The Bases of Design. Walter Crane

      STRUCTURAL LINES OF DIFFERENT PERIODS IN HARMONIOUS COMBINATION, CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL.

      It might be said that gradually from that time architecture, as the supreme organic and controlling influence in the arts of design, gave up her prerogative of leadership, and since has rather been on the whole displaced in artistic interest by the other arts; or rather, with the change of the principle of organic growth out of use and constructive necessity in architecture for those of classical authority, archæology, or learned eclecticism, the different arts, more especially painting, began an independent existence, and, with the other arts of design, may be said to have been more individualized and less and less related both to them and to architecture ever since, reaching the extremest points of divergence perhaps in our own days.

      It seems to me that, on the whole, there can be little doubt that architecture and the arts of design generally have suffered in consequence; and to bring them back to healthy and harmonious activity we must try to re-unite them all again upon the old basis.

      I will terminate here my short sketch of architectural style and its influence, not attempting now to follow it in its later changes and adaptations to the increased complexities of human existence. My purpose has been rather to dwell upon the organic and typical forms of architecture, in my endeavour to trace the relationship between it and the art of design generally.

      That relationship appears to me to consist chiefly in the control of constructive line and form, which all design, surface or otherwise, in association with any form of architecture is bound of necessity to acknowledge as a fundamental condition of fitness and harmony. Those essential properties of the expression of line, as they now seem, which give meaning and purpose to all design, appear to be derived straight from constructive necessities and the inseparable association of ideas with which they are connected; as, for instance, the idea of secure rest and repose conveyed by horizontal lines, or the sense of support and rigidity suggested by vertical ones may be directly traced to association with the fundamental principles of architectural structure, to the lintel and its support, to the laying of stone upon stone, and with this clue we might trace the expression of line through its many variations.

CHAPTER II.—OF THE UTILITY BASIS AND INFLUENCE

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      NEXT to the architectural basis influence in design, and, indeed, hardly separable from it, being another side of the constructive, adaptive art, we may fitly take the Utility Basis and influence.

      This may be considered in two ways:

      (1) In its effect upon pattern design and architectural ornament through primitive structural necessities.

      (2) In its effect upon structural form and ornamental treatment arising out of, or suggested by, functional use.

      (1) It is a curious thing that we should find the primitive ornamental motives bound up with the primitive structures and fabrics of pure utility and necessity, but such would appear to be the case.

      The plaiting of rushes to make a mat was probably one of the earliest industrial occupations, and the chequer one of the most primitive and universal of patterns. If we look at the surface effect of the necessity of the construction, the crossing of one equal set of fibres by another set at right angles, with the interlacement, a series of squares are produced, which alternate in tint if the colour of one set is darker than the sets which cross it (see illustration). Emphasize this contrast and we get our chequer, or chessboard pattern, which, either as a pattern complete in itself, as in plaids and tartans, or as a plan, or effect motive in designing is, as I have said, perhaps the most universal and imperishable of all patterns, being found in association with the design of all periods, and still surviving in constant use among designers.