hings must ultimately be governed by
their relation to other parts in any general scheme--circumstances
necessitate their being often designed apart. Still, if the colour of a
pattern has been carefully thought out, or rather harmoniously felt, as
a real organic thing, it is sure to fit into its place when its time
comes.

In arranging our design of colour we can have no better guide, as to
proportions and quality, than nature, and should do well, as a matter of
practice, to take a flower, or the plumage of a bird, or the colours of
a landscape, and adapt them to some particular pattern or scheme of
decoration, following the relative degrees of tint and their quantities
as nearly as possible. To do this successfully requires some invention
and taste; but successful, or unsuccessful, one could hardly fail to
learn something positive and valuable about colour, if the attempt was
conscientiously made; and fresher motives and sweeter colour would be
more likely to result from such study.

[Importance of Pure Tints]

I think it is a very important thing in all decorative work to keep
one's colours pure in quality, and to avoid muddy or heavy tints. Brown
is an especially difficult colour to use, because of its generally heavy
effect as a pigment, and the difficulty of harmonizing it with other
colours except as an outline; and even here it makes all the difference
whether it is a cool or a hot shade. A hot brown is most destructive of
harmony in colours. It is safe, as a rule, to make it lean to green, or
bronze, or gold.

As a general rule it is well to work either in a range of cool tints--a
cool key of colour, or the reverse--a warm and rich one. Few cool
harmonies can be better than ultramarine and turquoise on greenish
white, of which the Persians and Indians are so fond in tile-work. They
are delightful to the eye, while peculiarly adapted to the work, owing
their quality to the oxide of copper, which the firing brings out so
well.

Blues and greens and grays, relieved with white and yellow and orange:
or, reds and yellows, relieved with white and opposed by blacks,
generally answer: or a range of reds together, or range of blues, or of
yellows, with black and white for contrast and accent. Blue and white,
too, can be modified in quality; black may be greenish in tone, or
brownish, bluish, or purplish according to the harmony aimed at. White
may be pure or ivory-ton