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.”
[25] H. Colley March, “The Meaning of Ornament, or its
Archæology and its Psychology,” _Trans. Lanc. and Cheshire Ant.
Soc._, 1889.
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.
[26] Copied from J. Evans, _Bronze Implements_, p. 148.
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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.