Needlework As Art Part 9

[82] "Art in Ornament and Dress," by M. Charles Blanc, formerly Director of the French Inst.i.tute. Eng. Trans., Chapman and Hall, London.

[83] See Charles Blanc's "Art in Ornament and Dress," p.

31.

[84] Charles Blanc's "Art in Ornament and Dress," p. 43.

[85] Charles Blanc's "Art in Ornament and Dress," pp.

43, 45, 46.

[86] Chinese design shows naturalistic art arrested and perpetuated on totally different principles. Their representations are all equally allied to their art of picture-painting, whether on china with the brush, or on textiles with the needle. The flatness of the picture is still preserved by their ignorance of perspective. When they attempted to express different distances, they did so by placing them one above another, so that in reading the composition the eye first takes in the distant horizon; next below it, the middle distance; and being thus prepared, it comes down to the actual living foreground, on which rests the dramatic action and interest addressed to the spectator. The Chinese understood many of the secrets of art, yet never achieved perspective.

[87] See Mr. Penrose's work on the measurements of the Parthenon at Athens. Published by the Society of the Dilettanti.

[88] Marked outlines in embroidery add to the flatness, and enable us to omit cast shadows. In this it differs entirely from pictorial art, where one of the great objects is to avoid flatness.

[89] Semper's theory, already mentioned, is that textile design was certainly flat; that it was the first form of decoration, and was followed by bas-relief, which could not at once rid itself of the original motive.

[90] Auberville's "Ornamentation des Tissus" (eleventh century).

[91] Redgrave's "Manual of Design," pp. 43-45.

[92] This idolatrous type was introduced into England by the Buccaneers, and reflected on our carvings and embroideries of the time of James I., slightly modified by the Italian Renaissance of that period. As this sort of vulgar ornamentation has once prevailed, let us protect ourselves against its possible recurrence.

[93] While making this pa.s.sing allusion to the theory that the origin of all Gothic decoration is mainly founded on the motive of interlacing stems and foliage, I wish to guard myself against being supposed in any way to argue against other beginnings, whenever they can be proved. I have said before that most decorations have a mixed ancestry. But when I see single or cl.u.s.tered columns starting from the ground--spreading at the base like the gnarled root, and growing till they culminate in crowns of foliage, forming symmetrical capitals, like the first cl.u.s.ters of leaves on a strong young sapling--then the branches spreading and interlacing, only checked at equal intervals by a lovely leaf or burgeon, till they meet in blossoms on the highest point of the arch,--I cannot but adhere to the old idea that rows of trees meeting overhead suggested Gothic ornament as well as Gothic Architecture. The Spanish or Moresque Gothic was overloaded with leaves and flowers, and the German Gothic was enriched with fantastic trees and flowers, each according to its national taste and fashion. A Gothic tree is a very conventional plant; and generally carries only one leaf on each branch. I have given a specimen of archaic trees from the Bayeux tapestry. They are typical of the Gothic botanical idea and style down to the fourteenth century. (Fig. 13.)

Nor is this interpretation of Gothic design other than a result of its descent from the Egyptian ancestral motive, where the temple columns represented the single stem of the lotus with one large blossom for its capital, or else a bundle of stems of the lotus, palm, and convolvulus flowering together into a beautiful cl.u.s.ter. Even the gigantic columns of the great hypaethral hall at Karnac are only a stupendous exaggeration of the same stalk and flower motive. From these were derived the forms of the early Greek column--soon enriched by subst.i.tuting the Acanthus for the Lotus, but often retaining the convolvulus.

[94] 1 Kings x.; Ezek. xxvii. 10, 11. See Stanley's "Lectures on the Jewish Church."

[95] Layard's "Nineveh and its Remains," vol. ii. p.

388; Rawlinson's "Ancient Monarchies," vol. ii. p. 2.

CHAPTER III.

PATTERNS.

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

It is argued by some archaeologists 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 a.s.syrian, 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 Plateresque, 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," "peac.o.c.k's neck," &c.[96]

Patterns must be cla.s.sed 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 circ.u.mstances 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 cla.s.sical 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 repet.i.tion of certain (to us) inexpressive forms, which by reiteration a.s.sume importance and in some degree express beauty--the beauty of what Monsieur Blanc calls "cadence."

After these first unintelligible forms, which simply by repet.i.tion 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.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pl. 10.

WAVE PATTERNS.

1, 4, 9, 12, 13. Greek Wave Patterns. 2. Key or Maeander, Greek Wave. 3. Greek Broken Wave. 5, 6, 7. Egyptian Smooth and Rippling Water Patterns. 8. Mediaeval Wave. 10, 11, 14.

a.s.syrian. 15. Persian or Greek (from Gla.s.s 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 cla.s.sical 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 a.s.sist us to trace it back to a prehistoric style, though it may lead us into prehistoric times.

NATURALISTIC.