¬The¬ Land in the mountains : being an account of the past and present of Tyrol, its people and its castles
—“ measure-work,” as the Teuton term maaswerk might be translated—to which our English Gothic has given such an infinite variety of forms, are replaced, as a rule, in Tyrol by tracery that represents the idea of organic growth in which some plant-form of richly convoluted outline twines along a staff, or otherwise fills the space given to it. This rendering of plant-life in ever-varying designs, without thereby descending to a realistic copying of, Nature, gave every possible scope to individual taste
diversity of the patterns it wrought. Of many hundreds of grandly built-up armoires, presses, bridal- chests, tables, stalls, retables, room-panelling, ceilings, and other samples of Gothic design, known to the writer, no single instance could be cited of two or more of these articles being adorned with precisely the same pattern. In some cases “ measure-work ” was blended with the more idealistic plant-form designs, and of such blending the beautiful presses of which I give reproductions (Pi*