440 -Mr. H. H. Statham [June 4, 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, June 4, 1880. 



William Bowman, Esq. F.R.S. Vice-President, in the Chair. 



H. Heathoote Statham, Esq. 



Ornament. 



Ornament may be defined as including all artistic design which is not 

 of sufficient interest or expressive power to have independent value 

 in itself, but which is added to some object to give to that object an 

 interest or beauty which it would not otherwise possess. Thus the 

 conventional foliage design which covers the Greek vase (Fig. 14 in 

 illustrations) is ornament ; but the delineations of human figures 

 arranged in a continuous composition, which are often found on the 

 body of such a Greek vase, cannot be classed as ornament ; they are 

 figure drawings upon a vase, but they possess sufficiently high artistic 

 power and expressiveness to be of independent interest, upon whatever 

 surface they might be drawn. Japanese trays and other objects often 

 display beautiful drawings of birds and fishes, or grotesque attempts 

 at landscape ; but neither the birds, however beautiful, nor the land- 

 scapes, however preposterous, are ornament ; they are pictures, for 

 which the tray forms the groundwork and the frame. 



Ornament, therefore, is not an independent, but a relative art ; it 

 is always an appendage to something else, something which could 

 exist and could be of equal practical value without it, but to which it 

 imparts an added grace and value. It is most important to bear in 

 mind this relative condition of ornament in forming a true criticism 

 of the art, since it is evident that, in accordance with this definition, 

 ornament cannot be rightly judged of except in relation to the cir- 

 cumstances in which it is used, and its suitability to its position and 

 to the uses of the object in connection with which it is found. And 

 if we consider the nature of this relation of ornament to its circum- 

 stances, we shall find that we may broadly divide all ornament, in 

 this respect, into two classes, which we may call respectively surface 

 ornament, the object of which is to give interest to and diversify 

 surfaces that would otherwise appear blank, and functional ornament, 

 the object of which is to emphasize special features and assist in 

 expressing their function or their relation to the whole. Thus the 

 Arabic fret (Fig. 9) is a specimen of mere surface ornament, which 

 might be carried over any extent of surface, merely to break it up and 

 relieve it; while the vertical and horizontal flutings of the Ionic column 



