Ornamental Design Embracing The Anatomy Of Pattern The Application Of Ornament With 116 Full Page Illustrations

Author : Lewis F. Day
Publisher : CreateSpace
ISBN 13 : 9781494229740
Total Pages : 134 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (297 download)

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Download or read book The Anatomy of Pattern written by Lewis F. Day and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2013-11 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Author's PREFACE: There was a time in my own struggling for artistic existence, when I should have been so grateful for any practical teaching in ornament, that I fancy there must be students who will find it helpful to have set plainly before them what I have had to puzzle out for myself. Hence this series of Text Books of Ornamental Design; in which I have amplified and illustrated the substance of a series of Cantor Lectures delivered in December last before the Society of Arts. I have assumed no great amount of technical or artistic knowledge on the part of the reader—only that he wants to know. And, elementary as my subject is, I have taken some pains to save him all unnecessary effort in following my meaning. The illustrations are to be taken literally as illustrations, and not by any means considered as ornamental addenda to the book. It is only as diagrams that they have any claim to insertion; although, as an ornamentist, I have naturally made the necessary diagrams as interesting as under the circumstances was feasible. I have tried to make each one of the plates, as far as possible, explanatory in itself; so that from the study of them alone, apart from what I have to say, a fair idea of the construction of pattern might be gained. * * * * * An excerpt from the beginning of the INTRODUCTORY: The dictionary scarcely helps us to a definition of the word pattern, in the somewhat technical sense in which it is used by the designer. Inasmuch as a pattern signifies a "specimen," one might argue that repetition is implied in ornamental pattern. But inasmuch as any "shape or model for imitation" is quite as strictly speaking a pattern, one cannot exactly define pattern as repeating ornament. Nevertheless, pattern mostly comes of repetition. Many a pattern bears on the very face of it the evidence that it grew directly out of the necessity of repetition. It is more than probable that some mechanical necessity gave rise to all geometric pattern; certainly it is impossible to plait, net, knit, weave, or otherwise mechanically make, without producing pattern. It may be so small, as it often is in weaving, that the warp and weft are invisible to the naked eye; but it is there; and all that remains for us to do is to efface it all we can, or to make the best of it. Out of the determination to make the best of it has grown much of the most beautiful pattern-work. To neglect this source of inspiration, therefore, to say nothing of the attempt to suppress it, would seem to be wasteful of opportunity to the very last degree….