Evolution in Art

The Material of Which Patterns Are Made

Having sketched the main features of the decorative art of a definite locality, I now pass on to a different field, and will select examples from every age and clime, in order to illustrate the life-histories of a number of designs. In this I have a twofold object. First, I wish to indicate in this section the material out of which designs and patterns are formed—the objective originals which become gradually transformed into æsthetic conceptions; and, secondly, I also wish to illustrate the fact that this process of transformation is confined to no one people.

We shall see that the originals of decorative art are mainly either natural or artificial objects, and the latter will first claim our attention.

I — The Decorative Transformation and Transference of Artificial Objects

Dr. H. Colley March has introduced the term “Skeuomorph”18 for the forms of ornament demonstrably due to structure. Professor G. Semper19 “was the first to show that the basket-maker, the weaver, and the potter originated those combinations of line and colour which the ornamentist turned to his own use when he had to decorate walls, cornices, and ceilings.” So write MM. Perrot and Chipiez;20 but this statement is too sweeping. A considerable amount of ornamentation is doubtless due to technique, but in Europe, Western Asia, and North Africa plant forms have had a great influence in the origin of designs, some of which have been modified by passing through a textile technique.

Given any object, two forces, so to speak, attack it—the utilitarian and the æsthetic. The resultant may be an implement which is solely useful and has little or no beauty to recommend it; or while retaining a full measure of utility, it may be beautified in form or in surface decoration; or, lastly, the object may become so glorified by the artist as to be translated from earthly use into the realm of æsthetics.

1. Transformation of a Solitary Object

There are numerous examples of the annihilation of the useful by the beautiful. One instance came under my notice at the Murray Islands, in Torres Straits. Formerly when a girl was engaged to be married, in addition to numerous petticoats she wore a number of ornaments suspended from her neck and hanging down her back. The more important of these were white triangular pieces of shell, o, cut out of Conus millepunctatus; turtle-shell (“tortoise-shell”) bodkins (ter), used for shredding the leaves of which their petticoats were made, and for piercing the septum of the nose of infants; turtle-shell fish-hooks, and curious turtle-shell ornaments which are called sabagorar. These latter vary considerably in size, form, and amount of decoration; but by placing a number of them together a sequence can be obtained which illustrates the evolution of the sabagorar from the fish-hook (Fig. ⁴⁴). Some hook-like objects are slightly ornamented with incised lines, and they might very well serve as fish-hooks; others are clearly totally unfitted for practical use, and may be quite plain or decorated. Fish-hooks (Fig. ⁴⁴, A) are used in pairs, being fastened at each end of a piece of fine string, which, in its turn, is tied at its middle to the fishing-line proper. When the piece of twine with its hooks was thrown round a girl’s neck, the two hooks would often hang down her back shank to shank. Two sabagorar similarly arranged occur in the British Museum collections. What more natural than that this should be noticed, and to save the trouble of making two sabagorar a double one should be cut out of one piece of turtle-shell. The more remotely from the fish-hook did the sabagorar vary, the larger it became, and in some instances the double form became of considerable size, and the hook portion acquired a slight spiral curvature (Fig. ⁴⁴, K). In one modified specimen the hooks are actually fused with the shank (Fig. ⁴⁴, L). It will be also seen that divergent Λ-like processes often occur on the sabagorar, but are never found on the fish-hook.

The betrothal equipment of a girl thus consisted in the main of objects of utility which had reference to her future condition. The turtle-shell objects being easily cut, afforded a convenient field for ornamentation, and most of the ter implements exhibit a little decoration. The comparatively slender fish-hooks provided insufficient surface for ornamentation; the broadening of them for decorative purposes reduced their efficiency, so that in time the latter was sacrificed and a mere ornament resulted.

In the chain of islands which stretch away from the south-eastern end of New Guinea, one finds an interesting metamorphosis of the stone axe. The stone axe was very precious among these people, to whom the art of working in metals is still unknown. A large fine axe would have very considerable value, and the exhibition of it would be a symbol of wealth, and consequently of power. The desire to be recognised as wealthy has resulted in the development of a stone axe of which the stone is very large, often remarkably thin and beautifully polished, and is hafted to an unwieldy handle which may be carved and decorated with shell-money and other ornaments. The value of such an object seems to depend upon the amount of work required to produce it; its inutility enhances the reputation of the wealth of its possessor; thus we appear to arrive at certain primitive conceptions. Work done gives ownership or property. One form of wealth is the possession of unnecessary or useless property; the exhibition of this gives power to the owner.

I have made sketches (Fig. ⁴⁵) of two axes in my possession. The first (A) is decorated with characteristic ornamentation, consisting in the upper part of birds’ heads and at the handle of the bird and crocodile design; but it is still a useful implement. The second axe (B) has a large thin stone, and is an unwieldy and probably quite useless object.

The late Mr. H. H. Romilly21 tells us that at Utian (Brooker Island), in the Louisiades, “The stone implements made here are very fine. I got some axes of enormous size, which I am sure could not be intended for use. They seemed rather to be a common possession; perhaps two or three belonged to the village, and were exhibited on state occasions.” The Rev. Dr. W. Wyatt Gill,22 at South Cape, saw “two axes solemnly carried by the chiefs as a preliminary to peace... a glance at the slight artistic hafting will convince any one that they are not intended for cleaving timber.” This is all the information we have concerning these axes. It appears that they have come to be recognised as symbols of authority, but it is extremely doubtful whether they are anywhere held as a common possession.

A still more wonderful change has affected certain adzes in the Hervey Islands. (Fig. ⁴⁶.) The stone blade is a carefully cut and polished piece of basalt, and it has every appearance of being perfectly serviceable; but the elaborately carved handles preclude the idea that in their present state they could be used for practical purposes. In form the handles may be quadrangular, gradually diminishing from the base to the blade, or conical, or polygonal or cylindrical. When short the handles are thick, even to the extent that they can scarcely be grasped by the two hands; these forms too are often perforated by quadrangular holes. One specimen in the Archæological and Ethnological Museum at Cambridge is six feet three inches in length.

Later on (p. 83) I shall describe the ornamentation on these adzes; at present we are merely concerned with the fact that for some reason or another they have become functionless through increase in the size of the handle, and by reason of the weakness caused by deep carving. We have now to trace the meaning of this vagary.

Dr. W. Wyatt Gill, who resided for twenty-two years in the Hervey Islands, and who has been a very careful observer and recorder of Polynesian customs and beliefs, informs us that “The adzes of the Hervey Islanders are frequently hafted with carved ‘pua’ wood. The carving, which is often admirable, was formerly executed with sharks’ teeth, and was primarily intended for the adorning of their gods. The fine-pointed pattern is known as ‘the sharks’ teeth pattern’ (‘nio mango’). Other figures are each supposed, by a stretch of the imagination, to represent a man squatting down (‘tikitiki tangata’). Some patterns are of recent introduction, and being mere imitations of European designs, are destitute of the significations which invariably are attached to ancient Polynesian carving. The large square holes are known as ‘eel-borings’ (‘ai tuna’); the lateral openings are naturally enough called ‘clefts’ (‘kavava’). To carve was the employment of sacred men.” Dr. Hjalmar Stolpe, of Stockholm, who has made a special study23 of the ornamental art of these people, found in the museum in Chambéry an adze of this kind; according to the account on the label the stone had belonged to a chief, and it was after the owner’s death shafted in this manner that it might be preserved by his family as a remembrance. Dr. Stolpe continues, “The internal probability of the story confirms the truth of the account. Ancestor worship is a characteristic feature of Polynesian religion. The souls of the departed become the guardian spirits of the survivors. Their worship demanded a visible form, under which offerings could be enjoyed by them, and this was found sometimes in the skull itself of the deceased, which was preserved in the house, sometimes in some article of his property. In the latter case scarcely anything could be more suitable than the stone adze, which was the deceased’s most important implement, and which it required so much toil to make. On the Hervey Islands the transition was easier, as there the stone adze itself is considered as a god. Even the fine plait of coco-nut fibre with which the adze is fastened to the shaft was a god, and the method of binding it had, in Mangaia, been taught by the gods. Both during the operation of plaiting and during the decoration of the adze-shaft songs were sung in a low voice to the gods, that they might further the work. The ‘pua’ wood (Fagræa Berteriana) of which the carved adze-shafts are made may also have a religious significance, for Gill speaks of ‘its long branches being regarded as the road by which the spirits of the dead descended to Hades.’”

The following conclusions of Dr. Stolpe’s appear to be warranted:—“From these researches it appears to me to follow that the peculiarly shafted stone adzes of the Hervey Islands have a religious signification, that they are especially connected with ancestor worship, and that they were probably the very symbols under which this worship was performed.”

Dr. H. Colley March24 has gone a step further, and tries to account for the very remarkable form of the handle of the sacred adze. He says, “It is remarkable that the typical Mangaian axe [adze] was exclusively associated with ‘Tane, the royal-visaged.’ This god was widely venerated over the Pacific; in Mangaia he was especially the drum-god and the axe-god; he presided over the erotic dance as well as over the war dance... it is evident that the drum was not only associated with a Tane cult in the erotic dance, but was regarded as Tane’s embodiment; when the drum was beaten, it was Tane that was struck, and from the fissure in the drum it was Tane’s voice that issued.” Dr. March quotes a number of extracts from early voyagers, etc., descriptive of various Polynesian drums, and he comes to the conclusion that the upright drums, which were hollowed out of a single piece of wood, were originally derived from bamboo instruments. He figures a drum (Fig. ⁴⁷) said to have come from Java, which, with the exception of the terminal head, corresponds closely with the drum called naffa which Captain Cook describes at Tonga. He concludes that after the drum “had passed from bamboo to wood, the horizontal instrument assumed the erect form, more appropriate to the god, and was then surmounted, as in the so-called Javan example, by Tane’s head, which subsequently gave place to Tane’s adze. As the cult differentiated, the symbolism differentiated too.” Without going into further detail, in the short thick form of the Mangaian adze, such as Fig. ⁴⁶, the upper portion of the handle is usually cylindrical. The lower portion is usually quadrangular, or may be polygonal, and looks as if it might be a pedestal for the former. According to Dr. March’s interpretation, the stone implement represents the head of Tane; the upper cylindrical part of the handle is his neck. The lower part of the handle is an artistic analogue of the sacred drum; “the useless transverse closings represent the original bamboo joints, as well as the solid ends of the wooden drum. In spite of the fact that their presence increased the difficulty of hollowing out the shaft, they were reproduced in obedience to a well-recognised law. The square and oblong rectangular openings have an analogous explanation. They indicate the original aperture, whether the slit in the bamboo, or the single or double chink in the wooden drum which was excavated through the drum in order to secure its resonance. The great increase in the number of apertures, helped by rectangular designs on horizontal instruments, took place as an evolution of ornament that largely consists in a multiplication of functionless details.”

It is possible that the adzes from the Hervey Islands, with long, unperforated carved handles, may have a different history from the form illustrated in Fig. ⁴⁶; they may merely be decorated but useless adze handles. In any case, the above-quoted conclusions of Dr. Stolpe may be accepted.

In the three examples of the metamorphosis of a practical object into an unpractical one just recorded, we have an illustration of the effects of three dominant human forces on these several implements, art, display or wealth, and religion. The result is practically the same in all cases, but the motive leading to it is different. Analogous modifications are everywhere to be met with.

2. Transference of Fastenings

One of the earliest handicrafts was to fasten two things together. To quote from Dr. H. Colley March,25 “As soon as man began to make things, to fasten a handle to a stone implement, to construct a wattled roof, to weave a mat, skeuomorphs became an inseparable part of his brain, and ultimately occasioned a mental craving or expectancy.”

In order to securely fasten two objects together, such as splicing wood or fastening a handle to a stone implement, a lashing is necessary, and the nature of the latter varies more or less according to the conditions under which the artificers live. Where mammals are abundant, their sinews afford a readily procured and very strong, fine lashing, but it occurs only in short lengths. The hide of a newly-killed animal is pliant, strong, and can be so cut as to produce long thongs. Owing to the rarity of mammals in New Guinea, and their absence from the Great Ocean, the Papuans, Melanesians, and Polynesians make no use of skins or thongs; sinews may be employed, but the great bulk of all fastening is accomplished by the employment of vegetable fibres. The inner bark of various trees supplies bast and tapa, several vegetables have long fibres which are utilised, but the most widespread and important of all lashings in Oceania is the twisted or plaited string made from the fibres of the husk coco-nut. The latter is known as sinnet, and there are many degrees of excellence in its manufacture; for rough work it is coarsely plaited, but nothing can exceed the delicacy and beauty of the finest sinnet work, such, for example, as occurs on the symbolic adzes of the Hervey Islands, where it was even regarded as a god.

Most of the stone implements of primitive man were fastened in various ways into handles, and an inspection of almost any ethnological collection will demonstrate the diverse methods of lashing employed by even the most backward peoples. For example, we have in Plate I., Fig. 1, an illustration of the fastening of the stone axe of Montezuma II., now in the Ambras Museum at Vienna,26 but analogous figures will be found in numerous books of travel, or in ethnographical journals and treatises.

The even serving of the lashing gives rise to geometrical figures. One might in some cases describe them as patterns, whose symmetrical disposition gives a pleasing effect.

In process of time the stone spear points of our ancestors were replaced by bronze, and during the evolution of the palstave, or socketed bronze celt (Plate I., Figs. 4, 10, 11), from the flat bronze celt, the method of fastening also changed. But by this time the old style of binding had become so associated in men’s mind with the implement, that it was engraved on the socket of the bronze head as a pattern. Hence most of the ornamentation of bronze implements. (Plate I., Figs. 2-4.) On socketed bronze celts one frequently finds (Plate I., Figs. 10, 11) two, three, or more ridges running from the base to some distance towards the end; three is the most common number of these ridges. They may fade away at their ends, or terminate in slight knobs or annular prominences. The meaning of these characteristic markings is at present obscure, but they appear to be skeuomorphs of lashing.

What are known as “beads” have frequently the same origin; that is, they are reminiscences of fastenings. This is especially evident when the bead is decorated with a twisted design, as occurs in the zonal decoration of a bronze vessel from a Swiss lake-dwelling. (Plate I., Fig. 5.) There is no reason to believe that lashing was actually employed on older forms of Assyrian combs, or prehistoric bone needles or bronze knives, nevertheless the patterns shown in Plate I., Figs. 6, 8, and 9, have doubtless been derived from ligatures; more from the fact that such patterns were familiar, and a feeling for a need of decoration, than for any special appropriateness.

One frequently finds designs in the ornamentation of objects from Oceania which are evidently based upon sinnet lashings. To take a few out of many examples now before me, in Fig. ⁴⁸ we have a reduced rubbing of a carved cylindrical club, said to come from the Friendly Islands (Tonga); the same kind of club also occurs in Fiji. The decoration of this club irresistibly suggests bands of plaited sinnet irregularly bound round the club.

In these two groups of islands sinnet is often worked into a design that is also copied on the upper part of a carved wooden club. (Fig. ⁴⁹.) The same kind of lashing is seen in Plate I., Fig. 1. Occasionally, instead of being angular, this pattern is carved in curved lines, and so gives rise to an imbricate pattern, which might be mistaken for a scale pattern.

Other sinnet patterns perhaps occur in the lower part of the decoration of a Tongan club. (Fig. ⁵⁰.) The design on the upper left-hand corner is evidently copied from matting, and it frequently occurs on these clubs. This figure also illustrates the Tongan peculiarity of inserting little figures into designs, in this case a man and probably a frigate-bird.

I do not wish to suggest that all zigzags included within parallel lines, as in Fig. ⁴⁸, or such simple designs as those of Fig. ⁵⁰, are everywhere sinnet derivatives, or otherwise skeuomorphic; some, at least, in the Pacific certainly are. We have seen that birds’ head designs may degenerate into zigzags (Figs. ³⁰, ³⁶), and we shall see that frogs’ legs (Fig. ¹²², B), snakes (Fig. ¹⁰³, G, H, K), alligators (Fig. ⁹⁷, E, F), and even the human form (Fig. ¹²⁵, A) may pass into zigzags. There are many other possible origins of the zigzag, but in many cases it is probably only a purely decorative motive of no further significance. The simple zigzag can be traced in ancient Egyptian art as far back as 4000 B.C., and, according to Professor Flinders Petrie, it continued popular with a few modifications for about 2000 years, when spots were associated with it, but these were adopted from foreign art. About the eighteenth dynasty the use of the zigzag was discarded in favour of the wavy line and various scroll designs. In all cases it is necessary to study each pattern locally.

3. Skeuomorphs of Textiles

In Europe a very early form of fabric was wattle-work, formed by the interlacing of flexible boughs and wands. The most ancient huts were doubtless made of wattle-work daubed over with clay. Only very exceptionally are traces of these structures found, as, for example at Ebersberg, where Dr. Keller27 found, among the débris of a lake-village which had been destroyed by fire, fragments of the clay daubing, “smooth on one side, and marked on the other, with deep depressions of the basket-work.” The pattern thus impressed on the clay is one of repeated straight lines crossed by a contrasted series of curved ones. (Plate II., Fig. 1.) Thus the fire which consumed the house baked its clayey coating, and in this way preserved for us a record of what it destroyed.

I do not know whether the wattle-work has been perpetuated on any object as a skeuomorph, but it is possible that the shape of similarly constructed huts has been continued, as Mr. Charles de Kay suggests,28 into the round towers of Ireland. He says, “Seeing how the Irish kept heathen ideas in other things, we can perceive how the round wicker house of the Kelt, such as we see it carved on the column of Antoninus at Rome, developed into the wood and wicker outlook tower and beacon, and in skilful hands became the Irish round tower. Christian in usage, they are pagan in design.”

The predatory expeditions of the Scandinavians created a demand for watch-towers and places of temporary refuge; the pattern for these was supplied by the traditional erections of the Gauls, but their translation into “towers more durable, useful, simple yet stately, than anything Ireland had seen before or has seen since,” was due to the skill and experience of “Byzantine craftsmen driven from the East by the bigotry of the image-breaking emperors.”

Mr. de Kay also calls attention to the encircling stone bands, or “string-courses,” as in the round tower at Ardmore, “which repeat, without any useful object in stone, the horizontal bands that strengthened the tall wicker house of the Gauls. Such apparently trivial points weigh heavily in favour of the indigenous character of the round tower of Ireland.”

The interlacing of flexible bands, such as strips of bast, entire leaves as of grass, or shreds of large leaves, is known to almost every people, and is employed in making mats. When the elements employed are all of one size, and when the plaiting is straight, the intersections form regular equilateral rectangles or squares. (Plate II., Fig. 3, and compare the transferred design in Fig. ⁵⁰.) If the material consists of two colours simple patterns are readily produced, but of necessity the patterns must consist of straight, slanting, or zigzag lines; curves are an impossibility. The same holds good for nearly all forms of matting and basketry which is made of strips of one material, but the constructional surface marking may be rectangles of various shapes and sizes instead of simple squares. (Plate II., Fig. 4.) When one series of the components is twisted, as in Plate II., Fig. 5, there is a kind of flow effect in the intersections.

The making of baskets by laying down the material in a spiral gives rise to different effects, especially when coloured strips are interwoven for decorative purposes—as, for example, in some African baskets and the baskets made by the natives of South Australia, in the neighbourhood of Adelaide. Dr. Keller found in the Lake of Robenhausen a kind of basketry formed by bast, the fibre of the lime-tree, intertwisted among a series of willow rods, the strips “running concentrically in such a way that both together form a structure like that called ‘herring-bone.’”29 (Plate II., Fig. 2.) It is possible that the pattern in the middle band of Fig. ⁴⁹, and some of those in Fig. ⁵⁰, may have been suggested by basketry or plaited fans.

An early type of basket is seen in the Roman corbula (Plate II., Fig. 6), in which the osier rods are placed rectangularly; another, in an ivory plaque from Boulak (Plate II., Fig. 7), in which there is a chevron arrangement. The latter is the more common skeuomorph on European prehistoric pottery, but the rectangular type often occurs, and it may be seen on a Danish food-vessel of the Stone Age. (Plate II., Fig. 8.)

The bottom of a basket, with a cruciform arrangement of the bands, due to the method of weaving, was discovered by Dr. Keller in the Terramara marl-pits of Northern Italy (Plate II., Fig. 9); and a piece of pottery from the same deposit is ornamented with a corresponding skeuomorph (Plate II., Fig. 10).

Dr. Colley March has further developed this subject, and, while I cannot commit myself to several of his conclusions, I do not hesitate to give an exposition of his ingenious views, as they are very suggestive, and even if they are not finally accepted, they will lead to a further examination of the problems:—

“The perpetual concentration of attention, the strain of hand and eye and brain upon the forms of wattle-work and basketry produced an important decorative result. The mind acquired an expectancy of a special mode of curved repetitions. This particular skeuomorph is composed of a band that winds in and out among a row of rods or discs.” (Plate III., Fig. A.)

The “discs” are naturally the cross sections of the vertical elements of the wattle-work—that is the “rods.” “The device underwent a change in opposite directions. The discs grew, or they vanished. In the latter case the band left by itself is the meander, and may be called a curvilinear zigzag. In the former case the discs often became the seat of phyllomorphic invasion, and were transformed into leaves or flowers.

“Examples may be seen on the margin of a bronze shield from Cyprus (Plate III., Fig. 2); on a vessel of terra-cotta from the third sepulchre of Mycenæ (Plate III., Fig. 8); and on an enamelled Roman vase found on Bartlow Hill (Plate III., Fig. 5); whilst a twin-form, which presents both contrast and repetition, occurs on another bronze shield from the Mediterranean (Plate III., Fig. 1) and is the basis of the Assyrian ornament and its Greek variant called the guilloche. (Plate III., Figs. 4, 3.)

“A different skeuomorph is derived from a different method of basketry, in which a single fibre is turned round a row of osier-sticks, so as to produce a wave repetition (Plate III., Fig. B), as may be seen on the pottery of the ancient Pueblos (Plate III., Fig. 6). When these discs disappear, the fibre by itself resembles the Vitruvian scroll, and may be called a curvilinear fret. (Plate III., Fig. B.)

“Whenever the pattern has a stepped form, as on many of the Pueblo vases (Plate III., Fig. 7), it indicates that the methods of textile manufacture had already influenced the eye and mind of the race before the invention or introduction of pottery.”

The scroll-patterns illustrated by Dr. March may at one time and place have had the origin supposed by Dr. March, but it does not appear to me to be probable that they would have arisen in this way both in South Europe and in Mexico. I have shown (p. 51, Fig. ²⁷) how a simple guilloche has arisen from interlocking birds’ heads. The Vitruvian scroll design occurs among the Tugeri head-hunters of New Guinea, and it is most improbable that it owes its origin to basketry. It is probable that the Pueblo pottery with curvilinear patterns, such as Plate III., Fig. 6, is more recent than that with angular designs; but I shall return to this later on. In fact, I would feel inclined to state that Dr. March’s view is possible for the origin of the patterns in question, once and in a restricted locality, but highly improbable for wide application.

There is a great tendency for spirals to degenerate into concentric circles; examples could be given from New Guinea, America, Europe, and elsewhere. In fact, one usually finds the two figures associated together, and the sequence is one of decadence, never the evolution of spirals from circles. The intermediate stage has been aptly termed a “bastard spiral” by Dr. Montelius, “that is to say, concentric circles to which the recurved junction-lines give, to a casual glance, the appearance of true spirals.”30

“The strangest skeuomorph of all,” writes Dr. March, “was that common to the early inhabitants of Northern Europe. They were adepts in basketry, and in wattle-work for walls and ramparts. Moreover, the pliant bark of the birch was ever ready to the hand for a thousand purposes of life. The Norwegian still makes hinges for gates and loops for the oar out of the entwisted fibre. The old Norseman spoke of the rudder withy, for the earliest rudder was an oar; and leather thongs were also used to keep the oar against the thole-pin. The skeuomorph consists of a withy wound upon itself. (Plate VII., Fig. 11.) This device, wrongly called a rope-pattern, gained such an ascendency over the northern mind that it was employed sometimes as a symbol (Plate VII., Fig. 12), like the reefing knot on Roman altars. (Plate VII., Fig. 13.) It was used also by the ancient Hittites. (Plate IV., Fig. 1.)

“It is evident that the withy skeuomorph (Plate IV., Figs. 2, 3), the Scandinavian worm-knot, established itself as a necessity of the mind before those men who were dominated by it had discarded a covering of skins for one of cloth; for its type is antagonistic to the regular intersections and the stepped designs of textile fabrics, and no trace of these appears on their early pottery.

“When weaving was at last introduced, so as to be practised by these people, it was probably along with the introduction of metals. But for a while the use of metal only increased the number of twisted things. The words, wire, wicker, and withy are all from the root WI, to plait, and the Teutonic WIRA means filigree, an ornament of twisted filaments of metal; and as the simplest manner of terminating a wire is to coil its end, the earliest filigree is preponderantly spiral. (Plate IV., Figs. 5, 6, 7.) Thus was the way prepared,” concludes Dr. March, “for the advent of the serpent zoomorph, so much affected by Teutons and Scandinavians.”

In early times wooden bands were interwoven to form flat surfaces, as, for example, in the floor of a lake-dwelling at Niederwyl, in Switzerland (Plate IV., Fig. 8), but few traces of the art of “fascining,” as Dr. March points out, remain to us from antiquity, since wood-work rapidly perishes by decay, and is easily destroyed by fire. This art produces a bold decorative effect which appears to have been perpetuated in various ways. Amongst others may be mentioned the interior decoration of an earthen vessel from Ueberlingen See (Plate IV., Fig. 9), a crescent of red sandstone from Ebersberg (Plate IV., Fig. 10), and an incised stone from Hadrian’s Wall, in Northumberland. (Plate IV., Fig. 11.)

So far we have only considered the type of ornamentation which occurs on plaited or woven objects, and these are seen to be conditioned by that particular technique. We have now to see what occurs when a new material is substituted for the old.

There are many varieties of tapa in the Pacific, some of which are coarse and others of extreme fineness and softness. The process of making and decorating tapa has often been described; sometimes the tapa is ribbed, having been beaten with more or less finely corrugated wooden mallets, occasionally it is marked with squares which give it an appearance of having been stamped by a simply plaited mat, but many pieces are quite smooth. There is nothing in the texture or manufacture of tapa to prevent its being ornamented with intricate and involved patterns. As a general rule, all over the Pacific we find that tapa patterns are largely geometrical—that is, they are formed of straight and angled lines; bowed lines, which are grouped into leaf-like designs, are not infrequent, but doubly curved lines and scroll-like designs are extremely rare. The evidence clearly points to a time anterior to the employment of tapa, and when mats and other textiles were the only fabrics; the decoration of these was necessarily angular in style. When tapa became general the older designs were transferred to the new material, and quite irrespective of its capabilities. Only gradually has it been found that the smooth surface of tapa lends itself to a more elaborate decorative treatment. The essential conservatism of the savage precludes rapid emancipation from long existent thralls, especially as the æsthetic mind has, so to speak, become set in angularities.

It is probable that the practice of beating tapa with wooden mallets led to the discovery of printing in colours. The transitions are slight between finding the natural graining of wood impressing itself on the soft tapa, of so cutting the mallets as to produce a regularly grooved surface, and of colouring the blocks, and lastly of making the great printing blocks on which the pattern stands up in relief, which were made in Fiji. Sometimes the lines in relief of printing blocks are made by fastening the mid ribs of palm leaves on to a stout piece of tapa.

In certain islands it has been discovered that fern fronds covered with pigment can be used for printing, and thus what is known in this country as “nature-printing” has been independently arrived at.

What has happened in the Great Ocean apparently also took place in New Guinea. In the south-eastern peninsula the men wear tapa belts which are often painted. About the district of Kerepunu, in British New Guinea, tapa belts are worn by the men which are painted in a peculiar manner with grey and orange pigments. In Fig. ⁵¹ we have two typical patterns. It is obvious that the interlaced design would be easily arrived at in a plaited belt, but it is highly improbable that it is, so to speak, indigenous to the tapa.

In all the other examples of painted tapa known to me from British New Guinea, angular designs alone occur.

Professor von den Steinen discovered in Central Brazil some patterns, which most people would designate as “geometrical,” painted on pieces of bark which formed a frieze round a chief’s house. These patterns (Fig. ⁵²) are derived from serial repetitions of the minute triangular garment which constitutes the sole clothing of the women. This is a good example of the necessity for local information concerning the significance of designs. I would refer the reader to later pages for further examples of analogous patterns from the same district.

4. Skeuomorphic Pottery

Perhaps no manufacture is of such importance to anthropologists as pottery. In Europe pottery first appeared in what is termed by archæologists the Neolithic Age, or that period of human history when man had learnt to neatly chip and to polish his stone implements, but had not as yet discovered metal. Amongst living people the Australians and the Polynesians are the only great groups among whom pottery is unknown.31 There can be little doubt that the ceramic art has been independently discovered in various parts of the world, and Mr. Cushing believes that this has been the case even in America.

Earthen vessels are comparatively easy to make, and though they are brittle, their fragments, when properly baked, are almost indestructible. The history of man is unconsciously written largely on shards, and the elucidation of these unwritten records is as interesting and important as the deciphering of the cuneiform inscriptions on the clay tablets of Assyria. The Book of Pots has yet to be written, but materials for its compilation lie scattered throughout the great literature of archæology, anthropology, and ceramics, and in the specimens in a multitude of museums and collections. The scientific treatment of the subject has been sketched out mainly by W. H. Holmes and F. H. Cushing, and I have not hesitated to borrow largely from the publications of these American anthropologists.

There are three principal methods of making clay vessels—1, by coiling; 2, by modelling; or 3, by casting.

In the first method longer or shorter rope-like pieces of clay are formed. These are laid down in a spiral, and the vessel is built up by a continuation of the same process.

In modelling, or moulding, a lump of clay is taken, and this is first worked with the hands, and then the clay is gradually beaten into the desired shape and thickness by means of a wooden mallet, which hits against a stone or other object that is held inside the incipient vessel.

The third method, by casting, is very rarely employed except by quite civilised peoples. It was a comparatively late discovery that clay vessels could be cast within hollow moulds if the paste was made thin enough.

The coiling and moulding processes are in some places employed side by side, and a vessel may be commenced in the latter method and finished by coiling. (Fig. ⁵⁵.) This is done by the Nicobarese,32 Pueblo Indians, and other peoples.

The subject of the forms and decoration of pottery is so important for our study that it will be advisable to quote at considerable length some of the American investigations which bear upon it. Nowhere than in that continent are conditions more favourable to a scientific study of the evolution of ceramics, and our American colleagues happily are fully alive to this fact. Their researches afford valuable sidelights upon the probable history of European prehistoric ceramics.

Mr. J. D. Hunter,33 writing of the Mississippi tribes in 1823, says that they spread the clay “over blocks of wood, which have been formed into shapes to suit their convenience or fancy. When sufficiently dried they are removed from the moulds, placed in proper situations, and burned to a hardness suitable to their intended uses. Another method practised by them is to coat the inner surface of baskets, made of rushes or willows, with clay, to any required thickness, and when dry, to burn them as above described.”

Messrs. Squier and Davis,34 referring to the vessels of the Gulf Indians, say:—“In the construction of those of large size, it was customary to model them in baskets of willow or splints, which at the proper period were burned off, leaving the vessel perfect in form, and retaining the somewhat ornamental markings of their moulds. Some of those found on the Ohio seem to have been modelled in bags or nettings of coarse thread or twisted bark. These practices are still retained by some of the remote western tribes.”

Mr. W. H. Holmes35 points out that “clay has no inherent qualities of a nature to impose a given form or class of forms upon its products, as have wood, bark, bone, or stone. It is so mobile as to be quite free to take form from surroundings.... In early stages of culture the processes of art are closely akin to those of nature, the human agent hardly ranking as more than a part of the environment. The primitive artist does not proceed by methods identical with our own. He does not deliberately and freely examine all departments of nature or art, and select for models those things most convenient or most agreeable to fancy; neither does he experiment with the view of inventing new forms. What he attempts depends almost absolutely upon what happens to be suggested by preceding forms.

“The range of models in the ceramic art is at first very limited, and includes only those utensils devoted to the particular use to which the clay vessels are to be applied; later, closely associated objects and utensils are copied. In the first stages of art, when a savage makes a weapon, he modifies or copies a weapon; when he makes a vessel he modifies or copies a vessel” (pp. 445, 446).

The discovery of the art of making pottery was probably in all cases adventitious, the clay being first used for some other purpose. “The use of clay as a cement in repairing utensils, in protecting combustible vessels from injury by fire, or in building up the walls of shallow vessels, may also have led to the formation of discs or cups, afterwards independently constructed. In any case the objects or utensils with which the clay was associated in its earliest use would impress their forms upon it. Thus, if clay were used in deepening or mending vessels of stone by a given people, it would, when used independently by that people, tend to assume shapes suggested by stone vessels. The same may be said of its use in connection with wood and wicker, or with vessels of other materials. Forms of vessels so derived may be said to have an adventitious origin, yet they are essentially copies, although not so by design” (p. 445). In other words, such pottery is primitively skeuomorphic. Ceramic biomorphs will be dealt with in a later chapter.

Mr. Holmes further points out that the shapes first assumed by vessels in clay depend upon the shape of the vessels employed at the time of the introduction of the art, and these depend, to a great extent, upon the kind and grade of culture of the people acquiring the art, and upon the resources of the country in which they live.

A few examples will suffice. Mr. Holmes (loc. cit., pp. 383, 448) figures an oblong wooden vessel with a projecting rim, which is narrow at the sides but broad at the ends; it is in fact a sort of winged trough; this is sometimes copied in clay. It is evident that the elongated terminal shelf-like projections are more suited to a wooden than to an earthen vessel.

In Fig. ⁵³ we have an Iroquois bark-vessel. Mr. Cushing36 informs us that in order to produce this form of utensil from a single piece of bark, it is necessary to cut pieces out of the margin and fold it. Each fold, when stitched together in the shaping of the vessel, forms a corner at the rim. These corners, and the borders which they form, are decorated with short lines and combinations of lines, composed of coarse embroideries with dyed porcupine quills. Clay vessels (Fig. ⁵⁴), which strikingly resemble the shape and decoration of these birch or linden bark vessels, are of common occurrence in the lake regions of the United States. There can be but little doubt that the clay vessels are directly derived from the bark vessels.

Mr. Cushing’s long and intimate knowledge of the Zuñi Indians has enabled him to speak with authority on matters which might be merely happy suggestions by other anthropologists. Any one can guess at origins and meanings, but there are few who know at first-hand, and who therefore can act as interpreters to the student at home. The following account of Zuñi pottery is taken from Mr. Cushing’s paper, entitled “A Study of Pueblo Pottery as illustrative of Zuñi Culture Growth.”

So far as language indicates, the earliest Zuñi water vessels were tubes of wood or sections of cane. The latter must speedily have given way to the use of gourds. While the gourd was large and convenient in form, it was difficult of transportation, owing to its fragility. To overcome this it was encased in a coarse sort of wicker-work. Of this there is evidence among the Zuñis, in the shape of a series of rudely encased gourd vessels into which the sacred water is said to have been transferred from the tubes.

This crude beginning of the wicker-art in connection with water vessels points towards the development of the wonderful water-tight baskets of the south-west, explaining, too, the resemblance of many of its typical forms to the shapes of gourd vessels. The name for these vessels also supports this view.

Mr. Cushing suggests that water-tight osiery, once known, however difficult of manufacture, would displace the general use of gourd vessels. While the growth of the gourd was restricted to limited areas, the materials for basketry were anywhere at hand. Basket vessels were far stronger and more durable than gourds.

“We may conclude, then,” continues Mr. Cushing, “that so long as the Pueblo ancestry were semi-nomadic, basketry supplied the place of pottery, as it still does for the less advanced tribes of the south-west, except in cookery.” Thus the Ha va su paí, or Coçoninos of Cataract Cañon, Arizona, in 1881, “had not yet forgotten how to boil food in water-tight basketry, by means of hot stones, and continued to roast seeds, crickets, and bits of meat in wicker-trays, coated inside with gritty clay. A round basket-tray, either loosely or closely woven, is evenly coated inside with clay, into which has been kneaded a very large proportion of sand, to prevent contraction and consequent cracking from drying. This lining of clay is pressed, while still soft, into the basket as closely as possible with the hands, and then allowed to dry. The tray thus made is ready for use. The seeds or other substances to be parched are placed inside of it, together with a quantity of glowing wood coals;” these are made to rapidly revolve. “That this clay lining should grow hard from continual heating, and in some instances separate from its matrix of osiers, is apparent. The clay form thus detached would itself be a perfect roasting vessel” (pp. 484, 485). The modern Zuñi name for a parching pan indicates that the shallow vessel of twigs coated with clay for roasting had given birth to the parching pan of earthenware.

In the ancient Zuñi country are found vessels of the same form as the basket-pot or boiling basket, still surviving among the Havasupaí. These baskets are good examples of the spirally-coiled type of basket.

“Seizing the suggestion afforded by the rude tray-moulded parching-bowls, particularly after it was discovered that if well burned they resisted the effects of water as well as of heat, the ancient potter would naturally attempt in time to reproduce the boiling-basket in clay. She would find that to accomplish this she could not use as a mould the inside of the boiling-basket, as she had the inside of the tray, because its neck was smaller than its body. Nor could she form the vase by plastering the clay outside of the vessel, not only for the same reason, but also because the clay in drying would contract so much that it would crack or scale off. Naturally, then, she pursued the process she was accustomed to in the manufacture of the basket-bottle. That is, she formed a thin rope of soft clay, which, like the wisp of the basket, she coiled around and around a centre to form the bottom, then spirally upon itself, now widening the diameter of each coil more and more, then contracting as she progressed upward until the desired height and form were attained. As the clay was adhesive, each coil was attached to the one already formed by pinching or pressing together the connecting edges at short intervals as the widening went on. This produced corrugations or indentations marvellously resembling the stitches of basket-work. Hence accidentally the vessels thus built up appeared so similar to the basket which had served for its model that evidently it did not seem complete until this feature had been heightened by art. At any rate, the majority of specimens belonging to this type of pottery, especially those of the older periods during which it was predominant, are distinguished by an indented or incised decoration exactly reproducing the zigzags, serrations, chevrons, terraces, and other characteristic devices of water-tight basketry. Evidently, with a like intention, two little cone-like projections were attached to the neck near the rim of the vessel, which may hence be regarded as survivals of the loops whereby the ends of the strap-handle were attached to the boiling-basket. Although varied in later times to form scrolls, rosettes, and other ornate figures, they continued ever after quite faithful features of the spiral type of pot, and may even sometimes be seen on the cooking vessels of modern Zuñi.” Corroborative evidence of the connection between the two kinds of receptacles is found in their names, the translation being “coiled cooking-basket” and “coiled earthenware cooking-basket” (pp. 489-491).

Other earthenware vessels had a somewhat different evolutionary history, but they had for their starting-point the food-trencher of coiled wicker-work. When by a perfectly natural sequence of events ornamentation by painting came to be applied to the surface of the bowls a smooth surface was found preferable to a corrugated one, not only because it took paint more readily, but because it formed a far handsomer utensil for household use than if simply decorated by the older methods.

Later the building up of large vessels was no longer accomplished by the spiral method exclusively. “A lump of clay, hollowed out, was shaped how rudely so ever on the bottom of the basket or in the hand, then placed inside of a hemispherical basket-bowl, and stroked until pressed outward to conform with the shape, and to project a little above the edges of its temporary mould, whence it was built up spirally (Fig. ⁵⁵) until the desired form had been attained, after which it was smoothed by scraping.”

With regard to the employment of textile supports by the ancient peoples of North America for the clay vessels during the process of manufacture, Mr. Holmes37 writes:—“Nets or sacks of pliable materials have been almost exclusively employed. These have been applied to the surface of the vessel, sometimes covering the exterior entirely, and at others only the body or a part of the body. The nets or other fabrics used have generally been removed before the vessel was burned or even dried.... I have observed in many cases that handles and ornaments have been added, and that impressed and incised designs have been made in the soft clay after the removal of the woven fabric. There would be no need of the support of a net after the vessel had been fully finished and slightly hardened. Furthermore, I have no doubt that these textilia were employed as much for the purpose of enhancing the appearance of the vessel as for supporting it during the process of construction. In support of the idea that ornament was a leading consideration in the employment of these coarse fabrics, we have the well-known fact that simple cord-markings, arranged to form patterns, have been employed by many peoples for embellishment alone. This was a common practice of the ancient inhabitants of Great Britain”38 (p. 398).

The value of the bearing of such observations as the foregoing on the study of the prehistoric pottery of Europe is obvious. In America the record is unbroken; with us, like the great majority of our archæological finds, we are dealing with fragments, and it is only by careful piecing together that a symmetrical whole can be restored.

Dr. Klemm,39 some half-century ago, wrote:—“The imitation (of natural vessels) in clay presupposes numerous trials. In the Friendly Islands [Tonga40] we find vessels which are still in an early stage; they are made of clay, slightly burnt, and enclosed in plaited work; so also the oldest German vessels seem to have been, for we observe on those which remain an ornamentation in which plaiting is imitated by incised lines. What was no longer wanted as a necessity was kept up as an ornament.”

Dr. Daniel Wilson41 says that the early British urns may have been “strengthened at first by being surrounded with a plaiting of cords or rushes.... It is certain that very many of the indented patterns on British pottery have been produced by the impress of twisted cords on the wet clay—the intentional imitation it may be of undesigned indentations originally made up by the plaited network on ruder sun-dried urns.”

Professor Tylor42 refers to Mr. G. J. French’s experiments.43 “He coated baskets with clay, and found the wicker patterns came out on all the earthen vessels thus made; and he seems to think that some ancient urns still preserved were actually moulded in this way, judging from the lip being marked as if the wicker-work had been turned in over the clay coating inside.”

“On the surface of a few ancient vases or urns found in Germany,” Mr. Charles Rau44 says, “I noticed those markings which present the appearance of basket-work; I was, however, in doubt whether they were impressions produced by the inside of baskets, or simply ornamental lines traced on the wet clay. Yet, even in the latter case, it would seem that this kind of ornamentation was suggested by the former practice of modelling vessels in baskets.”

It may be taken as proved that in a number of cases the forms of pots are taken from natural objects, or from receptacles made of different materials. We cannot demonstrate this in all cases, nor should we expect to, for even assuming this to have been the universal origin, we cannot hope to have the earlier stages preserved to us. The record is imperfect, the evidence of origin is clear in some cases, and probable in others; in some the evidence is lacking.

What applies to the form of pottery applies equally to its decoration; often it is impossible to disassociate them. The actual or primitive technique of manufacture, too, may exhibit itself in and as an ornament, as, for example, the spiral markings in pottery made in the coil method. We have seen that in some places plaited or woven fabrics have been used to support the soft clay, and these have left their impress. If not previously destroyed, these marks become indelible after the burning of the pottery. These markings being due to the process of manufacture, are repeated in the manufacture of every vessel, and if not purposely smoothed out, expectancy comes into operation, and they may be imitated in a slightly conventional manner even when they may no longer occur in construction, as, for example, when the supports are no longer employed, or in pottery turned on a wheel.

Various methods of plaiting, intertwining, netting, and so forth may thus be transferred as skeuomorphic decoration to pottery. These are at first produced by means of incisions, puckerings of the clay by the fingers, application of accessory coils or pieces of clay, etc. Even the accidental imprints of nails or finger-tips, or of implements, may have suggested certain decoration.

Later on, when pottery was decorated by painting, the same kind of ornamentation was reproduced in the new medium, and as the changed conditions evoked freer treatment, the designs underwent various transformations.

Mr. Holmes45 discusses the modification of ornament (1) through material, (2) through form, (3) through methods of realisation (p. 458).

(1.) The material of which an object is made must have a very definite effect upon its decoration, and the material is to a very large extent dependent upon the locality. Metal, stone, clay, wood, bone, skins, and textiles are so varied in their structure that they require different artistic treatment, and it has usually taken a considerable time for a people to discover what is the most suitable form of decoration for an object made of a particular substance.

(2.) The forms of decorated objects exercise a strong influence upon the decorative designs employed. An ornament, as Mr. Holmes remarks, applied originally to a vessel of a given form, accommodates itself to that form pretty much as a costume becomes adjusted to the individual. When it came to be required for another form of vessel, very decided changes might be necessary.

The ancient Pueblo peoples were very fond of rectilinear forms of meander patterns, and many earthen vessels are found girdled with a beautiful angular pattern. (Fig. ⁵⁶.) When, however, the artist has to decorate a vessel which has rounded prominences in its central zone, he finds it very difficult to apply his favourite device, and he is practically compelled to convert his angled into a spiral meander. (Fig. ⁵⁷.)

(3.) Ornament is modified by the method of its execution, whether by incising, modelling, painting, or stamping; closely associated with these are the peculiarities of construction.

Nearly all woven fabrics encourage, even to compulsion, the use of straight lines in their decoration. Curved lines are rendered as stepped or broken lines. Fig. ⁵⁸ illustrates, in a diagrammatic manner, two forms of the same motive as expressed in different arts. The curvilinear freehand scroll, which is readily painted, incised, or moulded in relief, is forced by the constructional character of textiles into square forms, and a rectangular meander or fret will result. Brickwork, mosaics, or whole-coloured tiles also lead to similar results. In the small panel to the left of Fig. ⁵⁹ it will be observed that careless or hurried work has resulted in the rounding of an angular hook, which has been transmitted to pottery from a textile source. I have noticed the angularisation of spirals occurring in New Guinea; this was due, not to change in the material employed, but to the preference which the natives of the Papuan Gulf have to straight and angled lines. (Cf. Figs. ¹¹, ¹².) Primitive spirals have been copied by these people, and have gradually become angularised into a rectilinear meander.

Fig. ⁶⁰ is a drawing of the painted design of a large earthen vessel from the province of Tusayan, in the district of the Colorado Chiquito. From the occurrence of an isolated stepped line in the decoration, Mr. Holmes suggests that the ornamentation had a textile ancestry. The design is made by leaving the white colour of the pot and painting a black background. The “unit of the design,” as interpreted by Mr. Holmes, is given in black in Fig. ⁶¹. Judging from Fig. ⁶⁰, which is a representation of the vessel itself, Fig. ⁵⁹ is a fairly faithful copy of the design; but there is no warrant on this vase for his joining the scroll pattern at each end with its enclosing line, as in Fig. ⁶¹. It is obvious that if this design were logically worked out, it would appear as in the last figure; it may be so on other vases, but Mr. Holmes apparently is concerned with this one. Professor Grünwedel46 has drawn attention to the mistake of rectifying aboriginal drawings, as we are thereby preventing ourselves from studying the psychology of the natives. According to the method we are employing, we are concerned with what actually occurs, and not with what might be.

5. Stone Skeuomorphs of Wooden Buildings

Sir C. Fellows,47 in his interesting account of his travels in Asia Minor, draws attention to the remarkable rock-tombs which he discovered in Lycia, and which clearly prove that these tombs were models in stone of wooden dwellings. At Antiphellus (Plate V., Fig. 1) the timbering is reproduced to every detail of mortise and tenon. The stems of trees, laid horizontally to cover the chamber, are imitated in masonry. They project beyond the wall, and show their ends, as a row of circular sections, in the middle of the entablature. The tree trunk at each extremity of the row was larger than the rest, and has been squared. Sometimes all the trunks are squared, as may be seen at Xanthus (Plate V., Fig. 2); and we witness, as Dr. March points out, the origin of the well-known Greek ornament called “guttæ.” He also calls attention to the fact that skeuomorphs of timbering were much affected by the Normans, as in their various billet patterns; whilst their capitals often show sections, not alone of branches springing from a tree trunk, but of the enveloping bark also. (Plate I., Fig. B.)

Another rock tomb at Antiphellus (Plate V., Fig. 3) shows a row of squared trunks projecting beyond the side of the building, as would be a natural arrangement in any wooden house that had a length greater than its width. In the same building are external indications of a second story. They are indications only, for the story does not exist. The device is a skeuomorph, because it is functionless. “But we understand,” to again quote from Dr. March, “the origin of our ‘string-course,’ and we recognise one of the many reasons, in the ancestral training of the eye of our race, why the sight of a large unbroken surface produces in the mind a sense of disappointment, a feeling of unsatisfied expectancy, the anguish that Hood sings—

“‘A wall so blank
  That my shadow I thank
For sometimes falling there!’”

The gables of the roof of the old-time houses were often formed by the bent boughs of trees crossing each other at the ridge, as witnessed by an Etruscan hut-urn from Monte Albano (Plate I., Fig. C), and Pompeian wall-paintings. (Plate V., Fig. 4.) A finished treatment of the bent bough gable is seen in a tomb at Antiphellus. (Plate V., Fig. 3.)

In the wooden originals of the rock-tombs of Asia Minor (Plate V., Figs. 2, 3) one sees the birth of the gable which, arising as a structural necessity, was perpetuated in stone as the crowning glory of Grecian temples, and ever since has remained as a decorative adjunct to buildings, or the functionless adornment of the humblest household furniture. (Plate I., Figs. D-F.)

6. Skeuomorphic Inappropriateness

We have seen that as the bronze implement replaced the neolithic celt, so the lashing of the latter became a skeuomorphic decoration on the former. As tapa replaced matting the conditioned ornamentation of the early fabric was transmitted to a material which in itself imposed few artistic limitations. The same also with pottery when it was derived from or suggested by baskets; basketry impressed itself on the clay, literally or figuratively as the case may be, and thenceforward pots were doomed to basket-like ornamentation until the possibilities of clay worked out the freedom of the pot from the limitations of the basket. In all the above we have a continuity in function, and it is not very surprising that indications of structure stubbornly persisted.

Everywhere the human mind has become accustomed to certain local patterns, designs, and structures. These are bound up with the sacred associations of family and religion, with the green memories of childhood, and have become as it were indented into the consciousness of the individual. To many minds new designs are unvalued; they awaken no sympathy, they are devoid of associations; like alien plants, they pine away and die.

The pleasure which people take in beauty prompts them to ornament almost everything which admits of decoration, and it is the old patterns and designs which are most frequently copied. So it comes about that these are scattered with an impartial hand, and often without any regard to appropriateness. By inappropriateness I do not wish to imply that the ornament may not be suitable, but merely that it has no meaning so far as the decorated object is concerned. As a rule the decorative art of the less advanced peoples is far more appropriate48 than that of civilised. We may not have the clue, but the more we do know the more suitable do we find the decoration to be. The symbols of religious ceremonies are usually depicted on the utensils employed in that rite; the transference of such symbols to purely secular objects would clearly be inappropriate decoration. Our knowledge of the precise use of objects in ethnological collections, and the significance of their form and decoration is in many cases so imperfect that we are not in a position to criticise their appropriateness; but we have only to look around us at the objects of everyday life to see that ornamentation is quite as often inappropriate as appropriate. It will afford continual pleasure to attempt to trace the skeuomorphic (or “technical,” as it is sometimes called) origin of many patterns which have wandered far, and have at last found themselves in strange company.

II — The Decorative Transformation of Natural Objects

From things made by hands I now pass to natural objects, that we may see how these too are seized upon and modified by primitive folk.

Natural objects fall naturally into two main classes—inanimate and animate subjects; in other words, physical phenomena and living beings.

1. Physicomorphs

Under the term of “physicomorph”49 I propose to describe any representation of an object or operation in the physical world. The heavens and all the powers therein have been depicted in every age and by diverse peoples—usually, but not invariably, with some mystical or religious significance.

Chief of the dreaded powers of the air were the thunder-storm, with its concomitants, the thunder and lightning. These have impressed themselves upon the imagination of man, not only on account of their majesty, but also because of man’s impotence. The thunder is the voice of the god, the lightning his destructive and blasting energy.

The most obvious sign for lightning, a zigzag line, is practically ubiquitous. Similarly the sun is variously depicted as a star with few or many rays; as a circle, with a cross or star inscribed within it, or with rays projecting from its periphery. A plain disc, or more often a crescent, stands for the moon.

As the heavenly powers are so generally associated with the heavens, the celestial phenomena and bodies come to represent these cosmical deities, and symbolism is born. In the following pages I touch upon some of the symbolism of physicomorphs in America; later, in dealing with religion and its symbolism, I shall discuss similar symbols in the Old World.

The symbolism of their autocthones has been, and is still actively and sympathetically studied by American anthropologists, as in a valuable paper50 by F. H. Cushing, who remarks:—“The semi-circle is classed as emblematic of the rainbow; the obtuse angle as of the sky; the zigzag as lightning; terraces as the sky horizons, and modifications of the latter as the mythic ‘ancient sacred place of the spaces,’” and so on.

By combining several of these elementary symbols in a single device, sometimes a mythic idea was beautifully expressed. For example, Fig. ⁶² is the totem-badge Major J. W. Powell received from the Moki Pueblos of Arizona as a token of his induction into the rain gens of that people. An earlier and simpler form of this occurs on a very ancient sacred medicine jar. (Fig. ⁶³.) The sky (A), the ancient place of the spaces—region of the sky gods—(B), the cloud-lines (C), and the falling rain (D), are combined, and depicted to symbolise the storm, which was the objective of the exhortations, rituals, and ceremonials to which the jar was an appurtenance.

Dr. J. Walter Fewkes, in a more recent paper entitled “A few Summer Ceremonials at the Tusayan Pueblos,”51 gives an interesting account of the Flute Ceremony. Several ancient rain-cloud tiles are described; one of them (Fig. ⁶⁴) was in the room of the South House, which contained the altar. “Like its fellow, this tile had an O’-mow-uh [cloud] symbol, with falling rain and the two lightning snakes depicted upon it. There were also fourteen broad black parallel lines on a white ground representing falling rain. Three rain-cloud semi-circles were outlined by a broad black band above the falling rain. The field of the clouds was brown, and the middle cloud, which was the largest, had a conventionalised half-ear of corn,52 consisting of two parallel rows of rectangular kernels, each with a dot in the middle. A field of green occupied the whole face of the tile above the figures of the rain-clouds. On this region, rising from the depression which separates the lateral from the medial rain-cloud, one on each side, there was a brown zigzag lightning figure outlined in black. Each of these bore a simple terraced nā’k-tci [a terraced tablet placed on the head of certain figures] on the head” (p. 121).

Mr. Cushing53 has drawn attention to a bowl of which the form as well as its decoration is symbolic. He says, “Thus, upon all sacred vessels, from the drums of the esoteric medicine societies of the priesthood and all vases pertaining to them, to the keramic appurtenances of the sacred dance or Kâ’kâ, all decorations were intentionally emblematic. Of this numerous class of vessels I will choose but one for illustration—the prayer-meal-bowl of the Kâ’kâ. (Fig. ⁶⁵.) In this both form and ornamentation are significant. In explaining how the form of this vessel is held to be symbolic, I will quote a passage from the ‘creation myth,’ as I rendered it in an article on the origin of corn, belonging to a series on ‘Zuñi Bread-stuff,’ published this year [?1882] in the Millstone of Indianapolis, Indiana. ‘Is not the bowl the emblem of the earth our mother? For from her we draw both food and drink, as a babe draws nourishment from the breast of its mother; and round, as is the rim of a bowl, so is the horizon, terraced with mountains, whence rise the clouds.’ This alludes to a medicine bowl, not to one of the handled kind, but I will apply it as far as it goes to the latter. The two terraces on either side of the handle are in representation of the ‘ancient sacred place of the spaces,’ the handle being the line of the sky, and sometimes painted with the rainbow figure. Now the decorations are a trifle more complex. We may readily perceive that they represent tadpoles, dragon-flies, with also the frog or toad. All this is of easy interpretation. As the tadpole frequents the pools of springtime he has been adopted as the symbol of spring rains; the dragon-fly hovers over pools in summer, hence typifies the rains of summer; and the frog, maturing in them later, symbolises the rains of the later seasons; for all these pools are due to rainfall. When, sometimes, the figure of the sacred butterfly replaces that of the dragon-fly, or alternates with it, it symbolises the beneficence of summer; since, by a reverse order of reasoning, the Zuñis think that the butterflies and migratory birds bring the warm season from the ‘Land of everlasting summer.’

“Upon vessels of special function, like these we have just noticed, peculiar figures may be regarded as emblematic. On other classes, no matter how evidently conventional and expressive decorations may seem (excepting always totemic designs), it is wise to use great caution in their interpretation as intentional and not merely imitative.”

The study of symbols is a peculiarly difficult one, and there is no branch of our subject which contains so many pitfalls for the unwary. The two following paragraphs, respectively by Messrs. Holmes and Cushing,54 afford a useful warning:—

“There are those who, seeing these forms already endowed with symbolism, begin at what I conceive to be the wrong end of the process. They derive the form of the symbol directly from the thing symbolised. Thus the current scroll is, with many races, found to be a symbol of water, and its origin is attributed to a literal rendering of the sweep and curl of the waves. It is more probable that the scroll became the symbol of the sea long after its development through agencies similar to those described above, and that the association resulted from the observation of incidental resemblances. This same figure, in use by the Indians of the interior of the continent, is regarded as symbolic of the whirlwind, and it is probable that any symbol-using people will find in the features and phenomena of their environment, whatever it may be, sufficient resemblance to any of their decorative devices to lead to a symbolic association” (p. 460).

“To both the scroll or volute and the fret, and modifications of them ages later, the Pueblo has attached meanings. Those who have visited the South-west and ridden over the wide, barren plains during late autumn or early spring have been astonished to find traced on the sand, by no visible agency, perfect concentric circles and scrolls or volutes yards long, and as regular as though drawn by a skilled artist. The circles are made by the wind driving partly broken weed-stalks around and around their places of attachment until the fibres by which they are anchored sever and the stalks are blown away. The volutes are formed by the stems of red-top grass and of a round-topped variety of the Chenopodium drifted onward by the whirlwind, yet around and around their bushy adhesive tops. The Pueblos, observing these marks, especially that they are abundant after a wind storm, have wondered at their similarity to the printed scrolls on the pottery of their ancestors. Even to-day they believe the sand marks to be the tracks of the whirlwind, which is a god in their mythology of such distinctive personality that the circling eagle is supposed to be related to him. They have naturally, therefore, explained the analogy above noted by the inference that their ancestors, in painting the volute, had intended to symbolise the whirlwind by representing his tracks. Thenceforward the scroll was drawn on certain classes of pottery to represent the whirlwind and modifications of it (for instance, by the colour-sign belonging to any one of the ‘six regions’) to signify other personified winds” (p. 515).

It is interesting to note that colours are often symbolic. Thus in a footnote to p. 111, loc. cit., Dr. Fewkes says:—“Red is the colour of the south, yellow of the north, blue of the west, and white of the east. For the west the available pigment used has, however, a green colour, although blue is the colour corresponding to west.” A correspondence on the colours of the winds was carried on in the Academy in 1883. Dr. Whitley Stokes points out (p. 114) that among the Mayas of Yucatan red was associated with the east, white with the north, black with the west, and yellow with the south. (Cf. Brinton, Folk-Lore Journal, i. p. 246.) In Ireland, east was purple; south, white; north, black; and west, dun; the sub-winds between S. and E. were red and yellow respectively; between S. and W., green and blue; between N. and W., grey and dark brown; between N. and E., dark grey and speckled. Professor Max Müller (p. 302) notes that among the Navajos E. is dark; S., blue; W., yellow; N., white (cf. Mathews, Amer. Anth., April 1883); and in the Veda E. was red; S., white; W., dark or dark blue; and N., very dark. Lastly, Mr. Hilderic Friend (p. 318) says that in China and ancient Java there were five deities or rules—(1) black, water, N.; (2) red, fire, S.; (3) green, wood, E.; (4) white, metal, W.; (5) yellow, earth, middle. Colonel Garrick Mallery has also some notes on this subject, Fourth Ann. Rep. Bureau Ethnol., Washington, p. 53, and Tenth Ann. Rep., p. 618.

It is very rarely that landscapes are drawn by savages purely for decorative purposes. Maps or plans, or diagrams which are virtually a kind of elevation section, or even a sort of bird’s-eye view, may be limned for mnemonic or directive purposes (p. 209); but pictorial views are so rare that it is worth while giving an illustration of one (Fig. ⁶⁶) which I found etched on a bamboo tobacco-pipe, from Torres Straits, in the Museum für Völkerkunde, in Berlin.

I have little doubt that the island of Mer is here intended, on account of the shape of the hill and the presence of dome-shaped structures, which I take to be the beehive huts which characterise the eastern tribe of Torres Straits. I add for comparison a rough sketch (Fig. ⁶⁷) I took of this island, as seen from the south-west by west.

The natives have a legend that this hill, “Gelam,” was originally a dugong; and I believe the eye-mark in the native’s drawing is intended for the eye of Gelam, “Gelam dan,” and the projection to the extreme left to indicate Gelam’s nose, “Gelam pit,” a small jutting rocky escarpment at the head end of the island, which is enormously exaggerated in the drawing. I take it that the break in the ground of Fig. ⁶⁶, below the first bird, indicates the hill “Korkor,” which forms the tail of the dugong in my sketch, and which is one end of the horse-shoe shaped crater of a volcano. The part extending beyond this is the lava-flow which forms the north-eastern half of the island.55 The vegetation is suggested in a very perfunctory manner. I do not know what the lines that stream from the apex of the hill are intended for. I should add that to make it approximately topographically accurate, the native picture should be reversed,56 assuming my identification to be correct. What I imagine to have occurred is as follows:—The artist intended to represent Mer (Murray Island), and he drew the peak of the principal hill, Gelam, from a very characteristic point of view (I have sketches of my own similar to this); in order to give a realistic touch he inserted the eye, which is a prominent block of volcanic ash, and added the nose. The view is suggestive, but it is an impossible one, and it appears to me that this is characteristic of a great deal of the pictorial art of savages.

2. Biomorphs

The terms “zoomorph” and “phyllomorph” have been employed for the representations in art of plants and animals. Although man is, zoologically considered, only a higher animal, it is convenient to retain the term “anthropomorph,” which has been used by some writers to express representations of the human form. All three terms have reference to living beings, hence the appropriateness of classing them under the general designation of “biomorph.” The biomorph is the representation of anything living in contradistinction to the skeuomorph, which, as we have seen, is the representation of anything made, or of the physicomorph which is the representation of an object or operation in the physical world.

The fact that there is life in the original of the biomorph appears in most cases to exert an influence on the biomorph itself, so that it comes to have what might almost be described as a borrowed vitality.

The distinctive activities or qualities of any living being, more especially in the case of animals, very often cause them to be taken as symbolic of that particular quality. For example, the harmless, gentle, and affectionate dove, which only busies itself with parental cares, has come to be symbolic of peace. There are other reasons to which allusion will be made which have conspired to render biomorphs very important in decorative art.

Biomorphs partake of one characteristic of their originals. They have a life-history. All organisms are born, they grow, they die. During their growth they all pass through greater or less changes. Sometimes these changes, as in the metamorphoses of most insects, have attracted the attention of the least observant, and have appeared to be of such significance as to have been utilised for the illustration of religious doctrines. Whether taking place in full daylight, open to casual observation, or hidden in obscurity, or encapsuled within an egg-shell, marvellous transformations invariably accompany the earlier stages of the development of animals, from the egg stage. The development records an evolution, the history of which is being worked out in detail by the patient investigators of one of the most fascinating of all branches of study—embryology.

We have now to trace the birth, the evolution, and the decay of biomorphs, and we shall find that the subject is scarcely less suggestive and interesting than that of the very animals themselves.

Biomorphs are represented for varied purposes, and with other representations may be classified according to the diagram given in the introductory section (p. 8).

A. Representation of Abstract Ideas of Life

Even such an abstract idea as the Principle of Life, or Vital Energy, has been indicated in decorative art. “On every class of food- and water-vessels, in collections of both ancient and modern Pueblo pottery (except on pitchers and some sacred receptacles), it may be observed as a singular, yet almost constant feature, that encircling lines, often even ornamental zones, are left open or not, as it were, closed at the ends,” writes Cushing57 (p. 510), who adds, “I asked the Indian women, when I saw them making these little spaces with great care, why they took so much pains to leave them open. They replied that to close them was ‘fearful!’—that this little space through the line or zone on a vessel was the ’exit trail of life or being.’ How it came to be first left open, and why regarded as the ’exit trail,’ they could not tell. When a woman has made and painted a vessel she will tell you with an air of relief that it is a ‘Made Being’; as she places the vessel in the kiln, she also places in and beside it food. The noise made by a pot when struck or when simmering on the fire is supposed to be the voice of its associated being. The clang of a pot when it breaks or suddenly cracks in burning is the cry of this being as it escapes or separates from the vessel. That it has departed is argued from the fact that the vase when cracked never resounds as it did when whole. This vague existence never cries out violently unprovoked; but it is supposed to acquire the power of doing so by imitation; hence, no one sings, whistles, or makes other strange or musical sounds resembling those of earthenware under the circumstances above described during the smoothing, polishing, painting, or other processes of finishing. The being thus incited, they think, would surely strive to come out, and would break the vessel in so doing.” In their native philosophy and worship of water, the latter is supposed to contain the source of continued life, hence life also dwells in a vessel containing water, and having once held water, and in virtue of having done so, it contains the source of life. “If the encircling lines inside of the eating bowl, outside of the water jar, were closed, there would be no exit trail for this invisible source of life, or for its influence or breath.” In attempting to arrive at the origin of this, Cushing points out that it is very “difficult to smoothly join a line incised around a clay pot while still soft, and that this difficulty is greater when the ornamental band is laid on in relief. It would be a natural outgrowth of this predicament to leave the ends unjoined, which indeed the savage often did. When paint instead of incision or relief come to be the decorative agent, the lines or bands would be left unjoined in imitation. As those acquainted with Tylor’s Early History of Mankind will realise, a ’myth of observation’ like the above would come to be assigned in after ages.”

The soul or spirit as it is supposed to emerge from a person at death is often represented in Christian art as a miniature man or as a winged monstrosity, as a butterfly by the ancient Greeks, or in various ways by different peoples. Souls of deceased persons may be enshrined in living fruit-eating bats,58 frigate-birds,59 crocodiles,60 lizards,61 sharks,62 or other animals. Under certain conditions the representation of any of these forms would be emblematic of the soul.

The dove, flames (or tongues) of fire, wind, and other emblems are symbolic of spirit in Christian art.

B. Phyllomorphs

It has been frequently remarked that plant forms are rarely represented by savages. A possible explanation may be found in the fact that plant life is so passive, it does nothing actively or aggressively as compared with the irrepressible vitality of animals. Thus it does not impress itself on the imagination of backward peoples.

Another explanation has been suggested to me by Dr. Colley March. The need of ornament is based on expectancy. The eye is so accustomed to something in a certain association, that when this is not seen there is experienced a sense of loss. Among savage peoples the eye is accustomed to dwell on vegetal forms which are always present. It is only when they cease to be present, as in the exceptional circumstances of desert places, or walled towns, that the sense of loss can arise.

It is very probable that the reputed paucity of ornamentation derived from the vegetable world amongst primitive folk may be partly due to our not recognising it as such. Their conventions are not the same as ours, and they are often satisfied with what appears to us to be a very imperfect realism. Who, for example, would recognise in Fig. ⁶⁹ the leaves of a small “cabbage”-bearing wild palm? Yet the pattern on this painted bark-tablet of the Bakaïri tribe of Central Brazil has this significance, according to Professor von den Steinen (cf. p. 175).

Backward people have to be taught to see beauty in nature, and it is very doubtful if the elegance of the form of flower or leaf appeals to them. Bright colours we know please all, and it is the colour or scent of flowers and leaves which causes them to be worn or used in decoration.

One of the very few instances known to me in which vegetable forms are employed in ornamentation by the natives of British New Guinea occurs along the Fly River (Figs. ⁴, ⁸). These natives are fond of decorating their drums with leaves, hence it may happen that, on the principle of expectancy, leaves become mentally associated with drum decoration, and in consequence often carved upon drums, and thence, by the constraint of the feeling of expectancy transferred to pipes and other objects; the casual decoration becomes an engraved ornament. On the other hand, the Fly River appears to have been a culture route (pp. 28, 70), and the employment of plant motives (if the majority of these devices are really such) may be partly due to influence from Malaysia. Dr. M. Uhle63 points out that “The influences of the plant ornamentation of the East Indian Archipelago are also found in Western New Guinea. Although essentially peculiar to the western portion of the East Indian Archipelago it is not wanting in isolated cases in the eastern. Plant ornamentations in perforated carving are known from Halmahera which form a precise parallel with the carvings from Geelvink Bay. Further, the plant ornamentation occurs in Geelvink Bay also in isolated four-petalled flowers, as in Celebes, Halmahera, Timor, and Borneo. [Plant garlands are found on objects from the neighbourhood of Geelvink and Humboldt Bays.] A complete tendril with four-rayed leaves [or flowers] occurs as a pattern on a pottery-beater from Humboldt Bay.64 Trustworthy examples from further east in North New Guinea are either absent or are as yet unrecorded. The influence of the western plant ornament is also felt in South-west New Guinea in the district between Kamrao and Etna Bays. The formation of a cruciform pattern through the arrangement of four Nassa shells, which occurs not only in Geelvink Bay but also in South-west New Guinea at Wamuka River, appears to be due to the influence of a plant pattern, the frequent four-petalled flower.”

In the central district of British New Guinea plant forms appear to be again met with (Fig. ²¹). I say “appear,” as unless there is direct information from natives it is always risky to hazard a guess as to the meaning of a particular design. The reason for these designs is at present quite obscure, but there can be no doubt that there is a reason for them, and a good one too.

Where plants are represented by savage peoples we shall probably find that as a rule their employment is primarily due to other causes than the selection of beautiful forms and graceful curves for their own sakes. A very good example of this is found among the magic patterns on the combs of the Negritos of Malacca, and I would refer the reader to the section on Sympathetic Magic (p. 235), where this is dealt with at considerable length. It may be that this four-rayed flower which is credited with magical properties is the same which, as Dr. Uhle has pointed out, is so widely spread in the decorative art of the Malay Archipelago and Northern New Guinea.

Few plants have penetrated into the psychical life of man to the same extent as the lotus. The food-plants, which afford sustenance to his body, rarely, as such, enter the portals of art. Even those used in fermentation do not necessarily fare much better. The chief exception is the vine, which from its graceful habit of growth and its decorative leaves and clusters of grapes readily lends itself to artistic treatment, but in this case it was probably on account of the “wine that maketh glad the heart of man,” rather than the beauty of the vine, that this creeper became a favourite motive in decorative art. Having once effected an entrance by appealing to the lower senses, the vine retained its position by gratifying the higher. This chapter in the history of art has, however, yet to be written.

Neither mere utility nor intrinsic beauty appear to be a necessary qualification for the establishing of plant-life in decorative art. It is only, so to speak, when plants are provided with a soul, when an inner meaning is read into them, that they become immortalised.

The best example of this is found in the history of the lotus in decorative art. Religion introduced it, symbolism established it, and habit or expectancy retained it.

The Lotus and Its Wanderings

As many mistakes have arisen from the confusion of the Egyptian lotus with the rose water-lily it is necessary to clearly distinguish between them.

The White lotus (Nymphæa lotus) and the Blue lotus (N. cœrulea), which is only a colour variety of the former, have a disc-like leaf, cleft nearly to its centre, which floats on the surface of the water. The calyx has only four coarse sepals which are dark green in colour, and which entirely encase the bud until it begins to open. As it expands the delicate white or sapphire blue petals offer a marked contrast to the sepals. From four points of view of the open flower a central and two lateral sepals will be evident, often when the flower begins to fade the sepals bend downwards, but the petals do not expand to a greater extent than is shown in the accompanying figure (Fig. ⁷⁰), in which will also be seen the characteristic seed-capsule with its rosette-like apex.

The rose water-lily, or water-bean (Nelumbium speciosum), according to Professor Goodyear,65 is not represented in Egyptian pattern ornament. Its leaves (Fig. ⁷¹), standing erect out of the water, are bell-shaped and not slit. The calyx has numerous, over-lapping, scale-like sepals. The flower opens widely and the broad petals disappear from view by the expansion of the blossom. The seed-pod resembles the spout of a watering-pot. Sir J. G. Wilkinson says,66 “The Nelumbium, common in India, grows no longer in Egypt, and the care taken in planting it formerly seems to show it was not indigenous in Egypt.”

In every book dealing with Ancient Egypt numerous figures of the lotus will be noticed either in scenes illustrating the cult of some divinity and as sacred symbols, or in later times employed merely for decorative effect. The same remark applies, though to a less extent, to the art of Chaldea, Assyria, Persia, India, Phœnicia, and several of the Mediterranean countries.

Why should this motive be so widely spread? The most obvious answer has already been suggested. Religion introduced the lotus to art. We have already noticed the earthly original, now allusion must be briefly made to its symbolism; then its original home must be sought; and finally, some of its wanderings traced, and a few of its variations and transformations noted.

It appears that in Ancient Egypt the lotus was symbolic of the sun; a text at Denderah says, “The Sun, which was from the beginning, rises like a hawk from the midst of its lotus bud. When the doors of its leaves open in sapphire-coloured brilliancy, it has divided the night from the day.”67 At Denderah a king makes an offering of the lotus to the Sun-god, Horus, with the words, “I offer thee the flower which was in the beginning, the glorious lily of the Great Water.”68

Fig. ⁷² is a detail taken from a plate in the second volume of the magnificent atlas by Prisse d’Avennes;69 it is part of the offerings on an altar before Osiris, who is crowned with the solar disc. Osiris is the sun in the Lower World—i.e., during the night, and the father of Horus. Horus is sometimes depicted seated on a lotus.

The various animals which were symbolic of the sun or associated with sun-divinities are also placed in direct connection with the lotus, as if to emphasise its solar significance; for example—

The solar-bull is well recognised in Egyptian mythology, the Bull-god Apis being an incarnation of Osiris, and an offspring of the Sun-god, Ptah of Memphis. Similarly also for Assyria, Merodach, “the Bull of Light,” was originally a Sun-god; his Syrian equivalent was Baal. The Phœnician Moon-goddess, Astarte, had the bull as her symbol, and the bull of Europa was its counterpart. The Taurus of the Chaldean Zodiac commenced the year.

The lion was another sun-animal both in Egypt and in Chaldea and Assyria.

Among birds the hawk and the eagle were sun symbols, especially the former, and it is sometimes depicted standing on a lotus. The solar-goose is also important in its association with the lotus. (Fig. ¹²⁹, G.)

In early Cyprian pottery we find lotus derivatives grouped with the solar cross and other symbols of the sun. (Fig. ¹²⁹, F.)

The association of the lotus with the sun probably led to its other symbolic relations, and these latter have rather drawn attention away from what is here regarded as the more primitive symbol.

The lotus was a well recognised symbol of life, resurrection, and immortality. It was largely employed in funeral rites in Egypt, and is constantly associated with mummies, and also symbolised the resurrection, but this latter idea was associated in the Egyptian mind with reproductive power, and hence the relation of this also to the lotus. Professor Maspero says:70 “The assimilation and occasional complete identity of the Supreme God with the sun being once admitted, the assimilation and complete identity of the secondary divine beings with Ra (the sun) were a matter of course. Amon, Osiris, Horus, Ptah, were regarded sometimes as the living soul of Ra, sometimes as Ra himself.” From this would result a mingling and extension of symbolism; but upon these troubled waters the lotus calmly rides supreme. Its association with the sun, its connection with reproductive energy, its descent into the grave, and its symbolism of a resurrection have given to the lotus that immortality which it symbolised.

Although lotus designs are profusely scattered up and down in Egyptian art there is no reason for believing that the Egyptians regarded it as a national emblem, but it was a universally recognised symbol. At the beginning of the year it sprouted from its slimy bed and floated beautiful and pure on the surface of the waters. At sunrise the buds opened and studded the water with white or cerulean asters, which closed when night fell. Every autumn it died its annual death only as prelude to the vernal resurrection.

The intensely religious mind of the Ancient Egyptians was permeated with the problems of death and elevated by the prospect of immortality. Resurrection and future bliss were articles of firm faith, not merely a pious hope. What wonder then, with this religious saturation of immortality, that the flower which symbolised the resurrection should be depicted in such profusion in their tombs and elsewhere!

If the reader will take the trouble to compare lotus representations in books on Egyptology it will be beyond dispute that it is the white or blue lotus (Nymphæa), and not the rose water-lily (Nelumbium), which is so ubiquitously delineated.

A slightly conventionalised lotus with two of its leaves (Fig. ⁷³) is drawn on a vase contemporaneous with the pyramids, from the Necropolis of Memphis (Fourth and Fifth Dynasties, 3998-3503 B.C.).

The same lotus flower (Fig. ⁷²) appears some two thousand years later in a representation of an offering to Osiris from the Necropolis of Thebes belonging to the Twentieth Dynasty. Indeed, it was painted and carved so frequently for thousands of years that it would be impossible to describe its variations and applications. I must, however, permit myself to allude to one or two examples which are interesting from other points of view. In Plate VIII., Fig. 12, we see single lotus flowers employed in an isolated manner in a border pattern, and alternating with these is another device. The separation of the elements of a border pattern is by no means universal in Egyptian decorative art; for example, the scroll pattern (Fig. ⁷⁴) from the Necropolis of Thebes is a good example of a pattern which gives an idea of flow, but even here there is a lack of continuity in the spiral band which creates a feeling of dissatisfaction when one attempts to trace out the construction of the design. It is evident that in such patterns the spiral is quite a secondary motive, and it thus has not been worked out logically; the lotus flowers and the rosettes are the essential elements of the pattern.

With the last figure we may compare the scroll detail (Fig. ⁷⁵) from a Melian vase, the lotus flower being represented by four black marks, and the scroll has acquired that development which is so characteristic of Ægean art.

Various causes may lead to the evolution of a recognised scheme of decoration of certain objects, but when a new class of objects is to be decorated the artist has a chance to exhibit his originality; even so this is about the last thing which decorative artists do manifest. The constraint of custom appears to exert an influence too potent to be readily snapped, and so the Egyptian decorator, being further tied by religious sentiment, ornamented even extensive areas, such as the ceilings of tombs, with lotus designs, the main elements of which had been elaborated elsewhere.

In Fig. ⁷⁶ we have a ceiling design in which the lotus is very apparent both in flower and bud; the rosettes, like spiders’ webs, may possibly represent the leaves of the lotus (Fig. ⁷⁰), and we have the same interlocking but discontinuous spirals that occur in Fig. 74.

A different treatment of the same motive is seen in Fig. ⁷⁷, but here only the lotus flowers and the interlocking scrolls are employed. Below each flower is a fan-like portion apparently tied on to the former; this may have some significance or it may be merely a convenient method of finishing off the flower.

In these old Egyptian designs the rosette is often associated with the lotus and lotus derivatives, as in Fig. ⁷⁴; and it may happen, as in Fig. ⁷⁸, that the former is the most prominent motive. The lotus is here represented solely by the black triangles which occupy the angles of the quadrangular spaces which contain the rosettes; at all events there is good evidence to support this view.

The angularisation of the last pattern gives us Fig. ⁷⁹, which many people would imagine to be Greek, although, as a matter of fact, it is ancient Egyptian. The rosettes and the angled scrolls alone persist. We cannot speak with certainty as to the reason for the modification of the scrolls, but it is probable that it resulted from an attempt to copy such a painted design as Fig. ⁷⁸ in textiles, and the pattern metamorphosed by the new conditions was painted on the tomb ceilings along with its more flowing progenitor. For further examples of analogous transference of designs from one technique to another, and their consequent transformation, the reader is referred to p. 112.

Professor Flinders Petrie has stated that the scroll or spiral was one of the greatest factors in the early development of ornament, and only second to the lotus in the part it played in the decorative ideas of the ancient world. What it symbolised, if symbolise anything it did, we know not. Some affect to see in it a representation of the wanderings of the soul, but why, as Professor Petrie suggests, some souls should come to the end of their wanderings in a spiral and others in an oval is not explained. Its oldest use was on the scarabs, where it was clearly used first as “filling-in” ornament. We can first trace it about 3,500 B.C. At first in loose unconnected “C” and “S” links, and afterwards in every variety of combination, continuous as well as unconnected, the scroll line winds its way for ages through the records of Egyptian decoration. Yet there is a clear margin of 1000 years at least between any Egyptian date of its use and its appearance in the art of other ancient countries. From the fact that it is generally coloured yellow in Egyptian designs, Professor Petrie infers that gold was used in these forms to enclose gems, cloisonné and coloured stones; indeed Schliemann found such work in his explorations at Mycenæ.

Mr. Arthur Evans remarks:71—“On the twelfth dynasty [about between 2778 and 2565 B.C.] scarabs the returning spiral motive, as is well known to Egyptologists, was developed to an extraordinary degree. These purely spiral types, like the twelfth dynasty motives, were also copied by the native Cretan engravers. From Crete, where we find these Aegean forms in actual juxtaposition with their Egyptian prototypes, we can trace them to the early cemeteries of Amorgos, and here and in other Aegean islands like Melos can see them taking before our eyes more elaborate developments. Reinforced a thousand years later by renewed intimacy of contact between the Aegean peoples and the Egypt of Amenophis III., the same system was to regain a fresh vitality as the principal motive of the Mycenæan goldsmith’s work. But though this later influence reacted on Mycenæan art [about 1500 B.C.], as can be seen by the Orchomenos ceiling, the root of its spiral decoration is to be found in the earlier ‘Aegean’ system engrafted long before, in the days of the twelfth dynasty.

“In the wake of early commerce the same spiraliform motives were to spread still further afield to the Danubian basin, and thence in turn by the valley of the Elbe to the Amber Coast of the North Sea, there to supply the Scandinavian Bronze Age population with their leading decorative designs. Adopted by the Celtic tribes in the Central European area, they took at a somewhat later date a westerly turn, reached Britain with the invading Belgae, and finally survived in Irish Art.”72

Among the most frequent of the decorative designs employed by the Assyrians are the knop (or bud) and flower pattern and the rosette, and usually these are found in combination. For the former design I shall employ the Greek term “Anthemion.”

“That flower,” write MM. Perrot and Chipiez,73 “has been recognised as the Egyptian lotus, but Layard believes its type to have been furnished, perhaps, by a scarlet tulip which is very common towards the beginning of spring in Mesopotamia.74 We ourselves believe rather in the imitation of a motive from the stuffs, the jewels, the furniture, and the pottery that Mesopotamia drew from Egypt at a very early date through the intermediary of the Phœnicians. The Phœnicians themselves appropriated the same motive and introduced it with their own manufactures, not only into Mesopotamia but into every country washed by the Mediterranean. Our conjecture is to some extent confirmed by an observation of Sir H. Layard’s. This lotus flower is only to be found, he says, in the most recent of Assyrian monuments, in those, namely, that date from the eighth and seventh centuries B.C., centuries during which the Assyrian kings more than once invaded Phœnicia and occupied Egypt.75 In the more ancient bas-reliefs, flowers with a very different aspect—copied in all probability direct from nature—are alone to be found.

“The lotus flower is to be found, moreover, in monuments much older than those of the Sargonids, but that does not in any way disprove the hypothesis of a direct plagiarism. The commercial relations between the valleys of the Nile and the Euphrates date from a much more remote epoch, and about the commencement of the eighteenth dynasty the Egyptians seem to have occupied in force the basin of the Khabour, the principal affluent of the Euphrates. Layard found many traces of their passage over and sojourn in that district, among them a series of scarabs, many of which bore the superscription of Thothmes III. [1481-1449 B.C.]. So that the points of contact were numerous enough, and the mutual intercourse sufficiently intimate and prolonged, to account for the assimilation by Mesopotamian artists of a motive taken from the flora of Egypt, and to be seen on almost every object imported from the Nile Valley. This imitation appears all the more probable as in the paintings of Theban tombs, dating from a much more remote period than the oldest Ninevite remains, the pattern with its alternate bud and flower is complete (Plate VIII., Fig. 12).

“The Assyrians borrowed their motive from Egypt, but they gave it more than Egyptian perfection. They gave it the definite shapes that even Greece did not disdain to copy. In the Egyptian frieze the cones and flowers are disjointed; their isolation is unsatisfactory both to the eye and the reason. In the Assyrian pattern they are attached to a continuous undulating stem, whose sinuous lines add greatly to the elegance of the composition.”

While admitting that the lotus motive overran Assyrian art, there is reason to believe that it did so only because there was an antecedent style upon which it could be engrafted. The pattern shown in Fig. 10, Plate VIII., is an example of an Assyrian anthemion engraved on an ivory panel in the British Museum, and of purely Assyrian workmanship. It is worth while attempting to trace this back as far as possible. In Fig. 4, Plate VIII., we have a pattern painted in red, blue, white, and yellow upon plaster, discovered by Sir Henry Layard in Nebuchadnezzar’s palace in Nineveh. In this there is a serial repetition of a disc, or sphere, which is pendant; all the pendants are connected by a single cord, which appears as if it were drawn into loops by their weight.

In Fig. 7, Plate VIII., we have a representation from a stone carving of an Assyrian pavilion, and in Fig. 2 a “tabernacle” from the famous bronze gates of Balawat, which were made for Shalmaneser II., and are now in the British Museum. Yet more simple is the tasselled canopy (Fig. 6) from an enamelled brick from Nimroud, a king who is standing under this canopy has a fringe (Fig. 5) to his robe which is composed of alternate white and yellow tassels. King Sargon (about 722 B.C.) is also represented on a relief from Khorsabad in the Louvre, with a similar fringe (Fig. 1) to the hem of his robe.

Any one who has done any plaiting in bands of two colours knows that if the intersections be truly alternate the fringe along the opposite borders will all be of the same colour as in A, Plate VIII., but if the colours run in stripes the fringe all round will be composed of alternate patches of colour. When bands composed of several threads are employed, it is necessary to knot the strands together at the edge to prevent fraying. A more pleasing border is formed by taking half the strands of one band and tying them to half the strands of the next band of the same colour, and so on (B, Plate VIII.). By this means we naturally obtain a structural root-like origin for each tassel in the fringe, which may be termed the connecting strand. This appears to have been the common method of finishing off the edge of Assyrian textiles.

There is thus no difficulty in accounting for a fringe of tassels (Figs. 1, 5, Plate VIII.). Awnings (Fig. 6) as a protection from the blazing sun were a very common feature in Assyrian life. When the king went out on warlike or hunting expeditions he took with him a large royal tent or pavilion made of “slender columns with rich capitals and a domed roof, made, no doubt, of several skins sewn together, and kept in place by metal weights.76 The pavilion (Fig. 7) was a civil edifice, the temporary resting-place of the sovereign. The same materials were employed in the same spirit in the erection of religious tabernacles” (Fig. 2). It is, however, probable that brightly-woven rugs or mats were employed for the smaller canopies; these would even more require the employment of weights to prevent the wind from blowing about the covering. One can hardly interpret the pendants on the royal pavilion (Fig. 7) in any other manner than as weights to steady the awning. The pendants would in the case of textiles be fastened on to the tassels, probably they would sometimes be placed on alternate tassels. In the pavilion so often referred to the weight pendants are of two shapes, in this also carrying out that alternate arrangement which manifests itself structurally in most textiles, and which consequently gives rise to the feeling of expectancy in other objects. Another example of this is seen in the representation of the vine in Assyrian art, for the decorative sentiment has so possessed the artists as to cause them to depict the branches with a leaf and a bunch of grapes in regular succession.

There is no need to go further than this for the origin of the Assyrian anthemion. We find a fringe of tassels in alternate colours, we find a fringe of canopy weights of alternate design, we assume an occasional alternation of fringe and weight. In all cases these must be serially united by the “connecting strand.” How can the stone-carver or the wall-decorator represent these three alternatives? Clearly they would indicate rather than imitate them. What greater realism could we expect than that which we have?

There are many ways of making tassels—for example, each one may be allowed to splay out fan-wise, or it may be tightly tied round the middle, or bound round so as to form a kind of cone or spindle.

Whether as variously tied, or differently coloured tassels, or as alternate tassel and weight, a border of alternate members organically springing from a common base was constantly before the sight of the artists of this great textile manufacturing people. The conventionalising tendency of decorative art did the rest, and the various forms of Assyrian anthemion would easily follow.

A triple alternation (Fig. 9, Plate VIII.) occurs on an enamelled brick tile from Nimroud in the British Museum. It is characteristically Assyrian in style, but it does not give that effect of repose and satisfied expectancy which we demand from a pattern, and in this respect we cannot regard it as eminently successful.

If this hypothesis of Dr. March’s of the evolution of the Assyrian anthemion be correct, this pattern is essentially a skeuomorph, but at the same time certain local plant-forms were probably associated with it.

Let us now turn to the border pattern (Fig. 8, Plate VIII.) of the carved stone thresholds, which are occasionally found in a marvellous state of preservation. Here we have a “knop and flower pattern” which differs as much from the Assyrian style as it resembles that of Egypt. A comparison of this figure with Fig. 12, Plate VIII., will convince most people that borrowing has taken place. It is not always easy to determine how far the Assyrian anthemion has been influenced by native foliage or by conventional designs derived from the local flora. In these threshold borders, however, the Egyptian phyllomorph has grown, as Dr. March points out, like a floral parasite on a skeuomorphic basis. As introduced plants frequently overrun a new country and crowd out native forms, so the lusty lotus invaded the field of Assyrian art, and largely supplanted pre-existing phyllomorphs.

To return for a moment to the Egyptian pattern, the “proto-anthemion,” as one may term it, is characterised by the absence of a connecting strand, the buds and flowers springing from a basal line. My friend, Dr. March, with his usual ingenuity, has suggested to me a very plausible explanation of this fact. The Egyptian pattern was phyllomorphic from the beginning, originating in symbolism it was primitively a realistic representation of an erect water-plant.

Maspero says the decoration of each part of the Egyptian temple was in consonance with its position. The lower parts of the walls were adorned with long stems of lotus or papyrus—bouquets of water-plants emerging from the water.

This then is the solution of the difficulty. The Egyptian anthemion, derived from plants emerging from the water, has as a rule no connecting strand. The Assyrian variety, derived from a tassel-skeuomorph, is never without its looped base line, is primarily pendant, and consists in the earliest stage of plants that are non-aquatic.

The rosette (Plate VIII., Figs. 4, 8, 10) is usually stated to be an essentially Mesopotamian device, but it is scattered up and down in Egyptian and Mediterranean art. (Figs. ⁷⁴, ⁷⁸, ⁷⁹, ⁸⁴.) It may be characteristic of Assyria, but it is by no means peculiar to it.

The rosette in Egypt is probably mainly a lotus-motive; the upper end of the yellow-rayed seed-vessel may be regarded as the chief original, but some are undoubtedly fully expanded lotus flowers seen from above or below, or a group of buds or of flowers arranged radially. However conventionalised it may become, the rosette is most constantly associated with the lotus in Egypt, the land of its birth. Their association elsewhere is only to be expected, as there would naturally be a tendency for the rosette to accompany the knop and flower in their migrations.

According to Professor Flinders Petrie,77 it is even doubtful whether the rosette was truly of vegetable origin. The use of leather-work seemed to have greatly modified the rosette. Its primitive form did not look floral at all, merely a circle with white dotted lines radiating across. Later, there were concentric rings of colours, with the same white dotted lines. The stitched leather theory explained a whole host of peculiar ornaments that could hardly otherwise be understood.

Goodyear78 points out (p. 101) that no dated example of the rosette is known in Assyria or Chaldea before the twelfth century B.C.—i.e., on the dress of Merodach-idin-akhi, King of Babylon. It occurs with other lotuses in Egypt on the head-dress of Nefert, a statue of the Fourth Dynasty, 3998-3721 B.C. As previously stated, the earlier Egyptian kings of the Eighteenth Dynasty conquered Assyria. The reign of Thothmes III., who, according to a contemporary expression, “drew his frontiers where he pleased,” is placed by Professor Flinders Petrie79 from 1481-1449 B.C. The Egyptian empire then comprised Abyssinia, the Soudan, Nubia, Syria, Mesopotamia, part of Arabia, Khurdistan, and Armenia.80

In answer to the question, How is it that the fact has been overlooked that the rosette is as familiar a feature of Egyptian ornament as the earliest dated remains of other ornaments? Goodyear (p. 102) says that the answer apparently is that the rosette is very abundantly known on carved slabs from Nineveh, while the architectural surface carvings in Egypt are almost absolutely destitute of rosette ornament, but it is very frequently represented in tomb paintings.

Those who have argued for the Assyrian origin of the rosette appear to have only compared the stone carvings of the two countries in question, but it is well known that no borrowing of architecture took place. There is evidence that portable objects were traded from Egypt to Mesopotamia, and there is no doubt that the purely decorative mural paintings of Egyptian tombs were analogous to the patterns on Egyptian textiles, and these were traded to the East. The thresholds from Assyria were undoubtedly carved in imitation of rugs; from the monuments we may suppose that the walls were often decorated with woven stuffs, the ornamentation of which was transferred to stone and glazed bricks. We may then come to the conclusion that the mural decoration of Assyria was affected by the designs of textiles and other portable articles of merchandise, the idiosyncrasy of this country making itself felt in the selection and adaptation of Egyptian originals.

In dealing with rosettes we must be very careful not to fall into the common error of imagining that things which are similar are necessarily the same. In the course of this book there are several examples of the facility with which such a mistake could arise, and sometimes has arisen. Patterns and designs must primarily be studied in situ, and the wandering “from Dan to Beersheba” is to be deprecated as a method. It is only when the indigenous material is insufficient, or fails in its results, that the comparative method should be employed, and then only when history, tradition, or other lines of evidence warrant its use.

Rosettes undoubtedly occur in Egyptian decoration as well as in Assyrian. Goodyear makes a special pleading for the derivation of the latter from the former. The question really is—Are all Assyrian rosettes lotus-motives which originally had their source in Egypt? Few will doubt that Egyptian rosettes may have travelled with other lotus derivatives to Assyria, but it is improbable that a wholly foreign ornament should stud itself so profusely and ubiquitously over Assyrian architecture and manufactures.

I do not profess to be able to suggest what may be the original, or originals, of the primitive Assyrian rosette; but it does seem as if its vitality was increased and its employment further perpetuated by the cross-fertilisation, to speak figuratively, of the immigrant Egyptian variety.

In studying the influence of the lotus in decorative art we have to travel far afield, as it has left its trace even in India. The art of modern India is, so to speak, a medley composed of foreign motives and influences associated with native designs and religion. Under the term “native” must be included all the artistic influences which have been afforded by the mixed races of that vast peninsula. A very brief and limited survey of some of the historical aspects of the question must suffice.

In very early days “the Chaldeans, whose cry is in their ships,” voyaged to India for commercial purposes. Proof of this is found in the discovery of teak wood among the ruins of Mugheir. It is agreed also that there are distinct traces of Assyrian influences in Indian art.

Sir George Birdwood81 (ii. p. 162) says, “The researches of Mr. Fergusson have shown that stone architecture in India does not begin before the end of the third century B.C.;” and again (i. p. 99), “There is no known Hindu temple older than the sixth or fifth century of the Christian era; and all the earlier stone buildings are Buddhist.”

The same author has come to the conclusion (i. p. 146) “that the remarkable European character of the Buddhistic sculptures in the Panjab and Afghanistan is due, not to Byzantine, but to Greek influence. They are unmistakably Buddhistic sculptures, and may therefore date from B.C. 250 to about A.D. 700; and any of them which are later than the fourth century A.D. may have been executed under Byzantine influence.... Dr. Leitner was the first to insist on describing (the Buddhistic remains in the neighbourhood of Peshawar in the Panjab) as Græco-Buddhistic sculptures.... Their resemblance is probably due to their having been executed by Indian workmen from Greek designs or models.”

Goodyear remarks, “At a later date Hindu art became saturated with Mahommedan lotus patterns. These were all originally borrowed in the countries conquered by the Mohammedan Arabs, during the seventh century A.D., Syria, Egypt, North Africa, and Persia.” Islam swept into her net the decorative art of the countries she conquered, and as realism was denied to her owing to the Prophet’s injunction against depicting human or animal forms, she had to fall back on patterns, but, unknown to her, many of these were lotus derivatives. It was these patterns that the Arabs brought with them to India.82

“The history of India,” continues Goodyear, “thus explains why its apparently favourite water-lily [the Nelumbium] has had so little influence on its ornamental patterns. Although naturalistic rendering of the rose water-lily is found in ancient and modern Oriental art, it must be remembered that this has nothing to do with the dominance of a pattern, which is a matter of technical tradition. It appears that the famous Indian water-lily exercised no visible influence on the art of Egypt, and that Egyptian patterns have invaded its own home by many paths, at many times, borne by waves of historic influence which are admitted to have determined the character of Hindu art since the third century B.C., which is the first century in which this art is known to us.”

Examples of Indian forms of the anthemion will be found on Sindh pottery (Plate VIII., Fig. 11), on Delhi and Cashmere shawls, and on innumerable other objects and temple carvings. If one compares the anthemion combined with an “astragal” moulding in Fig. ⁸⁰, which is from the Lât at Allahabad, with Figs. 7 and 5, Plate V., which are purely Greek, it will be evident that borrowing has taken place. One cannot follow Sir George Birdwood83 when he says this “necking immediately below the capital represents with considerable purity the honeysuckle ornament of the Assyrians, which the Greeks borrowed from them with the Ionic order. Its form is derived originally from the Date Hom, but it really represents, conventionally, a flowery lotus, as the Bharhut sculptures enable us to determine. The ’reel and bead’ pattern running along the lower border of the necking represents the lotus stalks.” This author does not state which lotus he refers to, probably it is the Nelumbium or Rose water-lily, but the stalked flowers added on each side of the central anthemion have no distinctive character, nor can I see that the figures he gives of the Bharhut sculptures are any more definite.

The Buddhist missionaries carried this pattern with them to China, where on some of the pottery unmistakable lotus derivatives occur, and those too of the anthemion series.

From the Orient we must retrace our steps westward. Persian art may be left on one side, as it was largely a legacy of Assyrian.

Among the Mediterranean peoples the Phœnicians claim first attention on account of their early assumed rôle of middle-men. But as Perrot and Chipiez remark, “In the true sense of the word we can hardly say that Phœnicia had a national art. She built much and sculptured much, so we cannot say she had no art at all; but if we attempt to define it, it eludes us. Like an unstable chemical compound it dissolves into its elements, and we recognise one as Egyptian, another as Assyrian, and yet another, in its later years, as purely Greek. The only thing that the Phœnicians can claim as their own is the recipe, so to speak, for the mixture.” Herodotus tells us that the Phœnicians had in their ship “Egyptian and Assyrian goods.”84

Not only did the Phœnicians barter in foreign objects, but they manufactured articles for trade, and were expert craftsmen. At the funeral games in honour of Patroklos “the son of Peleus set forth other prizes for fleetness of foot; a mixing-bowl of silver, chased; six measures it held, and in beauty it was far the best in all the earth, for artificers of Sidon wrought it cunningly, and men of the Phœnicians brought it over the misty sea.”85 As their home-made goods were intended for foreign markets, they probably copied more or less exactly from Egyptian and Assyrian sources. They were artificers rather than original artists, their object was gain.

On the whole it appears that the Egyptian influence was more patent on Phœnician art than that of Assyrian, but on the other hand, the Phœnician religion was Semitic, and by this they were far more closely allied to Chaldea and Assyrian than to Egypt.

Through far wanderings and endless trafficking the “Phœnician, practised in deceit, a greedy knave,” as Homer dubs him, introduced numberless objects into the Mediterranean littoral which were ornamented with lotus designs or with patterns of lotus origin.

The great skill of the Chaldeans and Assyrians in weaving and embroidery enabled them to produce textiles which were highly valued wherever they found their way. The appropriation of “a goodly Babylonish garment” from the loot of Jericho by the unfortunate Achan shows how much these fabrics were prized. We know that the decoration of these beautiful and precious commodities reacted on the designs of Phœnician manufacturers, and directly or indirectly had some effect in guiding the nascent art of Europe.

When the Greeks were a young and growing people they, like most of their neighbours, were forced to trade with the Phœnicians they so despised, and were thus acquainted with trade goods from Mesopotamia and Egypt. The Ionic Greeks were more particularly influenced by Oriental art. The designs from early Greek tombs and the spoils recovered by the spade in recent excavations clearly show the nationality of the foster-mothers of Greek art.

The lessons learnt in childhood are hard to forget, and so, following the traditions of their fathers, the decorators continued to employ the same general patterns and designs that they saw around them and which they had inherited. For centuries we see the anthemion reproduced in architecture (Fig. ⁸² and Pl. V., Fig. 7), painting, pottery, varied it may be in detail, but essentially the same pattern. Rarely going direct to nature for inspiration, the Greeks were content with endless repetitions of slight variants of the one eternal and highly unconventional design. The mental unrest of the Greeks, which was always seeking something new, was in marked contrast to their decorative conservatism.

When the trade of Europe was taken up by Greeks they further disseminated this dominant motive. In less chaste form we find it in Roman art. The Renaissance gave it, with other matters classical, a new lease of life.

But Europe was not dependent on Greek and Roman influences alone for the spread of the anthemion. The Crusaders brought away with them many Oriental goods, and that, too, from the meeting-place of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Later the Moors invaded Spain, and left as the jetsam of their retreat a wealth of matchless decorative art, amongst which our old patterns may also be traced.

By this time it is often flamboyant. (Fig. ⁸¹.) The isolated elements of the design may have been the origin of the fleur de lis, of which the Prince of Wales’ Feathers appear to be a variant.86

Throughout the art of the civilised world of to-day we find repeated, again and again, the misnamed honeysuckle pattern, or the anthemion, as it is preferable to call it. Most of our modern examples can be traced to Ancient Greece, but even there it had a hoary antiquity and probably a multiple ancestry. It is not improbable that future research will demonstrate that the history of this pattern is far more complex than that which I have endeavoured to sketch out. Its amazing longevity may be due to the fact that it arose from various radicles, and when the branches met their differences were not too great to counterbalance their resemblances, and so a fusion or mingling of elements could easily and naturally result.

Mr. Goodyear has an elaborate study of the evolution of the Ionic capital (Fig. ⁸²) from the anthemion. A German architect and critic, Semper,87 appears to have been the first to derive the Ionic capital from the volutes of the Assyrian palmette (Pl. VIII., Figs. 9, 10) by a process of gradual suppression of the leafy portion and increase of the scroll. Dr. J. T. Clarke88 supported and elaborated this theory. At Neandreia, near Assos, in Asia Minor, he discovered an Ionic capital (Fig. ⁸³) which is a valuable “missing link.” But, according to Mr. Goodyear, there is no need to seek an Assyrian origin for this capital when all the intermediate stages can be found in Egypt and in the Greek Islands.

In Fig. ⁸⁴ and Fig. ¹³⁰, F, we have a lotus with curling sepals on pots from Cyprus; no one can dispute that these are really lotuses. The curling sepals become more spiral in Rhodian (Fig. ¹³⁰, G), and especially in Melian pottery (Fig. ⁸⁵). The central rosette has now become more leaf-like, but there are numerous true Egyptian examples of this, as in a compound flower (Fig. ⁸⁶) from a tomb ceiling, or again (Fig. ⁸⁷), on a blue-glazed lotus pendant from a necklace in the British Museum, of the Nineteenth Dynasty. In the Owens College Museum, Manchester, there is a somewhat similar enamel tomb amulet of the Twelfth Dynasty (2778-2565 B.C.). The transition from these to the stone or terra-cotta anthemion of the Parthenon (Fig. ⁸⁸) is very gradual.

Thus, according to this view, the volute of the Ionic capital is merely a drooping lotus sepal, which became spiral in the Grecian Archipelago. Many of the Ionic capitals, especially the earlier ones, exhibit distinct traces of the central palmette, but eventually only the spirals persisted, and the cleft between the curling sepals was gradually reduced so that their stems came to appear as a transverse band ending in volutes.

In following this view of the history of the Ionic capital we have practically traversed that of the anthemion. The more typical examples of this pattern not only present us with the element which we have already briefly studied, but alternating with it is a trefoil. For this again there are any number of Egyptian originals in which the trefoil indicates a lotus flower; in this case all the petals have been eliminated and only the sepals persist.

Lack of time prevents me from attempting to follow the fascinating evolution of various patterns and designs which adorn Grecian temples and vases; but I must permit myself to indicate a probable origin of an exceedingly common pattern which has also overrun our own art. I refer to the so-called egg-and-dart moulding of Greek entablatures (Plate V., Fig. 5), and the same motive painted on vases or moulded on the later Samian ware (Plate V., Fig. 6). In these two figures the pattern is drawn in its usual position, but, the better to follow the argument, a typical variety is figured (Fig. ⁸⁹) reversed. There are many varieties, from a series of U-shaped figures with alternating dots, as many Greek vases (Fig. ⁸⁹, E), through the Samian device (Plate V., Fig. 6) and Erechtheium variety (Fig. ⁸² and Plate V., Fig. 5), to others in which there is greater complexity and more floral forms (Fig. ⁸⁹, D).

With any given series of designs it is possible to begin at either end—in the one case there is an ascending evolution, in the other a degeneration. Students of the biological method of treating decorative art will recognise that the latter is by far the most general order in the evolution of patterns, and by adopting it in this case Professor Goodyear has been able to demonstrate the life-history of this pattern to the satisfaction of many students.

In Fig. ⁸⁹, A, we have a typical lotus flower and bud pattern or Greek pattern from Rhodes; the same design occurs in a simplified form on a fragment of Greek pottery from Naukratis (Fig. ⁸⁹, B),89 in which the lotus flower is now a lotus trefoil; and in Fig. ⁸⁹, C, the pattern is disrupted.

In Greek vases we usually find that decoration has been made with a fine feeling for appropriateness; thus the erect anthemion occurs when the vase is swelling, but where it is contracting an inverted anthemion is placed, because the decorative lines thus widen to correspond with the expansion of the vase. Again, in Egyptian tomb ceilings the bordering lotus pattern is inverted, as the base line of the design naturally is made to correspond with the peripheral line of the ceiling—in other words, the lotus anthemion was inverted.

We have then a painted lotus bud and trefoil pattern which was often inverted and as often a simple design. According to this view, the egg of the egg-and-dart pattern is simply a semi-oval left between two lotus trefoils, the dart being the central sepal. When this design came to be incised in stone, the new technique very slightly modified the pattern, and the flat oval areas necessarily came to be carved as rounded or leaf-shaped projections. On these latter occasionally appear reminiscences of the intervening buds, as on the Erechtheium leaf-and-dart moulding. Many variants occur in this device, especially in Roman sculpture.

Professor Goodyear points out that the egg-and-dart moulding as such is unknown to Egyptian patterns, owing to the almost entire absence in Egyptian art of carved or incised lotus borders of any kind, a preference for flat ornament in colour being the rule. Stone carved patterns of any kind in Egyptian art are quite rare before the Ptolemaic period. In Greek art the absence of patterns in projected carving is also a general rule down to the time of the Erechtheium. In Greek art also colour decoration on flat surfaces was the rule in architecture for earlier periods; for example, a leaf-and-dart pattern was painted on a Doric capital in Ægina.90

“The Ionic capital, the ‘honey-suckle,’ the egg-and-dart moulding, the meander, the various forms of spiral ornament, the guilloche and the rosette, and some few other motives, belong to one ornamental system, and have never been used in Europe, apart from historic connections with their original system, since the Greeks, and have never been used in Europe since prehistoric ages, without distinct dependance on the Greeks. As found with the Greeks they can all be traced back to Egyptian sources; except the guilloche, which is only the later variant of the spiral scroll. The guilloche pattern has been found in Egypt on pottery dated to the Twelfth Dynasty (2700 B.C.), which was probably made by foreigners resident in the country, but it may easily be an Egyptian pattern which has not yet been specified as such.

“The Egyptian rosette can be dated to the Fourth Dynasty, 3998-3721 B.C. Since that time its history has been continuous. Since its first transmission to Europe it has never been reinvented in Europe, for there was never an occasion or a chance to reinvent it there.

“The spiral scroll is dated to the Fifth Dynasty, and the meander (at present) to the Thirteenth Dynasty, about 2500-2000 B.C. The Egyptian Ionic capital is dated to the Eighteenth Dynasty, 1587-1327 B.C. The Egyptian anthemion (‘honey-suckle’ original) is dated to the Twelfth Dynasty (2778-2565 B.C.). A considerably higher antiquity than the given date must be assumed in all cases.”91

This in brief is Professor Goodyear’s theory;92 it is ingenious, but time will show how far it will convince students of this subject. It is quite possible that the egg-and-dart pattern may have had a multiple origin. Dr. Colley March is still inclined to see in it a kind of artistic reminiscence of the ends of beams (Plate V., Fig. 1) of earlier wooden buildings; but it is highly improbable that the conclusion arrived at by Mr. Hulme is the correct one. He says: “The echinus, or horse-chestnut, is also called the egg-and-tongue or egg-and-dart moulding, a variety of names that may be taken as conclusive of the fact that it bears no great resemblance to anything at all, but is a purely arbitrary form.”93 The variety of names is conclusive only of the ignorance of the name-givers as to what the pattern originated from. In future those who write on decorative art will have to prove that any pattern or design is a purely arbitrary form; that assumption is no longer permissible.

We have left the lotus far behind, and though it is hard to believe that the multitudinous designs of so many ages and of such diverse countries are all derived from the sacred flower of Ancient Egypt, yet it may well be that the oldest stock was a lotus derivative, and that the symbolism of that flower gave to it sufficient vitality to spread and multiply and replenish the earth.

C. Zoomorphs

It is a matter of common observation that our children very early take delight in pictures of animals and in making delineations of them. It is further noticeable that the quality of the drawing makes no difference to children, and they are as pleased with the crudest representation of an animal as their elders are with a life-like portrait. In all this the child closely resembles the folk, whether they be the backward classes among ourselves or the less advanced peoples. All these agree in being satisfied with diagrammatic realism.

Savages, however, vary greatly in their power of representing animal forms. In Fig. ³ we have a number of outlines of animals which were etched on bamboo pipes or carved on wooden drums by the Papuan natives of the islands of Torres Straits or of the adjacent coast of New Guinea. The figures are all reduced to the same scale by photography from tracings of the original delineations, and are therefore faithful copies of the originals. A glance at the figure will show that the animals are drawn with a very fair degree of accuracy, so that in most cases it is perfectly easy to identify the genus of the animal intended. There are numerous little touches which appeal to the eye of the naturalist as indicating keen observation on the part of the artists; for example, the sharks (C, D) are always drawn with unequally lobed tails, the tail of the dugong (M) is accurately rendered; several characteristic details are, as a rule, well brought out in the drawings of the cassowaries (K). On the other hand, there are several anatomical mistakes, as for instance, giving shark-like gill-slits to a bony-fish, or even to a crocodile. The mouth is represented in a sucker-fish (F) as being on the upper side of the head, whereas it should be underneath, and the view of that fish’s tail would be impossible from that particular point of view; but these and numerous other similar examples which I could name are merely due to a desire to express several salient features, without regard to the possibility of their being all seen at once. The artists’ aim was to give a recognisable representation of animals, and in this they have as a rule succeeded perfectly; it is captious to expect more from them.

On other parts of the mainland of New Guinea one rarely meets with representations so life-like as these,94 and nowhere else on that largest of islands are so many kinds of animals drawn. Animals are often depicted by the Australians, but usually these are very poor as works of art; they are also employed in pictography.

Although animals are so frequently drawn by the Torres Straits Islanders, they never arrange them in groups or in series. They are pictures of individuals, drawn for decorative effect, but they have no story to tell. The only exception to this rule occurs in the case of certain animals, two of which are sometimes placed symmetrically on the decorated object.

Representations of animals are not uncommon in Melanesia, but they are distinctly of rare occurrence in Polynesia. They occur in great profusion in America from north to south, but here they are predominantly religious or pictographic in significance. Animal forms are not characteristic of African art, except among the Bushmen, and there we find pictures of animals which are comparable with those of the Eskimo or the natives of Torres Straits.

As far back as the time when men hunted the reindeer and wild horse in Western Europe do we find drawings of animals. This was at the time period when the glacial cold was abating and when men lived in caves, used chipped, unpolished stone implements, and were unacquainted with pottery. In archæological nomenclature this is known as the Epoque Magdalénienne of the Cave Period in the Palæolithic Age. The figures of the mammoth, reindeer, horse (Fig. ⁹⁰), etc., are usually cleverly etched on bone or ivory, and sometimes they are wonderfully life-like and accurate; the representation of human beings are as a rule very weak indeed.

“The wild horse roamed in immense herds over Europe, and formed the chief food of the palæolithic hunters. In some of the caverns in France the remains of the horse are more abundant than those of any other animal, more even than those of the wild ox. Thus at Solutré, near Macon, the bones of horses, which had formed the food of the inhabitants of this station, form a deposit nearly 10 feet in depth and more than 300 feet in length, the number of skeletons represented being estimated at from 20,000 to 40,000. This primitive horse was a diminutive animal, not much larger than an ass, standing about 13 hands high, the largest specimens not exceeding 14 hands. But the head was of disproportionate size, and the teeth were very powerful. He resembles the tarpan or wild horse of the Caspian steppes. A spirited representation of two of these wild horses is engraved on an antler found at the station of La Madelaine in the Department of the Dordogne.”95

It is impossible for me to do more than just touch on the subject of the relation of animals to decorative and pictorial art; the few examples I can offer will, however, demonstrate its importance.

Wherever it occurs the crocodile or the alligator, as the case may be, almost invariably finds its way into the decorative art of the district. From north to south the crocodile asserts itself in the decorative art of New Guinea; for further information the reader is referred to Dr. Uhle,96 who has made an elaborate study of the crocodile in Malayo-Papuan art, has noted the strange metamorphoses to which it is subjected in north-west New Guinea; he also draws attention to the cult of the reptile in these parts. The belief of a relationship between the crocodile and man occurs among the Malays of Sumatra, Batta, Java, Makassar and the Bugis, Tagals, in Banka, Timor, Bouru, Aru, and the south-western islands. The Javanese have no fear of the crocodile when bathing, they believe that their “grandfathers” and “fathers” could do them no harm. The crocodile is reverenced in Borneo and killed only when the blood-revenge demands it; their teeth are used as talismans all over the island. The inhabitants of Kupang and Timor have an unconquerable fear of the killing of crocodiles and pray by dead ones. Even the Malays (Hovas) of Madagascar are afraid to kill crocodiles, since they would revenge themselves.

From Melanesia we will pass to Central America and take advantage of Mr. W. H. Holmes’s masterly study of the ancient art of the province of Chiriqui in the Isthmus of Panama.97

Wherever it occurs, the crocodile or the alligator, as the case may be, almost invariably finds its way into the decorative art of the district. From north to south the crocodile asserts itself in the decorative art of New Guinea; and, although associated with other animals, the alligator predominates among the zoomorphs of the Chiriqui.

In Fig. ⁹¹, we have a highly conventionalised representation of an alligator. The scutes (or scales) are represented by spotted triangles and run along the entire length of the back; a row of dashes in the mouth indicates the teeth.

In another class of ware the treatment is quite different, more clumsy, but prominence is given to a number of corresponding features; the strong curve of the back, the triangles, dots, the muzzle, and mouth. In Fig. ⁹² all the leading features are recognisable, but are very much simplified, and the body is without indication of scales, the head is without eyes, the jaws are without teeth, and the upward curve of the tip of the upper jaw in the last figure is greatly exaggerated, but this is a common feature in these representations.

The spaces to be decorated also largely determine the lines of modification. In Fig. ⁹³ we have an example crowding an elongated figure into a short rectangular space. The head is turned back over the body, the sunken curve of the back is enormously exaggerated, and the tail is thrown down along the side of the panel.

It often happens that the animal form, literally rendered, does not fill the panels satisfactorily. The head and tail do not correspond, and there is a lack of balance. In such cases, as Mr. Holmes points out, two heads have been preferred. The body is given a uniform double curve and the heads are turned down, as in Fig. ⁹⁴. This figure “is extremely interesting on account of its complexity and the novel treatment of the various features. The two feet are placed close together near the middle of the curved body, and on either side of these are the under jaws turned back and armed with dental projections for teeth. The characteristic scale symbols occur at intervals along the back; and very curiously at one place, where there is scant room, simple dots are employed, showing the identity of these two characters. Some curious auxiliary devices, the origin of which is obscure, are used to fill in marginal spaces.” Judging from some of the figures in Fig. ¹⁰⁰ we may regard the upper supplementary device as another alligator derivative.

Fig. ⁹⁵ is an extreme form of conventionalised alligator which has become metamorphosed into an apparently meaningless design which is intended to be symmetrical.

In Fig. ⁹⁶ we have a series showing the degeneration of the alligator into a curved line and a spot. The series shown in Fig. ⁹⁷ illustrate the tendency of linear bands not only to cramp the original in a vertical direction, but to force it into a serial pattern. Fig. ⁹⁷, A, is a simplification of such a two-headed form as Fig. ⁹⁴. One might be tempted to regard it as a doubly tailed form, but such do not appear to have been recognised by Mr. Holmes. The transition from this undoubted alligator derivative to the broad chevron of Fig. ⁹⁷, E, is quite obvious, the conventional scutes, dotted triangles, together with the zigzag body alone forming the pattern, and in Fig. ⁹⁷, F, the latter has disappeared. Mr. Holmes states “there is little doubt that the series continues further, ending with simple curved lines and even with straight lines unaccompanied by auxiliary devices.”

Mr. Holmes also points out that the Chiriqui have arrived at the scroll and fret by way of the alligator. I can here illustrate only two of these (Figs. ⁹⁸, ⁹⁹); in these the body of the reptile is the element of the design. In other cases Mr. Holmes finds that parts of the creature, such as head, feet, eye, or scales, assume the role of radicles, and pass through a series of modification ending in purely geometrical devices.

The designs in Fig. ¹⁰⁰ are painted upon low rounded prominences on vases, and hence are enclosed in circles. In Fig. ¹⁰⁰, A, the alligator is coiled up, but still preserves some of the well-known characters of that reptile. In B, we have the double hook modification of the alligator’s body, but the triangles are placed separately against the encircling line. In the next figure the body-line is omitted, and three dotted scutes alone represent the animal. The four scutes of the next designs assume a symmetrical position, and the central crossed line may represent the alligator’s body. In the last figure of this series the cross has become the predominating feature, and the spots have migrated into it, so that the triangles have become mere interspaces.

Finally, Fig. ¹⁰¹ is a zone pattern, painted on an earthen drum, the central zigzag line represents the body of the alligator, and the notched hooks its extremities; these are here arranged with perfect regularity, but sometimes only the latter occur in patterns, and then they are often somewhat irregularly disposed.

From his prolonged study of ancient American art, Mr. Holmes formulates the following generalisation:—“The agencies of modification inherent in the art in its practice are such that any particular animal form extensively employed in decoration is capable of changing into or giving rise to any or to all of the highly conventional decorative devices upon which our leading ornaments, such as the meander, the scroll, the fret, the chevron, and the guilloche, are based” (p. 187). The importance of the following conclusion is obvious:—“We are absolutely certain that no race, no art, no motive or element in nature or in art can claim the exclusive origination of any one of the well-known or standard conventional devices, and that any race, art, or individual motive is capable of giving rise to any and to all such devices. Nothing can be more absurd than to suppose that the signification or symbolism attaching to a given form is uniform the world over, as the ideas associated with each must vary with the channels through which they were developed” (p. 183).

The investigations of Dr. P. Ehrenreich and Professor Karl von den Steinen on the decorative art of various tribes in Central Brazil have led to results which may, without exaggeration, be termed startling. The patterns employed by these people typically belong to the class which is popularly described as geometrical. On page 176 I have selected examples of these patterns which will give a fair idea of the style of design.

Dr. Ehrenreich98 informs us that in the Bakaïri chiefs’ huts a frieze of blackened bark tablets run along the wall which are painted in white clay with very characteristic figures and patterns of fish. All the geometric figures are in reality diagrammatic representations of concrete objects, mostly animals. “Thus a wavy line with alternating spots denotes a large, dark-spotted colossal snake, the Anaconda (Eunectes murinus); a rhomboidal mark signifies a lagoon-fish, whereas a triangle does not by any means indicate that simple geometrical figure, but the small, three-cornered article of women’s clothing” (p. 98).

The following quotation is also translated from Dr. Ehrenreich99:—“The ornaments of the Karaya consist of patterns of zigzag lines, crosses, dots, lozenges, and peculiar interrupted meanders, whereas the quadrate and triangle occur only incidentally (that is, owing to the filling up of other figures), and circles are entirely absent. As in the ornamentation of the Xingus tribes, so also here occur those apparently entirely arbitrary geometrical combinations fundamentally of wholly defined concrete presentments, of which the most characteristic traits are therein reproduced. Unfortunately it is not always possible to correctly ascertain the respective natural objects. The frequently occurring cross (Fig. ¹⁰², A), which in America has so often given occasion for amusing hypotheses, is here nothing but a kind of lizard.... Also peculiarly characteristic are the extensive wings of a bat (Fig. ¹⁰², B), as well as the frequently occurring snake pattern, such as Fig. ¹⁰², C, which represents the rattlesnake, while another snake is represented in Fig. ¹⁰², D. Accurate representations of men and animals, as we know them to be done so excellently by the Bushmen and Eskimo, do not appear to be forthcoming among the Karaya.”

Professor von den Steinen100 describes the above-mentioned frieze more fully. The pieces of bark, which were from 15 cm. to 40 cm. (6 to 16 inches) broad, were blackened with soot, and the white or yellowish lime applied with the fingers. The frieze itself was over 56 m. (over 184 feet) in length.

I would ask the reader to refer back to Fig. ⁵², p. 97, although this motive is not a zoomorph, in order to show that triangular designs, or resulting zigzags, may have various origins.

Only one tablet represented a plant. (Fig. ⁶⁹.) It indicates the leaves of a small “cabbage”-bearing wild palm.

The bulk of the motives for the decorative art of these people, the Schingú tribes (the Xingu tribes of Ehrenreich), are drawn from the animal world; Fig. ¹⁰³ A, H, I, K, are Bakaïri patterns, and Figs. ¹⁰³ B-F those of the Auetö.

The pattern to the right in Fig. ¹⁰³, H, indicates a kind of ray, the characteristic rings and dots which ornament the skin of this fish are here represented.

Common to all the tribes of the Schingú stock is the employment of conventionalised representations of the mereschu. This is a small compressed lagoon-fish, about 19 cm. (7½ inches) long, and 9.5 cm. (3¾ inches) deep; its colour is silver-grey with brown spots. The mereschu belongs to the genus Serrasalmo or Myletes; the figure on p. 260, given by Von den Steinen, looks as if it were drawn from a badly-preserved spirit specimen, and one fails to see how Fig. ¹⁰³, C, for example, could by any stretch of the imagination be considered to suggest that fish. On p. 613 of Dr. Günther’s Introduction to the Study of Fishes (Edinburgh, 1880) is an outline figure of Serrasalmo scapularis; the contour of this fish is approximately rhomboidal, the head, the dorsal fin, and the tail fin occupy three of its angles, and the anal fin practically runs up to the fourth angle. Von den Steinen points out that in most cases representations of these animal-forms are incisions, not paintings, and the diagrammatic rendering of curved lines by angles is due to this fact. The patterns which I am about to describe are common to numerous allied tribes, and everywhere these patterns bear the name by which this kind of fish is locally known.

Sometimes the mereschu fish is employed singly, but most frequently a number of them are evenly distributed over the decorated surface, and between the fishes single, double, or even several lines may be drawn, as in Fig. ¹⁰³, B, C, E; these latter represent the net by means of which these fish are caught. Thus we may have a fish-pattern or a fishes-in-net pattern. These patterns are delineated on masks, posts, spinning-whorls, and other objects. Fig. ¹⁰³, B, is a pattern of the mereschu fishes-in-net group, but the fishes themselves are entirely filled up with black, and not their angles only.

The Auetö pattern drawn in Fig. ¹⁰³, F, is intended for a mailed- or armadillo-fish.

On a Bakaïri paddle (Fig. ¹⁰³, A) are incised four circles, which are the ring-markings of a ray, pinukái, on the other side of a transverse line follow two mereschu in the meshes of a net, then a pakú, and finally several kuómi fish. Professor von den Steinen believes that the object of this decoration is simply to bring fish close to the paddle. “But it is extremely instructive to see,” he continues,101 “that concerning these scribblings, though they certainly do not denote anything in their order of arrangement, consequently are not picture-writing; however, every single one is by no means a casual flourish, but the diagram of a well-defined object, and consequently, in fact, represents the element of a picture-writing.”

Zigzags and waved lines are snakes. Fig. ¹⁰³, K, represents common land-snake, the agau, or cobra of Brazil; to the left is the tail, the head is simply rendered, and as the skin of the snake is marked the artist characterised it by adding spots. Very similar is the sukuri water-snake or anaconda (Boa scytale), drawn to the left of Fig. ¹⁰³, H. A boa-constrictor is indicated in Fig. ¹⁰³, I; the row of diamonds left on the dark background, between the two rows of triangles, represents the marking of the snake’s skin. The larger terminal diamond to the left is probably the boa’s head. A snake is also painted on a Nahuquá bull-roarer (Fig. ¹⁰³, G).

We have seen that rows of horizontal triangles are uluris, women’s triangles, but when they are margined above by a line, as in Fig. ¹⁰⁴, B, they are bats; but rows of triangles vertically disposed, as in Fig. ¹⁰⁴, C, are hanging bats; Fig. ¹⁰⁴, A, is also a bat device.

Another triangular ornament (Fig. ¹⁰⁵) represents small birds, called by the Bakaïri natives yaritamáze, that is, they are a particular kind of bird, not birds in general.

Finally, one would naturally consider that the ornament engraved on the post, Fig. ¹⁰³, D, is simply the favourite mereschu pattern; but Von den Steinen assures us that the central design is not composed of mereschu, in which the angles are only slightly filled up, but that it is a locust, the lines arising from the angles of the lozenge being the legs. This locust pattern is, however, associated with true mereschus, which may be seen between the legs of the locust.

In Europe and in our own country we can study analogous transformations.

More or less recognisable animals break out, as it were into scrolls and floral devices, as on Samian vases (Plate VI., Fig. 1), on Gaulish swords (Fig. 2), on Pompeian walls (Fig. 3), and on the gold ornaments of Tuscany (Fig. 5). In Fig. 4, Plate VI., we have on an ancient pot from New Mexico a decorative treatment of birds which recalls that of the mural paintings of Pompeii.

Often in Greece and Italy symmetrical scrolls are associated with a head. (Plate VI., Fig. 6.) The scrolls themselves may, in some cases, be an animal form which has ended in a flourish, as is taking place in Plate VI., Fig. 5; or in others they may be the remnants of plant motive.

Dr. Colley March calls attention to old bench-ends of English churches, notably those in Cornwall, which are frequently surmounted by a crouching quadruped; at a later period this appears to be converted into a single scroll like that which adorned the old pews in Ormskirk Church. (Plate VI., Fig. 7.)

An ancient silver plate (Plate VI., Fig. 8), found in a tumulus at Largo, Fifeshire, is decorated with the distorted fore-half of an animal. The transformation is advanced to flamboyant curves in the zoomorph of the Dunnichen Stone (Plate VI., Fig. 9); but the head and ear and legs can still be distinguished. It is not quite certain what animal this is intended to represent. Earl Southesk102 believes it to be the horse, which was sacred to Frey, and is a special symbol of the sun. The second figure is very remarkable, but it seems to be an extreme and foliated form of the same zoomorph.

There are numerous examples of linear series of animals in the early art of Egypt, Assyria, Greece, and other artistic centres, but these do not appear to have developed into patterns, possibly because the units were readily recognisable, on the other hand, serially repeated conventionalised zoomorphs frequently metamorphose into patterns. These patterns by repeated copying tend to become simplified till finally not only is all trace of the original long lost, but the resultant pattern may so resemble other simple patterns as to be indistinguishable from them. This may easily lead to confusion and cause the designs to be classed as one. We thus come to the conclusion that before any pattern can be termed the same as another, its life-history must be studied, otherwise analogy may be confused with homology, and false relationships erected. Things which are similar are not necessarily the same.

At the extreme south-east end of New Guinea and in the adjacent archipelago the most frequent designs are beautiful scroll patterns, which are subject to many variations. I have already103 described many of these, and so there is no need to again repeat what I have said, except to remind the reader that all these patterns are variations of serially repeated conventionalised heads of the frigate-bird. I shall again allude to this bird when I deal with the relation of religion to art.

In the same district one occasionally meets with a pattern (Fig. ¹⁰⁶) which in some respects resembles the former and appears in some cases to have been confounded with it. This one clearly arises from the serial repetition of conventionalised heads of crocodiles. The illustration is part of the carved rim of a wooden bowl in my possession, which probably came from the Trobriands or the Woodlarks. The triangles above the crocodiles’ snouts are coloured black, those bounded by their jaws are painted red.

There is yet another method of representing animals which consists in grouping them so as to tell a story, or, in other words, to make a picture.

Grouped animals rarely occur by themselves in decorative art; men, houses, implements, and even vegetation are frequently associated with them. The Arctic peoples, such as the Lapps, Eskimo, etc., greatly affect this form of art. The bulk of these pictures are representations of hunting scenes, and many incidents in the lives of these hyperboreans are depicted on bone and ivory. There is reason for regarding these as records of particular events (cf. p. 207); but they are also very useful to us as illustrations of native life and industry. Animals are sometimes drawn foreshortened, and confused herds of reindeer are often figured; but the grouping is mainly linear, without effects of perspective being attempted.

This kind of art is extremely rare amongst savage peoples, in fact its presence may be regarded as one of the proofs that the people practising it have passed from a purely savage condition, and have made some advance towards civilisation. It has reached its highest point in the works of the great animal painters of the present day, and thus has been one of the last forms of graphic art to be perfected.

As a general rule the inferior representations of animals in groups, and of animal pictures generally, are not due to the process of decay. They are the bad workmanship of inferior craftsmen. It is the imperfection of immaturity, not the symptom of decadence.

The last stage of the life-cycle of this class of zoomorphs occurs when incompetent draughtsmen copy the work of a master; when, for example, we see on the walls of country inns cheap and badly-drawn copies of Landseer’s pictures.

Animals also play a large part in mythology, and it is often very difficult to determine the limits of totemism in this direction. There are, however, numberless instances of legendary communications and relationships, of friendliness and enmity between animals and men, which have no connection with totemism, and these often form the subject of decorative art. Sometimes the animal alone is represented, at other times both man and animal are depicted, and according to their artistic treatment we may have pictures, or should the zoomorph and anthropomorph be rendered schematically, heteromorphism may result. At present we have to deal with representations of animals which illustrate some belief, myth, or folk-tale. The sacred art of the Hebrews was almost free from zoomorphs, and that of Islam totally so; with these exceptions there has scarcely been a religion in which zoomorphs have not played a greater or less part.

I need only remind the reader of the numerous examples in which animals are depicted in illustration of, or as a kind of mnemonic of a folk-tale, a legend, or myth, and of some sacred tradition or belief. There are so many intermediate stages between these different phases that it is often impossible to draw the line between them. The religious belief, with its sacred tradition of one age, becomes the myth or the legend of a later period, subsequently it is perpetuated as a folk-tale; later it may serve to amuse children, and lastly it becomes the object of scientific study.

What I have termed the æsthetic life-history may occur to the zoomorph at any or all of these stages of religious decadence. There is no correlation between an extreme or medium phase in the æsthetic cycle and a corresponding stage in the religious series. To take a homely example, the illustrations of the most recently published fairy-tales are as a whole of greater artistic merit than has been the average illustration of sacred narratives during any period of the world’s history.

D. Anthropomorphs

As a general rule, savages are less skilful in the delineation of the human form than they are with representations of animals, nor is it usually employed so frequently as might be expected.

It is for religious purposes that the human form is most frequently represented, and I refer the reader to the section in which religion is dealt with for illustrations of this fact. I employ the term “human form” advisedly, as this includes the images of both gods and men. At one stage of its evolution in the human mind, deity, like the Spectre of Brocken, is the shadowy image of man projected on the clouds. So the gods are most naturally represented as men, but often with special attributes. Now, these attributes are worthy of special study as being the milestones which indicate the distance which any given religious conception has traversed.

In the distant vista of time we can dimly perceive the transformation of the totem animal into the god. In the highest period of Greek sculpture the evolution was, for example, perfected in “ox-eyed lady Hera,” consort of Olympian Zeus, and in the Cnidian statue of Demeter, “Mother-Earth,” whose archaic representation was a wooden image of a woman with a mare’s head and mane. For thousands of years the Egyptian pantheon was peopled by gods arrested in the process—gorgonised tadpoles of divinity. Still earlier stages may even now be noted among savage peoples.

I know of no example of the preponderating employment of the human face for decorative purposes to be compared with what I have established for the natives of the Papuan Gulf. Illustrations of this will be found in Figs. ¹⁰-¹⁹, and in my Memoir on Papuan Art, but only an examination of a large number of objects from this district of British New Guinea will bring home to the student the remarkable ubiquity of the motive. We have no information concerning the reason for copying human faces; my impression is that it is related to the initiation ceremonies, which we know from the accounts of the Rev. James Chalmers to be very prolonged and important. One would expect to find more animal representations among these people than appear on objects in our ethnographical collections. Possibly these people are passing from the totemistic into the anthropomorphic phase of religion, and the latter finds most expression in their art. However, such speculations are futile until we obtain far more detailed and extended information of their religion than we at present possess.

Human beings are comparatively rarely represented merely for decorative purposes. In pictographs they have no predominating position. But when we come to portraiture the matter is very different; here we have an adequate motive for the delineation of the human form and face; it is, however, very noteworthy that portraiture, as such, only occurs amongst civilised communities. Possibly the explanation of this may be found in the widespread savage philosophy of sympathetic magic. According to this system a portrait has a very vital connection with the subject, and any damage done to the counterfeit would be experienced by the original. Portraiture then would be too hazardous to health, or even life, to be lightly undertaken.

What we have seen happening to plants and animals is also the fate of men in decorative art. A few examples here will suffice.

New Zealand is one of the places where anthropomorphs abound, due in this case to ancestor cult. The short series of three clubs (Plate VI., Figs. 10-12) illustrates the metamorphosis of the limbs into curvilinear forms. In dealing with the religion of Polynesia I give examples (Figs. ¹²⁴-¹²⁸) of the degradation of the human form into “geometrical” patterns.

In the various illustrations which have been given representations of the human form may be isolated, as in Melanesia (Fig. ³, O), Mangaia (Fig. ¹²⁴), and New Zealand (Plate VI., Figs. 10, 12), or they may be double; for example, one frequently finds in Polynesia two god-figures placed back to back, and these may strangely degenerate, as in the examples given by Stolpe104 and Read.105 Human forms placed in linear series are frequent in Mangaian wood-carving (Figs. ¹²⁷ and ¹²⁵, A). Fig. ¹²⁶ illustrates the decoration of a broader area.

We get examples of the selection of one portion of the man in the face patterns of the Papuan Gulf. (Figs. ¹⁰-¹⁹.)

These are undoubtedly conscious selections from the very commencement, but we find various parts of the body come to be perpetuated, with the elimination of the remainder, owing to differing causes.

The reason for the simplification of the body and the disappearance of the head in the Mangaian art is probably partly due to the fact that savage peoples are usually quite content with suggestions of objects, they do not demand what we term realism. By conventionalising their representations the Mangaians were better able to multiply them, and at the same time to appropriately decorate the object with which they were concerned. It could not be with a view of economising time or labour. “Time,” as Stolpe says, “is for them of no importance, they have plenty of it, and usually they are not able even to reckon it.” Judging by the skill exhibited by these clever carvers in wood, we cannot put down the simplification of the human body to careless copying.

We have seen that the face may be represented to the exclusion of any other part of the body, but there are examples of parts of the face becoming predominant.

Professor Moseley106 was, I believe, the first to indicate the evolution which occurred in the images of gods in the Hawaian group. In some instances the hollow crescent form, which came to represent a face, seems to have been arrived at by an enormous increase in the size of the mouth; in others, as in the case of some wicker images, by a hollowing out of the face altogether; the mouth in the latter, though large, not being widened so as to encroach upon the whole area of the face. Since, in the worship of the gods, food was placed in the mouths, the mouths may have been gradually enlarged as the development of the religion proceeded, in order to contain larger and larger offerings, and the head in the wicker-work image may have been hollowed out for a similar purpose. Moseley traced the degeneration of the human (or god’s) face down to a hook-shaped ornament cut out of a sperm whale’s tooth.

Some of the carvings of the human face from New Zealand bear a general resemblance to those from Hawaii; but a very noticeable feature in the art of the former island is the protruding tongue. The most interesting development of this member occurs in the Maori hani, or staff of office. At the upper end is what appears, at first sight, to be a spear-point. “This portion, however, does not serve the purpose of offence, but is simply a conventional representation of the human tongue, which, when thrust forth to its utmost conveys, according to Maori ideas, the most bitter insult and defiance. When the chief wishes to make war against any tribe, he calls his own people together, makes a fiery oration, and repeatedly thrusts his hani in the direction of the enemy, each such thrust being accepted as a putting forth of the tongue in defiance. In order to show that the point of the hani is really intended to represent the human tongue, the remainder of it is carved into a grotesque and far-fetched resemblance of the human face, the chief features of which are two enormous circular eyes made of haliotis shell.”107

My friend, S. Tsuboi, has made a special study108 of the protruding tongue in New Zealand art. He gives illustrations of thirty-one specimens, and with characteristic Japanese ingenuity he has drawn figures of half-a-dozen models which he has constructed which illustrate the various possible variations, and the lines they may have taken. He has also made numerical tables of possible varieties. I allude to, this paper in order to draw the attention of students to graphic methods. I regret that my ignorance of the Japanese language precludes my giving the results of this investigation.

In Ancient Egypt the eye was symbolic, and numberless amulets are found which exhibit one, two, or numerous eyes in varying stages of degeneracy, or in strange modifications. These, too, have been studied and described by Tsuboi.109

E. Biomorphic Pottery

In the description of the primitive methods of pottery manufacture, allusion was made to the fact that vegetable and animal forms were copied by the early artificers.

Although the immediate originals of many kinds of clay vessels were baskets of various kinds, we must not forget that these also were often textile imitations of natural objects. Gourds which are of almost ubiquitous occurrence undoubtedly were early and independently utilised as vessels. For the more convenient porterage of them they would be enclosed in netting or basketry. The better the accessories became, the less need for the original foundations, especially as the latter were brittle. From the fact that the shape of certain baskets in a district resemble those of the gourds of that district, we may assume that this process of evolution has operated spontaneously in diverse places. Clay vessels which were modelled from the suggestion of such baskets would thus remotely be phyllomorphs but having an intermediate skeuomorphic stage.

Instead of this indirect mode of origin a more direct one has often occurred. Messrs. Squier and Davis110 record: “In some of the southern states (of North America), it is said, the kilns, in which the ancient pottery was baked, are now occasionally to be met with. Some are represented still to contain the ware, partially burned, and retaining the rinds of the gourds, etc., over which they were modelled, and which had not been entirely removed by the fire.” They also state that the Indians along the Gulf moulded their vessels “over gourds and other models and baked them in ovens.”

It is not necessary to believe that this has everywhere been the original ceramic gourd-derivatives, even among savage peoples. Once the power of working in clay was acquired, intentional copying of gourds (Figs. ¹⁰⁷, ¹⁰⁸), or other vegetable vessels, may very well have occurred. This is rendered all the more probable from the fact that animal forms are modelled as earthen vessels. I am not here alluding to figures of men or of totem, sacred, or familiar animals which may belong to a somewhat higher stage of culture than that which we are now more particularly considering; but to clay utensils which are copied from receptacles which are the shells or other parts of animals.

Wherever shells of sufficient size are found they are utilised as food and water vessels, and there are numerous instances in various parts of the world of vessels being modelled so as to represent the ancient and familiar utensils.

Clay vessels imitating both marine and fresh-water shells are occasionally obtained from the mounds and graves of the Mississippi Valley. The conch-shell appears to have been a favourite model (Fig. ¹⁰⁹, A and B). A clam shell is imitated in C and D. The more conventional forms of these vessels are exceedingly interesting, as they point out the tendencies and possibilities of modification. The bowl (E) has four rosettes, each consisting of a large central boss with four or five smaller ones surrounding it. The central boss, as in A, is derived from the spire of the conch shell, and the encircling knobs from the nodulated rim of the outer whorl of the shell. Mr. Holmes suggests that in this case the conception is that of four conch shells united in one vessel, the spouts being turned inwards and the spires outwards. With all possible respect to Mr. Holmes, I venture to demur to this interpretation. The fusion of elements which are essentially isolated is rare amongst primitive peoples; it is difficult to imagine how they could conceive of the structural union and fusion of four conch shells. This is very different from the amalgamation of the clay imitations of such vessels as gourds or coco-nuts, for these are frequently fastened in pairs or in small groups to a common string handle, and there is already the idea of multiplicity and the apposition of the vessels. Again, Mr. Holmes does not present us with any intermediate stages of this or similar clay vessels; until such evidence is forthcoming it would be safer to regard this as an example of transference. According to my interpretation, the rosette derived from the spire of a conch shell was a pleasing motive, and it was applied to and repeated upon a circular bowl, which may, as Mr. Holmes elsewhere111 suggests, be derived from the lower half of a gourd. A single conch derivative would be entitled to one rosette only, and the association of ideas would operate in favour of only one being moulded, at all events until a very extreme stage of degeneration had been attained; but in the case of transference there would be no continuity of custom to control the potter, and consequently more scope could be given to his fancy.

A highly conventionalised form is shown in F (Fig. ¹⁰⁹). The cup is unsymmetrical in outline, and has a few imperfect bosses near one corner, but its resemblance to a shell would hardly be recognised by one unacquainted with more realistic renderings of similar subjects. In G we have an imitation of a shell cup placed within a plain cup.

The skins, bladders, and stomachs of animals are very frequently employed as water-carriers. The characteristic forms of these may often be traced in the pottery of the same districts, odd details of form or of surface marking usually persist to a surprising degree.

In Fiji and elsewhere the image of a turtle has been modelled in clay, doubtless because the carapace is often used as a vessel.

While the use of an animal or the part of an animal as a vessel has often led to the imitation of that animal in clay or other material, owing to an association of ideas, we must be very careful not to run to the extreme and to say that there was a primitively utilitarian origin for all zoomorphic vessels. Sympathetic magic and religion are responsible for many, and we must admit that mere fancy must sometimes come into play, and when this is the case theorising is necessarily at fault.

3. Heteromorphs

As previously stated, I propose to adopt the term Heteromorph for a confusion with one another of two or more different skeuomorphs, or with the amalgamation of any two or more biomorphs, or with the combination of any skeuomorph with any biomorph. We may thus have (1) Heteromorphs of skeuomorphs, (2) Heteromorphs of biomorphs, and (3) Heteromorphs of skeuo-biomorphs.

To speak somewhat figuratively, heteromorphism is a sort of disease that may attack the skeuomorph or the biomorph. Whereas the final term of the life-history of the biomorph is, so to speak, senile decay, the result of heteromorphism is a teratological transformation. Accepting this view of the subject, the present section might be entitled “The Pathology of Decorative Art.”

Any stage of the life-history of a biomorph, whether it is the expression of decorative or religious art, is liable to be infected by heteromorphism. The only section of graphic art which must from the nature of the case be free from it is pictorial art. Where heteromorphs are introduced into pictures they form one of the subjects of those pictures, the picture itself is not subject to this modifying influence; for example, the introduction of the representation of a sphinx or a gryphon into a picture does not constitute the latter a heteromorph.

A. Heteromorphs of Skeuomorphs

The combination of two different kinds of skeuomorphs does not appear to be of very frequent occurrence, or, at all events, we have not yet trained ourselves to appreciate them.

In Fig. ⁵⁰ we have an example, which, however, is not particularly satisfactory. It will be noticed that various kinds of plaiting are indicated on this Tongan club; as a matter of fact, if it had really been covered with plaited work, the latter would have been uniform in its character, although diverse patterns might have been worked into it. If this club had been decorated in a consistent manner the simple in-and-out plaiting of the broad band, as in the middle of the figure to the left, could not occur along with the finer oblique plaiting in other parts of the object.

B. Heteromorphs of Biomorphs

Wherever two or more animals or plants are represented in association there is a tendency for them to amalgamate in process of time. I have shown numerous examples of this in the bird and crocodile motive in Papuan art, and it would be easy to multiply illustrations.

Heteromorphism is especially characteristic of that style of decoration which we call arabesque, or grotesque. This is said to have been the invention of a painter named Ludius in the reign of the Emperor Augustus. That sovereign is said by Pliny to have been the first who thought of covering whole walls with pictures and landscapes. The fashion for the grotesque spread rapidly, for all the buildings of about that date which have been found in good preservation afford numerous and beautiful examples of it. Vitruvius was entirely out of conceit with this sort of ornament, and declares that such fanciful paintings as are not founded in truth cannot be beautiful; but the general voice, both in ancient and modern times, has pronounced a very different opinion. It was from the paintings found in the baths of Rome that Raphael derived the idea of those famous frescoes in the gallery of the Vatican. His example was immediately followed by other distinguished artists. This style derived its name grotesque from the subterranean rooms (grotte) in which the originals were usually found—rooms not built below the surface of the ground, but buried by the gradual accumulation of soil and ruined buildings.

A typical example of Pompeian treatment is seen in Plate VI., Fig. 3, where a bird’s tail passes into a floral scroll.

The representations of such mythical monsters of antiquity as the Sphinx, Chimæra, the Harpies, and so forth, are familiar to all. Originally these embodied distinct conceptions which were familiar to the initiated, if not to all. They were symbols and their origin in art was religious; their retention was due to their decorative quality.

C. Complex Heteromorphs

We have now to consider the complications arising from a combination of skeuomorphs and biomorphs.

Again I have recourse to Dr. Colley March’s suggestive essay. He points out that in the north of Europe animals were strangled by the withy-band, as occurs on an incised stone from Gosforth (Plate VII., Fig. 3). Mr. Hildebrand endeavours to show that the so-called Scandinavian sun-snake was produced by the breaking down into curves of the figure of a lion rampant, copied by a succession of artificers, all ignorant of the appearance of a lion. But in the first place, points out Dr. March, the Norse Wurm is found long ago in prehistoric rock-sculptures. In the next place, the serpent of the north was symbolic of the sea and not of the sun. And then, it was not the unfamiliar lion that alone broke up into serpentine forms; the skeuomorph assailed the stag, as on King Gorm’s stone in Denmark (Plate VII., Fig. 2). Eikthysnir, the stag of the sun, who was an attendant and attribute of Frey, is here seen being strangled by the “laidly worm” of Scandinavia. Dr. March suggests that perhaps we may recognise the walrus in rock-sculptures at Crichie in Scotland (Plate VII., Figs. 6, 7). That the walrus was well known to the Northmen, and highly prized both for its hide, from which ships’ ropes were made (Plate IV., Fig. 4), and for its tusks, which were a source of ivory, is proved by the Orosian story (I. Orosius, i. 14). “He went thither chiefly for walruses, because they have noble bone in their teeth, and their skin is very good for ships’ ropes.” The Earl of Southesk,112 however, brings forward a considerable body of evidence in favour of the view that this “elephant” symbol, as it has been absurdly termed, is the sun-boar—a symbol of Frey. No animal held a higher place in Scandinavia, and at an early period it was adopted as the national emblem in Denmark, and borne on the standard.

One frequently finds on early Christian sculptured stones that the field on each side of the central cross is occupied by a writhing animal; of these numerous examples occur in the Isle of Man, where they are undoubtedly due to Scandinavian influence. This animal may be recognised in some cases as being a wolf, as on a cross at Michael (Plate VII., Fig. 5).

Two skeuomorphs attack the wolf. The influence of thong-work is seen in Plate VII., Fig. 1; this may be compared with Plate IV., Fig. 4, which is copied from a sculptured stone at Malew, also in the Isle of Man. The latter is one of several Manx skeuomorphs of leather or strap-work.

The withy-band is even more frequently depicted, and on a cross at Gosforth (Plate VII., Fig. 3) the wolf is being strangled by it.

The serpent or dragon also is frequently represented, indeed it seems as if the wolf and the serpent passed insensibly into one another, and nothing is easier than to confound the latter with twisted bands. So the animal fades away, till finally the skeuomorph triumphs, and only the ghost of a zoomorph remains in what, to ordinary eyes, is only an entwisted fibre (Plate VII., Fig. 11).

What then is the significance of this remarkable cycle? The explanation must be sought in the pagan-Christian overlap, at the time when the symbols of Norse mythology were being homologised with those of the Christian faith.

“Three mighty children to my father Lok
Did Angerbode, the giantess, bring forth—
Fenris the wolf, the serpent huge, and me.
Of these the serpent in the sea ye cast,
Who since in your despite hath wax’d amain,
And now with gleaming ring enfolds the world.
Me on this cheerless nether world he threw,
And gave me nine unlighted realms to rule.
While, on his island in the lake, afar,
Made fast to the bored crag, by wile not strength
Subdued, with limber chains lives Fenris bound.”

So, in the words of Matthew Arnold, spoke Hela to Hermod on his quest for the restoration of the slain Balder.

At the crack of doom, the Ragnaroks, Frey, Woden, Thor, and Tyr, are predestined to perish. A wolf shall devour the sun, and another shall swallow the moon, and the stars shall vanish out of heaven. Woden shall go first, and shall encounter Fenriswolf, but the wise, one-eyed god shall die. The hammer of the “friend of man” shall not avail against the sea-dragon, and though Thor fights Midgarthsorm, and shall slay him, he himself shall fall dead from the serpent’s venom. Garm, the hell-hound, shall fasten upon the one-handed Tyr, and each shall kill the other. Frey shall fall before Swart, the giant with the flaming sword. Then shall Vidar spring forward, the mighty son of the Father of Victory, and shall rend the wolf asunder. “Vidar shall inhabit the city of the gods when all is over,” as the giant said to Woden. “Vidar, who outlived the earth-fall, became,” says Professor Stephens,113 “a fitting emblem for that Almighty Lord who overcame Sin and Death,” and he is represented on some sculptured stones as a divine Hart, trampling on Fenriswolf and Midgarthsorm.

These strangled wolves and writhing snakes of Scandinavian art represent the portentous struggle of the powers of darkness with the gods when “the Wolf shall devour the Sire of Men; but Vid shall avenge him, and shall rend the cold jaws of the Beast.” But the new religion possessed a somewhat analogous imagery, and the symbolism of the one readily passed into that of the other. Whether pagan or Christian, the symbolic animal was attacked by the plaited thong or twisted fibres, and the secular handicraft choked the religious idea. Such a hold had this technique on the mind of the people that it predominated all their art, and even led to the extinction of religious symbolism.

There was, however, another means by which the pagan dragon crept into Christian art. I refer to the legend of Sigurd and Fafni, which was introduced into sepulchral and ecclesiastical carving as late as the fourteenth century by followers of the new faith. I cannot now detail the foundation story of the Nibelungen Lied; the point which at present concerns us is the slaying of Fafni in the form of a dragon or serpent by Sigurd with his magic sword.

This and other incidents of the legend are carved on wooden portals or door-pillars of churches, on fonts, and on Christian crosses of stone in many parts of Sweden and Norway, and also in some parts of England, as on the Hatton Cross in Lancaster.

Fafni is often seen passing into a maze of beautiful scroll-work, and in the Hatton Cross he is solely represented by a twisted knot.

Under monkish influence, no doubt, the whole story came by degrees to be looked upon as containing types and proofs of the younger religion. Sigurd became the Christian soldier, forging the sword of the spirit, and his defeat of the serpent could readily be adopted into Christian symbolism.114

“When the Anglo-Saxon had almost forgotten Midgarth’s Orm, and the ancient Egyptian snake-symbol, as old as the Rameside period, had been introduced as a new design (Plate VII., Fig. 8), this itself fell a prey to the dominant skeuomorph, and was doubled and entangled in obedience to the over-mastering expectancy of the day.”

“It must be clear,” continues Dr. Colley March, “that such transformations as these were due to something more than the successive copying of a copy by ignorant and slovenly artificers, as in those degenerate changes wrought by Gaulish imitators of the stater of Philip of Macedon. In that case the original coin was not before them; they had no artistic impulse or intention, their only object was to fabricate passable pieces of money. But the men whose ‘taste’ is disclosed by the work we have just considered were swayed by an influence they could not have understood. The expectancy that controlled them they inherited. The withy-band had wrapped itself round all their conceptions.” But the result was enrichment and not degradation, and the curious designs their art produced show us the only portal through which the animal form can enter into ornament, by resolving itself, namely, into the angles, curves, and scrolls of symmetrical repetition.

“Many pauses took place ere the process was completed. Now one part of the body was surrendered to the skeuomorph and anon another. Conventionalism established a temporary truce, but the war of structure against nature broke out afresh, and the grotesque appeared. We look upon the death-grasp of a writhing quadruped, the knotted convolutions of a serpent, the spectral gleam of a vanishing face. And then, when all was over, when the battle on the ornamental field was lost and won, nothing was left but a zoomorph of contrasted curves and symmetrical scrolls.”

The human form is not exempt from the skeuomorphic inroad. The two men in Fig. 4, Plate VII., which is taken from an illuminated page of the Gospel of Mac Regol, at Oxford, are suffering from but a mild attack, but the men on the Pre-Norman font at Checkley, near Uttoxeter, and similar figures (Figs. ¹¹⁰, ¹¹¹) on a cross at Ilam, five miles from Ashbourne, have all but succumbed.