Arts and Crafts Essays Part 5

The book is now "forwarded," and pa.s.ses 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 bra.s.s 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 in succession, 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, in England, usually distributed among five cla.s.ses of persons.

(1) The _superintendent_ or person responsible for the whole work.

(2) The _sewer_, usually a woman, who folds, sews, and makes the head-bands.

(3) The _book-edge gilder_, who gilds the edges. Usually a craft apart.

(4) The _forwarder_, who performs all the other operations leading up to the finis.h.i.+ng.

(5) The _finisher_, 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, and be 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 princ.i.p.al features of a bound book.

(1) The _back_, the posterior edge of the volume upon which at the present time the t.i.tle 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 of the 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 s.p.a.ce between the bands.

(5) _Head_ and _tail_, the top and bottom of the back.

(6) The _head-band_ and _head-cap_, the fillet of silk worked in b.u.t.tonhole st.i.tch 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; it is 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.

OF MURAL PAINTING

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, "Mural Painting" 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 subst.i.tution.

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 Berlin the 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 pa.s.sed, between landscape art and the decoration of walls; for the very essence of the landscape art is distance, whereas the 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-fas.h.i.+oned 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 Lords have been specially guarded against atmospheric changes of temperature. Next to real fresco, there has been in repute for a time the watergla.s.s process, in which Daniel Maclise's great paintings have been executed. I see no precise reason why these n.o.ble 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 watergla.s.s, 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 "maronflee," 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 oil painting, 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 very _mat_ medium. 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 cannot go 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 cla.s.s likely to succeed at such work.

Another _sine qua non_ as 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, on the 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 a.s.sociation 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, cla.s.s of Lancastrians. On the other hand, I have noticed that subjects that interest infallibly all cla.s.ses, 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 cla.s.s 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 most religious 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 "Hemicycle," 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.