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.
[27] F. Keller, _The Lake Dwellings of Switzerland and other
parts of Europe_. Second edition, 1878, p. 565.
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.”
[28] “Pagan Ireland,” _The Century Magazine_, xxxvii., 1889,
p. 368.
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.
[29] F. Keller, _The Lake Dwellings_, etc, p. 565.
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]
[30] O. Montelius, “Sur les Poignées des Epées et des Poignards
en Bronze,” _Congr. prehist. Stockholm_, 1874, ii. p. 891.
“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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.