176 
will be deepened if he pauses a moment to reflect as he goes about 
his daily rounds. One can hardly enter a room, or sit in a chair, 
or look at the table cloth as he eats, or put on a dress or a necktie, 
or observe a building or a railway coach, or read an advertise- 
ment, or use a coin or paper money, without consciously or un- 
fo, 
consciously acknowledging his indebtedness to the plant world as 
a source of design in art. 
The desire for ornament is substantially coexistent with the be- 
ginnings of civilization, and it is a cause for optimism that there 
seems to be an elemental human urge to make beautiful whatever 
is made. As plants present the most beautiful forms and com- 
binations of Iines and surfaces to be found in man’s environment, 
what is more natural than to use them as the basis of design ? 
Mr. Forest Grant has recently ® called attention to the fact that 
“the desire to create fresh patterns for use in the world’s indus- 
trial art has been leading our designers away from the plant forms 
which have so consistently furnished inspiration to the artists of 
all nations ”"—for exaniple, the lotus of the Egyptians, the acanthus 
of the Greek. 
“Phe machine age,” he says, 
machines, and purring motors, has furnished another sort of rhy- 
“with its cog wheels, riveting 
thm to those who are responsible for much of the art of today. 
Objects of steel and stone have been appearing in our textile de- 
sign with the same regularity with which they have appeared in 
our paintings, and murals. To many this movement away from 
nature has meant a loss in beauty of design which is much de- 
plored.” 
Perhaps it will not seem too elementary to emphasize again that 
plants do not furnish design directly. The object of the present 
exhibition is to illustrate how plants have been utilized as a source 
of design. Irom plants the artist may obtain ideas and ideals. 
for the plant world can hardly be surpassed for perfection of 
beauty. But the design itself must emanate from the brain of 
the artist; the plant world can only furnish the raw materials. 
What is needed is that artists shall not only make themselves 
familiar with classic designs, but also from time to time go directly 
to nature, comparing the established designs with the natural forms 
from which they were derived and making fresh observations. 
® Bull. Metropolitan Museum of Art 28: 102. June, 1933, 
