Page:Arts & Crafts Essays.djvu/275

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Of Designs and Working Drawings.

makers of very elaborately finished drawings seldom do anything but what we have often seen before; and that men of any individuality, actual designers that is to say, have a way of considering a drawing finished as soon as ever it expresses what they mean.

You may take it, then, as a general rule that highly finished and elaborate drawings are got up for show, "finished for exhibition" as they say (in compliance with the supposed requirements of an exhibition rather than with a view to practical purposes), and that drawings completed only so far as is necessary, precise in their details, disfigured by notes in writing, sections, and so on, are at least genuine workaday designs.

If you ask what a design should be like—well, like a design. It is altogether a different thing from a picture; it is almost the reverse of it. Practically no

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