Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 June 1894 — Copying from Nature. [ARTICLE]

Copying from Nature.

That the designer who copies from nature is the one who attains success most readily cannot be doubted. The days of copying from old designs are fast going, and now the designer who would keep up with the times must be as original as possible. This has been said many times before by many writers. The most unique method of designing from nature, thus assuring ’ originality, is a way which your correspondent has had explained to him recently by one of the designers in a Lawrence mill. This man has designed fancy figured effects for intricate shawl patterns for many years. Since the advent of the demand which calls for a closer imitation of nature in designing, this man has found it to be advantageous to copy from flowers. His ability to copy offhand from a flower model is deficient; so he does like this: He gets a bunch of roses or a twig of leaves and buds, and places these upon his design paper. A light pressure with the hands flattens the objects upon the paper sufficiently to permit a true outline to be made of each leaf or flower. This outline he makes by the use of a pencil. Then he is sure of getting the correct forms of the figures. After ho has made the outline of each leaf and flower the bunch is removed and be proceeds to fill in the shapes. Then he checks off the risers and sinkers according to the outlined forms, and thereby is sure of getting the correct shapes of the objects into his design. This appears to be quite a novel way of copying from nature. Any one can do this.—[Commercial Bulletin. The poets of Great Britain have, as a rule, been university men. Last year the United States raised 1,619,494,000 bushels of corn.