ORNAMENT is the proper enrichment of an object or surface with such forms, or forms and colours, as will give the thing decorated a new beauty, while strictly preserving its shape and character. It is the function of ornament to emphasize the forms of the object it decorates, not to hide them. Decoration is not necessarily ornament; for instance, the lovely sprays of plants with birds and cognate subjects, painted on Japanese pottery, may be called beautiful decoration, but cannot in our sense of the word be called ornament; for however realistic ornament may be, it must show that it has passed through the mind of man, and been acted on by it. This kind of decoration might be a literal transcript from nature, and neither emphasizes the boundaries of the decorated surface nor harmonizes with them. It possesses an exquisite beauty of its own, for the drawing and colour and the style of execution are good. With the exception of frets and diapers, true ornament is rare in Japanese art. Fig. 1 is a Japanese decoration on an oblong surface. Such a design is pretty, but we can hardly call it ornament. Something must be done with it before we can give it that name.

To make an ornamental design, the units of the decoration must be arranged and brought into order; repetition and symmetry may not be required, but even distribution, order, and balance are indispensable. The whole too must not appear to be accidental but designed for the object, while No. 1 might have been made from a shadow cast on a window. The sketch at Fig. 2 is an attempt to illustrate our notion of ornament by using the elements in Fig. 1 evenly distributed, having at the same time a due regard to the boundary-lines of the panel.

Applied ornament is that which is specially designed and fitted for the position it occupies.

Independent ornaments are such things as shields, labels, medallions, &c., with or without enclosing frames; paterÆ, festoons, and other loose ornamental objects, which may be attached to a surface, and may be used alone, or in combination with applied ornament (Fig. 133).

Numerous examples may be given of inappropriate ornament. As a rule, any kind of ornament that is not suited to the surface ornamented, or is falsely constructed, may be called inappropriate. For instance, if upright panels and pilasters were decorated with ornament running in oblique lines, or with a strongly-marked series of horizontal bands; or if a carpet pattern were designed to run in one particular direction; or, from an architectural point of view, if columns supporting nothing were used in decoration; if consoles or brackets were turned upside down; or if curved mouldings were decorated with frets; or panels were overloaded with mouldings; if forms, organic or otherwise, were used together, but out of scale with one another; or things were made to simulate what they are not; or there were a great excess of enrichment; each of these examples might be considered as inappropriate ornament.

Methods of Expression.—Ornament is expressed in three different ways: Firstly, by pure outline, as traced with a point; secondly, where breadth is added, by flat tints as in painting with the brush, or by shading, hatching, spotting, or stippling; thirdly, by relief, or sinking, as in modelling and sculpture. These three divisions may be subdivided, but all the subdivisions are but varieties or combinations of the first three genera. Relief modelled or pierced ornament has no other outline than that given by light and shade; but it may also be coloured, i. e. in two shades—one for the ornament and one for the background, or with the forms and background “picked out” in a variety of colours. Shaded or painted ornament in the flat is an imitation of relief work, and will be noticed again.

Ornament Expressed in Outline.—All the early decorative work of mankind, both the prehistoric etchings on bone and on pottery, the line decoration on Assyrian cylinders, bronze dishes and tablets, and the incised work on the Greek, Etruscan, and Roman cistas, hand-mirrors, and vases come under this head; as well as sgraffito-work when expressed by outline, cut in plaster showing a different-coloured plaster beneath.

Ornament Expressed by Flat Tints, in monochrome or colour, with no shading and without shadow, is a common method of ornamentation. This class includes painted ornament on the flat, whether polychromatic or in “grisaille”; inlaid wood-work, called parquetry when used for floors, and marquetry when used for other purposes; inlaid marble, stone, tile and plaster work, mosaic, tesselated, sectile and Alexandrine pavements; damascened metal-work; some enamels, lac-work, and painted pottery; woven, embroidered, printed, and stencilled stuffs, including oil-cloth; enamelled glass; and some sgraffito-work. It is convenient to class under this head certain work of slight thickness or relief, such as lace, applied work of paper, stuffs, velvet, &c., fine filigree and wire-work. Inlay under the name of “Tarsia” was greatly used by the Italians in the decoration of cathedrals and churches and in fittings and furniture; in cathedral stalls and sacristy fittings, boxwood was commonly inlaid in walnut, but ebony and ivory were largely employed for house furniture and fittings, and many different substances were sometimes employed. Tortoiseshell, gold, silver, ivory, mother-of-pearl, and different coloured woods are largely employed for the same purpose by Orientals and others. A species of inlay composed of white and stained ivory, ebony, and silver, in geometrical patterns, is much used by the cabinet-makers of India—our Tunbridge ware is supposed to be an imitation of it.

Flat Tints enriched by Outline were sometimes used in Greek vases, and are often used in inlays and damascened work; very pretty examples may be found in old Chinese lac-work, inlaid with figures and landscapes in black mother-of-pearl, the features, &c. being outlined.

Relief-work.—Ordinary modelled and carved work, either in relief or sunk, is too well known to need description; but under this heading are included pierced, open, and turned work, and such compound work as may be pierced, or turned and carved or incised as well.

Coloured Relief-work.—All Egyptian, Greek, and MediÆval bas-reliefs, and some if not all of their figure sculpture in the round, were coloured, but when the figures were of white marble, the colour was generally confined to the flesh, eyes, and hair, and to the stripes or patterns on the dresses. In one of the white marble sarcophagi from Sidon, now in the Museum at Constantinople, while figures of half life-size are left wholly white, smaller figures are wholly coloured and gilt, like the terra-cotta ones of Tanagra, and some of the ornament is white on a purple ground. All the Italian Renaissance bas-reliefs in “gesso duro” were wholly coloured.

In Greek temples the carved ornament was coloured, including the triglyphs, and parts of the ornament were often gilt, the uncut mouldings too were mostly ornamented in colour. In some enamelled pottery in relief, the figures or ornament were left white on a coloured ground, or the drapery of the figures and the ornament were coloured, as in some of the Della Robbia ware. All Roman embossed plaster was coloured and gilt. Much relief-work in bronze and the precious metals has been coloured by means of enamel, or alloys in the metal; coloured mosaic has been used to clothe columns, and some mosaic and pietra dura is in relief, as well as lac and ivory work inlaid with fine stones, mother-of-pearl, and ivory; all Moresque and some Saracen embossed plaster-work, and probably carved stone-work, was coloured and gilt; some Burmese plaster-work in relief is gilt and inlaid with coloured glass, and certain stuffs have had raised ornament upon them, formed by stuffing with wadding the applied pieces, which sometimes were embroidered.

Shaded or Painted Ornament on the Flat in Imitation of Relief-work.—This is probably the largest class, and includes engraving, shaded ornament in chiaroscuro, and shaded and coloured ornament with or without cast shadows; in it are included the Chinese, Persian, MediÆval, and Renaissance translucent enamels, which are laid over sunk (intaglio) work, and painters’ enamels; Boule work, which consists of brass, tin, or pewter, inlaid in ebony or tortoiseshell with the metal-work engraved; wood inlay in the shape of shaded natural flowers, landscapes, architectural views, and figure subjects; shaded ornament on woven or printed stuffs, and embroidery; and shaded painting on china and glass, and in Arabesques. What we now call Arabesques were paraphrases of Roman painted decoration, of which Pompeii offers us so wide a knowledge. These decorations consisted of fantastic buildings, interspersed with figures, animals, landscapes, and foliage. The discovery of this kind of painting in the baths of Titus[3] at Rome led Raphael to adopt it and to improve on it. The culminating point in Arabesque painting was the decoration of the loggias of the Vatican by Raphael and his pupil, Giovanni Recamatore, commonly known as Giovanni da Udine. The Mohammedans, from whom the name was derived, mostly avoided the figures of men and animals,[4] even in their secular buildings or furniture, it being feared that the portrayal of living creatures might lead them to idolatry; so spaces were filled with intricate geometrical patterns and coarse foliage.