common needs, and sank slowly but surely into feebleness and insipidity.