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Read Ebook: Origin and Development of Form and Ornament in Ceramic Art. Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution 1882-1883 Government Printing Office Washington 1886 pages 437-466. by Holmes William Henry
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Ebook has 71 lines and 13132 words, and 2 pages
+SUGGESTIONS BY FEATURES OF ARTIFICIAL OBJECTS.+
In the higher stages of art the constructional characters of architecture give rise to many notions of decoration which afterwards descend to other arts, taking greatly divergent forms. Aboriginal architecture in some parts of America had reached a development capable of wielding a strong influence. This is not true, however, of any part of the United States.
+SUGGESTIONS OF ACCIDENTS.+
Besides the suggestions of surface features impressed in manufacture or intentionally copied as indicated above, we have also those of accidental imprints of implements or of the fingers in manufacture. From this source there are necessarily many suggestions of ornament, at first of indented figures, but later, after long employment, extending to the other modes of representation.
+IDEOGRAPHIC AND PICTORIAL SUBJECTS.+
Non-ideographic forms of ornament may originate in ideographic features, mnemonic, demonstrative, or symbolic. Such significant figures are borrowed by decorators from other branches of art. As time goes on they lose their significance and are subsequently treated as purely decorative elements. Subjects wholly pictorial in character, when such come to be made, may also be used as simple decoration, and by long processes of convention become geometric.
The exact amount of significance still attached to significant figures after adoption into decoration cannot be determined except in cases of actual identification by living peoples, and even when the signification is known by the more learned individuals the decorator may be wholly without knowledge of it.
MODIFICATION OF ORNAMENT.
There are comparatively few elementary ideas prominently and generally employed in primitive decorative art. New ideas are acquired, as already shown, all along the pathway of progress. None of these ideas retain a uniform expression, however, as they are subject to modification by environment just as are the forms of living organisms. A brief classification of the causes of modification is given in the following synopsis:
Peoples dwelling in arctic climates are limited, by their materials, to particular modes of expression. Bone and ivory as shaped for use in the arts of subsistence afford facilities for the employment of a very restricted class of linear decoration, such chiefly as could be scratched with a hard point upon small irregular, often cylindrical, implements. Skins and other animal tissues are not favorable to the development of ornament, and the textile arts--the greatest agents of convention--do not readily find suitable materials in which to work.
Decorative art carried to a high stage under arctic environment would be more likely to achieve unconventional and realistic forms than if developed in more highly favored countries. The accurate geometric and linear patterns would hardly arise.
In applying a given idea to clay much depends upon the method of executing it. It will take widely differing forms when executed by incising, by modeling, by painting, and by stamping.
Intimately associated with methods of execution are peculiarities of construction, the two agencies working together in the processes of modification and development of ornament.
It may be thought by some that the processes of development indicated above are insufficient and unsatisfactory. There are those who, seeing these forms already endowed with symbolism, begin at what I conceive to be the wrong end of the process. They derive the form of symbol directly from the thing symbolized. Thus the current scroll is, with many races, found to be a symbol of water, and its origin is attributed to a literal rendition of the sweep and curl of the waves. It is more probable that the scroll became the symbol of the sea long after its development through agencies similar to those described above, and that the association resulted from the observation of incidental resemblances. This same figure, in use by the Indians of the interior of the continent, is regarded as symbolic of the whirlwind, and it is probable that any symbol-using people will find in the features and phenomena of their environment, whatever it may be, sufficient resemblance to any of their decorative devices to lead to a symbolic association.
Many excellent examples illustrative of this tendency to modification are found in Pueblo art. Much of the ornament applied to pottery is derived from the sister art, basketry. In the latter art the forms of decorative figures are geometric and symmetrical to the highest degree, as I have frequently pointed out. The rays of a radiating ornament, worked with the texture of a shallow basket, spring from the center and take uniform directions toward the margin, as shown in Fig. 485. But when a similar idea derived from basketry is executed in color upon an earthen vessel, we observe a tendency to depart from symmetry as well as from consistency. I call attention here to the arrangement of the parts merely, not to the motives employed, as I happen to have no examples of identical figures from the two arts.
It will be seen by reference to the design given in Fig. 486, taken from the upper surface of an ancient vase, that although the spirit of the decoration is wonderfully well preserved the idea of the origin of all the rays in the center of the vessel is not kept in view, and that by carelessness in the drawing two of the rays are crowded out and terminate against the side of a neighboring ray. In copying and recopying by free-hand methods, many curious modifications take place in these designs, as, for example, the unconformity which occurs in one place in the example given may occur at a number of places, and there will be a series of independent sections, a small number only of the bands of devices remaining true rays.
A characteristic painted design from the interior of an ancient bowl is shown in Fig. 487, in which merely a suggestion of the radiation is preserved, although the figure is still decorative and tasteful. This process of modification goes on without end, and as the true geometric textile forms recede from view innovation robs the design of all traces of its original character, producing much that is incongruous and unsatisfactory.
The growth of decorative devices from the elementary to the highly constituted and elegant is owing to a tendency of the human mind to elaborate because it is pleasant to do so or because pleasure is taken in the result, but there is still a directing and shaping agency to be accounted for.
Taking the first series, we observe that the ornaments are projected in straight continuous lines or zones, which are filled in with more or less complex parts, rectilinear and geometrically accurate. Still higher forms are marvelously intricate and graceful, yet not less geometric and symmetrical.
Let us turn to the primitive artisan, and observe him at work with rude brush and stylus upon the rounded and irregular forms of his utensils and weapons, or upon skins, bark, and rock surfaces. Is it probable that with his free hand directed by the eye alone he will be able to achieve these rythmic geometric forms. It seems to me that the whole tendency is in the opposite direction. I venture to surmise that if there had been no other resources than those named above the typical rectilinear fret would never have been known, at least to the primitive world; for, notwithstanding the contrary statement by Professor Hartt, the fret is in its more highly-developed forms extremely difficult to follow with the eye and to delineate with the hand. Until arts, geometric in their construction, arose to create and to combine mechanically the necessary elements and motives, and lead the way by a long series of object-lessons to ideas of geometric combination, our typical border ornament would not be possible. Such arts are the textile arts and architecture. These brought into existence forms and ideas not met with in nature and not primarily thought of by man, and combined them in defiance of human, conceptions of grace. Geometric ornament is the offspring of technique.
Acquisition of new material modifies form in pottery 451 Adventition, a source of form 445, 450 America as a field for study of art 443 Basketry copied in pottery 449 Busycon shell copied as a vessel, The 454 California, Pottery from 447 Ceramic art, Origin and development of form and ornament in, W.H. Holmes 437-465 form discussed 444 ornament discussed 444 Coils suggesting spiral ornament 456 Decorative motive in pottery, Sources of 453 European civilization checked aboriginal American art 443 Fancy modifying form in pottery 452 Fictile art related to written language 443 Form modifies ornament in pottery 458 of pottery modified by certain influences 450-452 Hartt, Prof. C.F., on form of designs as influenced by structure of the eye 463-464 Ideographic elements of decoration 453 Imitation, A source of form 445 Improvements in modes of manufacture modify forms in pottery 450 Intention a modifier of form in pottery 452 Modification of ornaments in pottery 458 Non-ideographic elements of decoration 453 Origin and development of form and ornament in ceramic art 437-465 Origin of ornament in pottery 453 Ornament in pottery, Origin of 453-457 Ornamental elements modified by invention 453 Pottery from California 447 Tusayan 451 Utah 449 Scroll, Possible origin of the 459 Shells copied in pottery 447 Skin vessels copied in pottery 447 Sources of decorative motive in ceramic art 453 Spiral ornament from coils 456 Stone vessels copied in pottery 447 Symbols adopted rather than invented 460 Utility modifies form in pottery 452 Wooden vessels copied in pottery 447, 451 Written language as related to fictile art 443
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