FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[15]Boyd Dawkins’ “Early Man in Britain,” p. 285. See also chapter onstitches(post), p.195.[16]Some of these styles survive; some are still perceptible as traditions or echoes; some have totally disappeared in our modern art, such as the Primitive or the Egyptian.[17]See Semper, “Der Stil.”[18]The history of Gaul begins in the 7th, and that of Britain in the 1st centuryB.C., while the civilization of Egypt dates back to more than 4000B.C.; therefore the historical overlap is very great. It is probable that a large portion of Europe was in its neolithic age, while the scribes were composing their records of war and commerce in the great cities on the Nile, and that the neolithic civilization lingered in remote regions while the voice of Pericles was heard in Athens, and the name of Hannibal was a terror in Italy.—See Boyd Dawkins’ “Early Man in Britain,” p. 481.[19]See chapter onpatterns.[20]In the Troad.[21]Some of the Egyptian arts we know are pre-Homeric (if Homer really sang 800B.C.), and Asiatic art was then in its highest development.[22]See chapter onstitches,cut work(post). This funeral tent is a monumental work, inasmuch as the inscription inwrought on it gives us the name and title of her in whose honour it was made, and whose remains it covered. See Villiers Stewart’s “Funeral Tent of an Egyptian Queen.”[23]Herodotus, book ii. c. 182; book iii. c. 47 (Rawlinson’s Trans.). See Rock’s Introduction, p. xiv.[24]Homer mentions “Sidonian stuffs and Phœnician skill” (Iliad, v. 170); also “Sidonian Embroidery.” Ibid. vi. 287-295.[25]The Assyrian designs are such as are now still worked at Benares, and being full of animals, they are called Shikurgah, or “happy hunting-grounds.” See Sir G. Birdwood’s “Industrial Arts of India,” p. 236. See also Plate 4.[26]See Perrot and Chipiez (pp. 737-757); also Clermont Ganneau’s Histoire de l’Art, “L’Imagerie Phénicienne,” Plate 1, pt. 1. Coupe de Palestrina. He says that certain scenes from the “Shield of Achilles” are literally to be found on Phœnician vases that have come down to us—vases of which Homer himself must have seen some of analogous design.[27]Homer speaks of Sidonian embroideries, “Iliad,” vi., 287-295.[28]See Egyptian fragments in the British Museum, and the specimens of Peruvian textiles; and Reiss and Stübel’s “Necropolis of Ancon in Peru.”[29]At Cervetri, Dennis’ “Etruria,” ed. 1878, i. p. 268.[30]The restless activity of the Phœnicians has often helped to confuse our æsthetic knowledge, and has caused the waste of much speculation in ascertaining how certain objects of luxury, belonging to distant civilizations, can possibly have arrived at the places where we find them.[31]“The Beautiful Gate of the Temple was covered all over with gold. It had also golden vines above it, from which hung clusters of grapes as tall as a man’s height.... It had golden doors of 55 cubits altitude, and 16 in breadth: but before these doors there was a veil of equal largeness with the doors. It was a Babylonian curtain of blue, fine linen, and scarlet and purple; of an admixture that was truly wonderful. Nor was the mixture without its mystical interpretation; but was a kind of image of the universe. For by the scarlet was to be enigmatically signified fire; by the fine flax, the earth; by the blue, the air, and by the purple, the sea;—two of them having their colours for the foundation of this resemblance; but the fine flax and the purple have their own origin for this foundation, the earth producing the one, and the sea the other. This curtain had also embroidered upon it all that was mystical in the heavens excepting the twelve signs of the zodiac, representing living creatures.” Josephus (Trans. by Whiston), p. 895.[32]See also M. E. Harkness and Stuart Poole, “Assyrian Life and History,” p. 66.[33]The visions of Ezekiel and St. John remind us of the composite figures and animals in Ninevite sculptures, and the prophetic poetry helps us to interpret their symbolism.[34]G. Smith’s “Ancient History of the Monuments,” Babylonia, p. 33. Edited by Sayce.[35]In the British Museum. See “Bronze Ornaments of Palace Gates, Balawat,” pl.E5.[36]See Auberville’s “Ornement des Tissus,” pl. 1.[37]The Egyptian queen in question was mother-in-law to Shishak, whose daughter married Solomon. After his son-in-law’s death, Shishak plundered the “King’s House,” and carried to Egypt the golden shields or panels (1 Kings xiv. 26). The golden vessels went to Babylon later, and the golden candlesticks to Rome.[38]Sir G. Birdwood repeatedly points out that the Vedic was the art that worshipped and served nature. The Puranic is the ideal and distorted. The Moguls, about 700B.C., introduced their ugly Dravidian art. Through the Sassanian art of Persia, that of India was influenced. Possibly the very forms which in India are copied from Assyrian temples and palaces, may have travelled first to Assyria upon Indian stuffs and jewellery (Sir G. Birdwood’s “Industrial Arts of India,” i. p. 236).[39]Ibid., p. 130 (ed. 1884).[40]Nearchus (Strabo, XV. i. 67) says that the people of India had such a genius for imitation that they counterfeited sponges, which they saw used by the Macedonians, and produced perfect imitations of the real object. See Sir G. Birdwood’s “Industrial Arts of India,” ii. p. 133 (ed. 1884).[41]Ibid., ii. p. 131 (ed. 1884).[42]See Sir G. Birdwood, p. 129 (ed. 1884). If Fergusson is right in suggesting that the art of Central America was planted there in the third or fourth century of our era, it would, perhaps, appear to have taken refuge in America when it was driven out of India by the Sassanians, and was really Dravidian. He gives to the Turanian races all the mound buildings, as well as the fylfot or mystic cross, and he looks in Central India for the discovery of some remains that will give us the secret of the origin of the Indo-Aryan style. He thinks the Archaic Dravidian is allied with the Chinese. See Fergusson’s “Architecture.”[43]Etruscan and Indian golden ornaments, including the “Bolla” and the “Trichinopoly” chains and coral, are to be found throughout Scandinavia and in Ireland. See “Atlas de l’Archéologie du Nord,” par la Société Royale des Antiquaires du Nord. Copenhagen, 1857.[44]Arrian tells us of the Celts, “a people near the Great Ionian Bay,” who sent an embassy to Alexander before the battle of the Granicus—“a people strong and of a haughty spirit.” Alexander asked them if they feared anything. They answered that they feared the “sky might fall upon their heads.” He dismissed them, observing that the Celts were an arrogant nation (Arrian, i. 4, 10).[45]According to Yates, the merchandise of Eastern Asia passed through Slavonia to the north of Europe in the Middle Ages, without the intervention of Greece or Italy. This may account for certain terms of nomenclature which evidently came with goods transported straight to the north. Yates’ “Textrinum Antiquorum,” vol. i. p. 225-246.[46]These northern ideas, spreading over Germany, England, and France, flourished especially on German soil; and Oriental-patterned embroideries for hangings and dress were worked in every stitch, on every material, as may be seen in the museums and printed catalogues of Vienna, Berlin, Munich, &c.[47]Except, perhaps, the Serpent and Tree cope in Bock’s Kleinodien.[48]The different Celtic nationalities are always recognizable. There was found in a grave-mound at Hof, in Norway, a brooch, showing at a glance that it was Christian and Celtic, though taken from the grave of a pagan Viking. Another at Berdal, in Norway, was at once recognized by M. Lorange as being undoubtedly Irish. There are many other instances of evident Celtic Christian art found on the west coast of Norway under similar conditions—probably spoil from the British Islands, which were subject to the descents of the pagan Vikings for centuries after the time of St. Columba’s preaching of Christianity in Scotland. For information on the subject, see G. Stephen’s “Monuments of Runic Art,” and F. Anderson’s “Pagan Art in Scotland.”[49]“Scotland in Pagan Times,” by J. Anderson, pp. 3-7.[50]On a vase in the British Museum, Minerva appears with her ægis on her breast, and clothed in a petticoat and upper tunic worked in sprays, and a border of kneeling lions. On another Panathenaic vase she has a gown bordered with fighting men, evidently the sacred peplos. (Fig.4.)[51]See the account of the veil of Herè in the Iliad, and that of the mantle of Ulysses in the Odyssey.[52]See Butcher and Lang’s Odyssey.[53]“Der Stil.”[54]The Greeks collected into one focus all that they found of beauty in art from many distant sources—Egyptian, Indian, Assyrian—and thus fired their inborn genius, which thenceforth radiated its splendour over the whole civilized world.[55]Homer’s Iliad, xviii. 480-617 (Butcher and Lang).[56]See “Woltmann and Woermann.” Trans. Sidney Colvin, p. 64.[57]Except, perhaps, the keystone arch.[58]Virg. Æneid iii. Trans. G.L.G.[59]The Indian Cush.[60]Except in the art of the Celts, whose Indo-Chinese style shows evidence of Mongolian importation, and later we find traces of a similar influence: for instance, “Yarkand rugs are semi-Chinese, semi-Tartar, resembling also the works of India and Persia. It is easy to distinguish from what source each comes, as one perceives the influence of the neighbouring native art” (“On Japan,” by Dresser, p. 322).[61]See a paper by M. Terrien de la Couperie in the Journal of the Society of Arts, 1881.[62]“Rome had to be overthrown that the new religion and the new civilization might be established. Christianity did its work in winning to it those Teutonic conquerors, but how vast was the cost to the world, occasioned by the necessity of casting into the boiling cauldron of barbarous warfare, that noble civilization and the treasures which Rome had gathered in the spoil of a conquered universe! Had any old Roman, or Christian father been gifted with Jeremiah’s prescience, he might have seen the fire blazing amidst the forests of Germany, and the cauldron settling down with its mouth turned towards the south, and would have uttered his lamentation in plaintive tones, such as Jeremiah’s, and in the same melancholy key” (“Holy Bible,” with Commentary by Canon Cook, Introduction to Jeremiah, vol. i. p. 319).[63]Scandinavian art became strongly tinctured with that of Byzantium. The Varangian Guards were, probably, answerable for this, by their intercourse between Greece and their native land, which lasted so many centuries. There have come down to us, as witnesses of this intercourse, many coins and much jewellery, in which all that is Oriental in its style has been leavened by its passage through Byzantine and Romanesque channels. Gibbon, writing of this period, says: “The habits of pilgrimage and piracy had approximated the countries of the earth” (see Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall,” chap. lv.).Greek embroidered patterns and Greek forms of dress still linger in Iceland. There was lately brought to England a bride’s dress, which might have belonged to the Greek wife of a Varangian guardsman. It is embroidered with a border in gold of the classical honeysuckle pattern; and the bridal wreath of gilt metal flowers might, from its style, be supposed to have been taken from a Greek tomb.[64]Evidently an imitation of the peplos of Minerva (see fig.4, p.32).[65]The descent from the Persian of Arab or Moorish art, as we generally call it when speaking of its Spanish development, is to be accounted for by the presence of a considerable colony of Persians in Spain in the time of the Moors, as attested by numerous documents still in existence. See Col. Murdoch Smith’s “Preface to Persian Art,” Series of Art Handbooks of the Kensington Museum.[66]Ronsard, poet, politician, and diplomatist, compares the Queen of Navarre to Pallas Athene:—“Elle adonnait son courageA mainte bel ouvrageDessus la toile, et encorA joindre la soie et l’or.Vous d’un pareil exerciseMariez par artificeDessus la toile en mainte traitsL’or et la soie en pourtraict.”[67]Mary de Medici brought back with her from Italy Federigo Vinciolo as her designer for embroideries.[68]See “Art Needlework,” by E. Maxse, and “Manuel de la Broderie,” by Madame E. F. Celnart.[69]From the Italian translation by Signor Minghetti.[70]Gaston, Duke of Orleans (died 1660), kept hothouses on purpose to supply models for floral textile designs. Le Brun often drew the embroideries for the hangings in rooms he had himself designed and decorated.[71]We have all seen the dining-room wine-coolers modelled in imitation of Roman tombs; and there is a drawing-room in a splendid mansion still furnished with cinerary urns covering the walls, while curule chairs most uncomfortably furnish the seats.[72]In his designs for papers and textiles, Mr. Morris’ poetical and artistic feeling—his admiration and sensitiveness for all that is beautiful and graceful (as well as quaint)—his respect for precedent, added to his own fanciful originality,—have given a colour and seal to the whole decorative art of England of to-day. It is a step towards a new school. The sobriety and tenderness of his colouring gives a sense of harmony, and reconciles us to his repetitions of large vegetable forms, which remind us sometimes of a kitchen-garden in a tornado. For domestic decoration we should, as far as possible, adhere to reposing forms and colours. Our flowers should lie in their allotted spaces, quiet and undisturbed by elemental struggles, which have no business in our windowed and glass-protected rooms.

[15]Boyd Dawkins’ “Early Man in Britain,” p. 285. See also chapter onstitches(post), p.195.

[16]Some of these styles survive; some are still perceptible as traditions or echoes; some have totally disappeared in our modern art, such as the Primitive or the Egyptian.

[17]See Semper, “Der Stil.”

[18]The history of Gaul begins in the 7th, and that of Britain in the 1st centuryB.C., while the civilization of Egypt dates back to more than 4000B.C.; therefore the historical overlap is very great. It is probable that a large portion of Europe was in its neolithic age, while the scribes were composing their records of war and commerce in the great cities on the Nile, and that the neolithic civilization lingered in remote regions while the voice of Pericles was heard in Athens, and the name of Hannibal was a terror in Italy.—See Boyd Dawkins’ “Early Man in Britain,” p. 481.

[19]See chapter onpatterns.

[20]In the Troad.

[21]Some of the Egyptian arts we know are pre-Homeric (if Homer really sang 800B.C.), and Asiatic art was then in its highest development.

[22]See chapter onstitches,cut work(post). This funeral tent is a monumental work, inasmuch as the inscription inwrought on it gives us the name and title of her in whose honour it was made, and whose remains it covered. See Villiers Stewart’s “Funeral Tent of an Egyptian Queen.”

[23]Herodotus, book ii. c. 182; book iii. c. 47 (Rawlinson’s Trans.). See Rock’s Introduction, p. xiv.

[24]Homer mentions “Sidonian stuffs and Phœnician skill” (Iliad, v. 170); also “Sidonian Embroidery.” Ibid. vi. 287-295.

[25]The Assyrian designs are such as are now still worked at Benares, and being full of animals, they are called Shikurgah, or “happy hunting-grounds.” See Sir G. Birdwood’s “Industrial Arts of India,” p. 236. See also Plate 4.

[26]See Perrot and Chipiez (pp. 737-757); also Clermont Ganneau’s Histoire de l’Art, “L’Imagerie Phénicienne,” Plate 1, pt. 1. Coupe de Palestrina. He says that certain scenes from the “Shield of Achilles” are literally to be found on Phœnician vases that have come down to us—vases of which Homer himself must have seen some of analogous design.

[27]Homer speaks of Sidonian embroideries, “Iliad,” vi., 287-295.

[28]See Egyptian fragments in the British Museum, and the specimens of Peruvian textiles; and Reiss and Stübel’s “Necropolis of Ancon in Peru.”

[29]At Cervetri, Dennis’ “Etruria,” ed. 1878, i. p. 268.

[30]The restless activity of the Phœnicians has often helped to confuse our æsthetic knowledge, and has caused the waste of much speculation in ascertaining how certain objects of luxury, belonging to distant civilizations, can possibly have arrived at the places where we find them.

[31]“The Beautiful Gate of the Temple was covered all over with gold. It had also golden vines above it, from which hung clusters of grapes as tall as a man’s height.... It had golden doors of 55 cubits altitude, and 16 in breadth: but before these doors there was a veil of equal largeness with the doors. It was a Babylonian curtain of blue, fine linen, and scarlet and purple; of an admixture that was truly wonderful. Nor was the mixture without its mystical interpretation; but was a kind of image of the universe. For by the scarlet was to be enigmatically signified fire; by the fine flax, the earth; by the blue, the air, and by the purple, the sea;—two of them having their colours for the foundation of this resemblance; but the fine flax and the purple have their own origin for this foundation, the earth producing the one, and the sea the other. This curtain had also embroidered upon it all that was mystical in the heavens excepting the twelve signs of the zodiac, representing living creatures.” Josephus (Trans. by Whiston), p. 895.

[32]See also M. E. Harkness and Stuart Poole, “Assyrian Life and History,” p. 66.

[33]The visions of Ezekiel and St. John remind us of the composite figures and animals in Ninevite sculptures, and the prophetic poetry helps us to interpret their symbolism.

[34]G. Smith’s “Ancient History of the Monuments,” Babylonia, p. 33. Edited by Sayce.

[35]In the British Museum. See “Bronze Ornaments of Palace Gates, Balawat,” pl.E5.

[36]See Auberville’s “Ornement des Tissus,” pl. 1.

[37]The Egyptian queen in question was mother-in-law to Shishak, whose daughter married Solomon. After his son-in-law’s death, Shishak plundered the “King’s House,” and carried to Egypt the golden shields or panels (1 Kings xiv. 26). The golden vessels went to Babylon later, and the golden candlesticks to Rome.

[38]Sir G. Birdwood repeatedly points out that the Vedic was the art that worshipped and served nature. The Puranic is the ideal and distorted. The Moguls, about 700B.C., introduced their ugly Dravidian art. Through the Sassanian art of Persia, that of India was influenced. Possibly the very forms which in India are copied from Assyrian temples and palaces, may have travelled first to Assyria upon Indian stuffs and jewellery (Sir G. Birdwood’s “Industrial Arts of India,” i. p. 236).

[39]Ibid., p. 130 (ed. 1884).

[40]Nearchus (Strabo, XV. i. 67) says that the people of India had such a genius for imitation that they counterfeited sponges, which they saw used by the Macedonians, and produced perfect imitations of the real object. See Sir G. Birdwood’s “Industrial Arts of India,” ii. p. 133 (ed. 1884).

[41]Ibid., ii. p. 131 (ed. 1884).

[42]See Sir G. Birdwood, p. 129 (ed. 1884). If Fergusson is right in suggesting that the art of Central America was planted there in the third or fourth century of our era, it would, perhaps, appear to have taken refuge in America when it was driven out of India by the Sassanians, and was really Dravidian. He gives to the Turanian races all the mound buildings, as well as the fylfot or mystic cross, and he looks in Central India for the discovery of some remains that will give us the secret of the origin of the Indo-Aryan style. He thinks the Archaic Dravidian is allied with the Chinese. See Fergusson’s “Architecture.”

[43]Etruscan and Indian golden ornaments, including the “Bolla” and the “Trichinopoly” chains and coral, are to be found throughout Scandinavia and in Ireland. See “Atlas de l’Archéologie du Nord,” par la Société Royale des Antiquaires du Nord. Copenhagen, 1857.

[44]Arrian tells us of the Celts, “a people near the Great Ionian Bay,” who sent an embassy to Alexander before the battle of the Granicus—“a people strong and of a haughty spirit.” Alexander asked them if they feared anything. They answered that they feared the “sky might fall upon their heads.” He dismissed them, observing that the Celts were an arrogant nation (Arrian, i. 4, 10).

[45]According to Yates, the merchandise of Eastern Asia passed through Slavonia to the north of Europe in the Middle Ages, without the intervention of Greece or Italy. This may account for certain terms of nomenclature which evidently came with goods transported straight to the north. Yates’ “Textrinum Antiquorum,” vol. i. p. 225-246.

[46]These northern ideas, spreading over Germany, England, and France, flourished especially on German soil; and Oriental-patterned embroideries for hangings and dress were worked in every stitch, on every material, as may be seen in the museums and printed catalogues of Vienna, Berlin, Munich, &c.

[47]Except, perhaps, the Serpent and Tree cope in Bock’s Kleinodien.

[48]The different Celtic nationalities are always recognizable. There was found in a grave-mound at Hof, in Norway, a brooch, showing at a glance that it was Christian and Celtic, though taken from the grave of a pagan Viking. Another at Berdal, in Norway, was at once recognized by M. Lorange as being undoubtedly Irish. There are many other instances of evident Celtic Christian art found on the west coast of Norway under similar conditions—probably spoil from the British Islands, which were subject to the descents of the pagan Vikings for centuries after the time of St. Columba’s preaching of Christianity in Scotland. For information on the subject, see G. Stephen’s “Monuments of Runic Art,” and F. Anderson’s “Pagan Art in Scotland.”

[49]“Scotland in Pagan Times,” by J. Anderson, pp. 3-7.

[50]On a vase in the British Museum, Minerva appears with her ægis on her breast, and clothed in a petticoat and upper tunic worked in sprays, and a border of kneeling lions. On another Panathenaic vase she has a gown bordered with fighting men, evidently the sacred peplos. (Fig.4.)

[51]See the account of the veil of Herè in the Iliad, and that of the mantle of Ulysses in the Odyssey.

[52]See Butcher and Lang’s Odyssey.

[53]“Der Stil.”

[54]The Greeks collected into one focus all that they found of beauty in art from many distant sources—Egyptian, Indian, Assyrian—and thus fired their inborn genius, which thenceforth radiated its splendour over the whole civilized world.

[55]Homer’s Iliad, xviii. 480-617 (Butcher and Lang).

[56]See “Woltmann and Woermann.” Trans. Sidney Colvin, p. 64.

[57]Except, perhaps, the keystone arch.

[58]Virg. Æneid iii. Trans. G.L.G.

[59]The Indian Cush.

[60]Except in the art of the Celts, whose Indo-Chinese style shows evidence of Mongolian importation, and later we find traces of a similar influence: for instance, “Yarkand rugs are semi-Chinese, semi-Tartar, resembling also the works of India and Persia. It is easy to distinguish from what source each comes, as one perceives the influence of the neighbouring native art” (“On Japan,” by Dresser, p. 322).

[61]See a paper by M. Terrien de la Couperie in the Journal of the Society of Arts, 1881.

[62]“Rome had to be overthrown that the new religion and the new civilization might be established. Christianity did its work in winning to it those Teutonic conquerors, but how vast was the cost to the world, occasioned by the necessity of casting into the boiling cauldron of barbarous warfare, that noble civilization and the treasures which Rome had gathered in the spoil of a conquered universe! Had any old Roman, or Christian father been gifted with Jeremiah’s prescience, he might have seen the fire blazing amidst the forests of Germany, and the cauldron settling down with its mouth turned towards the south, and would have uttered his lamentation in plaintive tones, such as Jeremiah’s, and in the same melancholy key” (“Holy Bible,” with Commentary by Canon Cook, Introduction to Jeremiah, vol. i. p. 319).

[63]Scandinavian art became strongly tinctured with that of Byzantium. The Varangian Guards were, probably, answerable for this, by their intercourse between Greece and their native land, which lasted so many centuries. There have come down to us, as witnesses of this intercourse, many coins and much jewellery, in which all that is Oriental in its style has been leavened by its passage through Byzantine and Romanesque channels. Gibbon, writing of this period, says: “The habits of pilgrimage and piracy had approximated the countries of the earth” (see Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall,” chap. lv.).Greek embroidered patterns and Greek forms of dress still linger in Iceland. There was lately brought to England a bride’s dress, which might have belonged to the Greek wife of a Varangian guardsman. It is embroidered with a border in gold of the classical honeysuckle pattern; and the bridal wreath of gilt metal flowers might, from its style, be supposed to have been taken from a Greek tomb.

Greek embroidered patterns and Greek forms of dress still linger in Iceland. There was lately brought to England a bride’s dress, which might have belonged to the Greek wife of a Varangian guardsman. It is embroidered with a border in gold of the classical honeysuckle pattern; and the bridal wreath of gilt metal flowers might, from its style, be supposed to have been taken from a Greek tomb.

[64]Evidently an imitation of the peplos of Minerva (see fig.4, p.32).

[65]The descent from the Persian of Arab or Moorish art, as we generally call it when speaking of its Spanish development, is to be accounted for by the presence of a considerable colony of Persians in Spain in the time of the Moors, as attested by numerous documents still in existence. See Col. Murdoch Smith’s “Preface to Persian Art,” Series of Art Handbooks of the Kensington Museum.

[66]Ronsard, poet, politician, and diplomatist, compares the Queen of Navarre to Pallas Athene:—“Elle adonnait son courageA mainte bel ouvrageDessus la toile, et encorA joindre la soie et l’or.Vous d’un pareil exerciseMariez par artificeDessus la toile en mainte traitsL’or et la soie en pourtraict.”

[66]Ronsard, poet, politician, and diplomatist, compares the Queen of Navarre to Pallas Athene:—

“Elle adonnait son courageA mainte bel ouvrageDessus la toile, et encorA joindre la soie et l’or.Vous d’un pareil exerciseMariez par artificeDessus la toile en mainte traitsL’or et la soie en pourtraict.”

[67]Mary de Medici brought back with her from Italy Federigo Vinciolo as her designer for embroideries.

[68]See “Art Needlework,” by E. Maxse, and “Manuel de la Broderie,” by Madame E. F. Celnart.

[69]From the Italian translation by Signor Minghetti.

[70]Gaston, Duke of Orleans (died 1660), kept hothouses on purpose to supply models for floral textile designs. Le Brun often drew the embroideries for the hangings in rooms he had himself designed and decorated.

[71]We have all seen the dining-room wine-coolers modelled in imitation of Roman tombs; and there is a drawing-room in a splendid mansion still furnished with cinerary urns covering the walls, while curule chairs most uncomfortably furnish the seats.

[72]In his designs for papers and textiles, Mr. Morris’ poetical and artistic feeling—his admiration and sensitiveness for all that is beautiful and graceful (as well as quaint)—his respect for precedent, added to his own fanciful originality,—have given a colour and seal to the whole decorative art of England of to-day. It is a step towards a new school. The sobriety and tenderness of his colouring gives a sense of harmony, and reconciles us to his repetitions of large vegetable forms, which remind us sometimes of a kitchen-garden in a tornado. For domestic decoration we should, as far as possible, adhere to reposing forms and colours. Our flowers should lie in their allotted spaces, quiet and undisturbed by elemental struggles, which have no business in our windowed and glass-protected rooms.

Gorgo.Behold these ’broideries! Finer saw you never.Praxinoè.Ye gods! What artists work’d these pictures in?What kind of painter could these clear lines limn?How true they stand! nay, lifelike, moving ever;Not worked—created!Woman, thou art clever!(Scene at a Festival)Theocritus, Idyll xv. line 78.

Gorgo.Behold these ’broideries! Finer saw you never.

Praxinoè.Ye gods! What artists work’d these pictures in?What kind of painter could these clear lines limn?How true they stand! nay, lifelike, moving ever;Not worked—created!Woman, thou art clever!

(Scene at a Festival)Theocritus, Idyll xv. line 78.

The word design, as applied to needlework, includes the principles and laws of the art: the motives and their hereditary outcome; the art creating the principles; the laws controlling the art.

Design means intention, motive, and should as such be applied to the smallest as to the greatest efforts of art. That which results from it, either as picture or pattern, is a record of the thoughts which produced it, and by its style fixes the date, of its production.

I will first consider the principles of design, and afterwards, in another chapter, inquire into the origin ofpatterns; investigating their motives, and using them as examples, and also as warnings.

The individual genius of the artist works first in design, though his work is for the use of the craftsman or artisan, his collaborator; for the two, head and hands, must work together, or else will render each other inoperative or ineffective.

The artisan, by right of his title, claims a part in the art itself; the craftsman, by his name, points out that he, too, has to work out the craft, the mystery, the inner meaning, of the design or intention.

The designer himself is subject to the prejudices calledthe taste of his day. He is necessarily under the influence which that taste has imposed upon him, and from which no spontaneous efforts of genius can entirely emancipate him. Whether he is conceiving a temple for the worship of a national faith, or the edging for the robe of a fair votaress, or the pattern on the border of a cup of gold or brass, he cannot avoid the force of tradition and of custom, which comes from afar, weighted with the power of long descent, and which crushes individuality, unless it is of the most robust nature.

Of very early design we have most curious and mysterious glimpses. The cave man was an artist. The few scratches on a bone, cleverly showing the forms of a dog or a stag, a whale or a seal, nay, the figure of a man, have enabled us to ascertain and to classify the Palæolithic cave man; from whom his less civilized successor, the Neolithic man, may be distinguished by his absence of all animal design.[73]

These fragmentary scraps of information, pieced together only in these later years, teach us the value of very small facts which time and care are now accumulating, and which, being the remains of lives and nations passed away, still serve as the soil in which history can be fertilized.

We have no means of judging whether the cave man was an artist on a greater or more advanced scale thanis actually shown by the bone-scratchings; the only other relic of his handiwork is the needle.[74]

It is evident that a direct imitation of nature, such as is seen in these “graffiti,” and at an immense distance in advance of them, in the earliest known Egyptian sculptures, preceded all conventional art. Some of the earliest portrait statues in the Museum at Boulac exhibit a high degree of naturalistic design before it became subservient to the expression of the faith of the people. As soon as art was found to be the fittest conveyance of symbolism, it became the consecrated medium for transmitting language, thought, and history, and was reduced to forms in which it was contented to remain petrified for many centuries, entirely foregoing the study or imitation of nature.[75]It recorded customs, historical events, and religious beliefs; receiving from the last the impress of the unchangeable and the absolute, which it gave to the other subjects on which it touched. It ceased to be a creative art (if it had ever aspired to such a function), and was never the embodiment of individual thought. This phase prevailed under different manifestations in Assyria and China. Pictorial art had, in fact, become merely the nursing mother of the alphabet, guiding its first steps—the hieroglyphic delineation or expression of thoughts and facts.[76]

In Egypt, the change from the first period of actual imitation of nature was succeeded by many centuries of the very slowest progress. Renouf speaks,[77]however, of “the astonishing identity that is visible through all the periods of Egyptian art” (for you could never mistake anything Egyptian for the produce of any other country). “This identity and slow movement,” he says, “are not inconsistent with an immense amount of change, which must exist if there is any real life.” In fact, there were periods of relative progress, repose, and decay, and every age had its peculiar character. Birch, Lepsius, or Marriette could at once tell you the age of a statue, inscription, or manuscript, by the characteristic signs which actually fix[78]the date.

Design, unconsciously has a slowly altering and persistently onward movement, which but seldom repeats itself. It is one of the most remarkable instances of evolution. But it also has its cataclysms (however we may account for them), of which the Greek apotheosis of all art is a shining example, and the total disappearance of classical influence in Europe before the Renaissance is another.

I will instance one prevailing habit of Egyptian art.[79]In the long processional subjects, and in individual separate figures, it was usual to draw the head in perfect profile, the body facing you, but not completely—a sortof compromise with a three-quarter view of it—and the feet following each other, on the same line as the profile. This mode of representing the human figure was only effaced gradually by the introduction of Greek art, and continued to be the conventional and decorative method even in the latest days of Egyptian art; and it is curious to observe, that in the Dark ages European design fell into the same habit. We cannot imagine that this distorted way of drawing the human figure could have any intentional meaning, and therefore may simply believe that it had become a custom; and that when art has so stiffened and consolidated itself by precedent and long tradition, as in Egypt and in India, certain errors as well as certain truths become, as it were, ingrained into it. Plato remarked of Egyptian art, that “the pictures and statues they made ten thousand years ago were in no particular better than those they make now.”[80]

One day, however, the Greek broke away from the ancient bonds of custom. The body was made to accompany the head, and the feet followed suit. But the strange fact remains that for several thousand years men walked in profile, all out of drawing. Evidently originality was not in much estimation among the Egyptian patrons of art. Design seemed to have restricted itself to effective adaptations in a few permitted forms in architecture and painting, and the illumination of the papyrus MSS.

Egyptian elasticity of design found some scope in its domestic ornamentation, in jewellery and hangings, but especially in its embroideries for dress. Here much ingenuity was shown, and the patterns on walls and the ceilings of tombs give us the designs which Semper considers as having been originally intended for textile purposes. He strains to a point to which I can hardlyfollow him, the theory that all decorations were originally textile (except such as proceeded in China from the lattice-work motive); though I willingly accept the idea that textile decoration was one of the first and most active promoters of design.

It is not possible for us to trace systematically the different points at which Egyptian and Asiatic art touch, but we can see that they were always acting and reacting on each other in the later centuries before our era, and that Greece profited by them. The first efforts of both to break through this chrysalis stage, resulted in the early Greek archaic style. Its strongly marked, muscular humanity reminds one of all the conflicting impressions struggling in the conception of the great artist who first embodied them. They appear to be breaking out from the trammels of Egyptian and Assyrian styles, which by meeting had engendered life; and Greek art was the child of their union. Then art, having shaken off symbolism as its only purpose, and seeking to represent the forms of men, yet possessed by a guiding spirit, first sought to convey the idea of expression. The worship of humanity, mingling with that of their gods, produced the Heroic ideal; and all the attributes of their heroes—majesty, beauty, grace, and passion—had to be depicted; as well as rage, sorrow, despair, and revenge. These were soon to be surrounded with all the splendours of the arts of decoration.

Greece had prepared for this outburst of excellence and the perfect science of art, by collecting the traditions, the symbols, the experience in colouring, and the knowledge of beautiful forms, human and ideal. All that was needed for the advent of the man who could design and create types of beauty for all ages was thus accumulated, and the man came, and his name was Pheidias. A crowd followed him, all steeped in the same flood of poetryand art; and for several centuries they filled the world with the sense and science of beauty. Then the function of the designer—the artist—was changed and elevated, and he became, through the great days of Greek and Roman Pagan art, and afterwards through the rise of that of Christianity, the exponent of all that was poetical and ennobling in the life of man.

But though the Greek artist had broken the chains of prescribed form, he still adhered to the “motive”—the inner symbolical thought—and strove to express it as it had never been expressed before.[81]New principles were evoked, and the artist, while revelling in the “sweetness and light” of freedom, framed for himself standards of taste and refinement, which he left as a heritage to all succeeding generations.

I fear that I am repeating a platitude when insisting that freedom in all design, but especially that employed in decoration, must be kept within certain boundaries; otherwise it becomes lawless. Rules, like all other controlling circumstances, are of the greatest service to the artist, as they suggest what he can do, as well as decide what he ought not to attempt. All boundaries are highly suggestive; the size of a sheet of paper—the form of a panel—the colours in the box of pigments—even the touch of the brush which comes to hand,—all these help to shape the idea to our ends, and assist us in giving to the original motive theform which is most suitable. These restrictions are often regarded as impediments by the impatient artist; whereas he ought to look on them as hints and suggestions, and claim their assistance, instead of struggling against them. Let us accept the principle that it is good for each of our efforts at decoration that we are controlled by the space allotted to its composition. The relative size (small, perhaps, for a table-cover, but large for that of a book) and the shape to which we are limited, alter all the conditions of a design. Whether it is square or oblong, or lengthened into a frieze; whether it must be divided into parts, including more than one motive, or be grouped round one centre; whether it is to be repeated more than once within the range of the eye, or whether it is to disappear into space upwards or horizontally; and whether it is to stand alone, or be framed with lines or a border,—all these restrictions must govern the design, or, in its highest phase, the composition.

The composition must consist of supporting lines well balanced, and “values” filling up the whole surface of the space, which is to contain it, and beyond which it must not seek to extend. As we have in embroidery no distances—only a foreground—the design must be placed all on one plane. The title of “composition” cannot be granted to a bouquet or a bird cast on one corner of a square of linen, however gracefully it may be drawn. It does not cover the space allotted to it.

If we carefully study the great and guiding principles that have been distinctly formulated by some of the Continental authorities on decorative art, we shall find much help in composing our designs. Nothing is more interesting than to search for the foundation of the structure which centuries have helped to raise, and to dig out, as it were, the original plan or thought of thefounder. So it is most instructive to learn the fundamental rules by which such results are secured.

M. Blanc[82]says of the general laws of ornamentation: “There can be no nobler satisfaction to the mind, than to be able to unravel what is beyond measure complicated, to diminish what is apparently immense, and to reduce to a few clear points what has been till now involved in a haze of obscurity. Just as the twenty-six letters of the alphabet have been, and always will be sufficient to form the expression of the words necessary for all human thought, so certain elements susceptible of combination among themselves have sufficed, and will suffice, to create ornament, whose variety may be indefinitely multiplied.”

He reduces ornamental design to five principles, Repetition, Alternation, Symmetry, Progression, and Confusion.

Fig. 5.Wave Pattern.

First, Repetition. “You may act on the mind, through sight, by the same means as those that will excite physical sensations. A single prick of a pin is nothing, but a hundred such will be intolerably painful. Repetition produces pleasurable sensations, as well as painful ones.” An insignificant form can become interesting by repetition, and by the suggestion which, singly, it could not originate. For example, the rolling of the Greek scroll or wave pattern awakens in us the idea of one object following another. “It also suggests the waves of the ocean; or the poet may see in it a troop of maidens pursuing each other in space, not frivolously, but in cadence, as if executing a mysticdance.” Change the curves into angular forms, as making the key pattern, and it will no longer flow, but become as severe as the other was graceful. No principle gives greater pleasure than repetition, and next to it,alternation.

Fig. 6.Key Pattern.

Variety is here added to the law of repetition. “There can be repetition without alternation, but no alternation without repetition.” Alternation is, then, a succession of two objects recurring regularly in turn; and the cadence of appearance and disappearance gives pleasure to the senses, whether it be addressed to taste, hearing, or sight. Alternate rhymes, and even short and long lines, soothe the ear in verse. In form, the alternations are the more agreeable, the more they differ. Such are, in architecture, a succession of metopes and triglyphs on a Doric frieze, where the circle and the straight lines relieve each other.

Linear patterns with circular motifs

Fig. 7.Metopes and Triglyphs.

Symmetry. The correspondence of two parts opposite to each other is symmetrical. “A living being, man or animal, is composed of two parts, which appear to have been united down one central line. Without being identical, if you folded them down the line, they would overlap and perfectly cover each other. Man is born with the sense of symmetry, to match his outward form; and he appreciates its existence, and instinctively feels the want of it. Symmetry is anotherword for justness of proportion. The Greeks understood by symmetry, the condition of a body of which the members have a common measure among themselves. We expect the two sides of a living being to correspond, and we look for these proportions in the living body to balance each other, which we do not expect to find in any other natural object. A large leaf at the end of a slender stem may be as appropriate, and give as much pleasure, as a small leaf in the same position; but a huge hand at the end of an arm is not so agreeable to our sense of symmetry as one of the size and outline which we naturally expect to see.

“The mind of man expects to find, outside of himself and his own proportions, something which he feels is proportionate and symmetrical; in fact, he at once detects the want of it. The Japanese, with delicacy and taste, often substitute for symmetry its corollary—balance. The Chinese or Japanese vase will often have an appreciable affinity and resemblance to a Greek one, each preserving a secret balance, even in the extremest whimsicality of its composition. Proportion is another corollary to symmetry, if it is not another word for some of its qualities.”

“Progression. In this principle are included long perspectives, pyramidal forms in architecture, and certain processional compositions.”

“For pyramidal surfaces, such as pediments, a progressive ornament is the fittest. All the buildings in the East, and in the ancient cities of Central America, which are raised on pyramids of steps, show the tendency to this species of effect in giving dignity to the buildings placed on such platforms.”

“Perspectives are highly attractive specimens of progression, which, when made use of in the decorations of a theatre, produce delightful illusions.”

M. Blanc quotes Bernardin de St. Pierre, who says: “When the branches of a plant are disposed in a uniform plan of diminishing size, as in the pyramidal shape of a pine, there is progression; and if these trees be planted in long avenues, diminishing in height and colour, as each tree does in itself, our pleasure is redoubled, because progression here becomes infinite. It is owing to this feeling of infinity that we take pleasure in looking at anything that presents progression, such as nurseries in different stages of growth, the slopes of hills retreating to the horizon at different levels—interminable perspectives.”

All floral compositions which give the effect or impression of growth may be included in the progressive principle. A composition which, beginning as it were with a stem, spreads and floreates equally on each side; thrusting outwards and upwards, and ending in a topmost twig or bud, is governed by this principle.

Confusion. Boileau is quoted by M. Blanc as saying, “A fine disorder is often the effect of art;” and he adds, “But before he said it, nature had shown it.” Here we must observe that the confusions or disorders of nature are all subject to certain laws; and it is in adopting this idea, that an artistic confusion may give us the sense of its being ordered by, and subject to definite rules. These rules act as the frame affects the picture, circumscribing its irregularities, and restricting them to a certain area. “The artist-painter is, in a small space, permitted to employ confusion, because the art of the cabinet-maker will keep the geometrical effect in view.” When the Japanese throw their ornaments, apparently without rule, here and there on the japanned box, they reckon on the square shape being sufficiently marked to the eye by its shining surface and sharp corners.

The confusion in a Japanese landscape is so beautifulthat one appreciates the innate sense of balance, which modifies the confusion—rules and orders it.

“In the hands of the designer, confusion is only a method of rendering order visible in a happy disorder. Here contraries meet and touch.... Admit these as the principles of all decoration, and you will find that, by following and combining them, you may produce varieties as numberless as the sands of the sea, and that a latent equilibrium will reduce nearly every complication and confusion to perfect harmony.”

Each of the five principles we have discussed has its corollary, which adds to the resources of the decorative artist. These are as follows:—To Repetition belongs harmony, or consonance; to Alternation, contrast; to Symmetry, radiation; to Progression, gradation; to balanced Confusion, deliberate complication.[83]

Harmoniesin form and in colour are produced in different ways—sometimes by repetition with variation; sometimes by the different parts being rather reflected on each than repeated. This explains the harmony that may be called consonance, if I rightly understand M. Blanc’s theory.

Contrastis most generally understood as a common resource in the hands of the artist for producing strong effects; but M. Blanc cleverly expresses the reticence needed to ensure contrast being pleasurable, not painful. “To adorn persons or things,” he says, “is not simply for the purpose of causing them to be conspicuous; it is that they may be admired. It is not simply to draw attention to them, but that they may be regarded with feelings of pleasure.... If contrast be needed, let it be used as the means of rendering the whole more powerful, brilliant, and striking. For instance, if orange is intended to predominate in a decoration, let blue be mingled withit, but sparingly. Let the complementary colour be its auxiliary, and not its rival.” Contrasts are always unpleasant, if the two forces struggle with each other for pre-eminence, whether it be in form or in colour. The rule to be observed in all ornamental design is this: “that contrasting objects, instead of disturbing unity, should assist it by giving most effect to that we wish to bring forward and display.”

Radiationbelongs to the principle of symmetry, starting from a centre from which all lines diverge, and to which all lines point. This is to be found throughout nature, from the rays of the sun to the petals of the daisy. All decorative art employs and illustrates it.

“Gradationin colour, as in form, is not quite synonymous with progression, but expresses a series of adroitly managed transitions. The English intermingle in their decoration, colours very finely blended; nor do they find any transition too delicate. This, as in all principles of ornament, has to be employed according to the feelings intended to be produced on the mind of the spectator—whether for absolute contrast or for imperceptible progression, when the tenderest colours are needed.”

Complicationis illustrated by M. Blanc, by a quotation from “Ziegler.”[84]“Complication is another aspect of the art which owns the same sentiment as that expressed by Dædalus in his labyrinth, Solomon in his mysterious seal, the Greeks in their interlacing and winding ornaments, the Byzantines, the Moors, and the architects of our cathedrals in their finest works. Intertwined mosaics, and intersection of arches and ribs, all spring from complication.”

To follow the interlacing line of an ornament, gives the mind the pleasure of untying the Gordian knot, without cutting it. It gives the excitement of curiosity,pursuit, and discovery. “When we see these traceries so skilfully plaited, in which straight lines and curves intermingle, cross, branch out, disappear and recur, we experience a high pleasure in unravelling a puzzle which at first, perhaps, appeared to be undecipherable; and in acknowledging that a latent arrangement may be recognized in what at first, and at a distance, seems an inextricable confusion.” The Celtic, Moorish, and Gothic styles illustrate and are explained by these remarks; and they are well worthy the attention of the designer.

Having so freely borrowed from M. Blanc’s chapter on the general laws of ornamentation, I will finish my quotations with the words with which he concludes: “There is no decoration in the works of nature or the inventions of men which does not owe its birth to one of the original principles here enumerated, viz. Repetition, Alternation, Symmetry, Progression, and Balanced Confusion; or else to one of their secondary causes, consonance, contrast, radiation, gradation, and complication; or lastly, to a combination of these different elements, which all finally lose themselves in a primordial cause—the origin of the movements of the universe—Order.”[85]

The extracts from M. Blanc’s works I have carefully placed between commas, being most anxious to express my obligation to him for his carefully formulated epitome of the laws of design. But though I have largely quoted, there remains still much most interesting and suggestive matter, which I recommend the reader to seek in his book.

Though we should call to our aid the general laws of design for all art, we must select from them what is specially appropriate for the needs of our craft. Fromthe art of needlework we should eliminate as much as possible all ideas ofroundness, all variety of surface and effects of light and shadow and contrasting colours. Unity, softness, grace, refinement, brightness, cheerfulness, pleasant suggestions,—these should be the objects in view when we design the panels for the drawing-room or boudoir, the hangings for the bed, or the cover for the table—harmony which will satisfy the eye, thoughts that shall please the mind.

The objects in nature that give us the most unalloyed pleasure—birds and flowers—are those that from all time have served as the materials for decorative design, and therefore have been moulded into the traditional patterns which have descended to us from the earliest times. Design must follow the scientific laws of art, and shape the variations of traditional forms from which we cannot escape. In our present search after these inner truths, I repeat that we have nothing to do with the rules of painting, sculpture, and architecture, or any other of the secondary arts, such as wood carving, metal work, &c.; these having each their own intrinsic principles, which must be worked out as corollaries from the general laws of composition which govern all Aryan art.[86]

It is curious that in drawing on the flat, in ancientfrescoes, there appear to be no acknowledged rules of perspective—hardly more in Pompeii, than on early Chinese screens and plates; or than later in the Bayeux tapestries. And yet the Greeks, with their unerring instinct, actually made use of false architectural perspectives to add to the effects of height and depth in their colonnaded buildings.[87]They sensibly diminished the circumference of the columns, and used other means in their designs for this purpose. They understood the principle, but they did not carry it into flat decorative art. They did not attempt, when they painted a landscape on the wall, to do more than recall the idea they were sketching; and never thought of vying in scientific or naturalistic imitation with the real landscape they saw through the window; they did not wish to interfere with the effect of the statue, or the human figures grouped in front of it, to which the wall served as a background. Those threw shadows and cast lights; but in the flat there were no shadows, no perspective—all was flat.[88]We must draw from this the deduction that the Greeks held that flatness was an essential quality of wall decoration (except in friezes) as well as of all textile ornament; and for every reason we must accept this flatness as a general law for designs in embroidery.

In hangings and dress materials, flatness is more agreeable than a complicated shaded design, especially when it is further confused by folds, disturbing and interrupting the flow of the lines of the pattern.

The reader will perceive that the laws of composition for textiles quoted from M. Blanc, apply perfectly to designs on the flat, and to outlined sketches in black andwhite, as well as to the most elaborate compositions for pictures, either historical or “genre.” They are rules which should be understood and employed by the man who draws for a wall-paper or an area railing; and certainly by him who makes patterns for our schools of design.

It may therefore be laid down as a general rule, that all designs for embroidery should be considered first as outlined drawings, covering a flat surface, and then filled in with colour. The outlines should as little as possible overlap one another, as flatness is one of the first objects to be remembered; and this, of course, will be disturbed by the parts passing over or under each other. Indian designs in flowers have invariably a wonderful flatness, in the absence of all light and shadow; joined to a naturalistic suggestion of detail, which is accounted for by their traditional mode of copying from nature. The branch or blossom to be copied, is laid on the ground and pegged down with care, to eliminate every variety of surface, and every branch and twig so arranged that they may not cross or touch each other. This conventional composition is then drawn, and every natural distinction in the form carefully copied. I would suggest that this idea should be accepted as useful for imitation among ourselves in certain conventional compositions of vegetable forms. Perhaps it is our Aryan ancestry that has given us a prevailing taste for such decorations; and it is worth while to consider how best to manipulate them.[89]

Clinging as we do to these floral designs, we can see that they are the only ones that bear repetition, whether covering the surface of the material in the rich irregularityof the flowers in a field, or conventionalized into a form or a pattern.

The eye is never shocked or fatigued by such repetitions in orderly confusion, or trained by the hand into artistic shapes or meanderings of tracery. But when embroidery or weaving attempts to represent animals or typical human figures, repetition immediately becomes tiresome. A Madonna surrounded by angels, comes in badly, repeated over and over again as a pattern, broken up by folds, cut up by a seam, dislocated in the joining, and repeated in tiers. Such a design is figured in Auberville’s book.[90]The drawing is beautiful, but by repetition it becomes ridiculous. I therefore deprecate this kind of ornament in textile work. For this reason embroidery, which can be fitted to each space that is to be covered, is preferable to woven designs, however richly or perfectly they may be carried out.

Another class of design, which must be considered apart, is the conventional-geometrical, of which the special distinction appears to be that it consists of echoes or fragments of what we have seen elsewhere. These conventional patterns are often merely thedetritusof past styles or motives crushed and placed by time in a sort of kaleidoscope. They remind one of the little wreaths of broken shells and coloured sea-weeds left on the sands by the retiring waves after a storm, and are sometimes full of beauty and suggestion. (Pl.17.) We trace in these fragmentary patterns forgotten links with different civilizations; and we ponder on the historical events which have brought them into juxtaposition. These kaleidoscope patterns are to be seen in Persian and Turkish carpets of the present day, and we find, on examination, little bits which can only be the remnants of a broken-up motive, probably as much lost now to thedesigner who inherits the traditional form, as to us who can only see the vague results.

I illustrate this remark by giving the border of a modern Persian carpet which has certainly had Egyptian ancestry. The boat, the beetle, and the prehistoric cross are to be found in it.

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