al instinct on the
side of perpetual change. While there are directions in which this
desire is not altogether harmful, since at least many monstrosities
offend our eyes but for a short time, a full compliance with it by the
designer is likely to prove disastrous to his reputation, and recent
phases in which an attempt has been made to throw aside as effete and
outworn the forms which have gradually grown with the centuries, and to
produce something entirely fresh and individual, have shown how
impossible it is at this period of the world's history to dispense with
tradition, and, escaping from the accumulated experience of the race,
set forth with childlike _naivete_. Careful study of these experiments
discloses the fact that in as far as they are successful in proportion
and line they approach the successes of previous generations, and that
the undigested use of natural _motifs_ results not in nourishment but in
nightmare.

The object aimed at by this series of handbooks is the recall of the
designer and craftsman to a saner view of what constitutes originality
by setting before them something of the experience of past times, when
craft tradition was still living and the designer had a closer contact
with the material in which his design was carried out than is usual at
present. Since both design and craftsmanship as known until the end of
the 18th century were the outcome of centuries of experience of the use
of material and of the endeavour to meet daily requirements, it may be
justly called folly to cast all this aside as the fripperies of bygone
fashion which cramp the efforts of the designer, and attempt to start
afresh without a rag of clothing, even if it were possible. At the same
time it is not intended to advocate the direct copyism of any style,
whether regarded as good, bad, or indifferent. Some minds find
inspiration in the contemplation of natural objects, while others find
the same stimulus in the works of man. The fashion of present opinion
lays great stress upon the former source of inspiration, and considers
the latter heretical, while, with a strange inconsistency, acclaiming a
form of design based upon unnatural contortions of growth, and a
treatment which is often alien to the material. It is the hope of the
author to assist the second class of mind to the rivalling of the
ancient glories of design and craftsmanship, and perhaps even to convert
some of those whose talents are at present wasted in