Needlework As Art Part 11

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 cla.s.sed 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 s.p.a.ces 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. Repet.i.tion 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 repet.i.tion. 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).

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pl. 19.

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 repet.i.tion 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 Maeander,[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 repet.i.tion of the Tau, or key of life.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 10.]

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 daedal 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pl. 20.

TREES OF LIFE.

1, 2, 3, 5. a.s.syrian. 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 Phnician 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 vitae_.

The palm, with its wonderful fruit, which is convertible into intoxicating drinks, and afterwards the vine itself, were each of them moulded into a.n.a.logous conventional fruit forms, which keep as much as possible within the limits of the original cone shape. (Pl. 21.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pl. 21.

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pl. 22.

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 Gla.s.s 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 cla.s.sical art was drawn from the pine cone and the artichoke; and in mediaeval 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pl. 23.

Different forms of Tree of Life, from Sicilian Silks.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pl. 24.

Modern Embroidery from the Princ.i.p.alities, 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 a.s.syrian 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 gla.s.s 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, p.r.o.nounced 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 ident.i.ty. 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pl. 25.

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 ill.u.s.trates; 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 enn.o.bled by the deeds of their descendants.