676 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



porary style, wliicli consisted in the use of a number of brandies, 

 spreading from each corner of the cover toward the center, the 

 unity of the whole being enhanced by a semis, simple or alter- 

 nate, of some simple tools over the whole of the side. The com- 

 bination -^as effected under the direction, if not by the hands, of 

 the great binders Nicholas and Clovis Eve, and consisted in the 

 enrichment of the interspaces of the first style by means of the 

 sprays and branches of the second. When mature the school 

 was characterized by compartments symmetrically distributed 

 and connected, filled with dainty devices or with the severer tools 

 of the Grolier pattern, and supported and enriched in the inter- 

 spaces by foliated branches and sprays. 



The third great school the school of Le Gascon and perhaps 

 the last, was characterized by the combination with the geomet- 

 rical framework of the preceding school of a new motive, bor- 

 rowed, I think, from the contemporary lace, or perhaps filigree 

 work, and used, ultimately, to fill in both the compartments or 

 panels and the space between them. The motive is an exceed- 

 ingly simple one, a small spiral of dots, but the close repetition of 

 it has a singularly rich if somewhat bewildering effect. The 

 school, however, in what specially characterized it, has dropped 

 the tradition of form and is content with the glitter of gold. 

 The repetition of the spiral is not always organic in its construc- 

 tion. The spirals are placed side by side, they do not grow the 

 one out of the other. And I submit that all patterns, to be good, 

 must be organic in the relation of their details and organic in the 

 method of their development. 



The great schools of design which I have thus attempted to 

 characterize are historical, and they are closed. The future, as I 

 have elsewhere had occasion to remark, is not, in my opinion, 

 with them or their developments or repetition, however much 

 the present may occupy itself with their corrected iteration. 



Design is invention and development, and when development 

 has reached a certain point the invention is exhausted and some 

 new departure must be taken. No new departure, however, of 

 any importance has taken place since the close of the great 

 schools of France of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and 

 the decoration of bound books is still an open problem awaiting 

 solution at the hands of genius. 



But though the problem awaits solution the conditions of the 

 problem may, I think, be stated shortly in general terms. In the 

 first place, then, there must be in any design a scheme or frame- 

 work of distribution. The area to be covered must be covered 

 according to some symmetrical plan. In the second place, the 

 scheme or framework of distribution must itself be covered by 

 the orderly repetition and, if need be, modification and develop- 



