The generalsolidityof a page is much to be sought for: modern printers generally overdo the "whites" in the spacing, a defect probably forced on them by the characterless quality of the letters.For where these are boldly and carefully designed, and each letter is thoroughly individual in form, the words may be set much closer together, without loss of clearness. No definite rules, however, except the avoidance of "rivers" and excess of white, can be given for the spacing, which requires the constant exercise of judgment and taste on the part of the printer.
The position of the page on the paper should be considered if the book is to have a satisfactory look. Here once more the almost invariable modern practice is in opposition to a natural sense of proportion. From the time when books first took their present shape till the end of the sixteenth century, or indeed later, the page so lay on the paper that there was more space allowed to the bottom and foremargin than to the top and back of the paper, thus:
the unit of the book being looked on as the two pages forming an opening. The modern printer, in the teeth of the evidence given by his own eyes, considers the single page as the unit, and prints the page in the middle of his paper—only nominally so, however, in many cases, since when he uses a headline he counts that in, the result as measured by the eye being that the lower margin is less than the top one, and that the whole opening has an upside-down look vertically, and that laterally the page looks as if it were being driven off the paper.
The paper on which the printing is to be done is a necessary part of our subject: of this it may be said that though there is some good paper made now, it is never used except for very expensive books, although it would not materially increase the cost in all but the very cheapest. The paper that is used for ordinary books is exceedingly bad even in this country, but is beaten in the race for vileness by that made in America, which is the worst conceivable. There seems to be no reason why ordinary paper should not be better made, even allowing the necessity for a very low price; but any improvement must be based on showing openly that the cheap articleischeap,e.g.the cheap paper should not sacrifice toughness and durability to a smooth and white surface, which should be indications of a delicacy of material andmanufacture which would of necessity increase its cost. One fruitful source of badness in paper is the habit that publishers have of eking out a thin volume by printing it on thick paper almost of the substance of cardboard, a device which deceives nobody, and makes a book very unpleasant to read. On the whole, a small book should be printed on paper which is as thin as may be without being transparent. The paper used for printing the small highly ornamented French service-books about the beginning of the sixteenth century is a model in this respect, being thin, tough, and opaque. However, the fact must not be blinked that machine-made paper cannot in the nature of things be made of so good a texture as that made by hand.
The ornamentation of printed books is too wide a subject to be dealt withfully here; but one thing must be said on it. The essential point to be remembered is that the ornament, whatever it is, whether picture or pattern-work, should formpart of the page, should be a part of the whole scheme of the book. Simple as this proposition is, it is necessary to be stated, because the modern practice is to disregard the relation between the printing and the ornament altogether, so that if the two are helpful to one another it is a mere matter of accident. The due relation of letter to pictures and other ornament was thoroughly understood by the old printers; so that even when the woodcuts are very rude indeed, the proportions of the page still give pleasure by the sense of richness that the cuts and letter together convey. When, as is most often the case, there is actual beauty in the cuts, the books soornamented are amongst the most delightful works of art that have ever been produced. Therefore, granted well-designed type, due spacing of the lines and words, and proper position of the page on the paper, all books might be at least comely and well-looking: and if to these good qualities were added really beautiful ornament and pictures, printed books might once again illustrate to the full the position of our Society that a work of utility might be also a work of art, if we cared to make it so.
William Morris.Emery Walker.
Modern bookbinding dates from the application of printing to literature, and in essentials has remained unchanged to the present day, though in those outward characteristics, which appeal to the touch and to the eye, and constitute binding in an artistic sense, it has gone through many changes for better and for worse, which, in the opinion of the writer, have resulted, in the main, in the exaggeration of technical skill and in the death of artistic fancy.
The first operation of the modernbinder is to fold or refold the printed sheet into a section, and to gather the sections, numbered or lettered at the foot, in their proper order into a volume.
The sections are then taken, one by one, placed face downwards in a frame, and sewn through the back by a continuous thread running backwards and forwards along the backs of the sections to upright strings fastened at regular intervals in the sewing frame. This process unites the sections to one another in series one after the other, and permits the perusal of the book by the simple turning of leaf after leaf upon the hinge formed by the thread and the back of the section.
A volume, or series of sections, so treated, the ends of the string being properly secured, is essentially "bound"; all that is subsequently done is done forthe protection or for the decoration of the volume or of its cover.
The sides of a volume are protected by millboards, called shortly "boards." The boards themselves and the back are protected by a cover of leather, vellum, silk, linen, or paper, wholly or in part. The edges of the volume are protected by the projection of the boards beyond them at top, bottom, and fore-edge, and usually by being cut smooth and gilt.
A volume so bound and protected may be decorated by tooling or otherwise upon all the exposed surfaces (upon the edges, the sides, and the back) and may be designated by lettering upon the back or the sides.
The degree in which a bound book is protected and decorated will determine the class to which the binding will belong.
(1) Incloth binding, the cover, called a "case," is made apart from the book, and is attached as a whole after the book is sewn.
(2) Inhalf binding, the cover is built up for and on each individual book, but the boards of which it is composed are only partly covered with the leather or other material which covers the back.
(3) Inwhole binding, the boards are wholly covered with leather or other durable material, which in half binding covers only a portion of them.
(4) Inextra binding, whole binding is advanced a stage higher by decoration. Of course in the various stages the details vary commensurately with the stage itself, being more or less elaborate as the stage is higher or lower in the scale.
The process ofextra bindingset out in more detail is as follows:—
(1) First the sections are folded or refolded.
(2) Then "end-papers"—sections of plain paper added at the beginning and end of the volume to protect the first and last, the most exposed, sections of printed matter constituting the volume proper—having been prepared and added, the sections are beaten, or rolled, or pressed, to make them "solid."
The end-papers are usually added at a later stage, and are pasted on, and not sewn, but, in the opinion of the writer, it is better to add them at this stage, and to sew them and not to paste them.
(3) Then the sections are sewn as already described.
(4) When sewn the volume passes into the hands of the "forwarder," who
(5) "Makes" the back, beating it round, if the back is to be round, and "backing" it, or making it fan out fromthe centre to right and left and project at the edges, to form a kind of ridge to receive and to protect the edges of the boards which form the sides of the cover.
(6) The back having been made, the "boards" (made of millboard, and originally of wood) for the protection of the sides are made and cut to shape, and attached by lacing into them the ends of the strings upon which the book has been sewn.
(7) The boards having been attached, the edges of the book are now cut smooth and even at the top, bottom, and fore-edge, the edges of the boards being used as guides for the purpose. In some cases the order is reversed, and the edges are first cut and then the boards.
(8) The edges may now be coloured and gilt, and if it is proposed to "gauffer" or to decorate them with tooling, they are so treated at this stage.
(9) The head-band is next worked on at head and tail, and the back lined with paper or leather or other material to keep the head-band in its place and to strengthen the back itself.
The book is now ready to be covered.
(10) If the book is covered with leather, the leather is carefully pared all round the edges and along the line of the back, to make the edges sharp and the joints free.
(11) The book having been covered, the depression on the inside of the boards caused by the overlap of the leather is filled in with paper, so that the entire inner surface may be smooth and even, and ready to receive the first and last leaves of the end-papers, which finally are cut to shape and pasted down, leaving the borders only uncovered.
Sometimes, however, the first and last leaves of the "end-papers" are of silk,and the "joint" of leather, in which case, of course, the end-papers are not pasted down, but the insides of the boards are independently treated, and are covered, sometimes with leather, sometimes with silk or other material.
The book is now "forwarded," and passes into the hands of the "finisher" to be tooled or decorated, or "finished" as it is called.
The decoration in gold on the surface of leather is wrought out, bit by bit, by means of small brass stamps called "tools."
The steps of the process are shortly as follows:—
(12) The pattern having been settled and worked out on paper, it is "transferred" to, or marked out on, the various surfaces to which it is to be applied.
Each surface is then prepared insuccession, and, if large, bit by bit, to receive the gold.
(13) First the leather is washed with water or with vinegar.
(14) Then the pattern is pencilled over with "glaire" (white of egg beaten up and drained off), or the surface is wholly washed with it.
(15) Next it is smeared lightly with grease or oil.
(16) And, finally, the gold (gold leaf) is applied by a pad of cotton wool, or a flat thin brush called a "tip."
(17) The pattern, visible through the gold, is now reimpressed or worked with the tools heated to about the temperature of boiling water, and the unimpressed or waste gold is removed by an oiled rag, leaving the pattern in gold and the rest of the leather clear.
These several operations are, inEngland, usually distributed among five classes of persons.
(1) Thesuperintendentor person responsible for the whole work.
(2) Thesewer, usually a woman, who folds, sews, and makes the head-bands.
(3) Thebook-edge gilder, who gilds the edges. Usually a craft apart.
(4) Theforwarder, who performs all the other operations leading up to the finishing.
(5) Thefinisher, who decorates and letters the volume after it is forwarded.
In Paris the work is still further distributed, a special workman (couvreur) being employed to prepare the leather for covering and to cover.
In the opinion of the writer, the work, as a craft of beauty, suffers, as do the workmen, from the allocation of different operations to different workmen. The work should be conceived of as one, andbe wholly executed by one person, or at most by two, and especially should there be no distinction between "finisher" and "forwarder," between "executant" and "artist."
The following technical names may serve to call attention to the principal features of a bound book.
(1) Theback, the posterior edge of the volume upon which at the present time the title is usually placed. Formerly it was placed on the fore-edge or side.
The back may be (a) convex or concave or flat; (b) marked horizontally with bands, or smooth from head to tail; (c) tight, the leather or other covering adhering to the back itself, or hollow, the leather or other covering not so adhering; and (d) stiff or flexible.
(2)Edges, the three other edges ofthe book,—the top, the bottom, and the fore-edge.
(3)Bands, the cords upon which the book is sewn, and which, if not "let in" or embedded in the back, appear on it as parallel ridges. The ridges are, however, usually artificial, the real bands being "let in" to facilitate the sewing, and their places supplied by thin slips of leather cut to resemble them and glued on the back. This process also enables the forwarder to give great sharpness and finish to this part of his work, if he think it worth while.
(4)Between-bands, the space between the bands.
(5)Headandtail, the top and bottom of the back.
(6) Thehead-bandandhead-cap, the fillet of silk worked in buttonhole stitch at the head and tail, and the cap or cover of leather over it. The head-band had its origin probably in the desire to strengthen the back and to resist the strain when a book is pulled by head or tail from the shelf.
(7)Boards, the sides of the cover, stiff or limp, thick or thin, in all degrees.
(8)Squares, the projection of the boards beyond the edges of the book. These may be shallow or deep in all degrees, limited only by the purpose they have to fulfil and the danger they will themselves be exposed to if too deep.
(9)Borders, the overlaps of leather on the insides of the boards.
(10)Proof, the rough edges of leaves left uncut in cutting the edges to show where the original margin was, and to prove that the cutting has not been too severe.
The life of bookbinding is in the dainty mutation of its mutable elements—back, bands, boards, squares, decoration. These elements admit of almost endless variation, singly and in combination, in kind and in degree. In fact, however, they are now almost always uniformly treated or worked up to one type or set of types. This is the death of bookbinding as a craft of beauty.
The finish, moreover, or execution, has outrun invention, and is the great characteristic of modern bookbinding. This again, the inversion of the due order, is, in the opinion of the writer, but as the carving on the tomb of a dead art, and itself dead.
A well-bound beautiful book is neither of one type, nor finished so that its highest praise is that "had it been made by a machine it could not have been made better." It is individual; itis instinct with the hand of him who made it; it is pleasant to feel, to handle, and to see; it is the original work of an original mind working in freedom simultaneously with hand and heart and brain to produce a thing of use, which all time shall agree ever more and more also to call "a thing of beauty."
T. J. Cobden-Sanderson.
There seems no precise reason why the subject of this note should differ much from that of Mr. Crane's article on "Decorative Painting" (pp.39-51). "Mural Painting" need not, as such, consist of any one sort of painting more than another. "Decorative Painting" does seem, on the other hand, to indicate a certain desire or undertaking to render the object painted more pleasant to the beholder's eye.
From long habit, however, chiefly induced by the constant practice of the Italians of modern times, "MuralPainting" has come to be looked upon as figure painting (in fact, the human figure exclusively) on walls—and no other sort of objects can sufficiently impart that dignity to a building which it seems to crave for. I can think of no valid reason why a set of rooms, or walls, should not be decorated with animals in lieu of "humans," as the late Mr. Trelawney used to call us: one wall to be devoted to monkeys, a second to be filled in with tigers, a third to be given up to horses, etc. etc. I know men in England, and, I believe, some artists, who would be delighted with the substitution. But I hope the general sense of the public would be set against such subjects, and the lowering effects of them on every one, and the kind of humiliation we should feel at knowing them to exist.
I have been informed that in Berlinthe walls of the rooms where the antique statues are kept have been painted with mixed subjects representing antique buildings with antique Greek views and landscapes, to back up, as it were, the statues. I must own it, that without having seen the decoration in question, I feel filled with extreme aversion for the plan. The more so when one considers the extreme unlikelihood of the same being made tolerable in colour at Berlin. I have also been told that some painters in the North of England, bitten with a desire to decorate buildings, have painted one set of rooms with landscapes. This, without the least knowledge of the works in question, as landscapes, I must allow I regret. There is, it seems to me, an unbridgeable chasm, not to be passed, between landscape art and the decoration of walls; for the very essence of the landscape art is distance, whereasthe very essence of the wall-picture is its solidity, or, at least, its not appearing to be a hole in the wall. On the matter of subjects fit for painting on walls I may have a few words to say farther on in this paper, but first I had better set down what little I have to advise with regard to the material and mode of executing.
The old-fashioned Italian or "Buon Fresco" I look upon as practically given up in this country, and every other European country that has not a climate to equal Italy. If the climate of Paris will not admit of this process, how much less is our damp, foggy, changeable atmosphere likely to put up with it for many years! It is true that the frescoes of William Dyce have lasted for some thirty years without apparent damage; but also it is the case that the Queen's Robing Rooms in the House of Lordshave been specially guarded against atmospheric changes of temperature. Next to real fresco, there has been in repute for a time the waterglass process, in which Daniel Maclise's great paintings have been executed. I see no precise reason why these noble works should not last, and defy climate for many, many long years yet; though from want of experience he very much endangered this durability through the too lavish application of the medium. But in Germany, the country of waterglass, the process is already in bad repute. The third alternative, "spirit fresco," or what we in England claim as the Gambier-Parry process, has, I understand, superseded it. I have myself painted in this system seven works on the walls of the Manchester Town Hall, and have had no reason to complain of their behaviour. Since beginning the series,however, a fresh change has come over the fortunes of mural art in the fact that, in France (what most strongly recommends itself to common sense), the mural painters have now taken to painting on canvas, which is afterwards cemented, or what the French call "maronflée," on to the wall. White-lead and oil, with a very small admixture of rosin melted in oil, are the ingredients used. It is laid on cold and plentifully on the wall and on the back of the picture, and the painting pressed down with a cloth or handkerchief: nothing further being required, saving to guard the edges of the canvas from curling up before the white-lead has had time to harden. The advantage of this process of cementing lies in the fact that with each succeeding year it must become harder and more like stone in its consistency. The canvases may be prepared as if for oilpainting, and painted with common oil-colours flatted (or matted) afterwards by gum-elemi and spike-oil. Or the canvas may be prepared with the Gambier-Parry colour and painted in that verymatmedium. The canvases should if possible be fine in texture, as better adapted for adhering to the wall. The advantage of this process is that, should at any time, through neglect, damp invade the wall, and the canvas show a tendency to get loose, it would be easy to replace it; or the canvas might be altogether detached from the wall and strained as a picture.
I must now return to the choice of subject, a matter of much importance, but on which it is difficult to give advice. One thing, however, may be urged as a rule, and that is, that very dark or Rembrandtesque subjects are particularly unsuited for mural paintings. I cannotgo into the reasons for this, but a slight experiment ought to satisfy the painter, having once heard the principle enunciated: that is, if he belong to the class likely to succeed at such work.
Anothersine qua nonas to subject is that the painter himself must be allowed to select it. It is true that certain limitations may be accorded—for instance, the artist may be required to select a subject with certain tendencies in it—but the actual invention of the subject and working out of it must be his. In fact, the painter himself is the only judge of what he is likely to carry out well and of the subjects that are paintable. Then much depends on whom the works are for; if for the general public, and carried out with their money, care (it seems to me but fair) should be taken that the subjects are such as they can understand and take interest in. If, onthe contrary, you are painting for highly-cultured people with a turn for Greek myths, it is quite another thing; then, such a subject as "Eros reproaching his brother Anteros for his coldness" might be one offering opportunities for shades of sentiment suited to the givers of the commissions concerned. But for such as have not been trained to entertain these refinements, downright facts, either in history or in sociology, are calculated most to excite the imagination. It is not always necessary for the spectator to be exact in his conclusions. I remember once at Manchester, the members of a Young Men's Christian Association had come to a meeting in the great hall. Some of them were there too soon, and so were looking round the room. One observed: "What's this about?" His friend answered: "Fallen off a ladder, the police are running him in!" Well,this was not quite correct. A wounded young Danish chieftain was being hurried out of Manchester on his comrade's shoulders, with a view to save his life. The Phrygian helmets of the Danes indicated neither firemen nor policemen; but the idea was one of misfortune, and care bestowed on it—and did as well, and showed sympathy in a somewhat uncultivated, though well-intentioned, class of Lancastrians. On the other hand, I have noticed that subjects that interest infallibly all classes, educated or illiterate, are religious subjects. It is not a question of piety—but comes from the simple breadth of poetry and humanity usually involved in this class of subject. That the amount of religiosity in either spectator or producer has nothing to do with the feeling is clear if we consider.
The Spaniards are one of the mostreligious peoples ever known, and yet their art is singularly deficient in this quality. Were there ever two great painters as wanting in the sacred feeling as Velasquez and Murillo? and yet, in all probability, they were more religious than ourselves.
It only remains for me to point to the fact that mural painting, when it has been practised jointly by those who were at the same time easel-painters, has invariably raised those painters to far higher flights and instances of style than they seem capable of in the smaller path. Take the examples left us, say by Raphael and Michel Angelo, or some of the earlier masters, such as the "Fulminati" of Signorelli, compared with his specimens in our National Gallery; or the works left on walls by even less favoured artists, such as Domenichino and Andrea del Sarto, or the French de la Roche's"Hémicycle," or our own great painters Dyce and Maclise's frescoes; the same rise in style, the same improvement, is everywhere to be noticed, both in drawing, in colour, and in flesh-painting.
F. Madox Brown.
The Italian words Graffiato, Sgraffiato, or Sgraffito, mean "Scratched," and scratched work is the oldest form of graphic expression and surface decoration used by man.
The term Sgraffito is, however, specially used to denote decoration scratched or incised upon plaster or potter's clay while still soft, and for beauty of effect depends either solely upon lines thus incised according to design, with the resulting contrast of surfaces, or partly upon such lines and contrast, and partly upon an under-coatof colour revealed by the incisions; while, again, the means at disposal may be increased by varying the colours of the under-coat in accordance with the design.
Of the potter's sgraffito I have no experience, but it is my present purpose briefly and practically to examine the method, special aptitudes, and limitations of polychrome sgraffito as applied to the plasterer's craft.
First, then, as to method. Given the wall intended to be treated: granted the completion of the scheme of decoration, the cartoons having been executed in several colours and the outlines firmly pricked, and further, all things being ready for beginning work. Hack off any existing plaster from the wall: when bare, rake and sweep out the joints thoroughly: when clean, give the wall as much water as it will drink: lay thecoarse coat, leaving the face rough in order to make a good key for the next coat: when sufficiently set, fix your cartoon in its destined position with slate nails: pounce through the pricked outlines: remove the cartoon: replace the nails in the register holes: mark in with a brush in white oil paint the spaces for the different colours as shown in the cartoon, and pounced in outline on the coarse coat, placing the letters B, R, Y, etc., as the case may be, in order to show the plasterer where to lay the different colours—Black, Red, Yellow, etc.: give the wall as much water as it will drink: lay the colour coat in accordance with the lettered spaces on the coarse coat, taking care not to displace the register nails, and leaving plenty of key for the final surface coat.
In laying the colour coat, calculate how much of the colour surface it maybe advisable to get on the wall, as the same duration of time should be maintained throughout the work between the laying of the colour coat and the following on with the final surface coat—for this reason, if the colour coat sets hard before the final coat is laid, it will not be possible to scrape up the colour to its full strength wherever it may be revealed by incision of the design. When sufficiently set,i.e.in about 24 hours, follow on with the final surface coat, only laying as much as can be cut and cleaned up in a day: when this is sufficiently steady, fix up the cartoon in its registered position: pounce through the pricked outlines: remove the cartoon and cut the design in the surface coat before it sets: then, if your register is correct, you will cut through to different colours according to the design, and in the course of a few days the work shouldset as hard and homogeneous as stone, and as damp-proof as the nature of things permits.
The three coats above referred to may be gauged as follows:—
Coarse Coat.—2 or 3 of sharp clean sand to 1 of Portland, to be laid about ¾ inch in thickness. This coat is to promote an even suction and to keep back damp.
Colour Coat.—1 of colour to 1½ of old Portland, to be laid about1/8inch in thickness. Specially prepared distemper colours should be used, and amongst such may be mentioned golden ochre, Turkey red, Indian red, manganese black, lime blue, and umber.
Final Surface Coat.—Aberthaw lime and selenitic cement, both sifted through a fine sieve—the proportions of the gauge depend upon the heat of the lime: or, Parian cement sifted as above—air-slakedfor 24 hours, and gauged with water coloured with ochre, so as to give a creamy tone when the plaster dries out: or, 3 of selenitic cement to 2 of silver sand, both sifted as above—this may be used for out-door work.
Individual taste and experience must decide as to the thickness of the final coat, but if laid between1/8and1/12inch, and the lines cut with slanting edges, a side light gives emphasis to the finished result, making the outlines tell alternately as they take the light or cast a shadow. Plasterers' small tools of various kinds and knife-blades fixed in tool handles will be found suited to the simple craft of cutting and clearing off the final surface coat; but as to this a craftsman finds his own tools by experience, and indeed by the same acquired perception must be interpreted all the foregoing directions, and specially that ambiguousword, dear to the writers of recipes,—Sufficient.
Thus far method. Now, as to special aptitudes and limitations. Sgraffito work may claim a special aptitude for design whose centre of aim is line. It has no beauty of material like glass, no mystery of surface like mosaic, no pre-eminence of subtly-woven tone and colour like tapestry; yet it gives freer play to line than any of these mentioned fields of design, and a cartoon for sgraffito can be executed in facsimile, undeviated by warp and woof, and unchecked by angular tesseræ or lead lines. True, hardness of design may easily result from this aptitude, indeed is to a certain extent inherent to the method under examination, but in overcoming this danger and in making the most of this aptitude is the artist discovered.
Sgraffito from its very nature "assertsthe wall"; that is, preserves the solid appearance of the building which it is intended to decorate. The decoration is in the wall rather than on the wall. It seems to be organic. The inner surface of the actual wall changes colour in puzzling but orderly sequence, as the upper surface passes into expressive lines and spaces, delivers its simple message, and then relapses into silence; but whether incised with intricate design, or left in plain relieving spaces, the wall receives no further treatment, the marks of float, trowel, and scraper remain, and combine to make a natural surface.
It compels the work to be executedin situ. The studio must be exchanged for the scaffold, and the result should justify the inconvenience. However carefully the scheme of decoration may be designed, slight yet important modifications and readjustments will probablybe found necessary in the transfer from cartoon to wall; and though the ascent of the scaffold may seem an indignity to those who prefer to suffer vicariously in the execution of their works, and though we of the nineteenth know, as Cennini of the fifteenth century knew, "that painting pictures is the proper employment of a gentleman, and with velvet on his back he may paint what he pleases," still the fact remains, that if decoration is to attain that inevitable fitness for its place which is the fulfilment of design, this "proper employment of a gentleman" must be postponed, and velvet exchanged for blouse.
It compels a quick, sure manner of work; and this quickness of execution, due to the setting nature of the final coat, and to the consequent necessity of working against time, gives an appearance of strenuous ease to the firm incisionsand spaces by which the design is expressed, and a living energy of line to the whole. Again, the setting nature of the colour coat suggests, and naturally lends itself to, an occasional addition in the shape of mosaic to the means at disposal, and a little glitter here and there will be found to go a long way in giving points of emphasis and play to large surfaces.
It compels the artist to adopt a limited colour scheme—a limitation, and yet one which may almost be welcomed as an aptitude, for of colours in decorative work multiplication may be said to be a vexation.
Finally, the limitations of sgraffito as a method of expression are the same as those of all incised or line work. By it you can express ideas and suggest life, but you cannot realise,—cannot imitate the natural objects on which your graphiclanguage is founded. The means at disposal are too scanty. Item: white lines and spaces relieved against and slightly raised on a coloured ground; coloured lines and spaces slightly sunk on a white surface; intricacy relieved by simplicity of line, and again either relieved by plain spaces of coloured ground or white surface. Indeed they are simple means. Yet line still remains the readiest manner of graphic expression; and if in the strength of limitation our past masters of the arts and crafts have had power to "free, arouse, dilate" by their simple record of hand and soul, we also should be able to bring forth new achievement from old method, and to suggest the life and express the ideas which sway the latter years of our own century.
Heywood Sumner.
Few things are more disheartening to the pursuer of plastic art than finding that, when he has carried his own labour to a certain point, he has to entrust it to another in order to render it permanent and useful. If he models in clay and wishes it burnt into terra cotta, the shrinkage and risk in firing, and the danger in transport to the kiln, are a nightmare to him. If he wishes it cast in plaster, the distortion by waste-moulding, or the cost of piece-moulding, are serious grievances to him, considering that after all he has but a friable result; and thoughthis latter objection is minimised by Mrs. Laxton Clark's ingenious process of indurating plaster, yet I am persuaded that most modellers would prefer to complete their work in some permanent form with their own hands.
Having this desirable end in view, I wish to draw their attention to some disused processes which once largely prevailed, by which the artist is enabled to finish, and render durable and vendible, his work, without having to part with it or pay for another's aid.
These old processes are modelling in Stucco-duro and Gesso.
Stucco-duro, although of very ancient practice, is now practically a lost art. The materials required are simply well-burnt and slacked lime, a little fine sand, and some finely-ground unburnt lime-stone or white marble dust. These are well tempered together with water andbeaten up with sticks until a good workable paste results. In fact, the preparation of the materials is exactly the same as that described by Vitruvius, who recommends that the fragments of marble be sifted into three degrees of fineness, using the coarser for the rough bossage, the medium for the general modelling, and the finest for the surface finish, after which it can be polished with chalk and powdered lime if necessary. Indeed, to so fine a surface can this material be brought, and so highly can it be polished, that he mentions its use for mirrors.
The only caution that it is needful to give is to avoid working too quickly; for, as Sir Henry Wooton, King James's ambassador at Venice, who greatly advocated the use of stucco-duro, observed, the stucco worker "makes his figures by addition and the carver by subtraction," and to avoid too great risk of the work crackingin drying, these additions must be made slowly where the relief is great. If the relief is very great, or if a figure of large dimensions is essayed, it may be needful even to delay the drying of the stucco, and the addition of a little stiff paste will insure this, so that the work may be consecutively worked upon for many days.
From the remains of the stucco work of classic times left us, we can realise how perfectly workable this material was; and if you examine the plaster casts taken from some most delicate low-relief plaques in stucco exhumed some ten years ago near the Villa Farnesina at Rome, or the rougher and readier fragments of stucco-duro itself from some Italo-Greek tombs, both of which are to be seen in the South Kensington Museum, you will at once be convinced of the great applicability of the process.
With the decadence of classic art some portion of the process seems to have been lost, and the use of pounded travertine was substituted for white marble; but, as thebassi-relieviof the early Renaissance were mostly decorated with colour, this was not important. The ground colours seem generally to have been laid on whilst the stucco was wet, as in fresco, and the details heightened with tempera or encaustic colours, sometimes with accessories enriched in gilt "gesso" (of which hereafter). Many remains of these exist, and in the Nineteenth Winter Exhibition of the Royal Academy there were no less than twelve very interesting examples of it exhibited, and in the South Kensington Museum are some few moderately good illustrations of it.
It was not, however, until the sixteenthcentury that the old means of producing the highly-finished white stucchi were rediscovered, and this revival of the art as an architectonic accessory is due to the exhumation of the baths of Titus under Leo X. Raphael and Giovanni da Udine were then so struck with the beauty of the stucco work thus exposed to view that its re-use was at once determined upon, and the Loggia of the Vatican was the first result of many experiments, though the re-invented process seems to have been precisely that described by Vitruvius. Naturally, the art of modelling in stucco at once became popular: the patronage of it by the Pope, and the practice of it by the artists who worked for him, gave it the highest sanction, and hardly a building of any architectural importance was erected in Italy during the sixteenth century that did not bearevidence of the artistic craft of the stuccatori.
There has just (Autumn, 1889) arrived at the South Kensington Museum a model of the central hall of the Villa Madama in Rome, thus decorated by Giulio Romano and Giovanni da Udine, which exemplifies the adaptability of the process; and in this model Cav. Mariani has employed stucco-duro for its execution, showing to how high a pitch of finish this material is capable of being carried. Indeed, it was used by goldsmiths for the models for their craft, as being less liable to injury than wax, yet capable of receiving equally delicate treatment; and Benvenuto Cellini modelled the celebrated "button," with "that magnificent big diamond" in the middle, for the cope of Pope Clement, with all its intricate detail, in this material. How minute this work of some six inchesdiameter was may be inferred from Cellini's own description of it. Above the diamond, in the centre of the piece, was shown God the Father seated, in the act of giving the benediction; below were three children, who, with their arms upraised, were supporting the jewel. One of them, in the middle, was in full relief, the other two in half-relief. "All round I set a crowd of cherubs in divers attitudes. A mantle undulated to the wind around the figure of the Father, from the folds of which cherubs peeped out; and there were many other ornaments besides, which," adds he, and for once we may believe him, "made a very beautiful effect." At the same time, figures larger than life, indeed colossal figures, were executed in it, and in our own country the Italian artists brought over by our Henry VIII. worked in that style for his vanished palace of Nonsuch. Gradually,stucco-duro fell into disuse, and coarse pargetry and modelled plaster ceilings became in later years its sole and degenerate descendants.
Gesso is really a painter's art rather than a sculptor's, and consists in impasto painting with a mixture of plaster of Paris or whiting in glue (the composition with which the ground of his pictures is laid) after roughly modelling the higher forms with tow or some fibrous material incorporated with the gesso; but it is questionable if gesso is the best vehicle for any but the lowest relief. By it the most subtle and delicate variation of surface can be obtained, and the finest lines pencilled, analogous, in fact, to the finepâte sur pâtework in porcelain. Its chief use in early times was in the accessories of painting, as the nimbi, attributes, and jewellery of the personage represented, and it was almost entirelyused as a ground-work for gilding upon. Abundant illustration of this usage will be found in the pictures by the early Italian masters in the National Gallery. The retables of altars were largely decorated in this material, a notable example being that still existing in Westminster Abbey.
Many of the gorgeous accessories to the panoply of war in mediæval times, such as decorative shields and the lighter military accoutrements, were thus ornamented in low relief, and on the high-cruppered and high-peaked saddles it was abundantly displayed. In the sixteenth-century work of Germany it seems to have received an admixture of finely-pounded lithographic stone, or hone stone, by which it became of such hardness as to be taken for sculpture in these materials. Its chief use, however, was for the decoration of the casketsand ornamental objects which make up the refinement of domestic life, and the base representative of it which figures on our picture-frames claims a noble ancestry.
Its tenacity, when well prepared, is exceedingly great, and I have used it on glass, on polished marble, on porcelain, and such like non-absorbent surfaces, from which it can scarcely be separated without destruction of its base. Indeed, for miniature art, gesso possesses innumerable advantages not presented by any other medium, but it is hardly available for larger works.
Time and space will not permit my entering more fully into these two forms of plastic art; but seeing that we are annually receiving such large accessions to the numbers of our modellers, and as, of course, it is not possible for all these to achieve success in, or find a means ofliving by, the art of sculpture in marble, I have sought to indicate a home-art means by which, at very moderate cost, they can bring their labours in useful form before the world, and at the same time learn and live.
G. T. Robinson.
Cast iron is nearly our humblest material, and with associations less than all artistic, for it has been almost hopelessly vulgarised in the present century, so much so that Mr. Ruskin, with his fearless use of paradox to shock one into thought, has laid it down that cast iron is an artistic solecism, impossible for architectural service now, or at any time. And yet, although we can never claim for iron the beauty of bronze, it is in some degree a parallel material, and has been used with appreciation in many ways up to the beginning of this century.
Iron was already known in Sussex at the coming of the Romans. Throughout this county and Kent, in out-of-the-way farm-houses, iron fire-backs to open hearths, fine specimens of the founder's art, are still in daily use as they have been for three hundred years or more. Some have Gothic diapers and meanders of vine with heraldic badges and initials, and are evidently cast from models made in the fifteenth century, patterns that remained in stock and were cast from again and again. Others, of the following centuries, have coat-arms and supporters, salamanders in the flames, figures, a triton or centaur, or even a scene, the Judgment of Solomon, or Marriage of Alexander, or, more appropriately, mere pattern-work, vases of flowers and the like. However crude they may be, and some are absurdly inadequate as sculpture, the sense of treatment and relief suitableto the material never fails to give them a fit interest.
With these backs cast-iron fire-dogs are often found, of which some Gothic examples also remain, simple in form with soft dull modelling; later, these were often a mere obelisk on a base surmounted by a ball or a bird, or rude terminal figures; sometimes a more delicate full figure, the limbs well together, so that nothing projects from the general post-like form; and within their limitations they are not without grace and character.
In Frant church, near Tunbridge, are several cast-iron grave slabs about six feet long by half that width, perfectly flat, one with a single shield of arms and some letters, others with several; they are quite successful, natural, and not in the least vulgar.
Iron railings are the most usual formof cast iron as an accessory to architecture; the earlier examples of these in London are thoroughly fit for their purpose and their material; sturdily simple forms of gently swelling curves, or with slightly rounded reliefs. The original railing at St. Paul's, of Lamberhurst iron, is the finest of these, a large portion of which around the west front was removed in 1873. Another example encloses the portico of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. The railing of the central area of Berkeley Square is beautifully designed, and there are instances here, as in Grosvenor Square, where cast iron is used together with wrought, a difficult combination.
Balcony railings and staircase balustrades are quite general to houses of the late eighteenth century. Refined and thoroughly good of their kind, they never fail to please, and never, of course, imitate wrought iron. The design isalways direct, unpretentious and effortless, in a manner that became at this time quite a tradition.
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 castin 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, sometimeseven 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. Inthe 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 alacquer. 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 almostuniversally 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.
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 aslogwood 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 destroyedit as an art. Henceforward there is an absolute divorce between thecommercial processand theartof 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 wasnoother 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 Frenchliners' 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 mediæval 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 dyepar 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 ourforefathers 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 theambers, 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, alldyesmust be soluble colours, differing in this respect frompigments; 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, intoadjectiveandsubstantivedyes.
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 asthe 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 muchimproved 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 orcomposition 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 theywere generally thinking of the tone rather than thetint. When they wanted tospecifya 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 earlyhistoricaltimes), 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 foulblotches 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.