individual artist.

[Variation of Allied Forms]

The most beautiful kinds of design rather seem to depend upon the
harmonious variation in association of similar or allied forms than on
sharp contrasts.

In compositions of figures the association of the delicate curves and
angles of the human form, and the lines of drapery, with the emphatic
verticals and horizontals, the semicircles and rectangles of
architectural form, for instance, are always delightful in competent
hands; as also compositions of figure and landscape, with its
possibilities of undulating line corrected by the severe horizon, or
sea-line, and contrasted with the vertical lines of trees, stems, and
the rich forms of foliage masses.

For the same reasons both of correspondence and contrast, masses of type
or lettering of good form are admirable as foils to figure designs, in
which commemorative monuments of all kinds and book designs afford
abundant opportunities to the designer.

[Use Of Human Figure and Animal Forms]

In surface or textile decoration of all kinds nothing gives so much
relief and vitality as the judicious use of animal forms and the human
figure, although they are not much favoured at present. The forms of
birds and animals, if designed in relation to the rest of the pattern,
will give a pleasant variety of form and line, and in their forms and
lines we find just those elements both of correspondence and contrast,
in their relation to geometric or to floral design, which are so
valuable.

[Illustration (f063a): Use of Inclosing Boundaries in Designing Animal
Forms in Decorative Pattern.]

In order to combine such forms successfully, however, great care in
designing is necessary; and a good sound principle to follow as a
general guide is to make the boundaries of the bird or animal touch the
limits of an imaginary inclosing form of some simple geometric or floral
or leaf shape (see p. 104[f063a]). This would at once control the form
and render it available in a pattern as a decorative mass or unit. The
particular shape of the controlling form must, of course, depend upon
the general character of the design, whether free and flowing or square
and restricted, the nature of the repeat, the ultimate position of the
work, and so on. A study of Gothic heraldry and the early Sicilian silk
patterns would be very instructive in this connection, since it i