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. Semper[19] “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.

Fig. 44.—Turtle-shell ornaments worn in Torres Straits. The ratio of size of the illustrations to the originals is as 4:15. A. Ordinary fish-hook, made of turtle-shell. B-L. Series of ornaments, probably derived from fish-hooks, made of turtle shell. All in the British Museum, from a photograph by Mr. H. Oldland, of the British Museum.

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.

Fig. 45.—Sketches of two axes from the South-east Peninsula of New Guinea in the possession of the author; about one-tenth natural size.

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. Romilly[21] 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.

Fig. 46.—Mangaian symbolic adze in the Copenhagen Museum; from Dr. C. March.

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 study[23] 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.”

Fig. 47.—An erect drum (Kaara), surmounted by the head of a god from Java, in the Copenhagen Museum; from Dr. C. March.

Dr. H. Colley March[24] 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.

Fig. 48.—Rubbing of part of the decoration of a Tongan club in the Norwich Museum; one-third natural size.

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.

Fig. 49.—Rubbing of part of the decoration of a Tongan club in the Norwich Museum; one-half natural size.

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.

Fig. 50.—Rubbing of part of the decoration of a Tongan club in the Norwich Museum; one-half natural size.

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. Keller[27] 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.

Fig. 51.—Sketches of tapa belts from Kerepunu, British New Guinea; about three-quarters natural size.

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.

Fig. 52.—Designs derived from uluri (women’s covering); A, B, C, Bakaïri tribe, Central Brazil; D, Auetö tribe, Central Brazil. After Von den Steinen; greatly reduced.

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. Holmes[35] 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. Cushing[36] 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.

Fig. 53.—Iroquois bark vessel; after Cushing.

Fig. 54.—Rectangular, or Iroquois, type of earthen vessel; after Cushing.

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.”

Fig. 55.—Clay nucleus in base mould, with beginning of spiral building; a stage in the formation of a Zuñi vessel; after Cushing.

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. Holmes[37] 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 [Tonga[40]] 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 Wilson[41] 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 Tylor[42] 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 Rau[44] 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. Holmes[45] 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.

Figs. 56 and 57.—Variations in a motive through the influence of form. Pueblo pottery; after Holmes.

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. 58.—A, Freehand form; B, Form imposed by fabric. Forms of the same motive expressed in different arts; after Holmes.

Fig. 59.—Design of Fig. 60; after Holmes.

Fig. 60.—Ancient Pueblo vase, province of Tusayan. The height and width of the vase are 14 inches; after Holmes.

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 Grünwedel[46] 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.

Fig. 61.—“Unit of the design” of Fig. 60; after Holmes.

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—

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 appropriate[48] 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.

Fig. 62.—Modern Moki rain symbol; after Holmes.

Fig. 63.—Decorative detail from an ancient Pueblo medicine-jar; after Holmes.

The symbolism of their autocthones has been, and is still actively and sympathetically studied by American anthropologists, as in a valuable paper[50] 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.

Fig. 64.—Rain-cloud tile of the South House in a Tusayan ceremony; after Fewkes.

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).

Fig. 65.—Zuñi prayer-meal-bowl; after Cushing.

Mr. Cushing[53] 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.

Fig. 66.—Tracing of a landscape etched on a bamboo tobacco-pipe, in Berlin; three-eighths natural size.

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.

Fig. 67.—Sketch of Mer (Murray Island), by the author, from the south-west-by-west, showing the hill Gelam.

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 Cushing[57] (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.”

Fig. 68.—Pueblo water-jar; after Cushing.

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.

Fig. 69.—Design based on a palmito leaf, Bakaïri tribe, Central Brazil; after Von den Steinen.

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. Uhle[63] 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.

Fig. 70.—Rough sketch of the Egyptian lotus (Nymphæa lotus); after original drawings by Professor Goodyear.

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.”

Fig. 71.—Sketch of the Indian lotus (Nelumbium speciosum); after Description de l’Egypt: Histoire Naturelle, from Goodyear.

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.—Lotus flowers and bud, painted on the coffin of a mummy from the Necropolis of Thebes, Twentieth Dynasty; after Prisse d’Avennes.