CHAPTER XIII

“Design” in
Illumination

“design” in illumination

“Design”—Elementary Patterns in Decoration—Scale
& Scope of Decoration—Of “Designing” Manu¬
scripts Generally.

“design”

Perhaps the nearest right definition of “design” is
“contrivance”—applied to the actual doing of the
work, rather than to the work when done: “decora¬
tion” (when that is the sense intended) is a safer
word,1 because it implies “of something.” And
generally that “something” lies at the root of the
matter. For example: “illuminated initials” and
“illuminated borders,” so called, are really illumi¬
nati«^: they are properly a decoration of manuscript
or print.

To consider a “piece-of-decoration” as a thing
existing apart from that which it decorates, as
something drawn or copied, and, so to speak, stuck
on to the finished work, is as ««natural as it would
be to contemplate the flame-of-a-candle as a thing
apart from the candle.

1 “ Design ” has been associated so much with bad cleverness
in the artist, or clever badness in the natural man, that if we
use the word in a good sense it is apt to be misunderstood.
Decoration is derived from decus, decor = comeliness or grace.

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The finest decoration is really part of the work “Design” in
itself, and may be described as the finishing touches Illumination
given directly to the work by the tools which are
properly employed on it.

The illuminator has, as a rule, to decorate a given
manuscript with pen or brush work—it may be
with the simplest pen flourishes, or with the most
elaborate figure “design.” How to make that illumi¬
nation part of the work, he can learn only by patient
practice and by careful handling of his tools.

ELEMENTARY PATTERNS IN DECORATION

Nearly all simple Decoration consists of a com¬
paratively limited number of elements—simple form
and pure colours—which are built up into more
complex forms to occupy an allotted space. A primi¬
tive type of such built-up decoration is seen in the
dotted patterns, which are found in every age—in
the remains of the most ancient art, and in the shell
decorations which children make on the sands at the
present day. Examples of dotted “backgrounds” in
the “Durham Book” are shown in fig. 130 (a and
b). Chequers and Diapers—in which two or more
elements are employed—are related patterns.1 (See
also Addenda, p. xxiii & fig. 1910.)

A simple way of filling a band (or long narrow

1 Chequers in colours and gold were largely used in the four¬
teenth-century MSS. for backgrounds in miniatures. There is
an example of very beautiful heraldic diapering (in enamel) on
the shield of William de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, in West¬
minster Abbey (a.d. 1296). On p. 300 of this book there is
a diagram of a very fine shield bearing a diapered chequer.

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