The Anatomy of Pattern by Lewis Foreman Day

Illustration: Lewis Foreman Day. The Lattice and the Diamond, from The Anatomy of Pattern, 1887.

In 1887, the English designer and critic Lewis Forman Day published the book The Anatomy of Pattern. It was one of a series of important and influential books that he wrote during this period, which saw the nineteenth century slowly draw to a close.

Books that classified the differing styles and accomplishments of both architecture and decoration had been published for centuries in Europe. However, ones dealing specifically with decoration and ornament were particularly popular in the eighteenth century and continued to be so in the nineteenth and into the twentieth century. The myriad titles produced over this long period of the decorative arts tended to deal with the specifics of technical and practical knowledge for the professional decorator. Many of the books gave detailed drawings of decoration that could be used in a variety of situations from the wealthy to the less so.

Illustration: Lewis Foreman Day. The Triangle, from The Anatomy of Pattern, 1887.

However, it was not until the nineteenth century that there began a form of rationalisation of decoration and ornament. Books began to appear that were aimed at the understanding of decoration and pattern. It was thought by many that rather than aimlessly copying a particular style, it was perhaps better to understand the anatomy of that particular decorative style. In many respects, this both changed the knowledge base of individuals involved in the decorative arts, but also helped to push forward a much more fundamental respect for, and understanding of, the vital and fundamental elements of the vocabulary that went to make up the history of decoration.

Day's approach to understanding decoration is particularly interesting, as he seems to be well aware that information concerning the anatomy of pattern itself could often be sketchy and ill taught. Therefore, in his short introduction to The Anatomy of Pattern he quickly draws attention to the fact that:

Illustration: Lewis Foreman Day. The Hexagon, from The Anatomy of Pattern, 1887.

'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.'

To be fair these small books could only ever have been meant as a learning tool for younger students who were starting with little or no knowledge of the vocabulary of decoration, ornament and pattern. However, these booklets would have been supported by a whole range of books that began to appear in the nineteenth century, even before Owen Jones The Grammar of Ornament in 1856. They were particularly popular in Britain, France and Germany and although many were initially based on the different aspects of classicism, the genre soon broke free and books began to appear with a number of differing and often increasingly interconnected themes.

Illustration: Lewis Foreman Day. The Octagon, from The Anatomy of Pattern, 1887.

Two of the most popular from the mid-nineteenth century onwards would have been that of medieval and Islamic decoration and it is interesting to note that Day himself places a certain emphasis on the basics of both pattern systems. What is even more interesting is how fundamentally similar are the founding structures of decoration. Day clearly implies through drawing and text that all decorative styles can be drawn with a few basic design and decoration rules. With a simple skeletal form many styles of pattern can be hung. This revelation opens up a world of infinite variety and possibility for the young student, which is its implication.

Illustration: Lewis Foreman Day. Diapers of Circles, from The Anatomy of Pattern, 1887.

Day's series of small books which also included The Application of Ornament and The Planning of Ornament, although by no means weighty tomes describing every detail and minutiae of decoration and ornament, were still inevitably able to inspire the student to understand the creative possibilities that could be fostered by a simple analysis of the rules that governed the vocabulary of pattern work. That it may well have taken successive generations who produce these rules and guides, goes without saying. Ultimately praise of their often anonymous achievements, which helped to produce the themes for Day's books, would inevitably have been silently dedicated by the author.

A glance at the Further reading links section below will give some indication as to the breadth of subject Day covered in his numerous publications. More examples from a number of Day's books will inevitably follow as articles on The Textile Blog in the coming weeks and months.

Further reading links:
Art nouveau embroidery =: Art in needlework
Nature and ornament;: Nature, the raw material of design
Penmanship of the Xvi, XVII and Xviiith Centuries: A Series of Typical Examples from English and Foreign Writing Books
Windows
Pattern design: A book for students treating in a practical way of the anatomy, planning & evolution of repeated ornament
Alphabets old and new, for the use of craftsmen: with an introductory essay on Art in the alphabet
Ornamental design, embracing The Anatomy of pattern: The planning of ornament; The application of ornament
Every-Day Art; Short Essays on the Arts Not Fine
Stained Glass
The Anatomy of Pattern
Nature In Ornament; An Enquiry Into The Natural Element In Ornamental Design & A Survey Of The Ornamental Treatment Of Natural Forms
Ornament & its application; a book for students, treating in a practical way of the relation of design to material, tools and methods of work
The application of ornament
Enamelling, a comparative account of the development and practice of the art
Alphabets old & new: Containing over one hundred and fifty complete alphabets, thirty series of numerals, and numerous facsimiles of ancient dates, etc., ... alphabet" (Text books of ornamental design)
Every-Day Art

Wallpaper Design by Emanuel Josef Margold

Illustration: Emanuel Josef Margold. Wallpaper design, c1910.

Wallpaper design work is often looked down upon as one of the lesser decorative skills. William Morris was particularly sneering and saw no real creative value or point to wallpaper pattern work. However, that did not stop him from producing prodigious rolls of the stuff throughout most of his career and to a certain extent, it could be said to have kept Morris & Co afloat through the most difficult economic times of the company.

Wallpaper design work is often indicative of a specific design style and can be easily identified and associated, often more so than textiles, with a particular decorative era. Sometimes wallpaper pattern work could even be slightly ahead of the more generalised decorative periods, and examples of wallpaper work can be seen that pre-empted a number of the major interior styles and movements, particularly in the twentieth century. However, even when considering nineteenth and indeed eighteenth century wallpaper work, styles and pattern work were often relatively immediate and topical. Whether this had more to do with the immediacy of the medium, compared to other areas of interiors such as textiles and furniture, or whether it had more to do with the large number of companies involved in the business of wallpaper making and the extreme competition that that engendered, is to be debated.

Wallpaper decoration and the professional designers that fed the industry, usually on a freelance commission basis, were wide-ranging and covered a host of skills from illustration to architecture. Many had little or no experience in the basics of wallpaper design, which is a technical as well as creative occupation. That a large proportion of designers, both commissioned and employed by wallpaper companies were primarily textile designers, suggests a similarity in both design fields. This would help to explain why textiles and wallpaper design are often so closely linked as disciplines when discussing the history of interiors.

The Austrian architect and designer Emanuel Josef Margold produced the two wallpaper designs that illustrate this article at the turn of the first decade of the twentieth century, in about 1910. Margold was known to have produced a range of work during the early twentieth century that included printed and woven textiles, embroidery, and wallpaper design. He was a member of the Wiener Werkstatte where he was for a while Josef Hoffmann's assistant. This relationship often gives the impression that Margold's work was derived from that of Hoffmann, and while there is a certain similarity, it only really corresponds when seen in the larger light of Austrian and German Jugendstil decoration. It has to be remembered that while Margold was indeed a member of the Wiener Werkstatte, he was also a one time resident at the Darmstadt Artists' colony, and also a member of both the German and Austrian Werkbund. This perhaps gives Margold a much larger and more comprehensive appreciation of the decorative arts in Central Europe before the First World War, and also that of his place within it, than perhaps the generalised moniker of being an assistant to Josef Hoffmann.

Illustration: Emanuel Josef Margold. Wallpaper design, c1910.

As to the two examples of his decorative wallpaper work, both appear bold, strikingly confident and graphically motivated. Neither show any of the complexity and involved style that was popular in both France and Britain. To be fair there was an element of pairing down and simplifying of wallpaper design even in France and Britain, although both came to this result from different directions, which was often the result of revivals and historical precedents. However, neither country was involved in modern ideals on anywhere near the scale produced in Central Europe. The movement in Germany and Austria was very much a matter of looking for new concepts and ideas and using many of the new skills being rapidly developed in both architecture and illustration.

This initial discovery and exploration was to become an unstoppable movement that would take decoration and pattern into a whole new area of exploration during the 1920s and 1930s. Inevitably due to the start already made by Margold and others like him throughout Germany and Austria in the first decade of the twentieth century, the notion of true modernism and the exploration and development of that decorative ideal went much further and faster than that of France with its conservatively and elitist led Art Deco formula. 

That decoration and pattern itself was to suffer the shock of being removed or at least disassociated from architecture, and to an extent interiors by the Modernist movement, has led to a seemingly permanent disruption of the central role decoration played for centuries in the cultural life of Europe. That Modernism generally saw the decorative arts as an irrelevance, is still very much with us today and can clearly be seen when considering the very subservient role that the decorative arts play in the world of contemporary architecture.

This was clearly not in the minds of those who designed wallpaper pattern work in 1910. However, the direction of increased simplicity on all fronts of the decorative arts during this period, does beg the question as to the reasoning behind the simplifying and de-cluttering of interiors. It seems as if there was perhaps more significance to the downsizing and eventual downgrading of decoration and pattern than being merely that of the removal of the more ornate excesses of late Victorian decoration and the increasingly scientific approach to health and interiors. Not a conspiracy as such, but perhaps a generalised shift in emphasis and ideal.

Further reading links:
Wallpaper: A History of Style and Trends
Pattern Design: Period Design Source Book
Wallpaper, its history, design and use,
Twentieth-Century Pattern Design
German Modernism: Music and the Arts (California Studies in 20th-Century Music)
Exotic Spaces in German Modernism (Oxford Modern Languages & Literature Monographs)
The Total Work of Art in European Modernism (Signale: Modern German Letters, Cultures, and Thought)
Erich Mendelsohn and the Architecture of German Modernism (Modern Architecture and Cultural Identity)
German Cities and Bourgeois Modernism, 1890-1924
German Encounters with Modernism, 1840-1945
The Divided Heritage: Themes and Problems in German Modernism
Wiener Werkstatte: 1903-1932 (Special Edition)
Wiener Werkstatte: Design in Vienna 1903-1932
Textiles of the Wiener Werkstatte: 1910-1932
Viennese Design and the Wiener Werkstatte
Wiener Werkstatte: Avantgarde, Art Deco, Industrial Design (German Edition)
Wonderful Wiener Werkstatte

Lace Design by H. D. Leipheimer

Illustration: H. D. Leipheimer. Lace centrepiece, c1904.

This lace centrepiece above was designed by the German designer H. D. Leipheimer in about 1904. He produced work within a number of textile disciplines including printed textiles and embroidery. The style of his work does seem to change somewhat over the different disciplines, even though they were all produced over the same short period of the middle of the first decade of the twentieth century. In further articles of The Textile Blog, Leipheimer's printed textile and embroidery work will be highlighted.

This particular lace piece, although still showing obvious signs of being connected to the long traditions of the lace craft, does give some indication of the changes in design style and emphasis that was taking place at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, particularly in Germany and Austria. Although it is often seen that France and Belgium were the decorative centres of the European decorative arts in this period, it is also true to say that Central Europe had a wholly independent decorative and design path of its own. Athough it did indeed share elements with Western Europe, it was still very much regarded as a seperate force within the larger decorative arts world. 

Leipheimer's design work for the lace craft discipline shows a decorative dynamism that brought elements of both tradition and modernity into its mixture. Its unusual corralling of tiny enclosed circles of different dimensions seems somewhat similar to the decorative pattern work that Gustav Klimt used in some of his fine art work. They appear to be groupings of small semi-abstract flower shapes, much used by Klimt and therefore linking Leipheimer's work, at least in this particular case, with the decorative formats of Austria. However, this style, of which Klimt was an important element, was always relatively broad, and could and was used on a much larger European scale than that of just Austria.

Although the piece itself is in fact part of a geometrical framework and highly symmetrical in its construction, it also gives the impression that there is an element of natural randomness to the pattern work. This has more to do with the structure of the work than anything else. The framework is casual and unpretentious and therefore any symmetry that shows through tends to be seen equally in a low key and casual manner. Rather like a snowflake, which although often seen technically as strict in its geometrical framework, is also seen as a natural and creative phenomenon, rather than a dry and crusty construction.

Leipheimer has given a life to his lace work and although, as already stated, his other textile work in different disciplines differs sometimes dramatically from this piece, they are still creatively anchored to elements of individual expression. It is easy to see features of the pattern work that are perhaps shared with Klimt in this piece for example, but it is also easy to dismiss the individual input of Leipheimer himself and his own creative journey, a journey that would have been separate and certainly independent from those creative individuals around him. Even though perhaps travelling along some of the same routes as the Viennese artist, how those journeys are interpreted is up to the individual and their own creative dynamics.

The journey of the artist, designer or crafts person should never be underestimated. Creativity is a uniquely individual attainment and no matter how often creative individuals travel along the same artistic pathway, a separate and distinct experience is always achieved.

Further reading links:
Modern Style: Jugendstil/Art Nouveau 1899-1905
Jugendstil Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau: Utopia: Reconciling the Irreconcilable (Taschen's 25th Anniversary Special Editions Series)
Art Nouveau
Gustav Klimt: Landscapes
Klimt (Taschen 25)
Klimt (World of Art)
422 Art Nouveau Designs and Motifs in Full Color (Dover Pictorial Archives)
Treasury of Art Nouveau Design & Ornament (Dover Pictorial Archive Series)
Art Nouveau Designs (Design Source Books)
Art Nouveau Floral Patterns and Stencil Designs in Full Color (Dover Pictorial Archives)
Art Nouveau (Dover Pictura)
Art Nouveau Motifs and Vignettes (Dover Pictorial Archives)
305 Authentic Art Nouveau Jewelry Designs
Art Nouveau (Art and Ideas Series)
Art Nouveau Decorative Ironwork
300 Art Nouveau Designs and Motifs in Full Color (Dover Pictorial Archive Series)
Art Nouveau Flowers (Design Source Books)
Gustav Klimt: Art Nouveau Visionary
Art Nouveau, 1890-1914
Art Nouveau (World of Art)
Art Nouveau: An Anthology of Design and Illustration from "The Studio" (Dover Pictorial Archive Series)