The birth of the embellishing art must be sought in that stage of animal development when instinct began to discover that certain attributes or adornments increased attractiveness. When art in its human sense came into existence ideas of embellishment soon extended from the person, with, which they had been associated, to all things with which man had to deal. The processes of the growth of the Æsthetic idea are long and obscure and cannot be taken up in this place.

The various elements of embellishment in which the ceramic art is interested may be assigned to two great classes, based upon the character of the conceptions associated with them. These are ideographic and non-ideographic. In the present paper I shall treat chiefly of the non ideographic, reserving the ideographic for a second paper.

Elements, non-ideographic from the start, are derived mainly from two sources: 1st, from objects, natural or artificial, associated with the arts; and, 2d, from the suggestions of accidents attending construction. Natural objects abound in features highly suggestive of embellishment and these are constantly employed in art. Artificial objects have two classes of features capable of giving rise to ornament: these are constructional and functional. In a late stage of development all things in nature and in art, however complex or foreign to the art in its practice, are subject to decorative treatment. This latter is the realistic pictorial stage, one of which the student of native American culture needs to take little cognizance.

Elements of design are not invented outright: man modifies, combines, and recombines elements or ideas already in existence, but does not create.

A classification of the sources of decorative motives employed in the ceramic art is given in the following diagram:

SUGGESTIONS OF NATURAL FEATURES OF OBJECTS.

The first articles used by men in their simple arts have in many cases possessed features suggestive of decoration. Shells of mollusks are exquisitely embellished with ribs, spines, nodes, and colors. The same is true to a somewhat limited extent of the shells of the turtle and the armadillo and of the hard cases of fruits.

These decorative features, though not essential to the utensil, are nevertheless inseparable parts of it, and are cast or unconsciously copied by a very primitive people when similar articles are artificially produced in plastic material. In this way a utensil may acquire ornamental characters long before the workman has learned to take pleasure in such details or has conceived an idea beyond that of simple utility. This may be called unconscious embellishment. In this fortuitous fashion a ribbed variety of fruit shell would give rise to a ribbed vessel in clay; one covered with spines would suggest a noded vessel, etc. When taste came to be exercised upon such objects these features would be retained and copied for the pleasure they afforded.

Passing by the many simple elements of decoration that by this unconscious process could be derived from such sources, let me give a single example by which it will be seen that not only elementary forms but even so highly constituted an ornament as the scroll may have been brought thus naturally into the realm of decorative art. The sea-shell has always been intimately associated with the arts that utilize clay and abounds in suggestions of embellishment. The Busycon was almost universally employed as a vessel by the tribes of the Atlantic drainage of North America. Usually it was trimmed down and excavated until only about three-fourths of the outer wall of the shell remained. At one end was the long spike-like base which served as a handle, and at the other the flat conical apex, with its very pronounced spiral line or ridge expanding from the center to the circumference, as seen in Fig. 475 a. This vessel was often copied in clay, as many good examples now in our museums testify. The notable feature is that the shell has been copied literally, the spiral appearing in its proper place. A specimen is illustrated in Fig. 475 b which, although simple and highly conventionalized, still retains the spiral figure.

In another example we have four of the noded apexes placed about the rim of the vessel, as shown in Fig. 476a, the conception being that of four conch shells united in one vessel, the bases being turned inward and the apexes outward. Now it is only necessary to suppose the addition of the spiral lines, always associated with the nodes, to have the result shown in b, and by a still higher degree of convention we have the classic scroll ornament given in c. Of course, no such result as this could come about adventitiously, as successful combination calls for the exercise of judgment and taste; but the initiatory steps could be taken—the motive could enter art—without the conscious supervision of the human agent.

SUGGESTIONS BY FEATURES OF ARTIFICIAL OBJECTS.

Functional features.—Functional features of art products liable to influence ornament comprise handles, legs, feet, rims, bands, and other peculiarities of shape originating in utility. Handles, for instance, may have been indigenous to a number of arts; they are coeval and coextensive with culture. The first load, weapon, or vessel transported by man may have been suspended by a vine or filament. Such arts as have fallen heir to handles have used them according to the capacities of the material employed. Of all the materials stone is probably the least suited to their successful use, while clay utilizes them in its own peculiar way, giving to them a great variety of expression. They are copied in clay from various models, but owing to the inadequate capacities of the material, often lose their function and degenerate into mere ornaments, which are modified as such to please the potter's fancy. Thus, for example, the series of handles placed about the neck of the vessel become, by modification in frequent copying, a mere band of ornamental figures in relief, or even finally in engraved, punctured, or painted lines, in the manner suggested in Fig. 477. Legs, pedestals, spouts, and other features may in a like manner give rise to decoration.

Fig. 478.—Scroll derived from coil of clay.