f an Oriental rug. The former, it
will be seen, is an imitative, the latter an inventive art. In
the one, the elements of the subject are rendered with all possible
naturalism; while, in the other, effects of atmosphere and the
accidental play of light and shade are sacrificed to a conventional
rendering, by which the design is kept flat upon the paper or wall.
One represents the point of view of the painter and the pictorial
illustrator; the other that of the designer and the architect. The
second, or conventional idea, has now come to be widely accepted
as a true basic principle in decorative art.

[Side note: _The New Decorative School_]

The idea is not by any means novel; it has always been the fundamental
principle of Japanese art; but its genesis was not in Japan. The
immediate inspiration of the new Decorative school, as far as it
is concerned with the decoration of books, at least, was found in
the art of Duerer, Holbein, and the German engravers of the sixteenth
century,--interest in which period has been lately so stimulated
by the Arts and Crafts movement in England. This movement, which
may fairly be regarded as one of the most powerful influences in
latter-day art, was begun with the aim of restoring those healthy
conditions which obtained before the artist and the craftsman came
to be two distinct and very much extranged workers. The activities
of the movement were at first more directly concerned with the
art of good book-making, which fructified in the famous Kelmscott
Press (an institution which, while necessarily undemocratic, has
exerted a tremendous influence on modern printing), and to-day
there is scarcely any sphere of industrial art which has not been
influenced by the Arts and Crafts impetus.

[Side note: _Criticisms of the School_]

This modern decorative renaissance has a root in sound art principles,
which promises for it a vigorous vitality; and perhaps the only
serious criticism which has been directed against it is, that it
encourages archaic crudities of technique which ignore the high
development of the reproductive processes of the present day; and,
moreover, that its sympathies tend towards mediaeval life and feeling.
While such a criticism might reasonably be suggested by the work of
some of its individual adherents, it does not touch in the least
the essential principles of the school. Art cannot be said to scout
modernity because it refuses to adjust itself to the every capric