Pattern Design

by Lewis F. Day

Overview

Take any form you choose and repeat it at regular intervals, and, just as repetitive sounds produce rhythm or cadence, you have pattern. However, the use of pattern in design is no haphazard matter, but a disciplined activity in which the artists must impose a pleasing order and structure on the whole to achieve an aesthetically satisfying end product.
This classic guide, revised and expanded by Amor Fenn three decades after its publication, teaches artists to do just that. Surveying a multitude of applications, from architectural detail to decorative textile printing and typographic patterns, Day provides insight into the geometric foundations of all repeating patterns, and treats in a practical way the anatomy, planning, and evolution of repeated ornament. He demonstrates the extent to which pattern is the essence of the ornamental arts, and offers a wealth of technical information for the student and designer.
Generously illustrated with more than 270 designs ranging from old Japanese, Persian, and Arabian patterns to early 20th-century motifs, Pattern Design will stimulate the imaginations and advance the skills of novices and experts alike.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780486139166
Publisher:	Dover Publications
Publication date:	01/17/2013
Series:	Dover Art Instruction
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	55 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

Read an Excerpt

PATTERN DESIGN

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By LEWIS F. DAY

Dover Publications, Inc.

Copyright © 1999 Dover Publications, Inc.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-486-13916-6

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CHAPTER 1

WHAT PATTERN IS.

Pattern not understood—The meaning of the word—Comes of repetition, and is closely connected with manufacture—Has always a geometric basis—Use and necessity of system in design—Lines inevitable, and must not be left to chance.

To readers of a book upon the subject, no apology for pattern is necessary. Modest as may be its pretensions to artistic consideration, it covers ground enough to command attention. It is here and there and everywhere about us. There is too much of it by more than half—and more than half of it is of such a kind as to make the discriminating wish they could do without it altogether. Still, there it is ; and there is no escape from it.

If folk knew a little more about it, realised what was and what was not within the control of the designer, understood how pattern came to be, and something of its scope and purpose, as well as of the processes through which a design must pass before ever it comes (for their momentary delight or lasting annoyance) to be produced, they would be less at its mercy. For the difficulty of designing is by no means in proportion to the importance of the field of design ; and in the case of repeated pattern, with which we have mostly to do—even those of us who are not concerned with trade or manufacture—the invention it requires is in inverse ratio to the free scope afforded. It is easier, as William Morris confessed, to design a big hand-made carpet, in which the artist is free to do very much as he likes, than to plan a small repeating pattern to the width of Wilton pile or common Kidderminster. The art of pattern design consists not in spreading yourself over a wide field, but in expressing yourself within given bounds.

The very strictness of such bounds is a challenge to invention. In the realm of applied design manufacture is autocrat, and the machine is taskmaster. Let who can rebel against their authority. For those who cannot—and they are the great majority—revolt is futile. We are all of us, artists no less than the rest of the world, dependent upon manufacture ; and those of the title who stand aloof from it give ground for the accusation, commonly brought against artists, of being at best unpractical and wrong-headed. Their sense of fairness is at fault, too, in blaming manufacture because it falls short of art, while they stand by and refuse a helping hand to the makers of things which will be made, and must be made, and made by machinery too, whether they like it or whether they do not. It rests with those who have some faculty of design (their name is not legion) to come to the aid of manufacture, which, without help from art, is given over to the ugliness which they deplore.

Pattern, it seems plain, and repeated pattern, conforming to the conditions of manufacture and even to mechanical production, is a consideration of importance, not merely to manufacturers and others engaged in industries into which art may possibly enter, but to all whose comfort and well-being depends in any degree upon the beauty and fitness of their surroundings.

The word "pattern" is here used in a somewhat technical sense—not, as the dictionary has it, to mean "a specimen" nor yet "a shape or model for imitation," but ornament and especially ornament in repetition. Pattern is, in fact, the natural outgrowth of repetition; and in every case the lines of its construction may be traced ; they pronounce themselves, indeed, with geometric precision. Geometric pattern grew, of course, out of primitive methods of workmanship. No mechanism so simple but it gives rise to it. To plait, to net, to weave, or in any way mechanically to make, is to produce pattern. The coarser the work, the more plainly is this apparent—as, for example, in the mesh of a coarse canvas ; but, though refinement of workmanship may be carried to the point at which, as in the finest satin or the most sumptuous velvet, warp and weft are not perceptible to the naked eye, the web is always there, and forms always a pattern. The pride of the mechanist is to efface such evidence of structure. To the artist it adds an interest; and, far from desiring to obliterate it, he prefers frankly to confess it, and to make the best of the texture or pattern which a process may give. He regards it as a source of inspiration even, which to neglect would seem to him wasteful of artistic opportunity.

It is to his determination to make the best of whatever may naturally come of any way of working that we owe much of the simplest and most satisfactory, if not absolutely the most beautiful, patternwork.

So infallibly does the repetition of simple units, resulting no less from elementary processes of handwork than from mechanical production, end in pattern, that, wherever there is ordered repetition there it is. Take any form you please and repeat it at regular intervals, and, as surely as recurrent sounds give rhythm or cadence, whether you want it or not, you have pattern. It is so in nature, even in the case of forms neither identical nor yet recurring at set intervals. The daisies make a pattern on the lawn, the pebbles on the path, the dead leaves in the lane; the branches of the trees above, the naked twigs against the sky, the clouds that mottle the blue heavens by day, the stars that diaper their depths by night, all make perpetual pattern. The grain of wood, the veining of marble, the speckling of granite, fall so obviously into pattern that they have been accepted in place of intelligent design. The surface of the sea is rippled, as the sandy shore is ribbed, with wind-woven device, the rocks are covered with shellfish clustering into pattern. Your footprints, as you walk, make a pattern on the pattern of the dewy grass; your breath upon the window-pane crystallises into pattern.

Technically speaking, however, we understand by pattern not merely the recurrence of similar forms, but their recurrence at regular intervals. The Japanese rendering of peach-blossoms on the surface of thin ice is undeniably ornamental. It may be regarded as part of a pattern, but, to be complete, it should repeat, which here it does not.

It must not be inferred from the casual occurrence of what is called pattern that there is anything casual about design: the very name denies that it is so.

The artist's hand does not crawl aimlessly over the paper and trail behind it flowers of the imagination. There is scope in ornament for all the fancy of a fertile brain ; but design is no mere overflow of a brimming imagination ; it is cunningly built up on lines necessary to its consistency, laboriously, it might be said, were it not that to the artist such labour is delight. Whoever finds it irksome may be sure his bent is not in the direction of applied design.

The main lines on which repeated ornament is built are so few and simple that they can quite easily be traced. Just as the man of science divides the animal world into families and classes, so may the man of art classify pattern according to its structure. He is able, no less than the scientist, to show the affinity between groups of design to all first appearances dissimilar, and to lay bare the very skeletons upon which all possible pattern is framed.

The idea of setting out to design a pattern without regard to its logical construction is contrary to reason. It is all very well to protest that art is free of laws : they govern it none the less. And the pattern designer is bound to reckon with the dry bones of design. With regard to the unit of his design he is free ; he may, if he will, throw taste to the winds; but when the pattern comes to be repeated, the very order of its repetition reveals the skeleton ; it was in the cupboard all the while.

This insistence upon the geometric basis of design may seem like dogmatism; and all dogma cuts two ways, irritating the student into opposition where it does not convince him; but experience will prove to him that the way to avoid the appearance of formality is not to set to work at haphazard. Suppose one were to begin without any thought of formal distribution and to design, let us say, a scroll, in itself as graceful as might be. A series of such scrolls, side by side, would show lines not in the least contemplated by the draughtsman, and in all probability as inelegant as they were unexpected. Who has not suffered in his time from wallpaper or other patterns in which certain ill-defined but awkward stripes would thrust themselves upon his attention? And to the designer himself one of his strangest experiences is the trick a seemingly quite innocent pattern will play upon him in repetition. A design, for example, which appears to be quite evenly distributed will run, when hung, into lines which slant in such a way as to give the impression that the walls are not true, or that the paper has been hung askew.

In a pattern in which patches of the ground are left bare, the gaps are by no means accidental. They are most deliberately planned—and from the very beginning—or there is no knowing what havoc they might play in repetition.

Amateurs will tell you (and a painter is an amateur when first he tries his hand at pattern) that the lines which are so distressing in incompetent pattern are the result of mathematical planning. That is not merely false, but, as every practical designer knows, the very opposite of the truth. There is no more radical mistake than to suppose that the awkward stripes which come out for the first time when a pattern is repeated are the result of the designer's having worked upon the obtrusive lines : they are the natural and inevitable result of not working upon any lines at all. If you work without a system the only safety is in insignificance. A pattern may be comparatively featureless; and, so long as there is in it no feature pronounced enough to distinguish itself, lack of order may perhaps pass unnoticed But it is hardly worth while going out of the way to secure an end so insignificant.

A design of any character has usually in it features which, when it is repeated, stand prominently out from the rest. To these the eye is irresistibly drawn; and, not merely so, but the lines they take in relation one to another insist on being seen. It is barely possible that, in the event of such lines not having been taken into consideration by the designer, they should fall together in the happiest conceivable way. More likely they will look awry.

The balance which in a single composition satisfies the eye is not enough when it comes to repetition. The shoulders of the mantling, for example, on page 7, one rising above the lion's back, the other falling below it, would in repeated scrollwork almost certainly give the impression of being out of the level. The only way to be sure that scrolls in repetition will balance is to begin by disposing them, as in the wall-pattern opposite, quite symmetrically.

The designer of experience runs no unnecessary risk. Accepting some sort of geometric plan as the basis of his design, and appreciating at their worth the severity and strength resulting from it, and the sense of scale it gives, he makes sure of lines deliberately fulfilling the purposes of decoration. He will counteract a tendency to stripes in one direction by features which direct attention otherwards; he will so clothe a doubtful line that there shall be no fear of its asserting itself, as in its nakedness it might. The lines he leaves in his design were chosen for their strength and steadiness. Such lines as reveal themselves are the lines upon which it was built, by no means unforeseen.

If lines left to chance reveal themselves, as they are apt to do, in sequence not to be endured, what else was to be expected? Only by a miracle could they happen to fall precisely as art would have them. The best of players makes sometimes a happy fluke in design; but he does not reckon upon such luck.

The point is this: it is, practically speaking, inevitable that lines shall in the end assert themselves in repeated pattern; if the artist does not arrange for them in his design, they fall as may happen ; it is therefore the merest precaution of common-sense on his part to lay them down from the beginning, to make them the framework upon which his pattern is built, the skeleton of his design.

A practical designer has not, as a rule, much difficulty in tracing the bones of a design, amply as they may be wrapped in foliation or other disguising detail. To lay them bare enough, however, to demonstrate the anatomy of pattern, recourse must be had to dissection.

CHAPTER 2

THE SQUARE.

Geometry the basis of all pattern—Breaks in the simple stripe give cross—lines-Hence the lattice and the chequer, on which a vast variety of pattern is built.

IT will be as well, before proceeding to dissect design apparently far removed from the geometric, to show the lines which of themselves make pattern. They prove to be the basis of all pattern.

The simplest of all patterns is the stripe—a series of parallel lines in one direction. But the limits of the mere stripe are soon reached; for any break in the repeated line or any deviation from the straight gives, by its regular recurrence, other lines in the cross direction. Gaps in a series of broken horizontal lines (4) give vertical lines; and in the same way the points of the zig-zags mark the upright (5). Any recurrent feature between the lines gives, again, lines across, slanting or at right angles to them, as the case may be (6 and 7). We arrive in effect, as the primitive basket weaver must have arrived in fact, at cross-lines ; and upon these a vast amount of varied pattern is built up, the simplest forms of which are the lattice and the chequer (8). They must also have been the earliest evolved by the basket plaiter. Grasses all of one colour naturally showed the lines of interweaving, the lattice (9). Grasses alternately light and dark in colour asserted their chequered masses of colour, and gave the chessboard pattern. Strips of different colours led also to more intricate pattern (10); and the width of the coloured strips had only to be varied to give all manner of plaids and tartans.

Something of the variety of pattern resulting from the closer or looser plaiting of equal strips is indicated below—as well as the further variety which comes of strips of unequal width (11 to 14).

On the regular network of cross-lines a vast number of patterns not necessarily regular may be built up, many of them suggestive of plaiting, if not actually suggested by it.

Taken singly, and filled in alternately light and dark, the squares give only the chess-board pattern ; taken in groups of two, or alternately of two and one (15), they begin to show possibilities in the way of upright or diagonal patterns. Grouped in threes or fives (16) they give already independent units of design. The unit of the Arab diaper (17) is clearly a group of eight squares.

Working upon the lines of the lattice, we arrive, without in any way departing from them, but simply by intermitting some of them, at something in the nature of a key or fret pattern (18). The elaborate Japanese fret on page 16 is built upon that plan, upon which it will be seen (same page) all manner of interlacing and free diapers may be schemed.

There are two ways of setting about design of this sort, both of which amount practically to the same thing. The one is to rule square lines and rub out parts of them, the other is to work with a pen or a brush upon faintly ruled paper—an exercise childish enough for the kindergarten, but by no means to be despised by the artist whose soul is not above pattern. It is wonderful what a vast and varied range of pattern is to be built upon the simple scaffolding of square lines.

The chess-board has only to be turned partly round to give us diamonds—but as they are still square, and it is only the point of view that is altered, we have as yet (as in the case of a diagonal stripe, which is still only a stripe) no different plan, but only a difference of effect—so great, however, as to be worth noting, and of quite exceptional importance when it comes to the construction of freer pattern.

(Continues...)

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Table of Contents

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
NOTE OF ACKNOWLEDGMENT
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
I. WHAT PATTERN IS
Pattern not understood
The meaning of the word
"Comes of repetition, and is closely connected with manufacture"
Has always a geometric basis
Use and necessity of system in design
"Lines inevitable, and must not be left to chance"
II. THE SQUARE
Geometry the basis of all pattern
Breaks in the simple stripe give cross-lines
"Hence the lattice and the chequer, on which a vast variety of pattern is built"
III. THE TRIANGLE
The square lattice crossed by diagonal lines gives the triangle
Hence the diamond
"And out of that the hexagon, the star, and other geometric units familiar in Arab diaper"
IV. THE OCTAGON
Four series of lines give the octagon
"Not the unit of a complete pattern, but the basis of some radiating patterns"
"More complicated cross-lines, giving sixteen and eighteen sided figures, result in more elaborate pattern, but involve no new principle "
Pentagon pattern really built on simple trellis lines
V. THE CIRCLE
The circle gives no new plan but only curvilinear versions of the foregoing
The wave a rounded zig-zag
The honeycomb compressed circles
"Segments of circles give scale pattern, a curvilinear variation upon diamond"
The ogee
The circle itself a scaffolding for design
VI. THE EVOLUTION OF PATTERN
Various starting points for the same pattern
Six ways in which it might have been evolved
The construction of sundry geometric diapers
Influence of material upon design
Some complex lattices
VII. BORDERS
What a border is
"Includes frieze, pilster, frame, &c."
Simplicity
Short interval of repeat
Flowing and broken borders
Mere lines
"Stop" borders"
Frets
Evolute
Zig-zag
Chevron
Undulate
Guilloche
Interlacing
Chain
Strap
Branching lines
Spiral scroll
Counterchange
Intermittent borders
Block border
Panel border
The S scroll
Natural growth
Enclosed borders
"Fringes, &c."
Strong and weak side of border
Direction of border
Corners and their influence upon design
Circular and concentric borders
VIII. PRACTICAL PATTERN PLANNING
Possible and practicable lines of pattern construction
Lines often fixed for the designer
Conditions of production affect plan
"Triangular plan, oriental"
"Rectangular plan, western"
Relation of one plan to the other
Of triangular and octagonal repeat to rectangular
Possibilities of the diamond
Design regulated by proportions of repeat
IX. THE TURNOVER
A weaver's device
Doubles width of pattern
Exact turnover not desirable where conditions do not make it necessary
Balance must be preserved
Use of doubling over in border design
Suited to stenciling and pouncing
X. "THE "DROP" REPEAT"
Scope given by drop repeat
Designed on diamond lines
And on the square
Geometrically same result
Practically different patterns
Opportunity of carrying pattern beyond width of stuff
Brick or masonry plan
Octagonal plan
Step pattern
False drop
XI. SMALLER REPEATS
Width of repeat divisible into width of material
Repeat two-thirds or two-fifths of width of material
Full width repeat seeming smaller
Variety in apparent uniformity
Weavers' ways of doing it
Same principle applied to larger design
Method and haphazard
More complicated system
Other plans for disguising precise order of small repeats
XII. SUNDRY SCAFFOLDINGS
Importance of variety of plan
Area of pattern not confined to area of repeat
Excursions compensated by incursions
Lines thus disguised
"Wave-lines, turned over, result in ogee"
Wave-lines result from working within narrow upright lines
Uprightness of narrow repeats counteracted by lines across
Diagonal wavelines to connect features forming horizontal band
Designs obviously based upon slanting and horizontal lines
Wave-line from side to side of broad repeat
Scaffolding of an old Louis XVI. Pattern
XIII. THE TURN-ROUND
Unit of design may be turned part way round
Unit of 6 by 6 inches results in repeat of 12 by 12 inches
Works either on the straight or as a drop
For radiating pattern a triangle half size of smaller square suffices for unit
Fold and fold again
Arab lattice pattern dissected
XIV. HOW TO SET ABOUT DESIGN
Free patterns planned on formal lines
Features recur at intervals determined by unit of repeat
Planning the only way to avoid unforseen effects
Means of disguising formal lines
Necessity for system
Genesis of counter-change border
Of geometric diaper
How not to do it
Detail not to be determined too soon
Genesis of conventional floral pattern starting with the masses
Of a drop pattern
Of a pattern stating with line
Of a floral pattern starting with distribution of flowers
Of a velvet pattern starting with severe lines
"Inhabited" pattern"
Evolution of Italian arabesque pilaster
Animal form in pattern
Starting at a venture
And from an idea
Afterthoughts
XV. TO PROVE A PATTERN
The unit of design a repeat
Repeat to be tested
One repeat not enough to show how design works
More must be indicated
Test of roughing out on one plan and working out on another
Accurate fit essential
Proving to be done at early stage of design
Test of cutting up drawing and rearranging the parts
XVI. PATTERN PLANNING IN RELATION TO TECHNIQUE
Dimensions of design determined by conditions of manufacture
Possibilities in block printing
Limitations in weaving
Narrow repeat a condition of
Sponging down
Colour designs in colour from the first
Colour as a help in complicated design
Form and colour
Design only a map of form and colour
Precaution against self-deception
The evolution of a design
Tracing paper
Accident
Mechanical helps
Hardness
Precision essential
Body colour
Water colour
Systematic use of mixed tints
Working drawing only a means to an end.
XIX. COLOUR
Close connection between form and colour
Effect of colour upon design
Drawing should show not merely effect of colour but its plan
A map of colour value and relation
Differences that colour makes
Casual colour
Colour and material
"Geometric form softened by colour, accidental or cunningly planned"
Confusion of form by colour
Emphasis of form by colour
Change of colour in ground
XX. THE INVENTION OF PATTERN
Imitation and translation
Memory and imagination
Old-time content with tradition
Modern self-consciousness
Originality
Conditions of to-day
Inspiration
How far nature helps
The use of old work
The designer and his trade
The artist and his personality
XXI. DEVELOPMENT OF PATTERN DESIGN - AN ADDITIONAL CHAPTER BY AMOR FENN.
Sources of nineteenth-century design
Augustus Welby Pugin and the Gothic revival
Designs for the Houses of Parliament
Mid Victorian vogue
Owen Jones and ancient Western and Oriental art
Bruce J. Talbert
Edwin William Godwin
William Morris
The Art Workers' Guild
Walter Crane
Lewis F. Day
C.F.A. Voysey
Arts and Crafts Society
E. W. Gimson
L' art nouveau
Continental designs
"W. Lovatelli-Colombo, Paris"
"Josef Hoffmann, Vienna"
Futuristic influence
Maurice Dufrène
Burkhalter
Geometric motifs
Stépanova
Modernistic art
Georges Valmier
Strong colour effects
Hermann Huffert
INDEX TO TEXT AND ILLUSTRATIONS