I have now dwelt at sufficient length upon the character of the
textile system of ornament and have laid especial stress upon the
manner in which it is interwoven with the technical constitution of
the art. I have illustrated the remarkable power of the art by which
decorative elements from without, coming once within the magic
influence, are seized upon and remodeled in accordance with the laws
of textile combination. Pursuing the investigation still further it is
found that the dominion of the textile system is not limited to the
art, but extends to other arts. Like a strong race of men it is not to
be confined to its own original habitat, but spreads to other realms,
stamping its own habits and character upon whatever happens to come
within its reach. Its influence is felt throughout the whole range of
those arts with which the esthetic sense of man seeks to associate
ideas of beauty. It is necessary, before closing this paper, to
examine briefly the character and extent of this influence and to
describe in some detail the agencies through which the results are
accomplished. First and most important are the results of direct
transmission.
House building, or architecture as it is called in the higher stages,
is in primitive times to a great extent textile; as culture develops,
other materials and other systems of construction are employed,
and the resultant forms vary accordingly; but textile characters are
especially strong and persistent in the matter of ornament, and
survive all changes, howsoever complete. In a similar way other
branches of art differentiated in material and function from the
parent art inherit many characters of form and ornament conceived in
the textile stage. It may be difficult to say with reference to any
particular example of design that it had a textile origin, for there
may be multiple origins to the same or to closely corresponding forms;
but we may assert in a general way of the great body of geometric
ornament that it owes something--if not its inspiration, its modes of
expression--to the teachings of the textile system. This appears
reasonable when we consider that the weaver's art, as a medium of
esthetic ideas, had precedence in time over nearly all competitors.
Being first in the field it stood ready on the birth of new forms of
art, whether directly related or not, to impose its characters upon
them. What claim can architecture, sculpture, or ceramics have upon
the decorative conceptions of the Digger Indians, or even upon those
of the Zuni or Moki? The former have no architecture, sculpture, or
ceramics; but their system of decoration, as we have seen, is highly
developed. The Pueblo tribes at their best have barely reached the
stage at which esthetic ideas are associated with building; yet
classic art has not produced a set of geometric motives more chaste or
varied. These examples of the development of high forms of decoration
during the very early stages of the arts are not isolated. Others are
observed in other countries, and it is probable that if we could lift
the veil and peer into the far prehistoric stages of the world's
greatest cultures the same condition and order would be revealed. It
is no doubt true that all of the shaping arts in the fullness of their
development have given rise to decorative features peculiar to
themselves; for construction, whether in stone, clay, wood, or metal,
in their rigid conditions, exhibits characters unknown before, many of
which tend to give rise to ornament. But this ornament is generally
only applicable to the art in which it develops, and is not
transferable by natural processes--as of a parent to its offspring--as
are the esthetic features of the weaver's art.
Besides the direct transmission of characters and forms as suggested
in a preceding paragraph, there are many less direct but still
efficacious methods of transfer by means of which various arts acquire
textile decorative features, as will be seen by the following
illustrations.
Japanese art is celebrated for its exquisite decorative design. Upon
superb works of porcelain we have skillful representations of subjects
taken from nature and from mythology, which are set with perfect taste
upon fields or within borders of elaborate geometric design. If we
should ask how such motives came to be employed in ceramic decoration,
the answer would be given that they were selected and employed because
they were regarded as fitting and beautiful by a race of decorators
whose taste is well nigh infallible. But this explanation, however
satisfactory as applied to individual examples of modern art, is not
at all applicable to primitive art, for the mind of man was not
primarily conscious of the beauty or fitness of decorative elements,
nor did he think of using them independently of the art to which they
were indigenous. Now the ceramic art gives rise to comparatively few
elements of decoration, and must therefore acquire the great body of
its decorative motives from other arts by some process not primarily
dependent upon the exercise of judgment or taste, and yet not by
direct inheritance, as the techniques of the two arts are wholly
distinct.
Textile and fictile arts are, in their earlier stages, to a large
extent, vessel making arts, the one being functionally the offshoot of
the other. The textile art is the parent, and, as I have already
shown, develops within itself a geometric system of ornament. The
fictile art is the offshoot and has within itself no predilection for
decoration. It is dependent and plastic. Its forms are to a great
extent modeled and molded within the textile shapes and acquire
automatically some of the decorative surface characters of the mold.
This is the beginning of the transfer, and as time goes on other
methods are suggested by which elements indigenous to the one art are
transferred to the other. Thus we explain the occurrence, the constant
recurrence of certain primary decorative motives in primitive
ceramics. The herring bone, the checker, the guilloche, and the like
are greatly the heritage of the textile art. Two forms derived from
textile surfaces are illustrated in Figs. 351 and 352. In the first
example shown, herring bone patterns appear as the result of textile
combination, and in the second a triangular checker is produced in the
same way. In Fig. 352 we see the result of copying these patterns in
incised lines upon soft clay.
[Illustration: FIG. 351. Herring bone and checker patterns produced in
textile combinations.]
[Illustration: FIG. 352. Herring bone and checker figures in fictile
forms transferred from the textile.]
Again, the ancient potter, who was in the habit of modeling his wares
within baskets, seems to have conceived the idea of building his
vessels by coiling just as he built his baskets. The surface exhibits
coiled ridges like basketry, as shown in Fig. 353, and the textile
character was further imposed upon the clay by marking these coils
with the thumb and with implements to give the effect of the
transverse series of filaments, and the geometric color patterns of
the basketry were reproduced in incised lines. When these peoples came
to paint their wares it was natural that the colored patterns native
to the basketry should also be reproduced, and many more or less
literal transfers by copying are to be found. A fine example of these
painted textile designs is shown in Fig. 354. It is executed in a
masterly style upon a handsome vase of the white ware of ancient
Tusayan. Not only are the details reproduced with all their geometric
exactness, but the arrangement of the designs upon the vessel is the
same as in the textile original. Nine-tenths of the more archaic,
Pueblo, ceramic, ornamental designs are traceable to the textile art,
and all show the influence of textile convention.
[Illustration: FIG. 353. Earthen vase built by coiling, exhibiting
decorative characters derived from basketry.]
[Illustration: FIG. 354. Ceramic ornament copied literally from a
textile original.]
Another peculiar class of transfers of a somewhat more indirect nature
may be noticed. All the more advanced American nations were very fond
of modeling the human form in clay, a large percentage of vessels
having some trace of the human form or physiognomy. Now, in many cases
the costume of the personage represented in the clay is also imitated,
and generally in color, the details of the fabrics receiving their
full share of attention. Such an example, from a sepulcher at Ancon,
is shown in Fig. 355. Here the poncho or mantle thrown across the
shoulders falls down upon the body in front and behind and the stripes
and conventional fishes are accurately reproduced. In this way both
style and matter of the textile decoration are introduced into the
ceramic art.
[Illustration: FIG. 355. Textile patterns transferred to pottery
through the copying of costume. From The Necropolis of Ancon, by Reiss
and Stuebel, Pl. 94.]
It will be seen by these illustrations that there are many natural
methods, automatic or semiautomatic in character, by which the one art
receives aid from the other; that in the beginning of the transfer of
textile ornament to fictile forms the process is purely mechanical,
and that it is continued automatically without any very decided
exercise of judgment or taste. As a result, these borrowed decorations
are generally quite as consistent and appropriate as if developed
within the art itself. Later in the course of progress the potter
escapes in a measure from this narrow groove and elaborates his
designs with more freedom, being governed still to a certain extent by
the laws of instinctive and automatic procedure. When, finally,
intellect assumes to carry on the work independently of these laws,
decoration tends to become debased.
Turning to other branches of art, what traces do we find of the
transfer to them of textile features? Take, for example, sculpture. In
the wood carving of the Polynesians we observe a most elaborate system
of decoration, more or less geometric in character. We do not need to
look a second time to discover a striking likeness to the textile
system, and we ask, Is it also derived from a textile source? In the
first place let us seek within the art a reason for the peculiar
forms. In carving wood and in tracing figures upon it with pointed
tools the tendency would certainly be towards straight lines and
formal combinations; but in this work there would be a lack of
uniformity in execution and of persistency in narrow lines of
combination, such as result from the constant necessity of counting
and spacing in the textile art. In the presentation of natural forms
curved lines are called for, and there is nothing inherent in the
carver's art to forbid the turning of such lines with the graver or
knife. Graphic art would be realistic to an extent regulated by the
skill and habits of the artist. But, in reality, the geometric
character of this work is very pronounced, and we turn naturally
toward the textile art to ask whether in some way that art has not
exercised an influence. The textile arts of these peoples are highly
developed and were doubtless so in a degree from very early times, and
must have had a close relation with the various arts, and especially
so in the matter of ornament. Specific examples may be cited showing
the intimacy of wood carving to textilia. Bows, spears, arrows, &c.
are bound with textile materials to increase their strength. Knives
and other weapons are covered with textile sheaths and handles of
certain utensils are lashed on with twisted cords. In ceremonial
objects these textile features are elaborated for ornament and the
characteristic features of this ornament are transferred to associated
surfaces of wood and stone by the graver. A most instructive
illustration is seen in the ceremonial adzes so numerous in museums
(Fig. 356). The cords used primarily in attaching the haft are, after
loss of function, elaborately plaited and interwoven until they become
an important feature and assume the character of decoration. The heavy
wooden handles are elaborately carved, and the suggestions of figures
given by the interlaced cords are carried out in such detail that at a
little distance it is impossible to say where the real textile surface
ceases and the sculptured portion begins.
All things considered, I regard it as highly probable that much of the
geometric character exhibited in Polynesian decoration is due to
textile dominance. That these peoples are in the habit of employing
textile designs in non-textile arts is shown in articles of costume,
such as the tapa cloths, made from the bark of the mulberry tree,
which are painted or stamped in elaborate geometric patterns. This
transfer is also a perfectly natural one, as the ornament is applied
to articles having functions identical with the woven stuffs in which
the patterns originate, and, besides, the transfer is accomplished by
means of stamps themselves textile. Fig. 357 illustrates the
construction of these stamps and indicates just how the textile
character is acquired.
[Illustration: FIG. 356. Ceremonial adz, with carved ornament
imitating textile wrapping. Polynesian work.]
Textile materials are very generally associated with the human figure
in art, and thus sculpture, which deals chiefly with the human form,
becomes familiar with geometric motives and acquires them. Through
sculpture these motives enter architecture. But textile decoration
pervades architecture before the sculptor's chisel begins to carve
ornament in stone and before architecture has developed of itself the
rudiments of a system of surface embellishment. Textile art in mats,
covers, shelters, and draperies is intimately associated with floors
and walls of houses, and the textile devices are in time transferred
to the stone and plaster. The wall of an ancient Pueblo estufa, or
ceremonial chamber, built in the pre-esthetic period of architecture,
antedating, in stage of culture, the first known step in Egyptian art,
is encircled by a band of painted figures, borrowed, like those of the
pottery, from a textile source. The doorway or rather entrance to the
rude hovel of a Navajo Indian is closed by a blanket of native make,
unsurpassed in execution and exhibiting conventional designs of a high
order.
[Illustration: FIG. 357. Portion of a tapa stamp, showing its
subtextile character. A palm leaf is cut to the desired shape and the
patterns are sewed in or stitched on.]
[Illustration: FIG. 358. Design in stucco, exhibiting textile
characters.]
The ancient "hall of the arabesques" at Chimu, Peru, is decorated in
elaborate designs that could only have arisen in the textile art
(Fig. 358), and other equally striking examples are to be found in
other American countries. The classic surface decorations known and
used in Oriental countries from time immemorial prevailed in
indigenous American architecture at a stage of culture lower than any
known stage of classic art.
It may appear that I have advocated too strongly the claims of the
textile art to the parentage of geometric ornament and that the
conclusions reached are not entirely satisfactory, but I have
endeavored so to present the varied phenomena of the art that the
student may readily reach deductions of his own. A correspondingly
careful study of other branches of art will probably enable us finally
to form a just estimate of the relative importance of the forces and
tendencies concerned in the evolution of decoration.
* * * * *