222 



ON TASTE IN ORNAMENTAL DESIGN. 



Part II. 



31. [But mixture of materials is not always resorted to 

 in order to escape from a dilemma : it is frequently thought 

 to be an improvement, and a sign of taste ; and a brass, gilt, 

 or silver, snake is coiled round the glass bottle for the double 

 purpose of ornament and support {fig. 4). Sometimes, how- 

 ever, the dependence on metal being scorned, the fashionable 

 reptile is of the same material, and a snake of opaque blue 



(11.) 



Fig. 5. Fig. 4. 



Fig. 6. 



Fig. 7. 



Fig. 8. 



glass winds round the transparent beaker (fig. 5). This may 

 remove one objection, but still leaves that of poverty of 

 design ; as when a glass imitates a pineapple, which, too, is 

 generally found to borrow the foot of a tumbler to adapt it 

 for use (fig. 6). 



Still more objectionable are the combination of two different 

 ideas and two incompatible natures to form a design ; and the 

 union " of the ugly fish and the beautiful woman," " the 

 dolphin in the wood and the boar in the sea," denounced by 

 Horace, are not more inconsistent than many of the anomalies 

 produced daily by our constructors of designs. In one a man 

 sits on a truncated column, with the branches of a candlestick 

 growing luxuriantly from his head, while he plays a lyre in 

 the character of Orpheus (fig. 7) : in another a stork performs 

 the unbirdly office of holding a light, or a cornucopia, in his 

 beak for the same purpose, as if to add another inconsistency, 

 and to show how little one part has any connection with the 

 rest (fig. 8). These faults are frequently made worse by the 

 same use of two different substances already noticed ;] and the 



