Page:Pattern design - a book for students treating in a practical way of the anatomy, planning & evolution of repeated ornament.djvu/102

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76
PATTERN DESIGN.

98. STEP PATTERN WHICH IS NOT A DROP REPEAT.

the other (93). Counteracting diagonal lines give, in the same way, diamonds (94).[1]

Further uses of the step, in lieu of the diamond, will be apparent when it comes to the discussion of freer patterns designed on its lines.

There is one form of step pattern which does not really constitute what is understood by a drop repeat. The second strip in diagram 95 drops slightly; but the third reverts again to the level of the first (or, if it can be said to drop, it takes a step out of all proportion to the last). As a consequence any such features as the flowers at the top of the repeat would, in recurrence, give a sort of zig-zag line.

True, a drop pattern may recover itself in the third repeat; but only on the condition that it drops just half its depth. A drop of one-third its depth recovers itself only in the fourth

  1. Another variety of the drop pattern in which the unit is not merely of the proportions of a double square, but is built deliberately upon the two squares counterchanged, is shown on page 101.