Page:Arts & Crafts Essays.djvu/68

 answer he must stand or fall; but such questions show that the scope of decoration is no mean one.

It must be acknowledged that a mixed exhibition does not easily afford the fairest or completest tests of such qualities. An exhibition is at best a compromise, a convenience, a means of comparison, and to enable work to be shown to the public; but of course is, after all, only really and properly exhibited when it is in the place and position and light for which it was destined. The tests by which to judge a designer's work are only complete then.

As the stem and branches to the leaves, flowers, and fruit of a tree, so is design to painting. In decoration one cannot exist without the other, as the beauty of a figure depends upon the well-built and well-proportioned skeleton and its mechanism. You cannot 44