[Footnote: From a paper by Prof. Jacobsthal in the _Transactions_ of the
Archæological Society of Berlin.--_Nature_.]
The statement that modern culture can be understood only through a study of
all its stages of development is equally true of its several branches.
Let us assume that decorative art is one of these. It contains in itself,
like language and writing, elements of ancient and even of prehistoric
forms, but it must, like these other expressions of culture, which are
forever undergoing changes, adapt itself to the new demands which are made
upon it, not excepting the very arbitrary ones of fashion; and it is owing
to this cause that, sometimes even in the early stages of its development,
little or nothing of its original form is recognizable. Investigations the
object of which is to clear up this process of development as far as
possible are likely to be of some service; a person is more likely to
recognize the beauties in the details of ornamental works of art if he has
an acquaintance with the leading styles, and the artist who is freed from
the bondage of absolute tradition will be put into a better position to
discriminate between accidental and arbitrary and organic and legitimate
forms, and will thus have his work in the creation of new ones made more
easy for him.
Hence I venture to claim some measure of indulgence in communicating the
results of the following somewhat theoretical investigations, as they are
not altogether without a practical importance. I must ask the reader to
follow me into a modern drawing-room, not into one that will dazzle us with
its cold elegance, but into one whose comfort invites us to remain in it.
The simple stucco ceiling presents a central rosette, which passes over by
light conventional floral forms into the general pattern of the ceiling.
The frieze also, which is made of the same material, presents a similar but
somewhat more compact floral pattern as its chief motive. Neither of these,
though they belong to an old and never extinct species, has as yet attained
the dignity of a special name.
The walls are covered with a paper the ornamentation of which is based upon
the designs of the splendid textile fabrics of the middle ages, and
represents a floral pattern of spirals and climbing plants, and bears
evident traces of the influence of Eastern culture. It is called a
pomegranate or pine-apple pattern, although in this case neither
pomegranates nor pine-apples are recognizable.
Similarly with respect to the pattern of the coverings of the chairs and
sofas and of the stove-tiles; these, however, show the influence of Eastern
culture more distinctly.
The carpet also, which is not a true Oriental one, fails to rivet the
attention, but gives a quiet satisfaction to the eye, which, as it were,
casually glances over it, by its simple pattern, which is derived from
Persian-Indian archetypes (Cashmere pattern, Indian palmettas), and which
is ever rhythmically repeating itself (see Fig. 1).
[Illustration: FIG. 1.]
The floral pattern on the dressing-gown of the master of the house, as well
as on the light woolen shawl that is thrown round the shoulders of his
wife, and even the brightly colored glass knicknacks on the mantel-piece,
manufactured in Silesia after the Indian patterns of the Reuleaux
collection, again show the same motive; in the one case in the more
geometrical linear arrangement, in the other in the more freely entwined
spirals.
Now you will perhaps permit me to denominate these three groups of patterns
that occur in our new home fabrics as modern patterns. Whether we shall in
the next season be able, in the widest sense of the word, to call these
patterns modern naturally depends on the ruling fashion of the day, which
of course cannot be calculated upon (Fig. 2).
[Illustration: FIG. 2.]
I beg to be allowed to postpone the nearer definition of the forms that
occur in the three groups, which, however, on a closer examination all
present a good deal that they have in common. Taking them in a general way,
they all show a leaf-form inclosing an inflorescence in the form of an ear
or thistle; or at other times a fruit or a fruit-form. In the same way with
the stucco ornaments and the wall-paper pattern.
The Cashmere pattern also essentially consists of a leaf with its apex
laterally expanded; it closes an ear-shaped flower-stem, set with small
florets, which in exceptional cases protrude beyond the outline of the
leaf; the whole is treated rigorously as an absolute flat ornament, and
hence its recognition is rendered somewhat more difficult. The blank
expansion of the leaf is not quite unrelieved by ornament, but is set off
with small points, spots, and blossoms. This will be thought less strange
if we reflect on the Eastern representations of animals, in the portrayal
of which the flat expanses produced by the muscle-layers are often treated
from a purely decorative point of view, which strikes us as an exaggeration
of convention.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.]
One cannot go wrong in taking for granted that plant-forms were the
archetypes of all these patterns. Now we know that it holds good, as a
general principle in the history of civilization, that the tiller of the
ground supplants the shepherd, as the shepherd supplants the hunter; and
the like holds also in the history of the branch of art we are
discussing--representations of animals are the first to make their
appearance, and they are at this period remarkable for a wonderful
sharpness of characterization. At a later stage man first begins to exhibit
a preference for plant-forms as subjects for representation, and above all
for such as can in any way be useful or hurtful to him. We, however, meet
such plant-forms used in ornament in the oldest extant monuments of art in
Egypt, side by side with representations of animals; but the previous
history of this very developed culture is unknown. In such cases as afford
us an opportunity of studying more primitive though not equally ancient
stages of culture, as for instance among the Greeks, we find the above
dictum confirmed, at any rate in cases where we have to deal with the
representation of the indigenous flora as contradistinguished from such
representations of plants as were imported from foreign civilizations. In
the case that is now to occupy us, we have not to go back so very far in
the history of the world.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.]
The ornamental representations of plants are of two kinds. Where we have to
deal with a simple pictorial reproduction of plants as symbols (laurel
branches, boughs of olive and fir, and branches of ivy), _i. e._, with a
mere characteristic decoration of a technical structure, stress is laid
upon the most faithful reproduction of the object possible--the artist is
again and again referred to the study of Nature in order to imitate her.
Hence, as a general rule, there is less difficulty in the explanation of
these forms, because even the minute details of the natural object now and
then offer points that one can fasten upon. It is quite another thing when
we have to deal with actual decoration which does not aim at anything
further than at employing the structural laws of organisms in order to
organize the unwieldy substance, to endow the stone with a higher vitality.
These latter forms depart, even at the time when they originate, very
considerably from the natural objects. The successors of the originators
soon still further modify them by adapting them to particular purposes,
combining and fusing them with other forms so as to produce particular
individual forms which have each their own history (_e.g._, the acanthus
ornament, which, in its developed form, differs very greatly from the
acanthus plant itself); and in a wider sense we may here enumerate all such
forms as have been raised by art to the dignity of perfectly viable beings,
_e.g._, griffins, sphinxes, dragons, and angels.
[Illustration: Fig. 5.]
The deciphering and derivation of such forms as these is naturally
enough more difficult; in the case of most of them we are not even in
possession of the most necessary preliminaries to the investigation, and
in the case of others there are very important links missing (_e.g._,
for the well-known Greek palmettas). In proportion as the representation
of the plant was a secondary object, the travesty has been more and more
complete. As in the case of language, where the root is hardly
recognizable in the later word, so in decorative art the original form
is indistinguishable in the ornament. The migration of races and the
early commercial intercourse between distant lands have done much to
bring about the fusion of types; but again in contrast to this we find,
in the case of extensive tracts of country, notably in the Asiatic
continent, a fixity, throughout centuries, of forms that have once been
introduced, which occasions a confusion between ancient and modern works
of art, and renders investigations much more difficult. An old French
traveler writes: "J'ai vu dans le trésor d'Ispahan les vetements de
Tamerlan; ils ne different en rien de ceux d'aujourd'hui." Ethnology,
the natural sciences, and last, but not least, the history of technical
art are here set face to face with great problems.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.]
In the case in point, the study of the first group of artistic forms that
have been elaborated by Western art leads to definite results, because the
execution of the forms in stone can be followed on monuments that are
relatively not very old, that are dated, and of which the remains are still
extant. In order to follow the development, I ask your permission to go
back at once to the very oldest of the known forms. They come down to us
from the golden era of Greek decorative art--from the fourth or fifth
century B.C.--when the older simple styles of architecture were supplanted
by styles characterized by a greater richness of structure and more
developed ornament. A number of flowers from capitals in Priene, Miletus,
Eleusis, Athens (monument of Lysicrates), and Pergamon; also flowers from
the calathos of a Greek caryatid in the Villa Albani near Rome, upon many
Greek sepulchral wreaths, upon the magnificent gold helmet of a Grecian
warrior (in the Museum of St. Petersburg)--these show us the simplest type
of the pattern in question, a folded leaf, that has been bulged out,
inclosing a knob or a little blossom (see Figs. 3 and 4). This is an
example from the Temple of Apollo at Miletus, one that was constructed
about ten years ago, for educational purposes. Here is the specimen of the
flower of the monument to Lysicrates at Athens, of which the central part
consists of a small flower or fruits (Figs. 5 and 6).
[Illustration: FIG. 7.]
The form passes over into Roman art. The larger scale of the buildings,
and the pretensions to a greater richness in details, lead to a further
splitting up of the leaf into acanthus-like forms. Instead of a fruit-form
a fir-cone appears, or a pine-apple or other fruit in an almost
naturalistic form.
In a still larger scale we have the club-shaped knob developing into a
plant-stem branching off something after the fashion of a candelabrum, and
the lower part of the leaf, where it is folded together in a somewhat
bell-shaped fashion, becomes in the true sense of the word a campanulum,
out of which an absolute vessel-shaped form, as _e.g._ is to be seen in the
frieze of the Basilica Ulpia in Rome, becomes developed.
[Illustration: FIG. 8.]
Such remains of pictorial representation as are still extant present us
with an equally perfect series of developments. The splendid Græco-Italian
vessels, the richly ornamented Apulian vases, show flowers in the spirals
of the ornaments, and even in the foreground of the pictorial
representations, which correspond exactly to the above mentioned Greek
relief representations. [The lecturer sent round, among other
illustrations, a small photograph of a celebrated vase in Naples
(representing the funeral rites of Patroclus), in which the flower in
question appears in the foreground, and is perhaps also employed as
ornament.] (Figs. 7 and 8.)
The Pompeian paintings and mosaics, and the Roman paintings, of which
unfortunately very few specimens have come down to us, show that the
further developments of this form were most manifold, and indeed they form
in conjunction with the Roman achievements in plastic art the highest point
that this form reached in its development, a point that the Renaissance,
which followed hard upon it, did not get beyond.
[Illustration: FIG. 9.]
Thus the work of Raphael from the loggias follows in unbroken succession
upon the forms from the Thermæ of Titus. It is only afterward that a freer
handling of the traditional pattern arose, characterized by the
substitution of, for instance, maple or whitethorn for the acanthus-like
forms. Often even the central part falls away completely, or is replaced by
overlapping leaves. In the forms of this century we have the same process
repeated. Schinkel and Botticher began with the Greek form, and have put it
to various uses; Stuler, Strack, Gropius, and others followed in their wake
until the more close resemblance to the forms of the period of the
Renaissance in regard to Roman art which characterizes the present day was
attained (Fig. 9).
Now, what plant suggested this almost indispensable form of ornament, which
ranks along with the acanthus and palmetta, and which has also become so
important by a certain fusion with the structural laws of both?
[Illustration: FIG. 10.]
We meet with organism of the form in the family of the Araceæ, or aroid
plants. An enveloping leaf (bract), called the spathe, which is often
brilliantly colored, surrounds the florets, or fruits, that are disposed
upon a spadix. Even the older writers--Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Galen,
and Pliny--devote a considerable amount of attention to several species of
this interesting family, especially to the value of their swollen stems as
a food-stuff, to their uses in medicine, etc. Some species of Arum were
eaten, and even nowadays the value of the swollen stems of some species of
the family causes them to be cultivated, as, for instance, in Egypt and
India, etc. (the so-called Portland sago, Portland Island arrowroot, is
prepared from the swollen stems of _Arum maculatum_). In contrast with the
smooth or softly undulating outlines of the spathe of Mediterranean Araceæ,
one species stands out in relief, in which the sharply-marked fold of the
spathe almost corresponds to the forms of the ornaments which we are
discussing. It is _Dracunculus vulgaris_, and derives its name from its
stem, which is spotted like a snake. This plant, which is pretty widely
distributed in olive woods and in the river valleys of the countries
bordering on the Mediterranean, was employed to a considerable extent in
medicine by the ancients (and is so still nowadays, according to Von
Heldreich, in Greece). It was, besides, the object of particular regard,
because it was said not only to heal snake-bite, but the mere fact of
having it about one was supposed to keep away snakes, who were said
altogether to avoid the places where it grew. But, apart from this, the
striking appearance of this plant, which often grows to an enormous size,
would be sufficient to suggest its employment in art. According to
measurements of Dr. Julius Schmidt, who is not long since dead, and was the
director of the Observatory at Athens, a number of these plants grow in the
Valley of Cephisus, and attain a height of as much as two meters, the
spathe alone measuring nearly one meter. [The lecturer here exhibited a
drawing (natural size) of this species, drawn to the measurements above
referred to.]
[Illustration: FIG. 11.]
Dr. Sintenis, the botanist, who last year traveled through Asia Minor and
Greece, tells me that he saw beautiful specimens of the plant in many
places, _e.g._, in Assos, in the neighborhood of the Dardanelles, under the
cypresses of the Turkish cemeteries.
The inflorescence corresponds almost exactly to the ornament, but the
multipartite leaf has also had a particular influence upon its development
and upon that of several collateral forms which I cannot now discuss. The
shape of the leaf accounts for several as yet unexplained extraordinary
forms in the ancient plane-ornament, and in the Renaissance forms that have
been thence developed. It first suggested the idea to me of studying the
plant attentively after having had the opportunity five years ago of seeing
the leaves in the Botanic Gardens at Pisa. It was only afterward that I
succeeded in growing some flowers which fully confirmed the expectations
that I had of them (Figs. 10 and 11).
[Illustration: FIG. 12.]
The leaf in dracunculus has a very peculiar shape; it consists of a number
of lobes which are disposed upon a stalk which is more or less forked
(tends more or less to dichotomize). If you call to your minds some of the
Pompeian wall decorations, you will perceive that similar forms occur there
in all possible variations. Stems are regularly seen in decorations that
run perpendicularly, surrounded by leaves of this description. Before this,
these suggested the idea of a misunderstood (or very conventional)
perspective representation of a circular flower. Now the form also occurs
in this fashion, and thus negatives the idea of a perspective
representation of a closed flower. It is out of this form in combination
with the flower-form that the series of patterns was developed which we
have become acquainted with in Roman art, especially in the ornament of
Titus' Thermæ and in the Renaissance period in Raphael's work. [The
lecturer here explained a series of illustrations of the ornaments referred
to (Figs. 12, 13, 14).]
The attempt to determine the course of the first group of forms has been to
a certain extent successful, but we meet greater difficulties in the study
of the second.
[Illustration: FIG. 13.]
It is difficult to obtain a firm basis on which to conduct our
investigations from the historical or geographical point of view into this
form of art, which was introduced into the West by Arabico-Moorish culture,
and which has since been further developed here. There is only one method
open to us in the determination of the form, which is to pass gradually
from the richly developed and strongly differentiated forms to the smaller
and simpler ones, even if these latter should have appeared
contemporaneously or even later than the former. Here we have again to
refer to the fact that has already been mentioned, to wit, that Oriental
art remained stationary throughout long periods of time. In point of fact,
the simpler forms are invariably characterized by a nearer and nearer
approach to the more ancient patterns and also to the natural flower-forms
of the Araceæ. We find the spathe, again, sometimes drawn like an acanthus
leaf, more often, however, bulged out, coming to be more and more of a mere
outline figure, and becoming converted into a sort of background; then the
spadix, generally conical in shape, sometimes, however, altogether replaced
by a perfect thistle, at other times again by a pomegranate. Auberville, in
his magnificent work "L'Ornement des Tissus," is astonished to find the
term pomegranate-pattern almost confined to these forms, since their
central part is generally formed of a thistle-form. As far as I can
discover in the literature that is at my disposal, this question has not
had any particular attention devoted to it except in the large work upon
Ottoman architecture published in Constantinople under the patronage of
Edhem Pasha. The pomegranate that has served as the original of the pattern
in question is in this work surrounded with leaves till it gives some sort
of an approach to the pattern. (There are important suggestions in the book
as to the employment of melon-forms.) Whoever has picked the fruit from the
tender twigs of the pomegranate tree, which are close set with small
altered leaves, will never dream of attributing the derivation of the
thorny leaves that appear in the pattern to pomegranate leaves at any stage
of their development.
[Illustration: FIG. 14]
It does not require much penetration to see that the outline of the whole
form corresponds to the spathe of the Araceæ, even although in later times
the jagged contour is all that has remained of it, and it appears to have
been provided with ornamental forms quite independently of the rest of the
pattern. The inner thistle-form cannot be derived from the common thistle,
because the surrounding leaves negative any such idea. The artichoke theory
also has not enough in its favor, although the artichoke, as well as the
thistle, was probably at a later time directly pressed into service. Prof.
Ascherson first called my attention to the extremely anciently cultivated
plant, the safflor (_Carthamus tinctoris_, Fig. 15), a thistle plant whose
flowers were employed by the ancients as a dye. Some drawings and dried
specimens, as well as the literature of the subject, first gave me a hope
to find that this plant was the archetype of this ornament, a hope that was
borne out by the study of the actual plant, although I was unable to grow
it to any great perfection.
In the days of the Egyptian King Sargo (according to Ascherson and
Schweinfurth) this plant was already well known as a plant of cultivation;
in a wild state it is not known (De Candolle, "Originel des Plantes
cultivées"). In Asia its cultivation stretches to Japan. Semper cites a
passage from an Indian drama to the effect that over the doorway there was
stretched an arch of ivory, and about it were bannerets on which wild
safran (_Saflor_) was painted.
[Illustration: FIG. 15]
The importance of the plant as a dye began steadily to decrease, and it has
now ceased to have any value as such in the face of the introduction of
newer coloring matters (a question that was treated of in a paper read a
short time ago by Dr. Reimann before this Society). Perhaps its only use
nowadays is in the preparation of rouge (_rouge végétale_).
But at a time when dyeing, spinning, and weaving were, if not in the one
hand, yet at any rate intimately connected with one another in the narrow
circle of a home industry, the appearance of this beautiful gold-yellow
plant, heaped up in large masses, would be very likely to suggest its
immortalization in textile art, because the drawing is very faithful to
nature in regard to the thorny involucre. Drawings from nature of the plant
in the old botanical works of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries look
very like ornamental patterns. Now after the general form had been
introduced, pomegranates or other fruits--for instance, pine-apples--were
introduced within the nest of leaves.
[Illustration: FIG. 16.]
Into the detailed study of the intricacies of this subject I cannot here
enter; the East-Asian influences are not to be neglected, which had
probably even in early times an effect upon the form that was assumed, and
have fused the correct style of compound flowers for flat ornament with the
above-mentioned forms, so as to produce peculiar patterns; we meet them
often in the so-called Persian textures and flat ornaments (Fig. 16).
We now come to the third group of forms--the so-called Cashmere pattern, or
Indian palmetta. The developed forms, which, when they have attained their
highest development, often show us outlines that are merely fanciful, and
represent quite a bouquet of flowers leaning over to one side, and
springing from a vessel (the whole corresponding to the Roman form with the
vessel), must be thrown to one side, while we follow up the simpler forms,
because in this case also we have no information as to either the where or
the when the forms originated. (Figs. 17, 18, 19.)
[Illustration: FIG. 17.]
Here again we are struck by resemblances to the forms that were the
subjects of our previous study, we even come across direct transitional
forms, which differ from the others only by the lateral curve of the apex
of the leaf; sometimes it is the central part, the spadix, that is bent
outward, and the very details show a striking agreement with the structure
of the aroid inflorescence, so much so that one might regard them as
actually copied from them.
[Illustration: FIG. 18.]
This form of ornament has been introduced into Europe since the French
expedition to Egypt, owing to the importation of genuine Cashmere shawls.
(When it cropped up in isolated forms, as in Venice in the fifteenth
century, it appears not to have exerted any influence; its introduction is
perhaps rather to be attributed to calico-printing.) Soon afterward the
European shawl-manufacture, which is still in a flourishing state, was
introduced. Falcot informs us that designs of a celebrated French artist,
Couder, for shawl-patterns, a subject that he studied in India itself, were
exported back to that country and used there (Fig. 20).
In these shawl-patterns the original simple form meets us in a highly
developed, magnificent, and splendidly colored differentiation and
elaboration. This we can have no scruples in ranking along with the
mediæval plane-patterns, which we have referred to above, among the highest
achievements of decorative art.
[Illustration: FIG. 19.]
It is evident that it, at any rate in this high stage of development,
resisted fusion with Western forms of art. It is all the more incumbent
upon us to investigate the laws of its existence, in order to make it less
alien to us, or perhaps to assimilate it to ourselves by attaining to an
understanding of those laws. A great step has been made when criticism has,
by a more painstaking study, put itself into a position to characterize as
worthless ignorantly imitated, or even original, miscreations such as are
eternally cropping up. If we look at our modern manufactures immediately
after studying patterns which enchant us with their classical repose, or
after it such others as captivate the eye by their beautiful coloring, or
the elaborative working out of their details, we recognize that the
beautifully balanced form is often cut up, choked over with others, or
mangled (the flower springing up side down from the leaves), the whole
being traversed at random by spirals, which are utterly foreign to the
spirit of such a style, and all this at the caprice of uncultured, boorish
designers. Once we see that the original of the form was a plant, we shall
ever in the developed, artistic form cling, in a general way at least, to
the laws of its organization, and we shall at any rate be in a position to
avoid violent incongruities.
[Illustration: FIG. 20.]
I had resort, a few years ago, to the young botanist Ruhmer, assistant at
the Botanical Museum at Schöneberg, who has unfortunately since died of
some chest-disease, in order to get some sort of a groundwork for direct
investigations. I asked him to look up the literature of the subject, with
respect to the employment of the Indian Araceæ for domestic uses or in
medicine. A detailed work on the subject was produced, and establishes
that, quite irrespective of species of Alocasia and Colocasia that have
been referred to, a large number of Araceæ were employed for all sorts of
domestic purposes. Scindapsus, which was used as a medicine, has actually
retained a Sanskrit name, "vustiva." I cannot here go further into the
details of this investigation, but must remark that even the incomplete and
imperfect drawings of these plants, which, owing to the difficulty of
preserving them, are so difficult to collect through travelers, exhibit
such a wealth of shape, that it is quite natural that Indian and Persian
flower-loving artists should be quite taken with them, and employ them
enthusiastically in decorative art. Let me also mention that Haeckel, in
his '"Letters of an Indian Traveler," very often bears witness to the
effect of the Araceæ upon the general appearance of the vegetation, both in
the full and enormous development of species of Caladia and in the species
of Pothos which form such impenetrable mazes of interlooping stems.
In conclusion, allow me to remark that the results of my investigation, of
which but a succinct account has been given here, negative certain
derivations, which have been believed in, though they have never been
proved; such as that of the form I have last discussed from the Assyrian
palmetta, or from a cypress bent down by the wind. To say the least the
laws of formation here laid down have a more intimate connection with the
forms as they have come down to us, and give us a better handle for future
use and development. The object of the investigation was, in general words,
to prepare for an explanation of the questions raised; and even if the
results had turned out other than they have, it would have sufficed me to
have given an impulse to labors which will testify to the truth of the dead
master's words:
"Was Du ererbt von deinen Vätern hast,
Erwirb es, um es zu besitzen."
* * * * *