In the last chapter on design I have described patterns as the examples or illustrations of the art of decoration, and as being the records of the motives which produced them in different eras. My present object is to class and define patterns as decorative art.

It is argued by some archÆologists that the recurrence of a pattern, for instance the “wave,” over the whole world, proves that it really came from many sources, under the same conditions of life and art; showing also that a pattern is a thing that, like a flower, must grow, if the culture of the race be equal. I do not believe this. We can nearly always trace the family history of a pattern to its original motive; and in the very few cases where we are unable to do so, it is hardly necessary to cover our ignorance by stretching the fashionable theory of development over the few instances that are as yet unaccountable.

I have been repeatedly asked to procure or to invent a new pattern. Such is my respect for the decorative achievement called a “pattern,” that I cannot hope for the moment of inspiration in which I might create such a thing. If any one has in his lifetime invented a pattern, he has done something truly remarkable, and as rare as is a really original thought on any subject. Patterns are commonly, like men, the result of many centuries of long descent from ancestors of remote antiquity. Individuals differ from their ancestors through inherited and surrounding conditions, and through the modifying powers of evolution, climate, and education. So also a pattern has, besides its ancestry and descent, the unconscious mark or seal of its day; and it is easy to trace whence it comes, if we set ourselves to examine the style of it seriously.

The patterns of which we can nearly always name at once the nationality, are the Assyrian, the Chinese, the Egyptian, the Hindu (Aryan and Turanian), the Persian, the Archaic and the highly developed Grecian; the Roman, the Celtic, the Byzantine, the Arabian, the Gothic, the Renaissance, the Spanish PlÂteresque, the Louis Quatorze, and those of the art of Central America.

The pattern cannot exist without design. Design means intention and motive. Many of the motives in Oriental textile decorations are suggestive of intention, as is shown by their names. Among Indian patterns we meet with “ripples of silver,” “sunshine and shade,” “pigeon’s eye,” “peacock’s neck,” &c.[96]

Patterns must be classed either by their dates, when ascertained, or according to their style, which must generally be allowed to cover vast areas and periods irregularly drifting down, overlapping, or being absorbed or effaced by the circumstances they have encountered.

Only when a national style has been obstinately fixed, as in China, and bound down by strict laws and religious formulas, suited exactly to the people for whom they were evolved out of the national life, and imprinted on it by their own lawgivers, philosophers, and priests; and neither imposed by conquerors, nor swept over by the waves of a new civilization;—only in such cases can we find a continuity of decorative art which leads us far back on its traces. Then, on this long track, we learn how little, man, the decorating animal, has really advanced in his powers of creation. He has gone more than once to a certain point, and has then either been petrified by law and custom—turned into a pillar of salt, like Lot’s wife, because he has looked back instead of striving to advance, or else through poverty or satiety has fallen into the last stage of the Seven Ages, “sans eyes, sans teeth—sans everything.” When what is good is neither perceived nor desired, then the arts, small and great, dwindle and disappear, and nothing remains to show that they have been, but a name, and perhaps a pattern.

Chinese design is the most striking example of the first of these phases; and the extinction of all classical art with the fall of Paganism in Rome is an instance of the second.

In the chapter on style it is said that a pattern is as ineffaceable as a word. But one will occasionally disappear for a time, till the ruin that covers it is cleared away, and the lost design recovered and employed simply as a decoration, if it is beautiful; or perhaps fitted with a new meaning, and so it makes a fresh start.

The importance of patterns, when traceable to their origin, as a means of investigating historical influences cannot be too much insisted on, and their history is full of suggestion as a guide to the decorator. Much has been argued and much ascertained from the evidence of these fragments of national civilizations, showing how an idea or a myth has been, as it were, engrafted into the essence of another national idea, partly altering what it finds, and changing to fit itself to its new surroundings. Eastern patterns have travelled far, and lasted long; and continue still to hold the fancy, and exercise the ingenuity, of the artist and decorator. When we find a pattern of which the nationality is strongly marked, it is worth our while to ascertain its date and history, which will help us to recognize cognate design wherever we may meet it. However, this is often not to be done; and then it is best to set these puzzling examples aside, and to await patiently the elucidation, which may come from some source of which we are as yet ignorant.

In very early art we have little remaining but patterns, on which we may found theories by tracing them home to their original source. The oldest patterns had each a meaning and an intention. When a pattern has been enduring and far spread, it is because it was originally the expression of an idea or a symbol.

In the earliest dawn of civilization, the arts were the repositories of the myths and mysteries of national faiths. Embroidery was one of these arts, and the border which edged the garment of a divinity, the veil which covered the grave of a loved one, or the flower-buds and fruit which fringed the hangings and curtains in the sanctuary, each had a meaning, and therefore a use. These symbolical designs and forms were constantly reproduced; and all human ingenuity was exercised in reforming, remodelling, and adding perfect grace to the expression of the same idea.

Patterns may be ranged under four heads—the Primitive, the Naturalistic, the Conventional, and the Geometrical.

The primitive are those of which we know not the ancestry, and rarely can guess the motive. To us they are, in general, simply rude decorations. The naturalistic are those which are borrowed from natural forms, and are either only imitative, or else convey some hidden meaning. The conventional are those which, by long descent, have come to be accepted simply as ornamental art, with or without reference to an original motive, now lost. The geometrical or symmetrical are founded on form only, and in so far resemble our experience of the primitive; they express no meaning, and only serve to satisfy the eye by their balance and their ingenuity.

PRIMITIVE.

The first patterned forms with which we are acquainted are the primitive. They are found in all parts of the inhabited world. In our present ignorance as to the beginnings of the scattered tribes of men, we cannot judge if these are the remains of an earlier art or the first germs of a new one. Of one thing there is no doubt: this primitive decoration consists entirely of pattern; that is to say, of the repetition of certain (to us) inexpressive forms, which by reiteration assume importance and in some degree express beauty—the beauty of what Monsieur Blanc calls “cadence.”

After these first unintelligible forms, which simply by repetition become accepted patterns, come those called the Prehistoric, of which we know or guess something as to their original meaning, and which, having been reduced from the hieroglyphic-symbolical to the conventional, have thus crystallized themselves, by constant use, into a pattern. Such, for instance, is the simplest form of the “wave” pattern, which in very early art was a representation of water.

The prehistoric water or wave patterns had other forms; for instance, zigzags, upright or horizontal, and undulating lines which are intelligible as expressing smooth or rough water. In general, however, the primitive and prehistoric patterns convey no idea, and consist, as we have said elsewhere, of lines, straight or wavy, sometimes intersected; of angles, zigzags, groups of dots, rings and little discs, and crosses of the Swastika shape. (Plate 10.)

Wave Patterns.

1, 4, 9, 12, 13. Greek Wave Patterns. 2. Key or MÆander, Greek Wave. 3. Greek Broken Wave. 5, 6, 7. Egyptian Smooth and Rippling Water Patterns. 8. MediÆval Wave. 10, 11, 14. Assyrian. 15. Persian or Greek (from Glass Bowl, British Museum). 16. English Waves (Durham Embroideries.)

Where shall the tartan be placed? It is certainly primitive, and apparently had no intention beyond that of employing as many coloured threads as there were dyes, so as to form the brightest contrasts, or else to be as invisible as possible either in the sunshine or in the shade. The Gauls brought this kind of weaving with them from the East, and probably invented the pattern, if such a motiveless design can be so called. It had its classical name, “Polymita,” and was admired in Rome when newly imported, as being something original and barbaric. The Romans found it in Britain, and Boadicea wore a tartan dress on the day of her defeat. Perhaps even then fashions came from France, and it may have been her best tunic from across the Channel. This fabric may have been imported by the Belgic Gauls, and was so easily woven on house looms, that it became in time the feudal dress of the Scottish tribes and clans, and the colours were ingeniously arranged to show the most different effects. The tartan has always been a resource for the woollen trade, and the fashion constantly recurs in France, either from sentiment or the actually inherited Gallic taste; but it remains a primitive pattern, and nothing can make it artistic. No embroidery can soften the constantly recurring angles, and only fringes can be employed to decorate a tartan costume. Pliny tells us of the ingenuity of Zeuxis, who, to show his wealth, had his name embroidered in gold in the squared compartments of his outer garment.[97]

Primitive patterns still linger in many savage nations, but especially throughout uncivilized Africa. Curious to say, the very ancient fossilized early art of Egypt does not assist us to trace it back to a prehistoric style, though it may lead us into prehistoric times.

NATURALISTIC.

The phases of the naturalistic patterns are constantly recurring. Art is always tending to realism, in the laudable effort to reach the motive without the shackles of rules. Each phase has fallen a prey to symbolism, to conventionalism, or to mannerism, which last symptom marks the decline and fall of art. We shall find these phases everywhere in the design of patterns.

Naturalism has always striven, by simple repetition, to reduce to patterns the forms of flowers, fruits, animals, birds, insects, reptiles, and other natural objects.

In flower patterns the simplest forms by repetition make sometimes the richest patterns, and the most effective. (Plate 11, Nos. 1 and 2.)

It is remarkable that one very beautiful class of natural objects is rarely employed in ancient decoration[98]—shells and corals. The barbarous tribes of the West Coast of Africa alone seem to have appreciated their forms, and added them to their small repertory of naturalistic patterns. They do not appear in any European or Asiatic textiles till the seventeenth century, when shells were much used in the decorations of the reigns of Queen Anne and Louis Quatorze.

The first change from naturalism into the conventional was through symbolism, and belonged to the time when unwritten thought was first recorded by pictured signs, which then ceased to be merely decoration. We find that the naturalism of the earliest Egyptians and Asiatics was soon entirely absorbed by the effort to express some hidden meaning or mystery, and then to fit the representation to a special place and purpose, and to restore it, as it were, to decorative art.

1. Persian Flower Border. 2. Egyptian Border, composed of Head-dress of the god Nile (Wilkinson’s “Ancient Egyptians”). 3. Assyrian. 4. Assyrian.

The lotus and the patterns founded on its forms, and the many emblematic meanings attached to them, are notable examples of these transmutations in style and intention, and of the value given to their intention and use in Egypt and India, where each development was immediately crystallized into a recognized pattern, and given its place and language. It received its “mot d’ordre,” and continued to act upon it long after the meaning was forgotten or out of date.

The rolling pattern which had so long represented only the “wave,” was given to the really straight stem of the lotus, and its blossom, substituted for the wave’s crest, now filled many a frieze in Indian temple architecture; whereas the lotus stems in Egypt were still bound in sheaves to form columns, and the flowers, buds, and leaves spread and blossomed into capitals. Here we have symbolism and conventionalized naturalism, all combined, showing how their principles, though quite distinct, can mix and unite. The conventional form often superseded and effaced the naturalistic, and became the sign of an idea, or the hieroglyphic picture of a thing; immovable and unalterable in Egypt, where every effort was made to secure eternity on earth, but continually returning to naturalism in India, where the Aryan tendency, with the assistance of the “Code of Manu,” always recurred to the restoration of the ancient naturalistic motive.

In the India Museum we may see the “wave” motive converted into a lotus pattern by rolling the long stems, and filling up the spaces between with the full-faced blossom. Sometimes the pattern is started by the figure of an elephant, from whose mouth the stem of the flower of the sun proceeds. This occurs so often that it must originally have had a meaning. Sometimes the sacred convolvulus takes the place of the lotus. (Plate 12.)

On an Egyptian mural painting are seen parties of men snaring ducks among papyrus and lotus plants. These are entirely conventional, and are, in fact, a sort of recognized hieroglyphic representing the idea of a lotus.[99]

The lotus was the accepted emblem of the sun, and reduced to a many-leaved radiating pattern may be found as an architectural ornament on the outside of the Buddhist “topes,” of which the models are on the staircase of the British Museum.[100] (Plate 13.)

We have Sir G. Birdwood’s authority for believing that, though the actual lotus was a native of India, and carried thence to Egypt, its decorative use as a pattern was Egyptian, and so returned to India. Both accepted it as their “sunflower.”[101]

1. Indian Rolling Lotus Pattern. 2, 3. Indian Lotus Patterns. 4, 5. Egyptian Lotus Patterns. 6. Sacred Convolvulus. Indian (seventeenth century).

1, 2. Indian Designs of Assyrian Daisy and Egyptian Lotus. 3. Vitruvian Scroll. Vignola. Architecture.

Can it be our Aryan descent which induces in us the earnest adoration, in our art of to-day, of our northern prototype of the sun’s emblem? I fear that we must acknowledge that our Æsthetic worship of our sunflowers is somewhat false and affected. Æstheticism is not art. Sunflowers, painted or embroidered as decoration, do not “take” if they are ordered and ranged, and reduced to a pattern like those of Egypt. They must be naturalistic, and, if possible, remind us of a disorderly cottage garden; whereas in India they were adapted from nature on fixed principles, which immediately reduced them to the conventional.

Sunflower pattern, R. S. A. N.
XIX. Century

I give an illustration of a Gothic sunflower resembling a transfigured rose; and another of an ordered naturalistic sunflower pattern, from a design of the Royal School of Art Needlework. (Plate 14.)

Fig. 9.
Gothic Sunflower. From Christ’s College Chapel, Cambridge.

I have given this account of the patterns founded on the lotus, as we can almost from this distance of time take a bird’s-eye view of its rise in naturalism, its spread, dispersion, and its crystallization into conventional forms; also we can trace how the lotus patterns of Indian art have resulted, when accepted in Europe, in nothing but the rolling wave, carrying flower forms which no longer represent a lotus; and how the lotus bud and flower pattern has become in time the classical “egg and tongue;” which, however, may have resulted also from a combination of other motives.

Representations of animal forms are sometimes very remarkable in phases of naturalism. The few remains of Celtic art that have survived are entirely animal, or very nearly so. In their stone, gold, silver, and bronze work, and in illuminated MSS., we meet with only animal forms; never a flower or a leaf.

Besides the Indo-Chinese patterns in Celtic art, which suggest the Chinese lattice-work (so strongly insisted on by Semper as a constant motive), we also find in all their decorations compartments containing involved patterns of cords or strings knitted or plaited, suggesting the entrails of animals, which by these hunting people were consulted as being mysteriously prophetic of approaching events, especially success or failure in the chase, and impending warlike raids.[102] There is no other way of accounting for these designs, which are peculiar to the race, unless we believe they always represent snakes. (Pl. 15.)

In England much that was characteristic of the style was lost as soon as the Saxons drove out the Celts, who carried it to Ireland, as may be seen in the Book of Kells, and the carving of the Harp of Tara, and the Celtic jewels in the Irish museums; but the interlacing patterns survived throughout Anglo-Saxon art, and were marvellously ingenious and beautiful; witness the Durham Book of St. Cuthbert.

We have no Celtic textiles remaining to us, unless some embroidery in the Marien-Kirche collection at Dantzic may be of that style and time. This is suggested by its altogether Indo-Chinese and very barbarous character;[103] and one of the coronation mantles in Bock’s “Kleinodien” is Runic in its peculiar serpent design.

Illumination from the Lindisfarne Gospels, about A.D. 700

Demeter. From a Greek Vase in the British Museum.

“Judging from their illuminated MSS.,” it is said, “the elements borrowed from textile art by the Celts are plaits, bows, zigzags, knots, geometrical figures in various symmetrically developed combinations, crosses, whorls, and lattice-work; next, those taken from metal work, such as spirals and nail-heads let into borders; thirdly, simple or composite zoomorphic forms, such as bodies of snakes, birds’ heads on long necks, lizards, dogs, dragons, and the like.”[104] They well understood how to make a pattern by the repetition of objects of any class.

1. Embroidery on a Greek Mantle, third century B.C., from the Tomb of the Seven Brothers, Crimea.
2. Egyptian Painted and Embroidered Linen. The cone, the bead, the daisy, the wave, the lotus under water, are all shown on this fragment.

Egyptian Tapestry.

1. Woven and embroidered on a Sleeve. 2. Woven and embroidered. 3. Painted and embroidered.

Representations of human figures in embroideries probably originated in hangings for the wall; but have been treated as decorative forms, both by the Indians and the Greeks, for wearing apparel. The peplos of Minerva was bordered with fighting gods and giants, and the Empress Theodora’s dress in the Ravenna mosaic repeats exactly the same motive. (See Fig. 4, and Pl. 6.)

There are two other examples of such Greek patterns. The mantle of Demeter on a Greek vase in the British Museum, of the best period (Pl. 16), is embroidered with flying genii and victorious chariots; and the embroidered mantle lately found in a Crimean tomb, is of precisely the same style of design, and the one illustrates the other. These instances are so exceptional, that it is curious that here, as in the case of the peplos, in each case there should happen to be a duplicate. (Plates 16 and 17, No. 1.)

In Babylonian, Assyrian, and Chaldean art we constantly find animal forms in patterns. The lion and the hare, birds and insects, are the commonest; and there are some instances of human figures reduced to a pattern in these sculptured representations of textiles. (Plate 2.)

There are curiously woven little human figures finished with the needle on the sleeve of an Egyptian dress in the British Museum, from Saccarah (Pl. 18), and, of course, when such a design is small, it ceases to be very objectionable. On the whole, however, naturalistic designs for embroideries are more safely confined to floral decorations, excepting always flat tapestries for walls, which, representing pictures, may be as naturalistic as their purpose and style will admit.

Animal forms are often reduced to patterns by repetition in Indian and Persian embroidery.[105] The drawing is naturalistic, but the colouring is fanciful. We may see any day, on Persian rugs, scarlet lions pursuing and capturing blue or yellow hares. The flatness and want of all shadows tends to the conventional. Lions, bulls, cats, beetles, and serpents abound especially in Egyptian design; insects, reptiles, and fish in Asiatic patterns, where animals are sometimes made to walk in pairs, with their heads and tails twisted into a pattern.

Though landscapes are so rarely worked that the subject is, perhaps, hardly worthy of notice, yet such mistaken specimens of ingenuity have occurred. An altar frontal was exhibited at Zurich, in 1883, containing some really exquisitely worked landscapes, which were quite out of place, both as art and as decoration, for an ecclesiastical purpose. This was of the beginning of the last century.[106]

While we appreciate and should take advantage of our national tendency to naturalistic design, we must beware of looking on fixed rules as bonds which cramp our liberty, and of thinking that nature should be our only guide to an otherwise unassisted and unfettered inspiration. Without the wholesome checks of experience and educated taste, and the knowledge which teaches us what to avoid, as well as what to imitate, founded on the successes and failures of others, we fall into weak imitations of natural objects. Mr. Redgrave points out how unpleasant and jarring to our sense of what is appropriate, and therefore how offensive to good taste and common sense, it is to tread on a carpet of water-lilies swimming in blue pools, or on fruits and flowers heaped up and casting shadows probably towards the light.[107] Woollen lions and tigers, as large as life, basking before the fire in a wreath of roses, are alarming rather than agreeable, and are of the nature of a practical joke in art. It is the search for novelty in naturalism that leads to such astonishing compositions; and these, being successively rejected in the heart of our civilization and culture, are drifted away to vulgarize our colonies, or to be sold cheap to furnish Continental hotels, and make the English traveller blush for his home manufactures.

SYMBOLICAL AND CONVENTIONAL.

Though it is true that the highest art, pictorial and sculptural, is always struggling towards naturalism, the art of decoration is, by its nature, constantly tending to conventionalism. Patterns, if not absolutely geometrical or naturalistic, must be classed under this principle. Let us examine what is meant by a conventional pattern.

It may be said that the conventional includes every form—the symbolic, the naturalistic, or even the hieroglyphic—that is selected and consecrated to convey a certain idea. The lily of Florence, which is something between a lily and an iris, but unlike either, is a conventional form; likewise the lily of France, which it is said was once a conventional frog. The rose of England, the shamrock, and the thistle have always been more naturalistic than is usual in such heraldic designs; but the parti-coloured rose of York and Lancaster was decidedly conventional, and heraldic.

Conventional patterns now are those which, having been originally naturalistic in style, but perhaps emblematic as to their motive, have been repeated till the meaning and form have been lost; or else, as in the case of the lotus, the emblem is forgotten, and nothing remains but the recognized conventional form.

One conventional pattern which, having commenced by being a symbol, has been repeated and varied till it has allowed the original essential meaning to escape, is the “palm-leaf” or “cone” pattern on French or Paisley shawls, which, having been a sacred emblem—the tree of life—in Persia, became in Europe, when the religious myth was lost, only a shawl pattern—merely a leaf, with plant painted within its outlines. (Plate 23, Nos. 10, 11.)

Decorative designs become conventional in spite of the intention of the designer. He is overruled by the spaces to be covered and the materials to be employed. His design must produce a flat pattern; he must repeat it again and again; he must give it a strong outline; he must distribute it regularly at certain intervals. Repetition at once conventionalizes the most naturalistic drawing, and the most sacred and mysterious emblem. Alternation is equally a source of conventionalism. There is no motive that cannot be conventionalized into a pattern by repetition. A Gothic crown and a true lily, repeated, will make an ecclesiastical conventional pattern. Then come all the Arabian and Moresque forms (which are mostly geometric), and also the Gothic (which are partly geometric and partly naturalistic, especially those in German and debased Spanish and Portuguese Gothic design).

1. Key Pattern. 2. Broken-up Key. 3. Beads. 4. Key and sign of Land. 5. Wave and Babylonian Daisy. 6. Key and Fundata. 7. Wave and Bead. 8. Wave and Daisy. 9. Key and Sun Cross. These Key Patterns from Ceiling of a Tomb at Saccarah, in Egypt. (Wilkinson’s “Ancient Egyptians.”)

Then we must accept as conventional all those which may be called kaleidoscope patterns, which are broken fragments of old motives, repeated or “radiated” so as to become partly geometrical, wholly conventional. (See Pl. 17, No. 2.)

Conventional patterns may be reduced into three kinds.

First, the naturalistic, which have by repetition been adapted for decorative art.

Secondly, the symbolical—Pagan or Christian, religious or historical, including the Heraldic.

Thirdly, those conventional forms which may never have had any inner meaning, or else, having originally had one, have lost it.

All these exist, sometimes apart and sometimes mingled; so that some thought must be expended in seeking the motive which has brought them together, and finding in each the internal evidence of its descent.

It is evident that patterns, conventionalized and brought from distant sources, sometimes meet and amalgamate. When the origin of a conventional pattern is disputed, it is worth while to examine if it has a double parentage. Let me give, as an instance, the key pattern. It may have been, as Semper believes, originally Chinese, and derived from wicker-work design. It represents also the broken or dislocated “wave,” the symbol of the River MÆander,[108] and for water generally. We find it everywhere in company with the wave, which never could have had any connection with wicker-work, not only in China, but in Persia, India, Egypt, Arabia, Greece, Rome, and Central America. (Pl. 19.)

Can any invention of man show a more symbolical intention than the wave pattern? The airy leap drawn downwards by the force of gravitation; controlled, and again made to return, but strong to insist on its own curve of predilection, rushing back under the same circle; strengthened by the downward movement to spring again from its original plane; beginning afresh its Sisyphus labour, and facing the next effort with the same grace and agility. Undying force, and eternal flowing unrest—these are the evident intention and symbol of the wave pattern. Though I believe the key pattern to be a modification of the wave form, yet the locking and unlocking movement suggests a repetition of the Tau, or key of life.

When we admire the friezes of garlands hung between the skulls of oxen and goats, we cannot for a moment doubt the sacrificial idea on which the design was founded. When the wreaths are carried by dancing children, we recognize the impersonation of the rejoicing of the dÆdal earth.

The Greeks, however strongly they exerted themselves to throw off the shackles of conventionality in sculpture, painting, and architecture, yet yielded to the traditional force of the symbolical pattern, and accepted most of the Oriental forms, merely remodelling them for their own use, and adding to their significance what their culture required; at the same time giving infinite variety, as their perfect taste dictated.

Trees of Life.

1, 2, 3, 5. Assyrian. 4. Sicilian Silk. (Birdwood’s “Indian Arts,” pp. 331, 335, 336, 337.)

Aristophanes, in “The Frogs,” laughs at the Persian carpet patterns—their unnatural birds and beasts and flowers—whilst he claims for his own frogs, that they at least have the merit of being natural.[109] This little touch of art throws a gleam of inner light on the struggle towards originality and truth which characterized the Greek principles of beauty and fitness in literature and art, in direct contrast to that which was always turning back to those fossil forms which were only respectable on account of their age and their mystery, but of which the tradition and intention were already lost.

Roman patterns were merely Greek adaptations with an Etruscan flavour, which was a survival of the earliest Italian art. Perhaps the indigenous element had been already modified by Phoenician influence.

In taking stock of Oriental symbolical patterns, we find that one of those of the widest ancestry and longest continuity is the “Sacred Hom.”[110] (Pl. 20-24.) This is to be found in Babylonian, Persian,[111] Indian, Greek, and Roman art; and consequently it prevails in all European decoration (except the Gothic), where it was reduced to unrecognizable forms.

Sir George Birdwood says the Hom or Homa was the Sanskrit Soma, used as an intoxicating drink by the early Brahmins, and was extracted from the plant of that name, an almost leafless succulent Asclepiad. It appears to have changed its conventional form as other plants by fermentation came to the front, containing what appeared to be the “spirit of life”—the aqua vitÆ. The palm, with its wonderful fruit, which is convertible into intoxicating drinks, and afterwards the vine itself, were each of them moulded into analogous conventional fruit forms, which keep as much as possible within the limits of the original cone shape. (Pl. 21.)

1. Tree of Life and Lions. Gate of MycenÆ. 2. Persian or Sicilian Silk. Tree of Life and Leopards.

1. Split Lotus Fruit on Chinese Bowl. 2. Split Lotus resembling Tree of Life. Frieze by Benozzo Gozzoli, Ricardi Palace, Florence. 3. Petal of Flower on Glass Bowl from Southern Italy. British Museum.

There is a palm-tree which absolutely carries a cone in the heart of its crown of fronds.[112] This may have helped to preserve the original motive of the sacred tree of life. The cone form in classical art was drawn from the pine cone and the artichoke; and in mediÆval art these were sometimes replaced by the pomegranate, and in the late Renaissance by the pine-apple, newly arrived from the West Indies.[113] It is a good example of the blending of one vegetable form into another, making the sequence, of which each phase in the East had an historical cause or a symbolical meaning,[114] but which in Europe had gradually lost all motive, and was simply an acknowledged decorative form.[115] In architectural ornament it is called the honeysuckle,[116] which it had grown to resemble in the days of Greece.

Different forms of Tree of Life, from Sicilian Silks.

Modern Embroidery from the Principalities, in which the cone-shaped tree grows into a vine,
and the two animals at the foot have lost their shape and intention.

This sacred tree, the Homa of Zoroaster and of the later Persians, has so early a beginning that we find it on Assyrian monuments.[117] Rock says “that, perhaps, it stood for the tree of life, which grew in Paradise.” It is represented as a subject of homage to men and animals, and it invariably stands between priests and kings, or beasts kneeling to it. It is figured on the small bucket for religious rites, carried in the hands, or embroidered in the upper sleeve of the monarch’s tunic. It always represents a shrub, sometimes bearing a series of umbels of seven flowers each. (Pl. 2, 20.)

Sometimes the expression of the symbol is reduced to the cone-fruit of the homa alone; or even to a blossom, as in the two glass bowls in the Slade collection in the British Museum, from a tomb at Chiusi, in Etruria. Here the design is a flower, of which each petal contains the essential emblem—a plant within a plant. These bowls, pronounced to be Greek of the fourth century B.C., have yet to me a strong Oriental character. (Pl. 22, No. 3.) I have spoken of the lotus as a naturalistic pattern. One mode of drawing and embroidering its flower in India, is to cut it in two; half the blossom is then carefully and almost botanically copied, thus conveying the inner meaning of the sacred flower. (Pl. 22, No. 3.)

Another conventional pattern, common to all times of art and all nations, is that called in architecture the “egg and tongue” pattern. (Pl. 13.) This, as I have already said, is supposed to be derived directly from the lotus. The Egyptians formed it from the bud and blossom; and the pattern is found in India, Greece, and Rome, changing continually and yet retaining its identity. Vitruvius claimed to have given it the last touch and finish, so that in Italy it was called the Vitruvian scroll; and it is common to all decoration, even in textiles, though it is hardly suited for weaving or embroidery. This is one of the earliest patterns which, having ceased long ago to be a religious emblem or sign, still survives by its decorative fitness, and perpetuates the echoes of its origin.

Typical Crosses.

1. Swastika. 2. From a Greek Vase, 765 B.C. 3. Indian Sectarial Mark of Sakti race. 4. Buddhist and Jainis mark. 5. Early Rhodian Pottery. 6. Egyptian prehistoric Cross. 7. Tau Cross. 8. Mark of land, Egyptian and Ninevite. 9. Ditto. 10. Clavus. 11, 12, 13. Scandinavian Sun and Moon Crosses. 14, 15, 16. Celtic. 17. Chrysoclavus. 18, 19. Stauracin patterns. 20. Scandinavian, from Norway. 21. Runic Cross. 22. Cross at Palenque, in Temple of the Sun. 23. Scotch Celtic Cross. 24. Cross from Iona. 25, 26. Runic Crosses. 27. Cross on the Dalmatic of Charlemagne. 28. From the Mantle of Henry II., Emperor of Germany.

Of the conventional symbolical forms of the early Christian Church I shall speak more fully in the chapter on ecclesiastical art, and therefore would only point out here, while touching on symbolical decoration, how that phase of Christian art is a great historical instance of the deep ancient meanings it illustrates; showing the motive to be often in accordance with the inherited pagan symbol, and yet differing from it. Pre-eminent among these is the emblem of the Cross, so early and universally used, full of mysterious secret allusions to the groping faiths of idolatrous nations, before the great fundamental idea of the “Word” was attached to it. This was one of the old signs used as a pattern, and transfigured into a fresh type, of which the radiance reflected back light upon all that preceded it, even as Chinese ancestors are ennobled by the deeds of their descendants.

1. Pallas Athene, from a vase in Lord Northampton’s Collection. 2. Ajax in a cloak embroidered with swastika, sun cross, and prehistoric water patterns. Etruscan Museum. Vatican.

The cross (Pl. 25), was a sign and a pattern in prehistoric art. It was the double of the Tau, the Egyptian emblem of life; and while the Jews reject the Christian cross, they still claim to have warned off the destroying angel by this sign in blood over the lintels of their doors in the first Passover.

But the most ancient and universal form of the cross is that of the Swastika, or Fylfote. This “prehistoric cross” is said to be formed of two fire-sticks, belonging to the ancient worship of the sun, laid across each other ready for friction; but losing that meaning, from an emblem they fell into a pattern, and this you will still find, utterly meaningless, on Persian carpets of to-day.

Sir G. Birdwood gives the Swastika as the sectarial mark of the Sakti sects in India. Fergusson names it with the mound buildings, as belonging to all Buddhist art; and examples of the Swastika are to be found on Rhodian pottery from the Necropolis of Kamiros, where we find also the key pattern.

In early Greek art the Swastika and Gammadion are everywhere, especially as embroidery on dress. Minerva’s petticoats are sometimes worked all over with the latter. On an early Greek vase in the Museo Gregoriano, are painted Ajax and Achilles playing at dice; and the mantle of Ajax is squared into an embroidered pattern that alternately represents a sun or star and a Gammadion (Pl. 26, No. 2). But it is unnecessary to multiply classical examples, which are endless.

The Christian Cross was often formed by converting the Tau into the Gamma, the sacred letter of the Greeks. It is said to have been the emblem of the corner-stone, and as a pattern, was called, down to the thirteenth century, the “Gammadion;” and though it had lost its original motive, it continued to preserve the idea of a secret and mystical meaning.

The Gammadion, as well as the Swastika, enters largely into the illuminations of the Celtic Book of Kells and those of the Lindisfarne MSS.; also it is to be found on the Celtic shields in the British Museum, together with the Swastika. Both appear in the Persian carpets of to-day, and as patterns were, in ecclesiastical decoration, employed down to the fifteenth century, both for European and British textiles. The Swastika, as well as the wave pattern, is of mysterious and universal antiquity, and has certainly traversed four thousand years,—how much more we dare not say. It is to be found throughout Egyptian and Indian art—never in that of Assyria.

Of the time of Rameses the Second we have two figures in a mural painting, an ally and an enemy, a guest and a prisoner, both clothed in embroidered garments, parsemÉs with the prehistoric cross.

Fig. 11.
Egyptian Enemy and Ally.

In the chapter on ecclesiastical art I shall again refer to this immemorial symbolical and conventional pattern. I much regret that, in the absence of a translation, I am prevented from availing myself of the accumulated learning on the subject of “The Prehistoric Cross,” by Baron Ernest de Bunsen.

Imitation of a Carpet carved in stone, from Nineveh, showing the Indian Lotus and the Assyrian Daisy. (In the British Museum.)

There was a pattern called the “crenelated” which apparently was derived from the Assyrian battlement, and is found throughout classic art, somewhat conventionalized.[118] It is named as an embroidered pattern in the inscription recording votive offerings of dresses in the temple of Athene at Athens.[119]

We know something of the conventional and symbolical embroideries of Nineveh, which are quite unlike those of India, except in the adoption of the lotus for decoration.[120] These are best understood by illustrations; and, therefore, I give one of the beautiful sculptured carpets from Nineveh, in the British Museum (Pl. 27), showing the Assyrian use of the lotus and cone, and the embroidered garment of a king from one of the sculptures in low relief (Plate 1). These are very stately—perfectly conventional and decorative; and we feel that they have grown where we find them, and are not borrowed from another civilization. What strikes us most, is the constant repetition and the little variety of ornament in these patterns. The forms are strongly marked—wheels or whorls, or daisies, often repeated. (The daisy belongs to Assyria as the lotus to Egypt.) The flowers are simply leafless blossoms. Splendid embroideries of sacred emblematical designs are, however, occasionally found, such as those from Layard’s “Monuments” (Plate 2).

Much has been written on the early symbolism of plants and flowers. The sun-myths have enlisted all floral legendary lore, and conventional ornament was largely drawn from them.

Many symbols are present to us when we name certain plants. The lily is the acknowledged sign of purity, the rose of love, the honeysuckle of enduring faith, the laurel of poetry, and the palm of victory; the oak of strength, the olive of peace. Some plants have accumulated more than one meaning. The vine has many attributes. It is an emblem of the mysteries of the Christian Church. It symbolizes plenty, joy, the family. Ivy means friendship, conviviality, remembrance.

The symbolism of beasts (bestiaria),[121] of birds (volucraria), and of stones (lapidaria) filled many volumes in the mediÆval ages, and are well worthy of the study of the decorative artist. The symbolism of animals and birds especially, constantly attracts our attention in the Oriental and Sicilian textiles of the early Christian times, and to the end of the thirteenth century. Later, in European textile decoration, most animals were accepted as emblematic in Christian art, beginning with the symbols of the four Evangelists. All the virtues and all the vices found their animal emblems conventionalized, and were thus woven, embroidered, and painted.[122]

Reptiles and insects are included under the head of “beasts,” and perhaps fishes also. Each was dowered with a symbolical meaning; and thus admitted into art, they were conventionalized by being strongly outlined, coloured flat; and by repetition without variation, were converted into patterns.

1, 2. Gothic Tiles. 3. Gothic Border of a Dress. 4. Gothic Vine. Westminster Abbey.

When the use of heraldic illustration was added to the already accepted symbolism, animal decoration became very common, and soon forgot its symbolical motives, which were succeeded by Renaissance fanciful patterns; and then the conventionalized beast and its symbolism disappeared from European decoration, except when it was a direct copy of an Oriental design.

Certain symbolical forms have, however, survived. The eagle has always meant empire, and the double-headed eagle, a double royalty.[123] Ezekiel represents Babylon and Egypt, symbolically, as two eagles.[124] But here we approach the subject of heraldry, which became a science in mediÆval days; and every man and woman in any way remarkable, every chivalrous action and national event, became a subject for textile art, and was woven or worked with the needle on banner, hanging, or dress. The altar decorations received a new stimulus as historical records, as well as religious symbols, and pride and piety were equally enlisted in these gifts to the Church.

Byzantine patterns have a barbaric stamp, and yet have much of the grandiose about them; but they are to the last degree conventional. In the early mosaics, both in Constantinople and Rome, every face and head, every flower and animal, represents a type and not an individual.

Fig. 13.
Gothic Trees, from Bayeux tapestry.

Gothic foliage patterns, in England and elsewhere, are a struggle between the naturalistic and the conventional. The Norman style and the Romanesque, which preceded it, and from which it was modified and elevated, show their vegetable forms thick-stemmed and few-leaved, whereas the Gothic aspired to a developed gracefulness; and the Renaissance, which succeeded it, assumed all the freedom of natural flowers and plants, floating in the breeze, on their delicate stems. (Pl. 28.)

All the Renaissance patterns, which, as their name denotes, were born again, like butterflies to frolic for a day of gay enjoyment, are purely decorative. Their generally charming, graceful forms group together to cover empty spaces with every regard to the rules of design and composition, but without any inner meaning. If we take these arabesques to pieces, we generally find the parts come from various sources; and having served last in pagan Rome for pagan purposes, had been slightly refashioned for Christian decorative art,[125] before the Byzantine inartistic taste, and barbaric splendour of metal-work patterns, had extinguished all the gay fancy of the arts of Southern Europe.

The mediÆval revival was a return to the light and fantastic, and a protest against the solemnity of all Gothic art, which had had its great day, had culminated, and died out. The patterns of the Renaissance are all guided by the principles of repetition and duplication, or that of doubling the pattern, which repeats itself to right and left, as if folded down the middle.

The principal lines thus echoed one another; but the artist was permitted to vary the conventionalism of the general forms of figures, flowers, fruit, or butterflies, so as to balance and yet differ in every detail.

Cloud Patterns.

1, 2, 3, 7. Japanese. 4. Chinese. 5, 8, 9. MediÆval. 6. Badge of Richard II.

Indo-Chinese Coverlet, supposed to have belonged to Oliver Cromwell. Hatfield House.

Amongst the conventional patterns which have descended to us, and are in general use without any particular symbolical meaning being attached to them, we must instance those derived from the Cloud pattern. This is to be found in early Chinese and Indian art, but I do not recognize it in Egyptian or Greek decoration. It came through Byzantium, and took its place amongst early Christian patterns. (Pl. 29.)

The Fundata or Netted Pattern.

Portion of a Phoenician Bowl from Cyprus.
Egyptian.Egyptian.Egyptian.

The cloud pattern is also Japanese, and is supposed to have been originally derived from Central Asia. It varies in shape, and is found as an ornament on the head of the sceptre in the collection at Nara, in Japan, which is twelve or thirteen hundred years old. There is an example of the cloud pattern in Aelfled’s embroidery at Durham; and it is often found under the feet of saints in painted glass and embroideries before the fourteenth century. A curious Indian example exists in a coverlet belonging to the Marquis of Salisbury, said to have been the property of Oliver Cromwell, on which the central medallion is filled with white horses careering amidst the cloud pattern.[126] (Pl. 30.)

The netted pattern called Fundata is extremely ancient. We find it in Egyptian mural paintings, as well as in the centre of a Phoenician bowl from Cyprus, now in the Louvre. The mediÆval Fundata was a silk material, covered with what appeared to be a gold network covering the stuff. It is supposed to be the same as that worn by Constantine,[127] and is named in ecclesiastical inventories as late as the fifteenth century. (Pl. 31.) All the wheel patterns are very ancient, and appear to be simply conventional wheels. In France they were called roÉs. There is a fine instance of this wheel pattern in Auberville’s “Tissus.” The wheels sometime enclose triumphal cars and other pictorial subjects. (Pl. 34.)

The patterns which are apparently composed with the intention of avoiding all meaning, are the Moorish. They are neither animal, vegetable, nor anything else. They show no motive in their complicated domes, their honeycombing, and their ingenious conventional forms; but cover equally textile fabrics or stucco ceilings without suggesting any idea, religious or symbolical.

All the splendid Italian brocades and velvet damasks were of conventional patterns, and like their Arab and Sicilian models, and also like their Spanish contemporaries, represented, and sought to represent nothing on earth. It was all floreated and meandering design; the motive reminding one of the pine-apple and the acanthus, or of vine stems meeting or parting, but never anything naturalistic for a moment. When animals were introduced it was always as a pattern doubled face to face, as if folded down a straight line.

We may say the same of the succeeding Louis Quatorze and the Louis Quinze styles, which were of the culminating period of clever and fantastic conventional decoration.

Our modern designs have phases of imitation, and the patterns of rich brocades which our great-grandmothers wore, came into fashion again about the third decade of this century. Now we have been trying to find our inspirations further back, and some of our copies of the simpler Sicilian patterns, with an occasional pair of birds, or a conventional plant, imitating the motive of the tree of life, have been very pretty. The only defect is the poverty which results from the absence of any active and informing motive. It is, however, easier to criticize than to create.

I would venture here to find fault with a very common method of converting a natural object into a conventional pattern, by radiation. Certain modes of repetition are very objectionable. A pattern, for instance, repeated four times round a centre, or a natural flower repeated exactly, but lying north, south, east, and west, are more or less inartistic, we may say vulgar. (Fig. 14.)

A natural flower may be conventionalized and radiated by placing it in the centre of the composition facing you; and the leaves arranged surrounding it, so as to formalize the design, though there is nothing really unnatural in the way in which they are made to grow. The illustration of a radiated sunflower explains my meaning.

It has been already observed that by repetition almost any object may be reduced to a pattern, but taste must be exercised in the selection of what is appropriate and beautiful. Radiation is also really a useful factor in conventional art, but common sense must guide the artist here as well as taste. In radiating the forms of a flower, nature gives endless hints of beauty; but a radiating pattern of human figures would be ridiculous, and even the branches of a tree cannot be so treated.

The awning of the classic hypÆthral hall or court was often reproduced in Roman arabesques. Sometimes we find it in a classical tomb, painted over the ceiling, and recalling its original use. This was revived in the Cinque-cento Renaissance; and again in Adams’ “Eighteenth Century Decorations,” it became an accepted pattern, called “the shell,” losing its original motive, and descending to fill up the panels of tea-caddies and surround keyholes. When thus reduced to the appearance of a little ruff, it needs some thought to recognize it, and give it credit for its first motive.

It is amusing to find how a form which it seems impossible to reduce to a pattern, will yet fall into one by a judicious arrangement of light and shadow, and by repetition. There is a little frieze in one of the Indian cases on the staircase in the British Museum, which is extremely pretty and effective. It consists of a repetition of little balconies with recesses and pillars and figures in pairs. I give it as illustrating the way conventional patterns grow. This balcony pattern is of the sixth century, A.D.

The ancient palmated pattern called Chrysoclavus, from the beginning of our era to the thirteenth century was partly a nail-headed design, and had become a Christian symbol. It was, probably, originally the primitive spot pattern; afterwards promoted to being an ornament of discs in colour or metal: this was Assyrian, Etruscan, and MycenÆan.[128] (Pl. 70.)

Among the conventional patterns which have apparently no hidden meaning, but which clearly show their descent, are the Chinese and Japanese wicker and lattice-work designs. The beauty of these is wonderful.

Semper shows that wicker (including bamboo work) was the foundation of all Chinese civilized life, for constructing houses, bridges, utensils, and for decoration. He gives this wicker-work origin to the universal key pattern, which may, however, have a double source—the wave, and the wicker-work.

We find the Key pattern in a tomb at Essiout, in Egypt, painted perhaps about 1600 B.C., in company with some other very old friends,[129] the Tuscan border, the Egg and Tongue, and the Bead, the Daisy, and the Wave. (Pl. 17, No. 2.) We meet it everywhere in ancient and modern decoration. There are several forms of it on a large terra-cotta vase in the British Museum from Kameiros in Rhodes, and on Chinese fictiles and embroideries. It is found also on garments in Iceland, whither the Greek patterns must have drifted through Norway, and, as they could go no further, there they remained.

I have often spoken of the extraordinary survival of a pattern. This is easy to account for when fashion, “the disturber,” had not yet existed. Then the ancient motive told its own tale, and its great age was its claim to perpetual youth; but it is more remarkable where we meet with revivals at distant periods, and apparently without any connecting link of ancestry or style.

For instance, the women of Genoa wore large cotton veils, printed with the Indian conventional tree and beast pattern, down to thirty years ago, when the fashion changed, and winter bonnets and summer muslin veils displaced the old costume. These patterns are now being printed in England on scores of cotton curtains for beds and windows.

GEOMETRICAL.

Geometrical patterns may be reduced to a very few primitive elements.

Fig. 18.
Varied adjustments of Square and Circle.

1. The Line, including straight and wavy lines.

2. The Angular Forms, including squares, oblongs, cubes, &c. 3. The Triangular, including zigzags, diamonds, &c.

4. The Circular, including all spots, discs, and radiations.

All these can be blended or mixed so as to form endless varieties. For instance, the square and the circle can intersect each other in different proportions, so as to give an entirely new effect to the pattern, each time the balance is altered or the phase of the repetition varied. The illustration will explain this. (Fig. 18.)

Right angles may intersect each other so as to produce the whole gamut of Chinese lattice-work decoration, and all the Celtic and Scandinavian entwined patterns, from which so many of the embroideries in the Italian pictures of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are probably descended.

The Moorish patterns are geometrical, and are created on the principle of avoiding in art the representation of any created thing. They show much ingenuity in keeping clear of any possible meaning. Most of these conventional patterns are founded on the ogee-arch and a kind of honeycomb pattern, involved and inverted. Their tiles, which nearest approach textile design, have, indeed, certain vegetable forms added to the others, but always geometrically arranged as no vegetables ever grew.

Geometrical patterns begin with primitive forms, and come down to the floor-cloth designs of to-day. They can be extracted in endless variety from the combinations of the kaleidoscope. This style is well suited for pavements in mosaic—either secular or ecclesiastical.

The Opus Alexandrinum furnishes us with most beautiful examples and adaptations for large or small spaces, so as to form the richest or the simplest floor decorations. How worthily a church may be thus adorned may be seen on the vast area of the floor of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, or that of the Church of St. Mark in Venice.

The nearest approach to the Opus Alexandrinum in textiles has been in Patchwork, of which a more artistic use may yet be made. We might exercise ingenuity in this direction, giving really fine and effective designs to our workers in patches, whose productions are, in general, simply alarming.

The fine quilting patterns of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are almost always geometrical, and make the best background to more resplendent embroideries overlying them, which is partly owing to their being only forms, and conveying no idea or inherited meaning. These expressionless designs are well fitted for spaces and borders in which the centres are elaborated, and require enclosing or framing; likewise, they are suited for large areas, which must not be perfectly plain, and yet not too disturbing to the eye, so as to distract it from the more important ornaments on the wall or ceiling. They suit carpets in passages or on staircases much better than any other kind of design, and form the best figured backgrounds for pictures. Both eye and mind often need repose, and therefore the simpler the geometrical pattern is, the better. Complicated and too ingenious combinations are painfully fatiguing. Simplicity and flatness are the greatest merits in such forms, as in shadowless patterns for textiles, and especially for embroideries.

If we turn to nature to assist us with new geometrical patterns, we shall find the most exquisite forms in the crystals of every newly-fallen snowflake, and in the nodal-points on a plate of metal or glass, covered with sand, and struck by sound. We shall hardly ever find in these a repetition of exactly the same combination, and their variety is only equalled by their beauty.