eir Arab and Sicilian models, and
also like their Spanish contemporaries, represented, and sought to
represent nothing on earth. It was all floreated and meandering
design; the motive reminding one of the pine-apple and the acanthus,
or of vine stems meeting or parting, but never anything naturalistic
for a moment. When animals were introduced it was always as a pattern
doubled face to face, as if folded down a straight line.

We may say the same of the succeeding Louis Quatorze and the Louis
Quinze styles, which were of the culminating period of clever and
fantastic conventional decoration.

Our modern designs have phases of imitation, and the patterns of rich
brocades which our great-grandmothers wore, came into fashion again
about the third decade of this century. Now we have been trying to
find our inspirations further back, and some of our copies of the
simpler Sicilian patterns, with an occasional pair of birds, or a
conventional plant, imitating the motive of the tree of life, have
been very pretty. The only defect is the poverty which results from
the absence of any active and informing motive. It is, however, easier
to criticize than to create.

[Illustration: Fig. 14.
Radiated Pattern.]

I would venture here to find fault with a very common method of
converting a natural object into a conventional pattern, by radiation.
Certain modes of repetition are very objectionable. A pattern, for
instance, repeated four times round a centre, or a natural flower
repeated exactly, but lying north, south, east, and west, are more or
less inartistic, we may say vulgar. (Fig. 14.)

[Illustration: Fig. 15.
Radiated Sunflower.]

A natural flower may be conventionalized and radiated by placing it in
the centre of the composition facing you; and the leaves arranged
surrounding it, so as to formalize the design, though there is nothing
really unnatural in the way in which they are made to grow. The
illustration of a radiated sunflower explains my meaning.

It has been already observed that by repetition almost any object may
be reduced to a pattern, but taste must be exercised in the selection
of what is appropriate and beautiful. Radiation is also really a
useful factor in conventional art, but common sense must guide the
artist here as well as taste. In radiating the forms of a flower,
nature gives endless hints of beauty; but a radiating pattern of human
figures would be ridiculous, and even the branches o