Identifier: artwilliam00bart (find matches)
Title: Art life of William Rimmer, sculptor, painter, and physician / Truman Bartlett.
Year: 1882 (1880s)
Authors: Bartlett, Truman Howe
Subjects: American Painting
Publisher: James R. Osgood and Co.
Contributing Library: Whitney Museum of American Art, Frances Mulhall Achilles Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Metropolitan New York Library Council - METRO

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The following letter was written in reply, and was accompanied byseveral pages of foolscap-paper covered with pencil-drawings of a large variety ofplants and flowers. The death of the person principally interested ended furtherconsideration of the matter. LETTER FROM DR. RIMMER ON DESIGN OF TEXTILE FABRICS. Mr. . Allow me to suggest that the great difficulty with us in the way of making designs for textile fabrics, which would be acceptable to persons of taste, is a want of knowledgeof the elementary principles and forms to be employed for the purpose. No person,however talented, can be expected to design a flower or fruit piece who is ignorant ofthe form of fruit and flowers; for, as a beautiful whole is made up of a collection orvariety of beautiful parts, beautiful in themselves, or held so by comparison, the wholecan only be made beautiful by a knowledge of what is individually beautiful, or whatis made to appear so by judicious contrasts. Complete designs, like sentences, though
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RIMMER AND HUNT. 83 infinite in variety, are nevertheless made up of a limited number of parts, as words arecomposed of single letters, and language made up of simple sounds; and these pans arethe natural objects with which the designer has to deal. Upon this point there isexcellent an opportunity to say too much, for any purpose short of an exhaustive treatise,upon things proper to be used in ornamental art, that, fearing myself, I will say no morethan is necessary to point in brief to the natural divisions of things and methods pre-senting themselves for consideration. The forms most used in design for textile fabrics are those of flowers, leaves, twigs,grasses, shrubs; also straight, curved, and angular lines, architectural vines and flourishes,vases, urns, birds and insects, crystalline and kaleidoscopic forms, waves, clouds, etc. To be able to draw these well, they should be studied, one order at a time, eachuntil it is well understood, beginning with the simplest and ending with

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