Art-studies from nature, as applied to design : for the use of architects, designers, and manufacturers . her arts than the culinary, one might not unentertainingly givea disquisition on edible sea-weeds, and on the various meansby which they are made subservient to the luxuries or necessitiesof man. The Icelanders, Greenlanders, the Chinese, and the EastIndians have already made some progress in this department;and nearer home, the Chondrus crispus, carrageen, or Irishmoss, figured at page 120, has long ago been placed on thetable, in soup, jellies, and blanc-manges. Or, if the natural histor
Art-studies from nature, as applied to design : for the use of architects, designers, and manufacturers . her arts than the culinary, one might not unentertainingly givea disquisition on edible sea-weeds, and on the various meansby which they are made subservient to the luxuries or necessitiesof man. The Icelanders, Greenlanders, the Chinese, and the EastIndians have already made some progress in this department;and nearer home, the Chondrus crispus, carrageen, or Irishmoss, figured at page 120, has long ago been placed on thetable, in soup, jellies, and blanc-manges. Or, if the natural history of the class were the object, one mightwith equal pleasure dwell on the marvellous exhibition of thestrange animal-like motions of the troops of zoospores whichissue from the thick yellow slime exuded from the ripe recep-tacles of the Fucus serratus—motions apparently so voluntary 120 ART-STUDIES FROM NATURE. that it is difficult to consider them as concordant with merevegetation. I have already hinted at. the capabilities of these weeds assuggestive models for the carver in w^ood. Now few modern. Chondrus crispus. structures are fitted up with more elegance than our first-classships, and in them no one will contend there is not a great andappropriate field for the display of the ornamental or decorativecapabilities of sea-weeds. Here they are at once appropriate SEA-WEEDS. 121 and reminiscent of those shores the voyagers have left behind—speaking to them, whilst gliding over the sea, of those landswhence they had departed, and of those other lands which they areseeking. Around and beneath figure-heads, as scrolls upon thebows or stern, bordering the panels of the cabin, and modelled tosuit the various machinery on deck, the designer might createa marine ornamentation as characteristic and as pleasing, andas elaborate, if he chose, as Corinthian skill developed from thetile-covered plant for the architecture of the land. In bronze or in iron, indeed in all dark metal-work
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Keywords: ., bookcentury180, bookdecade1870, booksubjectdecorationandornament
