scious thought, going straight to his mark with the shears and brush dipped in glue, as he might

FIG. 129.

Cover of box, made of dried rushes, varnished and decorated with appliqués of lacquer and mother-of-pearl. Japanese work, nineteenth century

with the brush dipped in paint, or the coloredchalk pencil. The limitations, as of greater severity, which cannot be modified, and must be accepted, and the rest of them, - all these are

COLORED MATERIAL APPLIED TO SURFACE

felt rather as suggestions of design than as hinderances to it. One does not know the full delight of decorative design until he has to do some work with these obstinate materials, which must be taken as they are because they cannot be modified more than a very little by the artist. But this chapter may close with a specimen of freer work. Fig. 129 is a box or basket of Vannerie, that is, of work done with rushes held together by a kind of sewing, for it will be noticed that the rushes are not woven or plaited together, but are laid side by side. Upon this rather stiff and yet not wholly unyielding surface is applied the design in high relief, consisting of flowers and long leaves of the iris. Of these long leaves two only are made of pieces of brilliant mother-of-pearl, flashing with all the colors of the rainbow, the material cut into small square tesserae and put side by side this probably to allow of a certain play when the surface is compressed. The same pearl is used for the calyx of the flower on the right, and for the lower petals of the flower on the left. All the rest is in dull gold lacquer, except the largest leaf, which is of dull slate-colored lacquer with a gold rib. It is in such inexpensive pieces as this, made for the use of the Japanese themselves, and never costing but a trifle in their own mercantile transactions, that there may be felt in the fullest degree the significance of that astonishing civilization.

M

Chapter Eighteen

MOSAIC1

OSAIC results from the use of inlay whenever the pattern grows so complex that it is easier to make it up of small pieces than to cut it in a solid smooth surface, and then to insert other pieces of material. This is the way in which it appears first in Egypt, at least as early as the time of Rameses III, at which time patterns made by inserting pieces of colored pottery into a cement background grew into mosaic in the parts most elaborately adorned. At a later time mosaic of

1 Mosaic: a combination of tesserae or small pieces of hard material producing a single, uniform surface. The term tessera (plural, tesserae) signifies a four-square piece; but the use of the term in industrial art covers pieces of any shape which fit close together and produce a continuous surface. Probably the cones of terra cotta used anciently in the flat country near the Euphrates would hardly be considered as forming a mosaic. They are pieces of inlay forming spots, of which the background is composed of the cement-like material which forms the pavement. On the other hand, if the pieces of hard material touch one another and cover the whole surface, they constitute a mosaic, no matter what their size may be. Thus certain twelfth-century churches in central France and certain mosques in Egypt and in Spain have a particolored masonry, the blocks of the exterior wall producing a polychromatic effect; and there is no way of excluding that work from mosaic, of which it is one modification.

IN ANTIQUITY

hard stone was used on the wall surfaces of Egypt; and, in what we call the Mycenaean art of Greece, there is an inlay of blue glass which often becomes mosaic by an increase in its elaboration. It does not seem, however, that anything like a solid pavement made up of tesserae, or a wall or vault covered in this way, is to be identified as of any period earlier than the first century B.C.

It appears, then, that mosaic as we have it,

a somewhat familiar decoration for floors and walls, is of the time of Roman supremacy in the Mediterranean lands; and although it came from the East, probably in the Alexandrian epoch, its use so exactly corresponded to the requirements of the imperial builders that we find it as much at home in the costlier dwellings and public baths of Britain and of Spain as in Syria. Fig. 130 shows a pavement still remaining in place in the Baths of Caracalla, in Rome. There are many pieces of this pavement, sometimes in place, sometimes taken from their original site and set up (so perfect is the cohesion of their cement ground) against the wall. The material is always marble or fine limestone, most of it nearly white, with patterns formed of a very dark gray, looking almost black by contrast.

Under the Imperial government mosaics of much greater splendor than these were made for public buildings, and also for private villas and city mansions. Marble, slate, and other fine-grained stones

were commonly used, and various positive colors, red and yellow, were got by the use of fine hard brick. The magnificent mosaic representing Alexander and Darius in the battle of Arbela, which was found in the House of the Faun in

Pompeii and has been relaid in the Museum of Naples, is of the first century B.C. In this a great number of colors are used. The details cannot be absolutely guaranteed, for the work of removal and resetting was done at a time of no very critical judgment, but the general design cannot have been changed, and this design involves the use of some score of distinguishable shades. Still, however, all seem to be of natural material. The pieces vary in size in these and in other elaborate mosaics of