FOOTNOTES:

Decorative linear patterns on a carpet border

Fig. 8.Persian Carpet.

Many conventional patterns of to-day are descendants of the lattice-work of Chinese art, and of the zigzags, lines, and discs of barbarous primitive ornamentation.

The traceries in Indian stone windows show some of the most charming geometrical forms, and are akin to the Persian and Russian modes of composing conventional patterns. They appear on very ancient metal work, and are the motives of all the embroideries in the Greek islands and the principalities, and of the linen embroideries of Russia. Their Byzantine origin gave its impress to the European schools of the Middle Ages, and the pattern-books of Germany and Venice of the sixteenth century are full of them. They are best suited for the mosaic stitches, and, kept in their places as decoration, they are useful for carpets and borders.

It should be impressed on our young artists, that, in composing their designs, they must be influenced by thematerials to be employed, and the purpose for which the decoration is intended. Thus in textile design for dress and hangings (excepting for tapestries) the fact must never be lost sight of that they will be subject to disturbance by crossing folds and crumplings, which will break up the lines of the pattern. It is therefore evident that a design fitted for a rigid material in a fixed place, such as an architectural decoration in wood, stone, or stucco, must be subject to a treatment different from that which befits an embroidered curtain or panel.

Stone and wood, being materials of uniform colour, require all the help of recessed shadows and projections to catch the light; whereas in textiles, form is assisted by colour, and smoothness of surface is a primary consideration. The strongly accentuated design for wood-carving becomes poor and lifeless when deprived of its essential conditions andraison d’être, and the pattern which looks charming, outlined and filled in with colour, could be hardly seen incised on a flat stone surface. This seems a truism, but the neglect of these plain axioms causes many mistakes in decorative art. Mr. Redgrave says: “A design must be bad which applies the same treatment to different materials.” He further says: “The position of the ornament requires special consideration. The varied quantities, bolder relief, and coarser execution are not only allowable, but absolutely necessary, at heights considerably above the eye. Moreover, each fabric has its own peculiar lustre, texture, &c. Thus, in the use of hangings, curtains, &c., the design might be suitable in silk, and coarse or dull in woollen.”[91]

Here I venture to differ from Mr. Redgrave. Perspective is as much to be respected in decoration as in pictures, near to the eye; and the gradation in size andcolour, as the ornament travels up into height or fades into distance, is a phase of pleasure which should not be checked by enlargement of form or reinforcement of colouring.

It is hardly necessary to warn our artists against a sort of design which is conventional, yet had its own meaning in the beginning. This is to be found in Indian carvings and embroideries of a certain date, or imitating the works of that distant period. It proceeded from a hideous worship of monstrous Dravidian divinities. Their statues are to be found, surrounded by coarsely designed patterns, in the temple architecture of the first and second centuries. Its characteristics are idols in niches or shrines, distorted in form or attitude; foliage of unnatural, twisted plants, added to the recurring of the lotus and tree of life; or animals destroying each other, or kneeling in worship to the idols. These ugly designs are purely conventional. Fergusson suggests that they were introduced into Mexico in the fourth or fifth centuriesA.D.by Buddhism.[92]

Those many-armed, sometimes many-faced divinities drove out the beautiful Aryan types, which, however, resumed their sway when the wave of the Renaissance flowed back to India, and was remodelled by Oriental taste to the lovely designs we find in the Taj Mahal.

In M. Blanc’s classification of ornament, he has placed Gothic design under the head of deliberate complication. The whole of the Gothic decorations, which are a gradual growth in one direction, arose from the study of interlacing boughs and stems, employed as the enrichment of the newly-grown forms of the vaulted roofs. The possibilities of great size and height covered these designs andinspired all their decoration; and the effect of reiteration and long recurring lines in perspective was essentially the motive of these avenues in stone.[93]

Here enter the principles of repetition and progression, and you will find how carefully the designers of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries worked up to these ideas. You will see in their embroideries, shining figures or pictures in gold, silver, and coloured silks, shimmering on dark velvet backgrounds, each design terminating a perspective of architectural forms which enhances their brilliancy. The most effective, probably,were generally employed for the adornment of the high altar, so as to be seen from a great distance. The smaller and less distinct and more delicate ornaments were reserved for the side chapels or for smaller churches, where such distant effects were inappropriate. But the motives ofecclesiastical embroiderywill be discussed in a future chapter.

All attempts at pictorial art are a mistake in textiles. It does not enter into such designs; and when by chance it is allowed to be so used, it is an error of judgment, and only exhibits a laborious and useless ingenuity. It is no longer an artistic delineation of a natural object, but becomes an imitation of another way of rendering such objects.

Mr. Redgrave says that pictorial art in our manufactures is one of our great mistakes. “The picture must be independent of the material, the thought alone should govern it; whereas in decoration the material must be one of the suggestors of the thought, its use must govern the design.”

Perhaps it will appear to my readers that here I repeat, in different forms, what has been said in a previous chapter on the history ofstyle. I think that it is better to do so, than to omit to show where style and design must accompany each other. Style, without any reference to design, would be but a barren subject; and design, without reference to style, would become lawless, and soon be lost in the mazes of bad taste and mannerism. Both subjects are of so large and important a nature that I do not attempt to do more than point out how, in their history and their influence, they belong to the craft of embroidery.

Such influences belong to all art; and though I am anxious to confine myself to only one section of it, I find it difficult to resist the temptation to generalize andstray from the prescribed path, when large and important views are opened on every side, as I travel on from point to point.

In sketching the history of design, as well as I may in so short a space, it is only considered in the light in which it illustrates our craft.

I repeat that the design should be informed by the motive which suggested it, and by the need which has called it forth; and it must be moulded to the space it has to fill, and the position it will occupy. The design must be modified into different outward forms, according to whether it is to be fitted to the edge of a building against the sky; to a high panelled wall; to be applied as a frieze, or round the capital of a pillar; to the embroidered cover of an altar, or the silken hangings of a bed, or the framed flat spaces on the walls of a saloon. In fact, “intention,” “place,” and “shape” are necessary motives and limits to a flat design.

Leaving aside all architectural ornamentation, and adhering only to my own subject, embroidery, I will limit my observations to the three purposes here suggested. Firstly, as the central effect of the holiest part of a church; secondly, in the domestic and comfortable room, to be adorned and made cheerful; and thirdly, as decking the refined and gay saloon or banqueting-hall.

To the church we should devote the most splendid and effective contrasts, to blaze unframed against dark empty backgrounds, or amidst stone and marble decorations; something set apart from its surroundings, and asserting that separation, is the desirable effect to be attained.

A totally different set of rules come into play when we have to select the decorations of a bedroom. Here a background does not exist. We are surrounded by four walls very near to the eye, so that perspectives are a secondary interest, if indeed they can claim anyconsideration; severe and magnificent ornamentation is out of place, except perhaps in that time-honoured institution—to be found in every great house possessing a suite of reception-rooms—the State bedroom, where the display of hangings and embroideries was the first motive of the decoration of the past, clothing and garnishing the bare spaces on the lofty walls. Space and separateness are not the object or aim of the bedroom of to-day; but lightness, snugness, and cheerful comfort, with which the design of the textile ornaments have much to do. This will in a later chapter come under the head offurniture.

For the saloon we may accept any splendour of rich and costly design, and the variously shaped panels assist in suggesting the form of the decoration. The plain or moulded panels, called in Italian “targhe,” or shields, seem to be descended from the actual shields of gold which Solomon hung on the walls of the king’s house in the Forest of Lebanon.[94]The motive was apparently Tyrian, and traces of it are also to be found in Assyrian sculpture.[95]

The practice of framing the design gives opportunities for change of materials, colour, and pattern, permitting the employment of different flat surfaces laid on each other, and scope for endless enrichment; the framed picture being, perhaps, the central culminating attraction, crowning, as it were, the textile ornamentation.

I merely give these instances as illustrating the rule that we have more than once laid down, that a design cannot fitly be employed except in the position for which the artist has composed it. I will, however, add that though it is right to give due consideration to thepreparation of each work for its intended use, yet we often have charming suggestions offered to us, by the chance acquisition of a beautiful artistic specimen, which finds its own place and accommodates itself to the surrounding colours and forms. These are the happy accidents of which the cultivated artistic eye takes advantage, adding them to the experience which may help those who are seeking for the rules of harmony and contrast in design.

Research into the mysteries and principles of design applies to woven arabesques and patterns, and must include machine-made textile ornament, and all decorative needlework. It is, in fact, the fabric for the million which most especially needs the careful study of guiding rules. When a plant sends forth hundreds of winged, wind-blown seeds, like the thistle, it spreads itself over wide fields, and is more mischievous than a more noxious growth, such as the deadly nightshade, which only drops an occasional berry into the earth. So a common cheap chintz or carpet, with a poor, gaudy, motiveless design, carries a bad style into thousands of homes wherever our commerce extends; disgracing us, while it corrupts the taste of other nations.

In addressing our young designers, I would remind them that in art the race is not always to the strong. Prudence and educated powers, thoughtfulness and study, often carry us where unassisted and uncultivated genius has signally failed. Even such facilities as are afforded by the acquirement of freehand drawing, as taught in our schools of art, are not to be despised. The workman should thoroughly master his tools, or they will hamper him. The first step towards design is that you should learn to draw. After this, appreciation and observation are necessary, and due balance in outline and colour should be studied; and all this is as much needed indrawing a pattern as in composing a picture. The difference lies in our art being only decorative, wherein beauty and fitness are to be remembered, and nothing else; whereas the picture may have to record historical facts, or to inspire poetical thoughts—to awe or to touch the beholder. A decorative design is only asked to delight him. Intelligent delight, however, can only be evoked by intelligent art, and to this, decoration must be subjected.

FOOTNOTES:[73]The earliest art we know (the bone-scratching) is naturalistic and imitative. We are unaware of any attempt at a pattern of the prehistoric period. The lake cities are of so vague a date that their ornaments on pottery are puzzling rather than instructive. The earliest Hellenic pottery was scratched or painted. Cuttle-fish, repeated over and over again, are among the earliest attempts at a pattern, by repetition of a natural object. Naturalism soon fell into symbolism, which appropriated it and all art, and the upheaval of a new culture was needed to lift it once more into the region of individual creation. See Boyd Dawkins’ “Early Man in Britain;” also General Pitt Rivers’s Museum of Prehistoric Art, lately presented to the University of Oxford.[74]See Boyd Dawkins’ “Early Man in Britain.”[75]“I hope, indeed, to enable them” (the members of his class) “to read, above all, the minds of semi-barbarous nations in the only language by which their feelings were capable of expression; and those whose temper inclines them to take a pleasure in mythic symbols, will not probably be induced to quit the profound fields of investigation which early art will open to them, and which belong to it alone. For this is a general law, that supposing the intellect of the workman the same, the more imitatively complete his art, the less he will mean by it, and the ruder the symbol, the deeper the intention.”—Ruskin’s “Oxford Lectures on Art,” 1870, p. 19.[76]See Isaac Taylor’s “History of the Alphabet.”[77]Renouf’s Hibbert Lectures, 1879, p. 67.[78]Now there is a point of view in which we may regard the imitative art of all races, the most civilized as well as the most barbarous—in reference to the power of correctly representing animal and vegetable forms, such as they exist in nature. The perfection of such imitation depends not so much on the manual dexterity of the artist as on his intelligence and comprehension of the type of the essential qualities of the form he desires to represent. See Ch. T. Newton’s “Essays on Art and Archæology,” p. 17.[79]See Wilkinson’s “Ancient Egyptians.”[80]Plato’s Second Book of Laws, p. 656.[81]“The religion of the Greeks penetrated into their institutions and daily life. The myth was not only embodied in the sculptures of Pheidias on the Parthenon, and portrayed in the paintings of Polygnotus in the Stoa Poikile; it was repeated in a more compendious and abbreviated form on the fictile vase of the Athenian household, on the coin circulated in the market-place, on the mirror in which the Aspasia of the day beheld her charms. Every domestic implement was made the vehicle of figurative language, or fashioned into a symbol.”—Newton’s “Essays on Art and Archæology,” p. 23.[82]“Art in Ornament and Dress,” by M. Charles Blanc, formerly Director of the French Institute. Eng. Trans., Chapman and Hall, London.[83]See Charles Blanc’s “Art in Ornament and Dress,” p. 31.[84]Charles Blanc’s “Art in Ornament and Dress,” p. 43.[85]Charles Blanc’s “Art in Ornament and Dress,” pp. 43, 45, 46.[86]Chinese design shows naturalistic art arrested and perpetuated on totally different principles. Their representations are all equally allied to their art of picture-painting, whether on china with the brush, or on textiles with the needle. The flatness of the picture is still preserved by their ignorance of perspective. When they attempted to express different distances, they did so by placing them one above another, so that in reading the composition the eye first takes in the distant horizon; next below it, the middle distance; and being thus prepared, it comes down to the actual living foreground, on which rests the dramatic action and interest addressed to the spectator. The Chinese understood many of the secrets of art, yet never achieved perspective.[87]See Mr. Penrose’s work on the measurements of the Parthenon at Athens. Published by the Society of the Dilettanti.[88]Marked outlines in embroidery add to the flatness, and enable us to omit cast shadows. In this it differs entirely from pictorial art, where one of the great objects is to avoid flatness.[89]Semper’s theory, already mentioned, is that textile design was certainly flat; that it was the first form of decoration, and was followed by bas-relief, which could not at once rid itself of the original motive.[90]Auberville’s “Ornamentation des Tissus” (eleventh century).[91]Redgrave’s “Manual of Design,” pp. 43-45.[92]This idolatrous type was introduced into England by the Buccaneers, and reflected on our carvings and embroideries of the time of James I., slightly modified by the Italian Renaissance of that period. As this sort of vulgar ornamentation has once prevailed, let us protect ourselves against its possible recurrence.[93]While making this passing allusion to the theory that the origin of all Gothic decoration is mainly founded on the motive of interlacing stems and foliage, I wish to guard myself against being supposed in any way to argue against other beginnings, whenever they can be proved. I have said before that most decorations have a mixed ancestry. But when I see single or clustered columns starting from the ground—spreading at the base like the gnarled root, and growing till they culminate in crowns of foliage, forming symmetrical capitals, like the first clusters of leaves on a strong young sapling—then the branches spreading and interlacing, only checked at equal intervals by a lovely leaf or burgeon, till they meet in blossoms on the highest point of the arch,—I cannot but adhere to the old idea that rows of trees meeting overhead suggested Gothic ornament as well as Gothic Architecture. The Spanish or Moresque Gothic was overloaded with leaves and flowers, and the German Gothic was enriched with fantastic trees and flowers, each according to its national taste and fashion. A Gothic tree is a very conventional plant; and generally carries only one leaf on each branch. I have given a specimen of archaic trees from the Bayeux tapestry. They are typical of the Gothic botanical idea and style down to the fourteenth century. (Fig.13.)Nor is this interpretation of Gothic design other than a result of its descent from the Egyptian ancestral motive, where the temple columns represented the single stem of the lotus with one large blossom for its capital, or else a bundle of stems of the lotus, palm, and convolvulus flowering together into a beautiful cluster. Even the gigantic columns of the great hypæthral hall at Karnac are only a stupendous exaggeration of the same stalk and flower motive. From these were derived the forms of the early Greek column—soon enriched by substituting the Acanthus for the Lotus, but often retaining the convolvulus.[94]1 Kings x.; Ezek. xxvii. 10, 11. See Stanley’s “Lectures on the Jewish Church.”[95]Layard’s “Nineveh and its Remains,” vol. ii. p. 388; Rawlinson’s “Ancient Monarchies,” vol. ii. p. 2.

[73]The earliest art we know (the bone-scratching) is naturalistic and imitative. We are unaware of any attempt at a pattern of the prehistoric period. The lake cities are of so vague a date that their ornaments on pottery are puzzling rather than instructive. The earliest Hellenic pottery was scratched or painted. Cuttle-fish, repeated over and over again, are among the earliest attempts at a pattern, by repetition of a natural object. Naturalism soon fell into symbolism, which appropriated it and all art, and the upheaval of a new culture was needed to lift it once more into the region of individual creation. See Boyd Dawkins’ “Early Man in Britain;” also General Pitt Rivers’s Museum of Prehistoric Art, lately presented to the University of Oxford.

[74]See Boyd Dawkins’ “Early Man in Britain.”

[75]“I hope, indeed, to enable them” (the members of his class) “to read, above all, the minds of semi-barbarous nations in the only language by which their feelings were capable of expression; and those whose temper inclines them to take a pleasure in mythic symbols, will not probably be induced to quit the profound fields of investigation which early art will open to them, and which belong to it alone. For this is a general law, that supposing the intellect of the workman the same, the more imitatively complete his art, the less he will mean by it, and the ruder the symbol, the deeper the intention.”—Ruskin’s “Oxford Lectures on Art,” 1870, p. 19.

[76]See Isaac Taylor’s “History of the Alphabet.”

[77]Renouf’s Hibbert Lectures, 1879, p. 67.

[78]Now there is a point of view in which we may regard the imitative art of all races, the most civilized as well as the most barbarous—in reference to the power of correctly representing animal and vegetable forms, such as they exist in nature. The perfection of such imitation depends not so much on the manual dexterity of the artist as on his intelligence and comprehension of the type of the essential qualities of the form he desires to represent. See Ch. T. Newton’s “Essays on Art and Archæology,” p. 17.

[79]See Wilkinson’s “Ancient Egyptians.”

[80]Plato’s Second Book of Laws, p. 656.

[81]“The religion of the Greeks penetrated into their institutions and daily life. The myth was not only embodied in the sculptures of Pheidias on the Parthenon, and portrayed in the paintings of Polygnotus in the Stoa Poikile; it was repeated in a more compendious and abbreviated form on the fictile vase of the Athenian household, on the coin circulated in the market-place, on the mirror in which the Aspasia of the day beheld her charms. Every domestic implement was made the vehicle of figurative language, or fashioned into a symbol.”—Newton’s “Essays on Art and Archæology,” p. 23.

[82]“Art in Ornament and Dress,” by M. Charles Blanc, formerly Director of the French Institute. Eng. Trans., Chapman and Hall, London.

[83]See Charles Blanc’s “Art in Ornament and Dress,” p. 31.

[84]Charles Blanc’s “Art in Ornament and Dress,” p. 43.

[85]Charles Blanc’s “Art in Ornament and Dress,” pp. 43, 45, 46.

[86]Chinese design shows naturalistic art arrested and perpetuated on totally different principles. Their representations are all equally allied to their art of picture-painting, whether on china with the brush, or on textiles with the needle. The flatness of the picture is still preserved by their ignorance of perspective. When they attempted to express different distances, they did so by placing them one above another, so that in reading the composition the eye first takes in the distant horizon; next below it, the middle distance; and being thus prepared, it comes down to the actual living foreground, on which rests the dramatic action and interest addressed to the spectator. The Chinese understood many of the secrets of art, yet never achieved perspective.

[87]See Mr. Penrose’s work on the measurements of the Parthenon at Athens. Published by the Society of the Dilettanti.

[88]Marked outlines in embroidery add to the flatness, and enable us to omit cast shadows. In this it differs entirely from pictorial art, where one of the great objects is to avoid flatness.

[89]Semper’s theory, already mentioned, is that textile design was certainly flat; that it was the first form of decoration, and was followed by bas-relief, which could not at once rid itself of the original motive.

[90]Auberville’s “Ornamentation des Tissus” (eleventh century).

[91]Redgrave’s “Manual of Design,” pp. 43-45.

[92]This idolatrous type was introduced into England by the Buccaneers, and reflected on our carvings and embroideries of the time of James I., slightly modified by the Italian Renaissance of that period. As this sort of vulgar ornamentation has once prevailed, let us protect ourselves against its possible recurrence.

[93]While making this passing allusion to the theory that the origin of all Gothic decoration is mainly founded on the motive of interlacing stems and foliage, I wish to guard myself against being supposed in any way to argue against other beginnings, whenever they can be proved. I have said before that most decorations have a mixed ancestry. But when I see single or clustered columns starting from the ground—spreading at the base like the gnarled root, and growing till they culminate in crowns of foliage, forming symmetrical capitals, like the first clusters of leaves on a strong young sapling—then the branches spreading and interlacing, only checked at equal intervals by a lovely leaf or burgeon, till they meet in blossoms on the highest point of the arch,—I cannot but adhere to the old idea that rows of trees meeting overhead suggested Gothic ornament as well as Gothic Architecture. The Spanish or Moresque Gothic was overloaded with leaves and flowers, and the German Gothic was enriched with fantastic trees and flowers, each according to its national taste and fashion. A Gothic tree is a very conventional plant; and generally carries only one leaf on each branch. I have given a specimen of archaic trees from the Bayeux tapestry. They are typical of the Gothic botanical idea and style down to the fourteenth century. (Fig.13.)Nor is this interpretation of Gothic design other than a result of its descent from the Egyptian ancestral motive, where the temple columns represented the single stem of the lotus with one large blossom for its capital, or else a bundle of stems of the lotus, palm, and convolvulus flowering together into a beautiful cluster. Even the gigantic columns of the great hypæthral hall at Karnac are only a stupendous exaggeration of the same stalk and flower motive. From these were derived the forms of the early Greek column—soon enriched by substituting the Acanthus for the Lotus, but often retaining the convolvulus.

Nor is this interpretation of Gothic design other than a result of its descent from the Egyptian ancestral motive, where the temple columns represented the single stem of the lotus with one large blossom for its capital, or else a bundle of stems of the lotus, palm, and convolvulus flowering together into a beautiful cluster. Even the gigantic columns of the great hypæthral hall at Karnac are only a stupendous exaggeration of the same stalk and flower motive. From these were derived the forms of the early Greek column—soon enriched by substituting the Acanthus for the Lotus, but often retaining the convolvulus.

[94]1 Kings x.; Ezek. xxvii. 10, 11. See Stanley’s “Lectures on the Jewish Church.”

[95]Layard’s “Nineveh and its Remains,” vol. ii. p. 388; Rawlinson’s “Ancient Monarchies,” vol. ii. p. 2.

In the last chapter ondesignI have described patterns as the examples or illustrations of the art of decoration, and as being the records of the motives which produced them in different eras. My present object is to class and define patterns as decorative art.

It is argued by some archæologists that the recurrence of a pattern, for instance the “wave,” over the whole world, proves that it really came from many sources, under the same conditions of life and art; showing also that a pattern is a thing that, like a flower, must grow, if the culture of the race be equal. I do not believe this. We can nearly always trace the family history of a pattern to its original motive; and in the very few cases where we are unable to do so, it is hardly necessary to cover our ignorance by stretching the fashionable theory of development over the few instances that are as yet unaccountable.

I have been repeatedly asked to procure or to invent a new pattern. Such is my respect for the decorative achievement called a “pattern,” that I cannot hope for the moment of inspiration in which I might create such a thing. If any one has in his lifetime invented a pattern, he has done something truly remarkable, and as rare as is a really original thought on any subject. Patterns are commonly, like men, the result of many centuries of long descent from ancestors of remote antiquity.

Individuals differ from their ancestors through inherited and surrounding conditions, and through the modifying powers of evolution, climate, and education. So also a pattern has, besides its ancestry and descent, the unconscious mark or seal of its day; and it is easy to trace whence it comes, if we set ourselves to examine the style of it seriously.

The patterns of which we can nearly always name at once the nationality, are the Assyrian, the Chinese, the Egyptian, the Hindu (Aryan and Turanian), the Persian, the Archaic and the highly developed Grecian; the Roman, the Celtic, the Byzantine, the Arabian, the Gothic, the Renaissance, the Spanish Plâteresque, the Louis Quatorze, and those of the art of Central America.

The pattern cannot exist without design. Design means intention and motive. Many of the motives in Oriental textile decorations are suggestive of intention, as is shown by their names. Among Indian patterns we meet with “ripples of silver,” “sunshine and shade,” “pigeon’s eye,” “peacock’s neck,” &c.[96]

Patterns must be classed either by their dates, when ascertained, or according to their style, which must generally be allowed to cover vast areas and periods irregularly drifting down, overlapping, or being absorbed or effaced by the circumstances they have encountered.

Only when a national style has been obstinately fixed, as in China, and bound down by strict laws and religious formulas, suited exactly to the people for whom they were evolved out of the national life, and imprinted on it by their own lawgivers, philosophers, and priests; and neither imposed by conquerors, nor swept over by the waves of a new civilization;—only in such cases canwe find a continuity of decorative art which leads us far back on its traces. Then, on this long track, we learn how little, man, the decorating animal, has really advanced in his powers of creation. He has gone more than once to a certain point, and has then either been petrified by law and custom—turned into a pillar of salt, like Lot’s wife, because he has looked back instead of striving to advance, or else through poverty or satiety has fallen into the last stage of the Seven Ages, “sanseyes,sansteeth—sanseverything.” When what is good is neither perceived nor desired, then the arts, small and great, dwindle and disappear, and nothing remains to show that they have been, but a name, and perhaps a pattern.

Chinese design is the most striking example of the first of these phases; and the extinction of all classical art with the fall of Paganism in Rome is an instance of the second.

In the chapter onstyleit is said that a pattern is as ineffaceable as a word. But one will occasionally disappear for a time, till the ruin that covers it is cleared away, and the lost design recovered and employed simply as a decoration, if it is beautiful; or perhaps fitted with a new meaning, and so it makes a fresh start.

The importance of patterns, when traceable to their origin, as a means of investigating historical influences cannot be too much insisted on, and their history is full of suggestion as a guide to the decorator. Much has been argued and much ascertained from the evidence of these fragments of national civilizations, showing how an idea or a myth has been, as it were, engrafted into the essence of another national idea, partly altering what it finds, and changing to fit itself to its new surroundings. Eastern patterns have travelled far, and lasted long; and continue still to hold the fancy, and exercise the ingenuity, of the artist and decorator. When we find a patternof which the nationality is strongly marked, it is worth our while to ascertain its date and history, which will help us to recognize cognate design wherever we may meet it. However, this is often not to be done; and then it is best to set these puzzling examples aside, and to await patiently the elucidation, which may come from some source of which we are as yet ignorant.

In very early art we have little remaining but patterns, on which we may found theories by tracing them home to their original source. The oldest patterns had each a meaning and an intention. When a pattern has been enduring and far spread, it is because it was originally the expression of an idea or a symbol.

In the earliest dawn of civilization, the arts were the repositories of the myths and mysteries of national faiths. Embroidery was one of these arts, and the border which edged the garment of a divinity, the veil which covered the grave of a loved one, or the flower-buds and fruit which fringed the hangings and curtains in the sanctuary, each had a meaning, and therefore a use. These symbolical designs and forms were constantly reproduced; and all human ingenuity was exercised in reforming, remodelling, and adding perfect grace to the expression of the same idea.

Patterns may be ranged under four heads—the Primitive, the Naturalistic, the Conventional, and the Geometrical.

The primitive are those of which we know not the ancestry, and rarely can guess the motive. To us they are, in general, simply rude decorations. The naturalistic are those which are borrowed from natural forms, and are either only imitative, or else convey some hidden meaning. The conventional are those which, by long descent, havecome to be accepted simply as ornamental art, with or without reference to an original motive, now lost. The geometrical or symmetrical are founded on form only, and in so far resemble our experience of the primitive; they express no meaning, and only serve to satisfy the eye by their balance and their ingenuity.

The first patterned forms with which we are acquainted are the primitive. They are found in all parts of the inhabited world. In our present ignorance as to the beginnings of the scattered tribes of men, we cannot judge if these are the remains of an earlier art or the first germs of a new one. Of one thing there is no doubt: this primitive decoration consists entirely of pattern; that is to say, of the repetition of certain (to us) inexpressive forms, which by reiteration assume importance and in some degree express beauty—the beauty of what Monsieur Blanc calls “cadence.”

After these first unintelligible forms, which simply by repetition become accepted patterns, come those called the Prehistoric, of which we know or guess something as to their original meaning, and which, having been reduced from the hieroglyphic-symbolical to the conventional, have thus crystallized themselves, by constant use, into a pattern. Such, for instance, is the simplest form of the “wave” pattern, which in very early art was a representation of water.

The prehistoric water or wave patterns had other forms; for instance, zigzags, upright or horizontal, and undulating lines which are intelligible as expressing smooth or rough water. In general, however, the primitive and prehistoric patterns convey no idea, and consist, as we have said elsewhere, of lines, straight or wavy,sometimes intersected; of angles, zigzags, groups of dots, rings and little discs, and crosses of the Swastika shape. (Plate10.)

Pl. 10.Sixteen different wave patternsSee larger image

Pl. 10.

Wave Patterns.

1, 4, 9, 12, 13. Greek Wave Patterns. 2. Key or Mæander, Greek Wave. 3. Greek Broken Wave. 5, 6, 7. Egyptian Smooth and Rippling Water Patterns. 8. Mediæval Wave. 10, 11, 14. Assyrian. 15. Persian or Greek (from Glass Bowl, British Museum). 16. English Waves (Durham Embroideries.)

Where shall the tartan be placed? It is certainly primitive, and apparently had no intention beyond that of employing as many coloured threads as there were dyes, so as to form the brightest contrasts, or else to be as invisible as possible either in the sunshine or in the shade. The Gauls brought this kind of weaving with them from the East, and probably invented the pattern, if such a motiveless design can be so called. It had its classical name, “Polymita,” and was admired in Rome when newly imported, as being something original and barbaric. The Romans found it in Britain, and Boadicea wore a tartan dress on the day of her defeat. Perhaps even then fashions came from France, and it may have been her best tunic from across the Channel. This fabric may have been imported by the Belgic Gauls, and was so easily woven on house looms, that it became in time the feudal dress of the Scottish tribes and clans, and the colours were ingeniously arranged to show the most different effects. The tartan has always been a resource for the woollen trade, and the fashion constantly recurs in France, either from sentiment or the actually inherited Gallic taste; but it remains a primitive pattern, and nothing can make it artistic. No embroidery can soften the constantly recurring angles, and only fringes can be employed to decorate a tartan costume. Pliny tells us of the ingenuity of Zeuxis, who, to show his wealth, had his name embroidered in gold in the squared compartments of his outer garment.[97]

Primitive patterns still linger in many savage nations, but especially throughout uncivilized Africa. Curious to say, the very ancient fossilized early art of Egypt doesnot assist us to trace it back to a prehistoric style, though it may lead us into prehistoric times.

The phases of the naturalistic patterns are constantly recurring. Art is always tending to realism, in the laudable effort to reach the motive without the shackles of rules. Each phase has fallen a prey to symbolism, to conventionalism, or to mannerism, which last symptom marks the decline and fall of art. We shall find these phases everywhere in the design of patterns.

Naturalism has always striven, by simple repetition, to reduce to patterns the forms of flowers, fruits, animals, birds, insects, reptiles, and other natural objects.

In flower patterns the simplest forms by repetition make sometimes the richest patterns, and the most effective. (Plate11, Nos. 1 and 2.)

It is remarkable that one very beautiful class of natural objects is rarely employed in ancient decoration[98]—shells and corals. The barbarous tribes of the West Coast of Africa alone seem to have appreciated their forms, and added them to their small repertory of naturalistic patterns. They do not appear in any European or Asiatic textiles till the seventeenth century, when shells were much used in the decorations of the reigns of Queen Anne and Louis Quatorze.

The first change from naturalism into the conventional was through symbolism, and belonged to the time when unwritten thought was first recorded by pictured signs, which then ceased to be merely decoration. We find that the naturalism of the earliest Egyptians and Asiatics was soon entirely absorbed by the effort to express some hidden meaning or mystery, and then to fit the representationto a special place and purpose, and to restore it, as it were, to decorative art.

Pl. 11.See larger image

Pl. 11.

1. Persian Flower Border. 2. Egyptian Border, composed of Head-dress of the god Nile (Wilkinson’s “Ancient Egyptians”). 3. Assyrian. 4. Assyrian.

The lotus and the patterns founded on its forms, and the many emblematic meanings attached to them, are notable examples of these transmutations in style and intention, and of the value given to their intention and use in Egypt and India, where each development was immediately crystallized into a recognized pattern, and given its place and language. It received its “mot d’ordre,” and continued to act upon it long after the meaning was forgotten or out of date.

The rolling pattern which had so long represented only the “wave,” was given to the really straight stem of the lotus, and its blossom, substituted for the wave’s crest, now filled many a frieze in Indian temple architecture; whereas the lotus stems in Egypt were still bound in sheaves to form columns, and the flowers, buds, and leaves spread and blossomed into capitals. Here we have symbolism and conventionalized naturalism, all combined, showing how their principles, though quite distinct, can mix and unite. The conventional form often superseded and effaced the naturalistic, and became the sign of an idea, or the hieroglyphic picture of a thing; immovable and unalterable in Egypt, where every effort was made to secure eternity on earth, but continually returning to naturalism in India, where the Aryan tendency, with the assistance of the “Code of Manu,” always recurred to the restoration of the ancient naturalistic motive.

In the India Museum we may see the “wave” motive converted into a lotus pattern by rolling the long stems, and filling up the spaces between with the full-faced blossom. Sometimes the pattern is started by the figure of an elephant, from whose mouth the stem of the flower of the sun proceeds. This occurs so often that it mustoriginally have had a meaning. Sometimes the sacred convolvulus takes the place of the lotus. (Plate12.)

On an Egyptian mural painting are seen parties of men snaring ducks among papyrus and lotus plants. These are entirely conventional, and are, in fact, a sort of recognized hieroglyphic representing the idea of a lotus.[99]

The lotus was the accepted emblem of the sun, and reduced to a many-leaved radiating pattern may be found as an architectural ornament on the outside of the Buddhist “topes,” of which the models are on the staircase of the British Museum.[100](Plate13.)

We have Sir G. Birdwood’s authority for believing that, though the actual lotus was a native of India, and carried thence to Egypt, its decorative use as a pattern was Egyptian, and so returned to India. Both accepted it as their “sunflower.”[101]

Pl. 12.See larger image

Pl. 12.

1. Indian Rolling Lotus Pattern. 2, 3. Indian Lotus Patterns. 4, 5. Egyptian Lotus Patterns. 6. Sacred Convolvulus. Indian (seventeenth century).

Pl. 13.See larger image

Pl. 13.

1, 2. Indian Designs of Assyrian Daisy and Egyptian Lotus. 3. Vitruvian Scroll. Vignola. Architecture.

Can it be our Aryan descent which induces in us the earnest adoration, in our art of to-day, of our northern prototype of the sun’s emblem? I fear that we must acknowledge that our æsthetic worship of our sunflowers is somewhat false and affected. Æstheticism is not art. Sunflowers, painted or embroidered as decoration, do not “take” if they are ordered and ranged, and reduced to a pattern like those of Egypt. They must be naturalistic, and, if possible, remind us of a disorderly cottage garden; whereas in India they were adaptedfrom nature on fixed principles, which immediately reduced them to the conventional.

Grouped sunflowers in a gardenSee larger image

Sunflower pattern, R. S. A. N.XIX. Century

I give an illustration of a Gothic sunflower resembling a transfigured rose; and another of an ordered naturalistic sunflower pattern, from a design of the Royal School of Art Needlework. (Plate14.)

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