CHAPTER XI
CONTOURS OF SURFACE
Adaptation of Old Designs to Modern Purposes - "Throwing About" - Critical Inspection of Work from a Distance as it Proceeds.
Fig. 22.
Here are two fragments of a kind of running ornament. Fig. 22 is a part of the jamb molding of a church in Vicenza. If you observe carefully, you will find that it has a decidedly classical appearance. The truth is that it was carved by a Gothic artist late in the fourteenth century, just after the Renaissance influence began to make itself felt. It is an adaptation by him [104] of what he remembered having seen in his travels of the new style, grafted upon the traditional treatment ready to his hand.
It suits our purpose all the better on that account, for the reason that we are going to re-adapt his design into an exercise, and shall attempt to make it suitable to our limited ability in handling the tools, to the change in material [105] from stone to wood, and lastly, to our different aims and motives in the treatment of architectural ornament. Please do all this for yourself in another design, and look upon this suggestion merely in the light of helping a lame dog over a stile.
In this exercise (Fig. 23) you will repeat all you have already done with the others, [106] until you come to the shaping of the leaves, in which an undulating or up and down motion has been attempted. This involves a kind of double drawing in the curves, one for the flat and one for the projections; so that they may appear to glide evenly from one point to the other, sweeping up and down, right and left, without losing their true contours. Carvers call this process "throwing about," i.e., making the leaves, etc., appear to rise from the background and again fall toward it in all directions. The phrase is a very meager one, and but poorly expresses the necessity for intimate sympathy between each surface so "thrown about." It is precisely in the observance of this last quality that effects of richness are produced. You can hardly have too much monotony of surface, but may easily err by having too much variety. Therefore, whatever system of light and shade you may adopt, be careful to repeat its motive in some sort of rhythmic order all over your work; by no other means can you make it rich and effective at a distance.
It is well every now and then to put your work up on a shelf or ledge at a distance and view it as a whole; you will [107] thus see which parts tell and which do not, and so gain experience on this point. Work should also be turned about frequently, sidewise and upside down, in order to find how the light affects it in different directions. Of course, you must not think that because your work may happen to look well when seen from a little way off that it does not matter about the details, whether they be well or poorly carved. On the contrary, unless you satisfy the eye at both points of view, your work is a partial failure. The one thing is as important as the other, only, as the first glance at carved work is generally taken at some little distance, it is the more immediately necessary to think of that, before we begin to work for a closer inspection. First impressions are generally lasting with regard to carved work, and, as I have said before, beauty of detail seldom quite atones for failure in the arrangement of masses.
The rounded forms in this design may give you a little trouble, but practise, and that alone, will enable you to overcome this. Absolute smoothness is not desirable. Glass-papered surfaces are extremely ugly, because they obtrude themselves on [108] account of their extreme smoothness, having lost all signs of handiwork in the tool marks. We shall have something to say presently about these tool marks in finishing, as it is a very important subject which may make all the difference between success or failure in finishing a piece of work.
