their inborn genius, which thenceforth radiated its
    splendour over the whole civilized world.

    [55] Homer's Iliad, xviii. 480-617 (Butcher and Lang).

    [56] See "Woltmann and Woermann." Trans. Sidney Colvin,
    p. 64.

    [57] Except, perhaps, the keystone arch.

    [58] Virg. Æneid iii. Trans. G.L.G.

    [59] The Indian Cush.

    [60] Except in the art of the Celts, whose Indo-Chinese
    style shows evidence of Mongolian importation, and later
    we find traces of a similar influence: for instance,
    "Yarkand rugs are semi-Chinese, semi-Tartar, resembling
    also the works of India and Persia. It is easy to
    distinguish from what source each comes, as one
    perceives the influence of the neighbouring native art"
    ("On Japan," by Dresser, p. 322).

    [61] See a paper by M. Terrien de la Couperie in the
    Journal of the Society of Arts, 1881.

    [62] "Rome had to be overthrown that the new religion
    and the new civilization might be established.
    Christianity did its work in winning to it those
    Teutonic conquerors, but how vast was the cost to the
    world, occasioned by the necessity of casting into the
    boiling cauldron of barbarous warfare, that noble
    civilization and the treasures which Rome had gathered
    in the spoil of a conquered universe! Had any old Roman,
    or Christian father been gifted with Jeremiah's
    prescience, he might have seen the fire blazing amidst
    the forests of Germany, and the cauldron settling down
    with its mouth turned towards the south, and would have
    uttered his lamentation in plaintive tones, such as
    Jeremiah's, and in the same melancholy key" ("Holy
    Bible," with Commentary by Canon Cook, Introduction to
    Jeremiah, vol. i. p. 319).

    [63] Scandinavian art became strongly tinctured with
    that of Byzantium. The Varangian Guards were, probably,
    answerable for this, by their intercourse between Greece
    and their native land, which lasted so many centuries.
    There have come down to us, as witnesses of this
    intercourse, many coins and much jewellery, in which all
    that is Oriental in its style has been leavened by its
    passage through Byzantine and Romanesque channels.
    Gibbon, writing of this period, says: "The habits of
    pilgrimage and piracy had approximated the countries of
    the earth" (see Gibbon's "Decline and Fall," chap. lv.).

    Greek embroidered patterns and Greek forms of dress
    still linger in Iceland. There was lately brought to
    England a bride's dress, which might have belonged to
    the Greek wife of a Varangian guardsman. It is
    embroidered with a border in gold of the classical
    honeysuckle pattern; and the bridal wreath of gilt metal
    flowers might, from its style, be supposed to have been
    taken from a Greek tomb.

    [64] Evidently an imitation of the peplos of Minerva
    (see fig. 4, p. 32).

    [65] The descent from the Persian of Arab or Moorish
    art, as we generally call it when speaking of its
    Spanish development, is to be accounted for by the
    presence of a considerable colony of Persians in Spain
    in the time of the Moors, as attested by numerous
    documents still in existence. See Col. Murdoch Smith's
    "Preface to Persian Art," Series of Art Handbooks of the
    Kensington Museum.

    [66] Ronsard, poet, politician, and diplomatist,
    compares the Queen of Navarre to Pallas Athene:--

        "Elle adonnait son courage
        A mainte bel ouvrage
        Dessus la toile, et encor
        A joindre la soie et l'or.
        Vous d'un pareil exercise
        Mariez par artifice
        Dessus la toile en mainte traits
        L'or et la soie en pourtraict."

    [67] Mary de Medici brought back with her from Italy
    Federigo Vinciolo as her designer for embroideries.

    [68] See "Art Needlework," by E. Maxse, and "Manuel de
    la Broderie," by Madame E. F. Celnart.

    [69] From the Italian translation by Signor Minghetti.

    [70] Gaston, Duke of Orleans (died 1660), kept hothouses
    on purpose to supply models for floral textile designs.
    Le Brun often drew the embroideries for the hangings in
    rooms he had himself designed and decorated.

    [71] We have all seen the dining-room wine-coolers
    modelled in imitation of Roman tombs; and there is a
    drawing-room in a splendid mansion still furnished with
    cinerary urns covering the walls, while curule chairs
    most uncomfortably furnish the seats.

    [72] In his designs for papers and textiles, Mr. Morris'
    poetical and artistic feeling--his admiration and
    sensitiveness for all that is beautiful and graceful (as
    well as quaint)--his respect for precedent, added to his
    own fanciful originality,--have given a colour and seal
    to the whole decorative art of England of to-day. It is
    a step towards a new school. The sobriety and tenderness
    of his colouring gives a sense of harmony, and
    reconciles us to his repetitions of large vegetable
    forms, which remind us sometimes of a kitchen-garden in
    a tornado. For domestic decoration we should, as far as
    possible, adhere to reposing forms and colours. Our
    flowers should lie in their allotted spaces, quiet and
    undisturbed by elemental struggles, which have no
    business in our windowed and glass-protected rooms.

CHAPTER II.

DESIGN.

    _Gorgo._ Behold these 'broideries! Finer saw you never.

    _Praxinoè._ Ye gods! What artists work'd these pictures in?
    What kind of painter could these clear lines limn?
    How true they stand! nay, lifelike, moving ever;
    Not worked--_created!_ Woman, thou art clever!

      (Scene at a Festival) _Theocritus_, Idyll xv. line 78.

The word design, as applied to needlework, includes the principles and
laws of the art: the motives and their hereditary outcome; the art
creating the principles; the laws controlling the art.

Design means intention, motive, and should as such be applied to the
smallest as to the greatest efforts of art. That which results from
it, either as picture or pattern, is a record of the thoughts which
produced it, and by its style fixes the date, of its production.

I will first consider the principles of design, and afterwards, in
another chapter, inquire into the origin of patterns; investigating
their motives, and using them as examples, and also as warnings.

The individual genius of the artist works first in design, though his
work is for the use of the craftsman or artisan, his collaborator; for
the two, head and hands, must work together, or else will render each
other inoperative or ineffective.

The artisan, by right of his title, claims a part in the art itself;
the craftsman, by his name, points out that he, too, has to work out
the craft, the mystery, the inner meaning, of the design or intention.

The designer himself is subject to the prejudices called the taste of
his day. He is necessarily under the influence which that taste has
imposed upon him, and from which no spontaneous efforts of genius can
entirely emancipate him. Whether he is conceiving a temple for the
worship of a national faith, or the edging for the robe of a fair
votaress, or the pattern on the border of a cup of gold or brass, he
cannot avoid the force of tradition and of custom, which comes from
afar, weighted with the power of long descent, and which crushes
individuality, unless it is of the most robust nature.

Of very early design we have most curious and mysterious glimpses. The
cave man was an artist. The few scratches on a bone, cleverly showing
the forms of a dog or a stag, a whale or a seal, nay, the figure of a
man, have enabled us to ascertain and to classify the Palæolithic cave
man; from whom his less civilized successor, the Neolithic man, may be
distinguished by his absence of all animal design.[73]

These fragmentary scraps of information, pieced together only in these
later years, teach us the value of very small facts which time and
care are now accumulating, and which, being the remains of lives and
nations passed away, still serve as the soil in which history can be
fertilized.

We have no means of judging whether the cave man was an artist on a
greater or more advanced scale than is actually shown by the
bone-scratchings; the only other relic of his handiwork is the
needle.[74]

It is evident that a direct imitation of nature, such as is seen in
these "graffiti," and at an immense distance in advance of them, in
the earliest known Egyptian sculptures, preceded all conventional art.
Some of the earliest portrait statues in the Museum at Boulac exhibit
a high degree of naturalistic design before it became subservient to
the expression of the faith of the people. As soon as art was found to
be the fittest conveyance of symbolism, it became the consecrated
medium for transmitting language, thought, and history, and was
reduced to forms in which it was contented to remain petrified for
many centuries, entirely foregoing the study or imitation of
nature.[75] It recorded customs, historical events, and religious
beliefs; receiving from the last the impress of the unchangeable and
the absolute, which it gave to the other subjects on which it touched.
It ceased to be a creative art (if it had ever aspired to such a
function), and was never the embodiment of individual thought. This
phase prevailed under different manifestations in Assyria and China.
Pictorial art had, in fact, become merely the nursing mother of the
alphabet, guiding its first steps--the hieroglyphic delineation or
expression of thoughts and facts.[76]

In Egypt, the change from the first period of actual imitation of
nature was succeeded by many centuries of the very slowest progress.
Renouf speaks,[77] however, of "the astonishing identity that is
visible through all the periods of Egyptian art" (for you could never
mistake anything Egyptian for the produce of any other country). "This
identity and slow movement," he says, "are not inconsistent with an
immense amount of change, which must exist if there is any real life."
In fact, there were periods of relative progress, repose, and decay,
and every age had its peculiar character. Birch, Lepsius, or Marriette
could at once tell you the age of a statue, inscription, or
manuscript, by the characteristic signs which actually fix[78] the
date.

Design, unconsciously has a slowly altering and persistently onward
movement, which but seldom repeats itself. It is one of the most
remarkable instances of evolution. But it also has its cataclysms
(however we may account for them), of which the Greek apotheosis of
all art is a shining example, and the total disappearance of classical
influence in Europe before the Renaissance is another.

I will instance one prevailing habit of Egyptian art.[79] In the long
processional subjects, and in individual separate figures, it was
usual to draw the head in perfect profile, the body facing you, but
not completely--a sort of compromise with a three-quarter view of
it--and the feet following each other, on the same line as the
profile. This mode of representing the human figure was only effaced
gradually by the introduction of Greek art, and continued to be the
conventional and decorative method even in the latest days of Egyptian
art; and it is curious to observe, that in the Dark ages European
design fell into the same habit. We cannot imagine that this distorted
way of drawing the human figure could have any intentional meaning,
and therefore may simply believe that it had become a custom; and that
when art has so stiffened and consolidated itself by precedent and
long tradition, as in Egypt and in India, certain errors as well as
certain truths become, as it were, ingrained into it. Plato remarked
of Egyptian art, that "the pictures and statues they made ten thousand
years ago were in no particular better than those they make now."[80]

One day, however, the Greek broke away from the ancient bonds of
custom. The body was made to accompany the head, and the feet followed
suit. But the strange fact remains that for several thousand years men
walked in profile, all out of drawing. Evidently originality was not
in much estimation among the Egyptian patrons of art. Design seemed to
have restricted itself to effective adaptations in a few permitted
forms in architecture and painting, and the illumination of the
papyrus MSS.

Egyptian elasticity of design found some scope in its domestic
ornamentation, in jewellery and hangings, but especially in its
embroideries for dress. Here much ingenuity was shown, and the
patterns on walls and the ceilings of tombs give us the designs which
Semper considers as having been originally intended for textile
purposes. He strains to a point to which I can hardly follow him, the
theory that all decorations were originally textile (except such as
proceeded in China from the lattice-work motive); though I willingly
accept the idea that textile decoration was one of the first and most
active promoters of design.

It is not possible for us to trace systematically the different points
at which Egyptian and Asiatic art touch, but we can see that they were
always acting and reacting on each other in the later centuries before
our era, and that Greece profited by them. The first efforts of both
to break through this chrysalis stage, resulted in the early Greek
archaic style. Its strongly marked, muscular humanity reminds one of
all the conflicting impressions struggling in the conception of the
great artist who first embodied them. They appear to be breaking out
from the trammels of Egyptian and Assyrian styles, which by meeting
had engendered life; and Greek art was the child of their union. Then
art, having shaken off symbolism as its only purpose, and seeking to
represent the forms of men, yet possessed by a guiding spirit, first
sought to convey the idea of expression. The worship of humanity,
mingling with that of their gods, produced the Heroic ideal; and all
the attributes of their heroes--majesty, beauty, grace, and
passion--had to be depicted; as well as rage, sorrow, despair, and
revenge. These were soon to be surrounded with all the splendours of
the arts of decoration.

Greece had prepared for this outburst of excellence and the perfect
science of art, by collecting the traditions, the symbols, the
experience in colouring, and the knowledge of beautiful forms, human
and ideal. All that was needed for the advent of the man who could
design and create types of beauty for all ages was thus accumulated,
and the man came, and his name was Pheidias. A crowd followed him, all
steeped in the same flood of poetry and art; and for several
centuries they filled the world with the sense and science of beauty.
Then the function of the designer--the artist--was changed and
elevated, and he became, through the great days of Greek and Roman
Pagan art, and afterwards through the rise of that of Christianity,
the exponent of all that was poetical and ennobling in the life of
man.

But though the Greek artist had broken the chains of prescribed form,
he still adhered to the "motive"--the inner symbolical thought--and
strove to express it as it had never been expressed before.[81] New
principles were evoked, and the artist, while revelling in the
"sweetness and light" of freedom, framed for himself standards of
taste and refinement, which he left as a heritage to all succeeding
generations.

I fear that I am repeating a platitude when insisting that freedom in
all design, but especially that employed in decoration, must be kept
within certain boundaries; otherwise it becomes lawless. Rules, like
all other controlling circumstances, are of the greatest service to
the artist, as they suggest what he can do, as well as decide what he
ought not to attempt. All boundaries are highly suggestive; the size
of a sheet of paper--the form of a panel--the colours in the box of
pigments--even the touch of the brush which comes to hand,--all these
help to shape the idea to our ends, and assist us in giving to the
original motive the form which is most suitable. These restrictions
are often regarded as impediments by the impatient artist; whereas he
ought to look on them as hints and suggestions, and claim their
assistance, instead of struggling against them. Let us accept the
principle that it is good for each of our efforts at decoration that
we are controlled by the space allotted to its composition. The
relative size (small, perhaps, for a table-cover, but large for that
of a book) and the shape to which we are limited, alter all the
conditions of a design. Whether it is square or oblong, or lengthened
into a frieze; whether it must be divided into parts, including more
than one motive, or be grouped round one centre; whether it is to be
repeated more than once within the range of the eye, or whether it is
to disappear into space upwards or horizontally; and whether it is to
stand alone, or be framed with lines or a border,--all these
restrictions must govern the design, or, in its highest phase, the
composition.

The composition must consist of supporting lines well balanced, and
"values" filling up the whole surface of the space, which is to
contain it, and beyond which it must not seek to extend. As we have in
embroidery no distances--only a foreground--the design must be placed
all on one plane. The title of "composition" cannot be granted to a
bouquet or a bird cast on one corner of a square of linen, however
gracefully it may be drawn. It does not cover the space allotted to
it.

If we carefully study the great and guiding principles that have been
distinctly formulated by some of the Continental authorities on
decorative art, we shall find much help in composing our designs.
Nothing is more interesting than to search for the foundation of the
structure which centuries have helped to raise, and to dig out, as it
were, the original plan or thought of the founder. So it is most
instructive to learn the fundamental rules by which such results are
secured.

M. Blanc[82] says of the general laws of ornamentation: "There can be
no nobler satisfaction to the mind, than to be able to unravel what is
beyond measure complicated, to diminish what is apparently immense,
and to reduce to a few clear points what has been till now involved in
a haze of obscurity. Just as the twenty-six letters of the alphabet
have been, and always will be sufficient to form the expression of the
words necessary for all human thought, so certain elements susceptible
of combination among themselves have sufficed, and will suffice, to
create ornament, whose variety may be indefinitely multiplied."

He reduces ornamental design to five principles, Repetition,
Alternation, Symmetry, Progression, and Confusion.

  [Illustration: Fig. 5.
    Wave Pattern.]

First, Repetition. "You may act on the mind, through sight, by the
same means as those that will excite physical sensations. A single
prick of a pin is nothing, but a hundred such will be intolerably
painful. Repetition produces pleasurable sensations, as well as
painful ones." An insignificant form can become interesting by
repetition, and by the suggestion which, singly, it could not
originate. For example, the rolling of the Greek scroll or wave
pattern awakens in us the idea of one object following another. "It
also suggests the waves of the ocean; or the poet may see in it a
troop of maidens pursuing each other in space, not frivolously, but in
cadence, as if executing a mystic dance." Change the curves into
angular forms, as making the key pattern, and it will no longer flow,
but become as severe as the other was graceful. No principle gives
greater pleasure than repetition, and next to it, _alternation_.

  [Illustration: Fig. 6.
    Key Pattern.]

Variety is here added to the law of repetition. "There can be
repetition without alternation, but no alternation without
repetition." Alternation is, then, a succession of two objects
recurring regularly in turn; and the cadence of appearance and
disappearance gives pleasure to the senses, whether it be addressed to
taste, hearing, or sight. Alternate rhymes, and even short and long
lines, soothe the ear in verse. In form, the alternations are the more
agreeable, the more they differ. Such are, in architecture, a
succession of metopes and triglyphs on a Doric frieze, where the
circle and the straight lines relieve each other.

  [Illustration: Fig. 7.
    Metopes and Triglyphs.]

Symmetry. The correspondence of two parts opposite to each other is
symmetrical. "A living being, man or animal, is composed of two parts,
which appear to have been united down one central line. Without being
identical, if you folded them down the line, they would overlap and
perfectly cover each other. Man is born with the sense of symmetry, to
match his outward form; and he appreciates its existence, and
instinctively feels the want of it. Symmetry is another word for
justness of proportion. The Greeks understood by symmetry, the
condition of a body of which the members have a common measure among
themselves. We expect the two sides of a living being to correspond,
and we look for these proportions in the living body to balance each
other, which we do not expect to find in any other natural object. A
large leaf at the end of a slender stem may be as appropriate, and
give as much pleasure, as a small leaf in the same position; but a
huge hand at the end of an arm is not so agreeable to our sense of
symmetry as one of the size and outline which we naturally expect to
see.

"The mind of man expects to find, outside of himself and his own
proportions, something which he feels is proportionate and
symmetrical; in fact, he at once detects the want of it. The Japanese,
with delicacy and taste, often substitute for symmetry its
corollary--balance. The Chinese or Japanese vase will often have an
appreciable affinity and resemblance to a Greek one, each preserving a
secret balance, even in the extremest whimsicality of its composition.
Proportion is another corollary to symmetry, if it is not another word
for some of its qualities."

"Progression. In this principle are included long perspectives,
pyramidal forms in architecture, and certain processional
compositions."

"For pyramidal surfaces, such as pediments, a progressive ornament is
the fittest. All the buildings in the East, and in the ancient cities
of Central America, which are raised on pyramids of steps, show the
tendency to this species of effect in giving dignity to the buildings
placed on such platforms."

"Perspectives are highly attractive specimens of progression, which,
when made use of in the decorations of a theatre, produce delightful
illusions."

M. Blanc quotes Bernardin de St. Pierre, who says: "When the
branches of a plant are disposed in a uniform plan of diminishing
size, as in the pyramidal shape of a pine, there is progression; and
if these trees be planted in long avenues, diminishing in height and
colour, as each tree does in itself, our pleasure is redoubled,
because progression here becomes infinite. It is owing to this
feeling of infinity that we take pleasure in looking at anything that
presents progression, such as nurseries in different stages of
growth, the slopes of hills retreating to the horizon at different
levels--interminable perspectives."

All floral compositions which give the effect or impression of growth
may be included in the progressive principle. A composition which,
beginning as it were with a stem, spreads and floreates equally on
each side; thrusting outwards and upwards, and ending in a topmost
twig or bud, is governed by this principle.

Confusion. Boileau is quoted by M. Blanc as saying, "A fine disorder
is often the effect of art;" and he adds, "But before he said it,
nature had shown it." Here we must observe that the confusions or
disorders of nature are all subject to certain laws; and it is in
adopting this idea, that an artistic confusion may give us the sense
of its being ordered by, and subject to definite rules. These rules
act as the frame affects the picture, circumscribing its
irregularities, and restricting them to a certain area. "The
artist-painter is, in a small space, permitted to employ confusion,
because the art of the cabinet-maker will keep the geometrical effect
in view." When the Japanese throw their ornaments, apparently without
rule, here and there on the japanned box, they reckon on the square
shape being sufficiently marked to the eye by its shining surface and
sharp corners.

The confusion in a Japanese landscape is so beautiful that one
appreciates the innate sense of balance, which modifies the
confusion--rules and orders it.

"In the hands of the designer, confusion is only a method of rendering
order visible in a happy disorder. Here contraries meet and touch....
Admit these as the principles of all decoration, and you will find
that, by following and combining them, you may produce varieties as
numberless as the sands of the sea, and that a latent equilibrium will
reduce nearly every complication and confusion to perfect harmony."

Each of the five principles we have discussed has its corollary, which
adds to the resources of the decorative artist. These are as
follows:--To Repetition belongs harmony, or consonance; to
Alternation, contrast; to Symmetry, radiation; to Progression,
gradation; to balanced Confusion, deliberate complication.[83]

_Harmonies_ in form and in colour are produced in different
ways--sometimes by repetition with variation; sometimes by the
different parts being rather reflected on each than repeated. This
explains the harmony that may be called consonance, if I rightly
understand M. Blanc's theory.

_Contrast_ is most generally understood as a common resource in the
hands of the artist for producing strong effects; but M. Blanc
cleverly expresses the reticence needed to ensure contrast being
pleasurable, not painful. "To adorn persons or things," he says, "is
not simply for the purpose of causing them to be conspicuous; it is
that they may be admired. It is not simply to draw attention to them,
but that they may be regarded with feelings of pleasure.... If
contrast be needed, let it be used as the means of rendering the whole
more powerful, brilliant, and striking. For instance, if orange is
intended to predominate in a decoration, let blue be mingled with it,
but sparingly. Let the complementary colour be its auxiliary, and not
its rival." Contrasts are always unpleasant, if the two forces
struggle with each other for pre-eminence, whether it be in form or in
colour. The rule to be observed in all ornamental design is this:
"that contrasting objects, instead of disturbing unity, should assist
it by giving most effect to that we wish to bring forward and
display."

_Radiation_ belongs to the principle of symmetry, starting from a
centre from which all lines diverge, and to which all lines point.
This is to be found throughout nature, from the rays of the sun to the
petals of the daisy. All decorative art employs and illustrates it.

"_Gradation_ in colour, as in form, is not quite synonymous with
progression, but expresses a series of adroitly managed transitions.
The English intermingle in their decoration, colours very finely
blended; nor do they find any transition too delicate. This, as in all
principles of ornament, has to be employed according to the feelings
intended to be produced on the mind of the spectator--whether for
absolute contrast or for imperceptible progression, when the tenderest
colours are needed."

_Complication_ is illustrated by M. Blanc, by a quotation from
"Ziegler."[84] "Complication is another aspect of the art which owns
the same sentiment as that expressed by Dædalus in his labyrinth,
Solomon in his mysterious seal, the Greeks in their interlacing and
winding ornaments, the Byzantines, the Moors, and the architects of
our cathedrals in their finest works. Intertwined mosaics, and
intersection of arches and ribs, all spring from complication."

To follow the interlacing line of an ornament, gives the mind the
pleasure of untying the Gordian knot, without cutting it. It gives the
excitement of curiosity, pursuit, and discovery. "When we see these
traceries so skilfully plaited, in which straight lines and curves
intermingle, cross, branch out, disappear and recur, we experience a
high pleasure in unravelling a puzzle which at first, perhaps,
appeared to be undecipherable; and in acknowledging that a latent
arrangement may be recognized in what at first, and at a distance,
seems an inextricable confusion." The Celtic, Moorish, and Gothic
styles illustrate and are explained by these remarks; and they are
well worthy the attention of the designer.

Having so freely borrowed from M. Blanc's chapter on the general laws
of ornamentation, I will finish my quotations with the words with
which he concludes: "There is no decoration in the works of nature or
the inventions of men which does not owe its birth to one of the
original principles here enumerated, viz. Repetition, Alternation,
Symmetry, Progression, and Balanced Confusion; or else to one of their
secondary causes, consonance, contrast, radiation, gradation, and
complication; or lastly, to a combination of these different elements,
which all finally lose themselves in a primordial cause--the origin of
the movements of the universe--ORDER."[85]

The extracts from M. Blanc's works I have carefully placed between
commas, being most anxious to express my obligation to him for his
carefully formulated epitome of the laws of design. But though I have
largely quoted, there remains still much most interesting and
suggestive matter, which I recommend the reader to seek in his book.

Though we should call to our aid the general laws of design for all
art, we must select from them what is specially appropriate for the
needs of our craft. From the art of needlework we should eliminate
as much as possible all ideas of _roundness_, all variety of surface
and effects of light and shadow and contrasting colours. Unity,
softness, grace, refinement, brightness, cheerfulness, pleasant
suggestions,--these should be the objects in view when we design the
panels for the drawing-room or boudoir, the hangings for the bed, or
the cover for the table--harmony which will satisfy the eye, thoughts
that shall please the mind.

The objects in nature that give us the most unalloyed pleasure--birds
and flowers--are those that from all time have served as the materials
for decorative design, and therefore have been moulded into the
traditional patterns which have descended to us from the earliest
times. Design must follow the scientific laws of art, and shape the
variations of traditional forms from which we cannot escape. In our
present search after these inner truths, I repeat that we have nothing
to do with the rules of painting, sculpture, and architecture, or any
other of the secondary arts, such as wood carving, metal work, &c.;
these having each their own intrinsic principles, which must be worked
out as corollaries from the general laws of composition which govern
all Aryan art.[86]

It is curious that in drawing on the flat, in ancient frescoes, there
appear to be no acknowledged rules of perspective--hardly more in
Pompeii, than on early Chinese screens and plates; or than later in
the Bayeux tapestries. And yet the Greeks, with their unerring
instinct, actually made use of false architectural perspectives to add
to the effects of height and depth in their colonnaded buildings.[87]
They sensibly diminished the circumference of the columns, and used
other means in their designs for this purpose. They understood the
principle, but they did not carry it into flat decorative art. They
did not attempt, when they painted a landscape on the wall, to do more
than recall the idea they were sketching; and never thought of vying
in scientific or naturalistic imitation with the real landscape they
saw through the window; they did not wish to interfere with the effect
of the statue, or the human figures grouped in front of it, to which
the wall served as a background. Those threw shadows and cast lights;
but in the flat there were no shadows, no perspective--all was
flat.[88] We must draw from this the deduction that the Greeks held
that flatness was an essential quality of wall decoration (except in
friezes) as well as of all textile ornament; and for every reason we
must accept this flatness as a general law for designs in embroidery.

In hangings and dress materials, flatness is more agreeable than a
complicated shaded design, especially when it is further confused by
folds, disturbing and interrupting the flow of the lines of the
pattern.

The reader will perceive that the laws of composition for textiles
quoted from M. Blanc, apply perfectly to designs on the flat, and to
outlined sketches in black and white, as well as to the most
elaborate compositions for pictures, either historical or "genre."
They are rules which should be understood and employed by the man who
draws for a wall-paper or an area railing; and certainly by him who
makes patterns for our schools of design.

It may therefore be laid down as a general rule, that all designs for
embroidery should be considered first as outlined drawings, covering a
flat surface, and then filled in with colour. The outlines should as
little as possible overlap one another, as flatness is one of the
first objects to be remembered; and this, of course, will be disturbed
by the parts passing over or under each other. Indian designs in
flowers have invariably a wonderful flatness, in the absence of all
light and shadow; joined to a naturalistic suggestion of detail, which
is accounted for by their traditional mode of copying from nature. The
branch or blossom to be copied, is laid on the ground and pegged down
with care, to eliminate every variety of surface, and every branch and
twig so arranged that they may not cross or touch each other. This
conventional composition is then drawn, and every natural distinction
in the form carefully copied. I would suggest that this idea should be
accepted as useful for imitation among ourselves in certain
conventional compositions of vegetable forms. Perhaps it is our Aryan
ancestry that has given us a prevailing taste for such decorations;
and it is worth while to consider how best to manipulate them.[89]

Clinging as we do to these floral designs, we can see that they are
the only ones that bear repetition, whether covering the surface of
the material in the rich irregularity of the flowers in a field, or
conventionalized into a form or a pattern.

The eye is never shocked or fatigued by such repetitions in orderly
confusion, or trained by the hand into artistic shapes or meanderings
of tracery. But when embroidery or weaving attempts to represent
animals or typical human figures, repetition immediately becomes
tiresome. A Madonna surrounded by angels, comes in badly, repeated
over and over again as a pattern, broken up by folds, cut up by a
seam, dislocated in the joining, and repeated in tiers. Such a design
is figured in Auberville's book.[90] The drawing is beautiful, but by
repetition it becomes ridiculous. I therefore deprecate this kind of
ornament in textile work. For this reason embroidery, which can be
fitted to each space that is to be covered, is preferable to woven
designs, however richly or perfectly they may be carried out.

Another class of design, which must be considered apart, is the
conventional-geometrical, of which the special distinction appears to
be that it consists of echoes or fragments of what we have seen
elsewhere. These conventional patterns are often merely the _detritus_
of past styles or motives crushed and placed by time in a sort of
kaleidoscope. They remind one of the little wreaths of broken shells
and coloured sea-weeds left on the sands by the retiring waves after a
storm, and are sometimes full of beauty and suggestion. (Pl. 17.) We
trace in these fragmentary patterns forgotten links with different
civilizations; and we ponder on the historical events which have
brought them into juxtaposition. These kaleidoscope patterns are to be
seen in Persian and Turkish carpets of the present day, and we find,
on examination, little bits which can only be the remnants of a
broken-up motive, probably as much lost now to the designer who
inherits the traditional form, as to us who can only see the vague
results.

I illustrate this remark by giving the border of a modern Persian
carpet which has certainly had Egyptian ancestry. The boat, the
beetle, and the prehistoric cross are to be found in it.

  [Illustration: Fig. 8.
    Persian Carpet.]

Many conventional patterns of to-day are descendants of the
lattice-work of Chinese art, and of the zigzags, lines, and discs of
barbarous primitive ornamentation.

The traceries in Indian stone windows show some of the most charming
geometrical forms, and are akin to the Persian and Russian modes of
composing conventional patterns. They appear on very ancient metal
work, and are the motives of all the embroideries in the Greek islands
and the principalities, and of the linen embroideries of Russia. Their
Byzantine origin gave its impress to the European schools of the
Middle Ages, and the pattern-books of Germany and Venice of the
sixteenth century are full of them. They are best suited for the
mosaic stitches, and, kept in their places as decoration, they are
useful for carpets and borders.

It should be impressed on our young artists, that, in composing their
designs, they must be influenced by the materials to be employed, and
the purpose for which the decoration is intended. Thus in textile
design for dress and hangings (excepting for tapestries) the fact must
never be lost sight of that they will be subject to disturbance by
crossing folds and crumplings, which will break up the lines of the
pattern. It is therefore evident that a design fitted for a rigid
material in a fixed place, such as an architectural decoration in
wood, stone, or stucco, must be subject to a treatment different from
that which befits an embroidered curtain or panel.

Stone and wood, being materials of uniform colour, require all the
help of recessed shadows and projections to catch the light; whereas
in textiles, form is assisted by colour, and smoothness of surface is
a primary consideration. The strongly accentuated design for
wood-carving becomes poor and lifeless when deprived of its essential
conditions and _raison d'être_, and the pattern which looks charming,
outlined and filled in with colour, could be hardly seen incised on a
flat stone surface. This seems a truism, but the neglect of these
plain axioms causes many mistakes in decorative art. Mr. Redgrave
says: "A design must be bad which applies the same treatment to
different materials." He further says: "The position of the ornament
requires special consideration. The varied quantities, bolder relief,
and coarser execution are not only allowable, but absolutely
necessary, at heights considerably above the eye. Moreover, each
fabric has its own peculiar lustre, texture, &c. Thus, in the use of
hangings, curtains, &c., the design might be suitable in silk, and
coarse or dull in woollen."[91]

Here I venture to differ from Mr. Redgrave. Perspective is as much to
be respected in decoration as in pictures, near to the eye; and the
gradation in size and colour, as the ornament travels up into height
or fades into distance, is a phase of pleasure which should not be
checked by enlargement of form or reinforcement of colouring.

It is hardly necessary to warn our artists against a sort of design
which is conventional, yet had its own meaning in the beginning. This
is to be found in Indian carvings and embroideries of a certain date,
or imitating the works of that distant period. It proceeded from a
hideous worship of monstrous Dravidian divinities. Their statues are
to be found, surrounded by coarsely designed patterns, in the temple
architecture of the first and second centuries. Its characteristics
are idols in niches or shrines, distorted in form or attitude; foliage
of unnatural, twisted plants, added to the recurring of the lotus and
tree of life; or animals destroying each other, or kneeling in worship
to the idols. These ugly designs are purely conventional. Fergusson
suggests that they were introduced into Mexico in the fourth or fifth
centuries A.D. by Buddhism.[92]

Those many-armed, sometimes many-faced divinities drove out the
beautiful Aryan types, which, however, resumed their sway when the
wave of the Renaissance flowed back to India, and was remodelled by
Oriental taste to the lovely designs we find in the Taj Mahal.

In M. Blanc's classification of ornament, he has placed Gothic design
under the head of deliberate complication. The whole of the Gothic
decorations, which are a gradual growth in one direction, arose from
the study of interlacing boughs and stems, employed as the enrichment
of the newly-grown forms of the vaulted roofs. The possibilities of
great size and height covered these designs and inspired all their
decoration; and the effect of reiteration and long recurring lines in
perspective was essentially the motive of these avenues in stone.[93]

Here enter the principles of repetition and progression, and you will
find how carefully the designers of the twelfth, thirteenth, and
fourteenth centuries worked up to these ideas. You will see in their
embroideries, shining figures or pictures in gold, silver, and
coloured silks, shimmering on dark velvet backgrounds, each design
terminating a perspective of architectural forms which enhances their
brilliancy. The most effective, probably, were generally employed for
the adornment of the high altar, so as to be seen from a great
distance. The smaller and less distinct and more delicate ornaments
were reserved for the side chapels or for smaller churches, where such
distant effects were inappropriate. But the motives of ecclesiastical
embroidery will be discussed in a future chapter.

All attempts at pictorial art are a mistake in textiles. It does not
enter into such designs; and when by chance it is allowed to be so
used, it is an error of judgment, and only exhibits a laborious and
useless ingenuity. It is no longer an artistic delineation of a
natural object, but becomes an imitation of another way of rendering
such objects.

Mr. Redgrave says that pictorial art in our manufactures is one of our
great mistakes. "The picture must be independent of the material, the
thought alone should govern it; whereas in decoration the material
must be one of the suggestors of the thought, its use must govern the
design."

Perhaps it will appear to my readers that here I repeat, in different
forms, what has been said in a previous chapter on the history of
style. I think that it is better to do so, than to omit to show where
style and design must accompany each other. Style, without any
reference to design, would be but a barren subject; and design,
without reference to style, would become lawless, and soon be lost in
the mazes of bad taste and mannerism. Both subjects are of so large
and important a nature that I do not attempt to do more than point out
how, in their history and their influence, they belong to the craft of
embroidery.

Such influences belong to all art; and though I am anxious to confine
myself to only one section of it, I find it difficult to resist the
temptation to generalize and stray from the prescribed path, when
large and important views are opened on every side, as I travel on
from point to point.

In sketching the history of design, as well as I may in so short a
space, it is only considered in the light in which it illustrates our
craft.

I repeat that the design should be informed by the motive which
suggested it, and by the need which has called it forth; and it must
be moulded to the space it has to fill, and the position it will
occupy. The design must be modified into different outward forms,
according to whether it is to be fitted to the edge of a building
against the sky; to a high panelled wall; to be applied as a frieze,
or round the capital of a pillar; to the embroidered cover of an
altar, or the silken hangings of a bed, or the framed flat spaces on
the walls of a saloon. In fact, "intention," "place," and "shape" are
necessary motives and limits to a flat design.

Leaving aside all architectural ornamentation, and adhering only to my
own subject, embroidery, I will limit my observations to the three
purposes here suggested. Firstly, as the central effect of the holiest
part of a church; secondly, in the domestic and comfortable room, to
be adorned and made cheerful; and thirdly, as decking the refined and
gay saloon or banqueting-hall.

To the church we should devote the most splendid and effective
contrasts, to blaze unframed against dark empty backgrounds, or amidst
stone and marble decorations; something set apart from its
surroundings, and asserting that separation, is the desirable effect
to be attained.

A totally different set of rules come into play when we have to select
the decorations of a bedroom. Here a background does not exist. We are
surrounded by four walls very near to the eye, so that perspectives
are a secondary interest, if indeed they can claim any consideration;
severe and magnificent ornamentation is out of place, except perhaps
in that time-honoured institution--to be found in every great house
possessing a suite of reception-rooms--the State bedroom, where the
display of hangings and embroideries was the first motive of the
decoration of the past, clothing and garnishing the bare spaces on the
lofty walls. Space and separateness are not the object or aim of the
bedroom of to-day; but lightness, snugness, and cheerful comfort, with
which the design of the textile ornaments have much to do. This will
in a later chapter come under the head of furniture.

For the saloon we may accept any splendour of rich and costly design,
and the variously shaped panels assist in suggesting the form of the
decoration. The plain or moulded panels, called in Italian "targhe,"
or shields, seem to be descended from the actual shields of gold which
Solomon hung on the walls of the king's house in the Forest of
Lebanon.[94] The motive was apparently Tyrian, and traces of it are
also to be found in Assyrian sculpture.[95]

The practice of framing the design gives opportunities for change of
materials, colour, and pattern, permitting the employment of different
flat surfaces laid on each other, and scope for endless enrichment;
the framed picture being, perhaps, the central culminating attraction,
crowning, as it were, the textile ornamentation.

I merely give these instances as illustrating the rule that we have
more than once laid down, that a design cannot fitly be employed
except in the position for which the artist has composed it. I will,
however, add that though it is right to give due consideration to the
preparation of each work for its intended use, yet we often have
charming suggestions offered to us, by the chance acquisition of a
beautiful artistic specimen, which finds its own place and
accommodates itself to the surrounding colours and forms. These are
the happy accidents of which the cultivated artistic eye takes
advantage, adding them to the experience which may help those who are
seeking for the rules of harmony and contrast in design.

Research into the mysteries and principles of design applies to woven
arabesques and patterns, and must include machine-made textile
ornament, and all decorative needlework. It is, in fact, the fabric
for the million which most especially needs the careful study of
guiding rules. When a plant sends forth hundreds of winged, wind-blown
seeds, like the thistle, it spreads itself over wide fields, and is
more mischievous than a more noxious growth, such as the deadly
nightshade, which only drops an occasional berry into the earth. So a
common cheap chintz or carpet, with a poor, gaudy, motiveless design,
carries a bad style into thousands of homes wherever our commerce
extends; disgracing us, while it corrupts the taste of other nations.

In addressing our young designers, I would remind them that in art the
race is not always to the strong. Prudence and educated powers,
thoughtfulness and study, often carry us where unassisted and
uncultivated genius has signally failed. Even such facilities as are
afforded by the acquirement of freehand drawing, as taught in our
schools of art, are not to be despised. The workman should thoroughly
master his tools, or they will hamper him. The first step towards
design is that you should learn to draw. After this, appreciation and
observation are necessary, and due balance in outline and colour
should be studied; and all this is as much needed in drawing a
pattern as in composing a picture. The difference lies in our art
being only decorative, wherein beauty and fitness are to be
remembered, and nothing else; whereas the picture may have to record
historical facts, or to inspire poetical thoughts--to awe or to touch
the beholder. A decorative design is only asked to delight him.
Intelligent delight, however, can only be evoked by intelligent art,
and to this, decoration must be subjected.

FOOTNOTES:

    [73] The earliest art we know (the bone-scratching) is
    naturalistic and imitative. We are unaware of any
    attempt at a pattern of the prehistoric period. The lake
    cities are of so vague a date that their ornaments on
    pottery are puzzling rather than instructive. The
    earliest Hellenic pottery was scratched or painted.
    Cuttle-fish, repeated over and over again, are among the
    earliest attempts at a pattern, by repetition of a
    natural object. Naturalism soon fell into symbolism,
    which appropriated it and all art, and the upheaval of a
    new culture was needed to lift it once more into the
    region of individual creation. See Boyd Dawkins' "Early
    Man in Britain;" also General Pitt Rivers's Museum of
    Prehistoric Art, lately presented to the University of
    Oxford.

    [74] See Boyd Dawkins' "Early Man in Britain."

    [75] "I hope, indeed, to enable them" (the members of
    his class) "to read, above all, the minds of
    semi-barbarous nations in the only language by which
    their feelings were capable of expression; and those
    whose temper inclines them to take a pleasure in mythic
    symbols, will not probably be induced to quit the
    profound fields of investigation which early art will
    open to them, and which belong to it alone. For this is
    a general law, that supposing the intellect of the
    workman the same, the more imitatively complete his art,
    the less he will mean by it, and the ruder the symbol,
    the deeper the intention."--Ruskin's "Oxford Lectures on
    Art," 1870, p. 19.

    [76] See Isaac Taylor's "History of the Alphabet."

    [77] Renouf's Hibbert Lectures, 1879, p. 67.

    [78] Now there is a point of view in which we may regard
    the imitative art of all races, the most civilized as
    well as the most barbarous--in reference to the power of
    correctly representing animal and vegetable forms, such
    as they exist in nature. The perfection of such
    imitation depends not so much on the manual dexterity of
    the artist as on his intelligence and comprehension of
    the type of the essential qualities of the form he
    desires to represent. See Ch. T. Newton's "Essays on Art
    and Archæology," p. 17.

    [79] See Wilkinson's "Ancient Egyptians."

    [80] Plato's Second Book of Laws, p. 656.

    [81] "The religion of the Greeks penetrated into their
    institutions and daily life. The myth was not only
    embodied in the sculptures of Pheidias on the Parthenon,
    and portrayed in the paintings of Polygnotus in the Stoa
    Poikile; it was repeated in a more compendious and
    abbreviated form on the fictile vase of the Athenian
    household, on the coin circulated in the market-place,
    on the mirror in which the Aspasia of the day beheld her
    charms. Every domestic implement was made the vehicle of
    figurative language, or fashioned into a
    symbol."--Newton's "Essays on Art and Archæology," p.
    23.

    [82] "Art in Ornament and Dress," by M. Charles Blanc,
    formerly Director of the French Institute. 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 passing 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 clustered
    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 clusters 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
    cluster. Even the gigantic columns of the great
    hypæthral 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 substituting 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 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.)

  [Illustration: Pl. 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.

  [Illustration: Pl. 11.
    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]

  [Illustration: Pl. 12.
    1. Indian Rolling Lotus Pattern.
    2, 3. Indian Lotus Patterns.
    4, 5. Egyptian Lotus Patterns.
    6. Sacred Convolvulus. Indian (seventeenth century).]

  [Illustration: Pl. 13.
    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.

  [Illustration: 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.)

  [Illustration: 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.

  [Illustration: Illumination from the Lindisfarne Gospels, about A.D.
      700]

  [Illustration: Pl. 16.
    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.

  [Illustration: Pl. 17.
    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.]

  [Illustration: Pl. 18.
    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).

  [Illustration: 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 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.

  [Illustration: 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 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.

  [Illustration: Pl. 20.
    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 Phœnician
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.)

  [Illustration: Pl. 21.
    1. Tree of Life and Lions. Gate of Mycenæ. 2. Persian or Sicilian
        Silk. Tree of Life and Leopards.]

  [Illustration: 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 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.

  [Illustration: Pl. 23.
    Different forms of Tree of Life, from Sicilian Silks.]

  [Illustration: Pl. 24.
    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.

  [Illustration: 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 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.

  [Illustration: Pl. 26.
    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.

  [Illustration: 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.

  [Illustration: Pl. 27.
    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]

  [Illustration: Fig. 12.
    Crenelated Pattern.]

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.

  [Illustration: Pl. 28.
    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.

  [Illustration: 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.

  [Illustration: Pl. 29.
    CLOUD PATTERNS.
    1, 2, 3, 7. Japanese.
    4. Chinese.
    5, 8, 9. Mediæval.
    6. Badge of Richard II.]

  [Illustration: Pl. 30.
    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.)

  [Illustration: Pl. 31.
    THE FUNDATA OR NETTED PATTERN.
    Portion of a Phœnician 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
Phœnician 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.

  [Illustration: Fig. 14.
    Radiated Pattern.]

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.)

  [Illustration: Fig. 15.
    Radiated Sunflower.]

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.

  [Illustration: Fig. 16.]

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.

  [Illustration: Fig. 17.
    Indian Balcony Pattern, from steps of tope of Jamal-Zartri,
        Afghanistan. British Museum.]

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.

  [Illustration: 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.

FOOTNOTES:

    [96] Sir G. Birdwood tells us of patterns of an Indian
    brocade called "Chundtara" (moon and stars), figured all
    over with representations of heavenly bodies.

    [97] Pliny, "Natural History," lib. xxx. c. 8, § 34.

    [98] There is a shell pattern in gold on a twelfth
    century fragment of a Bishop's garment at Worcester.

    [99] See Wilkinson's "Ancient Egyptians," vol. iii. pp.
    132, 133, 350, 553.

    [100] Bötticher, in his "Tektonik," will allow of but
    one origin for the "egg and tongue" pattern. I cannot
    give up the evident descent from the lotus flower and
    bud; but I have said before that a pattern has sometimes
    a double parentage, and it may be so in this case.

    [101] The lotus is almost entirely lost as a native
    growth in India, and is fast disappearing in Egypt. The
    lotus blossom in Egypt was not only a sacred emblem, but
    also an _objet de luxe_. At their feasts, the honoured
    guests were presented with the flowers, and as they
    faded, slaves carried round baskets of fresh blossoms.
    See Wilkinson's "Manners and Customs of the Ancient
    Egyptians."

    [102] See the Book of Lindisfarne, and the two Celtic
    bronze shields in the British Museum. These last are
    very curious. The long involved lines show their origin,
    and the shields are enriched with enamel and corals, in
    repetitions of the prehistoric cross.

    [103] See "Album of Photographs of the Marien-Kirche,
    Dantzic," Taf. 31.

    [104] Woltmann and Woermann, Eng. Trans., p. 202.

    [105] Charlemagne's dress, in his tomb, was covered with
    golden elephants. This must have been Indian. His mantle
    was "_parsemé_" with golden bees.

    [106] Elsewhere there is a notice of Miss Morritt's
    really beautifully embroidered landscapes at Rokeby; and
    all who saw them will remember the extremely clever and
    effective pictures in crewels by an accomplished
    American lady, Mrs. Oliver Wendell Holmes, exhibited in
    London a few years ago. These exceptional cases do not,
    however, disprove the objections against employing the
    most unfit and unmanageable materials for producing
    subjects alien to the art of embroidery.

    [107] See Redgrave's "Manual of Design," pp. 50-61.

    [108] See Appendix 21, by Ch. T. Newton, to the first
    edition of Ruskin's "Stones of Venice." He gives, as
    instances of this pattern, certain coins from Prienè,
    where the River Mæander is symbolized by the angular key
    pattern. Appendix, No. 1.

    [109] "(Euripides _loquitur_) Not horse-cocks, nor yet
    goat-stags, such as they depict on Persian carpets"
    (Aristophanes, "The Frogs," v. 939-944). The Persian
    carpets, which are the legitimate descendants of
    Babylonian art, are curiously fragmentary. In a modern
    design are to be seen birds, indicated by a head, bill,
    and eyes; little coffee-pots, and flowers broken off at
    the stalks, and small quadrupeds without any particular
    form; also the prehistoric cross, the Tau, and bits of
    broken-up wave and key patterns. All these, repeated
    into a pattern, remind us of scraps in a kaleidoscope,
    thrown together accidentally, or else taken up by chance
    where history and art have dropped them.

    [110] "Soma" or "Homa" ("Sarcostemma Viminale vel
    Brevistigma"), from Cashmere and the Hindu Cush, still
    used by the Brahmins, and the juice of which was the
    first intoxicant of the human race. See Birdwood's
    "Indian Art," vol. ii. pp. 336, 337.

    [111] "The Hom, the sacred Persian tree, is constantly
    placed between two animals, chained to it." See Pl. 23,
    Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

    [112] The Hom or Homa, the sacred tree of Assyrian and
    Persian sculpture and textiles, is accounted for as a
    pattern by Dr. Rock, who says: "From the earliest
    antiquity a tradition came down through middle Asia, of
    some holy tree, perhaps the tree of life spoken of as
    growing in Paradise." It is always represented as
    something like a shrub, and is a conventional portrait
    of a palm; but Rock says it has every look of having
    belonged to the family of the Asclepiadeæ. For its last
    transformation into a vine, see Pl. 24.

    [113] Rock's "Introduction," p. cxxxi.

    [114] Sir George Birdwood says: "The intimate absorption
    of Hindu life in the unseen realities of man's spiritual
    consciousness is seldom sufficiently acknowledged by
    Europeans, and, indeed, cannot be fully comprehended by
    men whose belief in the supernatural has been destroyed
    by the prevailing material ideas of modern society.
    Every thought, wish, and deed of the Hindu belongs to
    the world of the unseen as well as the seen; and nothing
    shows this more strikingly than the traditionary works
    of India. Everything that is made has a direct religious
    use, or some religious symbolism. The materials of which
    different articles are fashioned, their weight, and the
    colours with which they are painted, are fixed by
    religious rule. An obscured symbolism of material and
    colour is to be traced also in the forms of things, even
    for the most domestic uses. Every detail of Indian
    decoration, Aryan or Turanian, has a religious meaning,
    and the arts of India will never be rightly understood
    until there are brought to their study, a familiar
    acquaintance with the character and subjects of the
    religious poetry, national legends, and mythological
    scriptures that have always been their inspiration, and
    of which they are the perfected imagery." See Sir George
    Birdwood's "Indian Arts," part i. p. 2.

    [115] The Persian tree of life was not alien to the
    worship of the Zoroastrian religion of the Sassanides,
    and is said to have been the origin of the worship of
    Bacchus. It was introduced by Oriental weavers into
    Sicilian and Spanish stuffs.

    [116] Sir G. Birdwood suggests that the honeysuckle
    pattern is derived from the Tree of Life, cone, and
    palm, refashioned and combined with the graceful
    ingenuity of Greek art, and covering a mixture of sacred
    traditional emblems.

    [117] Haug, in his "Essays on the Sacred Writings of the
    Parsees" (pp. 132, 239), tells us that these people
    still hold the homa to be sacred, and from it squeeze a
    juice used by them in their religious ceremonies.

    [118] See Perrot et Chipiez, "Histoire de l'Art," vol.
    ii. pp. 260, 267, Pl. xiv.

    [119] See Appendix, No. 1.

    [120] India, in return, afterwards influenced Persia,
    the successor of Babylon.

    [121] In India, the elephant is a very common element in
    a pattern; in Egypt, the serpent; in Persia, the lion.
    In animal patterns, certain emblems were grouped
    together. The lion and the goose represent strength and
    prudence; the lion and eagle, strength and dominion; the
    lion and dove, strength and gentleness. We may see these
    double emblems on Sicilian textiles.

    [122] Chinese art is crowded with symbolisms.

    [123] The double-headed eagle was the badge of Saladin,
    as well as that of the Holy Roman Empire.

    [124] Ezekiel xvii.

    [125] In the earliest days of Christianity.

    [126] "A cloud pattern from which issue two clasped
    hands is the device of Guizot Marchand or Guido
    Mercator, printer, in 1498. He lived at the College of
    Navarre."--Dibdin's "Decameron," ii. pp. 33-36.

    [127] See Gori (tom. iii. pp. 20, 84), as cited by Rock,
    Introduction, p. liii. The same netted pattern was found
    in the grave of an Archbishop of York of about the end
    of the thirteenth century. Its name, _fundata_, is
    derived from _funda_, the fisherman's net; also, in
    later times, it was called _laqueata_. See Rock's
    Introduction (p. liv.). See also M. Ch. Clermont
    Ganneau's "L'Imagerie Phénicienne," Coupe de Palestrina;
    and Chaldée et Assyrie, in Perrot and Chipiez, ii. p.
    736. Another instance is shown here of the fundata
    occurring in the bronze flat bowl copied from Layard's
    "Monuments," 2nd series, plate 62. The whole design of
    the bowl is Babylonian, consisting of a rich border of
    repetitions of the tree of life; each has the peculiar
    ornament of little knobs often seen on their
    head-dresses.

    [128] See Bock's "L. Gewänder," p. 129; Gori, "Thes.
    Dipt." ii. pp. 20, 275; Marquardt, "Handbuch Röm. Alt."
    vii. pp. 527-31 (Eng. Trans.). Authorities differ in
    describing the Chrysoclavus. Sir G. Birdwood calls it a
    button pattern ("Indian Arts," vol. ii. p. 241). The
    "Chrysoclavus" was the name given to the palmated or
    triumphal pattern with which the consular robes are
    invariably embroidered in the Roman Consular ivories at
    Zurich, Halberstadt, and in the South Kensington Museum.
    The tenacious life of this pattern is curiously shown in
    the way it appears in the fifteenth century on Italian
    playing-cards. (See "Cartes à Jouer," an anonymous
    French book in the print-room of the British Museum.)
    The kings and knaves wear the Byzantine humeral, and the
    Chrysoclavus pattern is carved on their chairs. Till
    lately English playing-cards showed the same
    dress-pattern. I shall discuss the Latin Clavus and the
    Chrysoclavus amongst ecclesiastical embroideries, pp.
    308, 336 (_post_).

    [129] See Wilkinson's "Ancient Egyptians," i. p. 125.
    The date of these mural paintings may, however, be even
    as late as the time of Alexander the Great.

CHAPTER IV.

MATERIALS.

1. RAW MATERIALS.

The history of an art must, more or less, include that of its raw
material.

This is too true to be disputed, but in the art of embroidery it opens
out such endless avenues, through such vast regions of technical
study, that we must acknowledge the difficulty, or rather the
impossibility, of including in one volume even a tithe of the
information already collected.

I shall, therefore, only dedicate a few pages to the history of those
fibres which have always been most important in the different phases
of our civilization.

Among books on textile materials, I must again name the "Textrinum
Antiquorum," by Yates. His premature death, and the loss that the
world of art and manufacture has sustained by the chain of his
invaluable researches being broken, cannot be appreciated but through
the study of the first and only volume of this already rare book, from
which I venture to quote largely.

Semper's "Der Stil" is a work of reference on this subject, so
valuable that it should, by a good translation, be placed within the
reach of non-German scholars.

From Colonel Yule's "Marco Polo," and his abundant notes, we learn
much of Asiatic textile art in the thirteenth century, and its early
traditions in the immutable East, and Sir G. Birdwood's books on this
Indian art are most instructive.

Egyptian textiles are splendidly illustrated by Sir Gardiner
Wilkinson. All these modern writers quote Pliny and the Periplus;[130]
and Pliny quotes all the classic authors, from Homer to his day. Here
is a wide field for gathering information regarding the materials for
embroidery in past ages.

When we use the phrase "raw material" so glibly, with an æsthetic
contempt for that which the art of man has neither manipulated nor
reorganized, we show our own coarse appreciation, if not ignorance, of
the wonderful inherent beauty and microscopic delicacy of form,
colour, and substance of those materials which we fashion for our own
uses.

Few know the structure of the tender filaments of wool, flax, cotton,
and silk; or that each has its peculiar form and attributes, and its
individual capabilities for the purposes for which they appear to us