ffects as merely test the capacity or ingenuity of the
machine, but rather such as appear to be most decoratively appropriate
and effective.

There appears to be no _mechanical_ reason why cotton should not be
printed all over with landscapes and graphic sketches, and people clothe
themselves with them as with Christmas numbers, or turn their couches,
chairs, and curtains into scrap albums, but there is every reason _on
the score of taste_ why these things should not be done.

[Illustration (f129): (1) Contrasting Surfaces of Warp and Weft in
Woven Silk Hanging; (2) Stencil Principle.]

With any textile, as I have said, we are as designers dealing with
surface. It is surface ornament that is wanted also in printed cotton.
Now good line and form and pure tints have the best effect, because they
do not break the surface into holes, and give a ragged or tumbled
appearance, which accidental bunches of darkly-shaded flowers in high
relief undoubtedly do. If small rich detail and variety are wanted, we
should seek it in the inventive spirit of the Persian and Indian, and
break our solid colours with mordants or arabesques in colour of
delicate subsidiary pattern instead of using coarse planes of light and
shadow, or showing up ragged and unrelated forms upon violent grounds.

[Illustration (f130): Indian Printed Cotton Cover: South Kensington
Museum.]

The true idea of a print pattern is of something gay and fanciful:
bright and fresh in colour, and clear in line and form: a certain
quaintness is allowable, and in purely floral designs there is room for
a considerable degree of what might be called naturalism, so far as good
line-drawing and understanding of flower form goes, emphasis of colour
being sought by means of _planes of colour_, rather than by planes of
shadow.

I had intended to touch upon other provinces of design, but I have taken
up so much space with those I have been discussing already that I can
only now briefly allude to these.

[Wall-Paper]

Of wall-paper, which may be regarded in the light of more or less of a
substitute for mural painting, and also textile wall-hangings, much the
same general principles and many of the same remarks apply as have been
already used in regard to mural decoration. The designer has much
freedom as to motive, and his ingenuity is only bounded by or
concentrated in a square of twenty-one inches. If he has suc