Chapter V: Introduction (4)

“Seizing the suggestion afforded by the rude tray-moulded parching-bowls, particularly after it was discovered that if well burned they resisted the effects of water as well as of heat, the ancient potter would naturally attempt in time to reproduce the boiling-basket in clay. She would find that to accomplish this she could not use as a mould the inside of the boiling-basket, as she had the inside of the tray, because its neck was smaller than its body. Nor could she form the vase by plastering the clay outside of the vessel, not only for the same reason, but also because the clay in drying would contract so much that it would crack or scale off. Naturally, then, she pursued the process she was accustomed to in the manufacture of the basket-bottle. That is, she formed a thin rope of soft clay, which, like the wisp of the basket, she coiled around and around a centre to form the bottom, then spirally upon itself, now widening the diameter of each coil more and more, then contracting as she progressed upward until the desired height and form were attained. As the clay was adhesive, each coil was attached to the one already formed by pinching or pressing together the connecting edges at short intervals as the widening went on. This produced corrugations or indentations marvellously resembling the stitches of basket-work. Hence accidentally the vessels thus built up appeared so similar to the basket which had served for its model that evidently it did not seem complete until this feature had been heightened by art. At any rate, the majority of specimens belonging to this type of pottery, especially those of the older periods during which it was predominant, are distinguished by an indented or incised decoration exactly reproducing the zigzags, serrations, chevrons, terraces, and other characteristic devices of water-tight basketry. Evidently, with a like intention, two little cone-like projections were attached to the neck near the rim of the vessel, which may hence be regarded as survivals of the loops whereby the ends of the strap-handle were attached to the boiling-basket. Although varied in later times to form scrolls, rosettes, and other ornate figures, they continued ever after quite faithful features of the spiral type of pot, and may even sometimes be seen on the cooking vessels of modern Zuñi.” Corroborative evidence of the connection between the two kinds of receptacles is found in their names, the translation being “coiled cooking-basket” and “coiled earthenware cooking-basket” (pp. 489-491).

Other earthenware vessels had a somewhat different evolutionary history, but they had for their starting-point the food-trencher of coiled wicker-work. When by a perfectly natural sequence of events ornamentation by painting came to be applied to the surface of the bowls a smooth surface was found preferable to a corrugated one, not only because it took paint more readily, but because it formed a far handsomer utensil for household use than if simply decorated by the older methods.

Later the building up of large vessels was no longer accomplished by the spiral method exclusively. “A lump of clay, hollowed out, was shaped how rudely so ever on the bottom of the basket or in the hand, then placed inside of a hemispherical basket-bowl, and stroked until pressed outward to conform with the shape, and to project a little above the edges of its temporary mould, whence it was built up spirally (Fig. 55) until the desired form had been attained, after which it was smoothed by scraping.”

With regard to the employment of textile supports by the ancient peoples of North America for the clay vessels during the process of manufacture, Mr. Holmes[37] writes:—“Nets or sacks of pliable materials have been almost exclusively employed. These have been applied to the surface of the vessel, sometimes covering the exterior entirely, and at others only the body or a part of the body. The nets or other fabrics used have generally been removed before the vessel was burned or even dried.... I have observed in many cases that handles and ornaments have been added, and that impressed and incised designs have been made in the soft clay after the removal of the woven fabric. There would be no need of the support of a net after the vessel had been fully finished and slightly hardened. Furthermore, I have no doubt that these _textilia_ were employed as much for the purpose of enhancing the appearance of the vessel as for supporting it during the process of construction. In support of the idea that ornament was a leading consideration in the employment of these coarse fabrics, we have the well-known fact that simple cord-markings, arranged to form patterns, have been employed by many peoples for embellishment alone. This was a common practice of the ancient inhabitants of Great Britain”[38] (p. 398).

[37] W. H. Holmes, “Prehistoric Textile Fabrics of the United
States derived from Impressions on Pottery,” _Third Ann. Rep.
Bureau Ethnol_. Washington, 1884.

[38] A very interesting collateral line of study has sprung
from Mr. Holmes’ investigations of the impressions on pottery.
By the simple expedient of taking impressions in clay from
ancient pottery, and so throwing into high relief the rather
obscure intaglio impressions in the originals, he has been
able to restore a considerable number of diverse fabrics which
were used for the purposes just stated. “The perfect manner in
which the fabric in all its details of plaiting and weaving can
be brought out is a matter of astonishment; the cloth itself
could hardly make all the particulars of its construction
more manifest.” The perishable material so impressed the clay
that when it had long since crumbled into dust the latter was
enabled to transmit the details of the structure of a fabric
the very existence of which would otherwise never have been
known.

The value of the bearing of such observations as the foregoing on the study of the prehistoric pottery of Europe is obvious. In America the record is unbroken; with us, like the great majority of our archæological finds, we are dealing with fragments, and it is only by careful piecing together that a symmetrical whole can be restored.

Dr. Klemm,[39] some half-century ago, wrote:—“The imitation (of natural vessels) in clay presupposes numerous trials. In the Friendly Islands [Tonga[40]] we find vessels which are still in an early stage; they are made of clay, slightly burnt, and enclosed in plaited work; so also the oldest German vessels seem to have been, for we observe on those which remain an ornamentation in which plaiting is imitated by incised lines. What was no longer wanted as a necessity was kept up as an ornament.”

[39] G. Klemm, _Allgemeine Cultur-Geschichte der Menschheit_,
vol. i. p. 188.

[40] Pottery is made in Fiji, but not in Tonga.

Dr. Daniel Wilson[41] says that the early British urns may have been “strengthened at first by being surrounded with a plaiting of cords or rushes.... It is certain that very many of the indented patterns on British pottery have been produced by the impress of twisted cords on the wet clay—the intentional imitation it may be of undesigned indentations originally made up by the plaited network on ruder sun-dried urns.”

[41] D. Wilson, _Prehistoric Annals of Scotland_ (2nd ed.),
1863, i. p. 430.

Professor Tylor[42] refers to Mr. G. J. French’s experiments.[43] “He coated baskets with clay, and found the wicker patterns came out on all the earthen vessels thus made; and he seems to think that some ancient urns still preserved were actually moulded in this way, judging from the lip being marked as if the wicker-work had been turned in over the clay coating inside.”

[42] E. B. Tylor, _Researches into the Early History of
Mankind_ (3rd edit.), 1878, p. 273.

[43] G. J. French, _An Attempt_, etc., 1858.

“On the surface of a few ancient vases or urns found in Germany,” Mr. Charles Rau[44] says, “I noticed those markings which present the appearance of basket-work; I was, however, in doubt whether they were impressions produced by the inside of baskets, or simply ornamental lines traced on the wet clay. Yet, even in the latter case, it would seem that this kind of ornamentation was suggested by the former practice of modelling vessels in baskets.”

[44] Charles Rau, “Indian Pottery,” _Smithsonian Report_, 1866,
p. 346, and 1882, p. 49.

It may be taken as proved that in a number of cases the forms of pots are taken from natural objects, or from receptacles made of different materials. We cannot demonstrate this in all cases, nor should we expect to, for even assuming this to have been the universal origin, we cannot hope to have the earlier stages preserved to us. The record is imperfect, the evidence of origin is clear in some cases, and probable in others; in some the evidence is lacking.

What applies to the form of pottery applies equally to its decoration; often it is impossible to disassociate them. The actual or primitive technique of manufacture, too, may exhibit itself in and as an ornament, as, for example, the spiral markings in pottery made in the coil method. We have seen that in some places plaited or woven fabrics have been used to support the soft clay, and these have left their impress. If not previously destroyed, these marks become indelible after the burning of the pottery. These markings being due to the process of manufacture, are repeated in the manufacture of every vessel, and if not purposely smoothed out, expectancy comes into operation, and they may be imitated in a slightly conventional manner even when they may no longer occur in construction, as, for example, when the supports are no longer employed, or in pottery turned on a wheel.

Various methods of plaiting, intertwining, netting, and so forth may thus be transferred as skeuomorphic decoration to pottery. These are at first produced by means of incisions, puckerings of the clay by the fingers, application of accessory coils or pieces of clay, etc. Even the accidental imprints of nails or finger-tips, or of implements, may have suggested certain decoration.

Later on, when pottery was decorated by painting, the same kind of ornamentation was reproduced in the new medium, and as the changed conditions evoked freer treatment, the designs underwent various transformations.

Mr. Holmes[45] discusses the modification of ornament (1) through material, (2) through form, (3) through methods of realisation (p. 458).

[45] W. H. Holmes, “Origin and Development of Form and Ornament
in Ceramic Art,” _Fourth Ann. Rep. Bureau Ethnol_. Washington,
1886.

(1.) The material of which an object is made must have a very definite effect upon its decoration, and the material is to a very large extent dependent upon the locality. Metal, stone, clay, wood, bone, skins, and textiles are so varied in their structure that they require different artistic treatment, and it has usually taken a considerable time for a people to discover what is the most suitable form of decoration for an object made of a particular substance.

(2.) The forms of decorated objects exercise a strong influence upon the decorative designs employed. An ornament, as Mr. Holmes remarks, applied originally to a vessel of a given form, accommodates itself to that form pretty much as a costume becomes adjusted to the individual. When it came to be required for another form of vessel, very decided changes might be necessary.

.

The ancient Pueblo peoples were very fond of rectilinear forms of meander patterns, and many earthen vessels are found girdled with a beautiful angular pattern. (Fig. 56.) When, however, the artist has to decorate a vessel which has rounded prominences in its central zone, he finds it very difficult to apply his favourite device, and he is practically compelled to convert his angled into a spiral meander. (Fig. 57.)

(3.) Ornament is modified by the method of its execution, whether by incising, modelling, painting, or stamping; closely associated with these are the peculiarities of construction.

Nearly all woven fabrics encourage, even to compulsion, the use of straight lines in their decoration. Curved lines are rendered as stepped or broken lines. Fig. 58 illustrates, in a diagrammatic manner, two forms of the same motive as expressed in different arts. The curvilinear freehand scroll, which is readily painted, incised, or moulded in relief, is forced by the constructional character of textiles into square forms, and a rectangular meander or fret will result. Brickwork, mosaics, or whole-coloured tiles also lead to similar results. In the small panel to the left of Fig. 59 it will be observed that careless or hurried work has resulted in the rounding of an angular hook, which has been transmitted to pottery from a textile source. I have noticed the angularisation of spirals occurring in New Guinea; this was due, not to change in the material employed, but to the preference which the natives of the Papuan Gulf have to straight and angled lines. (Cf. Figs. 11, 12.) Primitive spirals have been copied by these people, and have gradually become angularised into a rectilinear meander.

Fig. 60 is a drawing of the painted design of a large earthen vessel from the province of Tusayan, in the district of the Colorado Chiquito. From the occurrence of an isolated stepped line in the decoration, Mr. Holmes suggests that the ornamentation had a textile ancestry. The design is made by leaving the white colour of the pot and painting a black background. The “unit of the design,” as interpreted by Mr. Holmes, is given in black in Fig. 61. Judging from Fig. 60, which is a representation of the vessel itself, Fig. 59 is a fairly faithful copy of the design; but there is no warrant on this vase for his joining the scroll pattern at each end with its enclosing line, as in Fig. 61. It is obvious that if this design were logically worked out, it would appear as in the last figure; it may be so on other vases, but Mr. Holmes apparently is concerned with this one. Professor Grünwedel[46] has drawn attention to the mistake of rectifying aboriginal drawings, as we are thereby preventing ourselves from studying the psychology of the natives. According to the method we are employing, we are concerned with what actually occurs, and not with what might be.

[46] Cf. p. 334, which is an abstract of what that author says.

5. _Stone Skeuomorphs of Wooden Buildings._

Sir C. Fellows,[47] in his interesting account of his travels in Asia Minor, draws attention to the remarkable rock-tombs which he discovered in Lycia, and which clearly prove that these tombs were models in stone of wooden dwellings. At Antiphellus (Plate V., Fig. 1) the timbering is reproduced to every detail of mortise and tenon. The stems of trees, laid horizontally to cover the chamber, are imitated in masonry. They project beyond the wall, and show their ends, as a row of circular sections, in the middle of the entablature. The tree trunk at each extremity of the row was larger than the rest, and has been squared. Sometimes all the trunks are squared, as may be seen at Xanthus (Plate V., Fig. 2); and we witness, as Dr. March points out, the origin of the well-known Greek ornament called “guttæ.” He also calls attention to the fact that skeuomorphs of timbering were much affected by the Normans, as in their various billet patterns; whilst their capitals often show sections, not alone of branches springing from a tree trunk, but of the enveloping bark also. (Plate I., Fig. B.)

[47] C. Fellows, _A Journal written during an Excursion in Asia
Minor_, 1839.

Another rock tomb at Antiphellus (Plate V., Fig. 3) shows a row of squared trunks projecting beyond the side of the building, as would be a natural arrangement in any wooden house that had a length greater than its width. In the same building are external indications of a second story. They are indications only, for the story does not exist. The device is a skeuomorph, because it is functionless. “But we understand,” to again quote from Dr. March, “the origin of our ‘string-course,’ and we recognise one of the many reasons, in the ancestral training of the eye of our race, why the sight of a large unbroken surface produces in the mind a sense of disappointment, a feeling of unsatisfied expectancy, the anguish that Hood sings—

“‘A wall so blank
That my shadow I thank
For sometimes falling there!’”

The gables of the roof of the old-time houses were often formed by the bent boughs of trees crossing each other at the ridge, as witnessed by an Etruscan hut-urn from Monte Albano (Plate I., Fig. C), and Pompeian wall-paintings. (Plate V., Fig. 4.) A finished treatment of the bent bough gable is seen in a tomb at Antiphellus. (Plate V., Fig. 3.)

In the wooden originals of the rock-tombs of Asia Minor (Plate V., Figs. 2, 3) one sees the birth of the gable which, arising as a structural necessity, was perpetuated in stone as the crowning glory of Grecian temples, and ever since has remained as a decorative adjunct to buildings, or the functionless adornment of the humblest household furniture. (Plate I., Figs. D-F.)

6. _Skeuomorphic Inappropriateness._

We have seen that as the bronze implement replaced the neolithic celt, so the lashing of the latter became a skeuomorphic decoration on the former. As tapa replaced matting the conditioned ornamentation of the early fabric was transmitted to a material which in itself imposed few artistic limitations. The same also with pottery when it was derived from or suggested by baskets; basketry impressed itself on the clay, literally or figuratively as the case may be, and thenceforward pots were doomed to basket-like ornamentation until the possibilities of clay worked out the freedom of the pot from the limitations of the basket. In all the above we have a continuity in function, and it is not very surprising that indications of structure stubbornly persisted.

Everywhere the human mind has become accustomed to certain local patterns, designs, and structures. These are bound up with the sacred associations of family and religion, with the green memories of childhood, and have become as it were indented into the consciousness of the individual. To many minds new designs are unvalued; they awaken no sympathy, they are devoid of associations; like alien plants, they pine away and die.

The pleasure which people take in beauty prompts them to ornament almost everything which admits of decoration, and it is the old patterns and designs which are most frequently copied. So it comes about that these are scattered with an impartial hand, and often without any regard to appropriateness. By inappropriateness I do not wish to imply that the ornament may not be suitable, but merely that it has no meaning so far as the decorated object is concerned. As a rule the decorative art of the less advanced peoples is far more appropriate[48] than that of civilised. We may not have the clue, but the more we do know the more suitable do we find the decoration to be. The symbols of religious ceremonies are usually depicted on the utensils employed in that rite; the transference of such symbols to purely secular objects would clearly be inappropriate decoration. Our knowledge of the precise use of objects in ethnological collections, and the significance of their form and decoration is in many cases so imperfect that we are not in a position to criticise their appropriateness; but we have only to look around us at the objects of everyday life to see that ornamentation is quite as often inappropriate as appropriate. It will afford continual pleasure to attempt to trace the skeuomorphic (or “technical,” as it is sometimes called) origin of many patterns which have wandered far, and have at last found themselves in strange company.

[48] A remarkable example of inappropriate skeuomorphic
decoration occurs among some of the tribes of Central Brazil,
where the small triangular covering of the women is copied and
made into patterns (Fig. 52) on various objects, some being on
the bark tablets which run as a frieze round a chief’s house
(pp. 97, 175).

II.—THE DECORATIVE TRANSFORMATION OF NATURAL OBJECTS.

From things made by hands I now pass to natural objects, that we may see how these too are seized upon and modified by primitive folk.

Natural objects fall naturally into two main classes—inanimate and animate subjects; in other words, physical phenomena and living beings.

1. _Physicomorphs._

Under the term of “physicomorph”[49] I propose to describe any representation of an object or operation in the physical world. The heavens and all the powers therein have been depicted in every age and by diverse peoples—usually, but not invariably, with some mystical or religious significance.

[49] φυσικός—of or concerning the order of external nature;
natural, physical.

Chief of the dreaded powers of the air were the thunder-storm, with its concomitants, the thunder and lightning. These have impressed themselves upon the imagination of man, not only on account of their majesty, but also because of man’s impotence. The thunder is the voice of the god, the lightning his destructive and blasting energy.

The most obvious sign for lightning, a zigzag line, is practically ubiquitous. Similarly the sun is variously depicted as a star with few or many rays; as a circle, with a cross or star inscribed within it, or with rays projecting from its periphery. A plain disc, or more often a crescent, stands for the moon.

As the heavenly powers are so generally associated with the heavens, the celestial phenomena and bodies come to represent these cosmical deities, and symbolism is born. In the following pages I touch upon some of the symbolism of physicomorphs in America; later, in dealing with religion and its symbolism, I shall discuss similar symbols in the Old World.

The symbolism of their autocthones has been, and is still actively and sympathetically studied by American anthropologists, as in a valuable paper[50] by F. H. Cushing, who remarks:—“The semi-circle is classed as emblematic of the rainbow; the obtuse angle as of the sky; the zigzag as lightning; terraces as the sky horizons, and modifications of the latter as the mythic ‘ancient sacred place of the spaces,’” and so on.

[50] _A Study of Pueblo Pottery_, etc., 1886.

By combining several of these elementary symbols in a single device, sometimes a mythic idea was beautifully expressed. For example, Fig. 62 is the totem-badge Major J. W. Powell received from the Moki Pueblos of Arizona as a token of his induction into the rain gens of that people. An earlier and simpler form of this occurs on a very ancient sacred medicine jar. (Fig. 63.) The sky (A), the ancient place of the spaces—region of the sky gods—(B), the cloud-lines (C), and the falling rain (D), are combined, and depicted to symbolise the storm, which was the objective of the exhortations, rituals, and ceremonials to which the jar was an appurtenance.

Dr. J. Walter Fewkes, in a more recent paper entitled “A few Summer Ceremonials at the Tusayan Pueblos,”[51] gives an interesting account of the Flute Ceremony. Several ancient rain-cloud tiles are described; one of them (Fig. 64) was in the room of the South House, which contained the altar. “Like its fellow, this tile had an _O’-mow-uh_ [cloud] symbol, with falling rain and the two lightning snakes depicted upon it. There were also fourteen broad black parallel lines on a white ground representing falling rain. Three rain-cloud semi-circles were outlined by a broad black band above the falling rain. The field of the clouds was brown, and the middle cloud, which was the largest, had a conventionalised half-ear of corn,[52] consisting of two parallel rows of rectangular kernels, each with a dot in the middle. A field of green occupied the whole face of the tile above the figures of the rain-clouds. On this region, rising from the depression which separates the lateral from the medial rain-cloud, one on each side, there was a brown zigzag lightning figure outlined in black. Each of these bore a simple terraced _nā’k-tci_ [a terraced tablet placed on the head of certain figures] on the head” (p. 121).

[51] “A few Summer Ceremonials at the Tusayan Pueblos,”
_Journal of American Ethnology and Archæology_, ii., 1892.

[52] Maize or Indian corn.

Mr. Cushing[53] has drawn attention to a bowl of which the form as well as its decoration is symbolic. He says, “Thus, upon all sacred vessels, from the drums of the esoteric medicine societies of the priesthood and all vases pertaining to them, to the keramic appurtenances of the sacred dance or _Kâ’kâ_, all decorations were intentionally emblematic. Of this numerous class of vessels I will choose but one for illustration—the prayer-meal-bowl of the _Kâ’kâ_. (Fig. 65.) In this both form and ornamentation are significant. In explaining how the form of this vessel is held to be symbolic, I will quote a passage from the ‘creation myth,’ as I rendered it in an article on the origin of corn, belonging to a series on ‘Zuñi Bread-stuff,’ published this year [?1882] in the _Millstone_ of Indianapolis, Indiana. ‘Is not the bowl the emblem of the earth our mother? For from her we draw both food and drink, as a babe draws nourishment from the breast of its mother; and round, as is the rim of a bowl, so is the horizon, terraced with mountains, whence rise the clouds.’ This alludes to a medicine bowl, not to one of the handled kind, but I will apply it as far as it goes to the latter. The two terraces on either side of the handle are in representation of the ‘ancient sacred place of the spaces,’ the handle being the line of the sky, and sometimes painted with the rainbow figure. Now the decorations are a trifle more complex. We may readily perceive that they represent tadpoles, dragon-flies, with also the frog or toad. All this is of easy interpretation. As the tadpole frequents the pools of springtime he has been adopted as the symbol of spring rains; the dragon-fly hovers over pools in summer, hence typifies the rains of summer; and the frog, maturing in them later, symbolises the rains of the later seasons; for all these pools are due to rainfall. When, sometimes, the figure of the sacred butterfly replaces that of the dragon-fly, or alternates with it, it symbolises the beneficence of summer; since, by a reverse order of reasoning, the Zuñis think that the butterflies and migratory birds bring the warm season from the ‘Land of everlasting summer.’

[53] _Loc. cit._, p. 517.

“Upon vessels of special function, like these we have just noticed, peculiar figures may be regarded as emblematic. On other classes, no matter how evidently conventional and expressive decorations may seem (excepting always totemic designs), it is wise to use great caution in their interpretation as intentional and not merely imitative.”

The study of symbols is a peculiarly difficult one, and there is no branch of our subject which contains so many pitfalls for the unwary. The two following paragraphs, respectively by Messrs. Holmes and Cushing,[54] afford a useful warning:—

[54] _Annual Report Bureau of Ethnology_, iv.

“There are those who, seeing these forms already endowed with symbolism, begin at what I conceive to be the wrong end of the process. They derive the form of the symbol directly from the thing symbolised. Thus the current scroll is, with many races, found to be a symbol of water, and its origin is attributed to a literal rendering of the sweep and curl of the waves. It is more probable that the scroll became the symbol of the sea long after its development through agencies similar to those described above, and that the association resulted from the observation of incidental resemblances. This same figure, in use by the Indians of the interior of the continent, is regarded as symbolic of the whirlwind, and it is probable that any symbol-using people will find in the features and phenomena of their environment, whatever it may be, sufficient resemblance to any of their decorative devices to lead to a symbolic association” (p. 460).

“To both the scroll or volute and the fret, and modifications of them ages later, the Pueblo has attached meanings. Those who have visited the South-west and ridden over the wide, barren plains during late autumn or early spring have been astonished to find traced on the sand, by no visible agency, perfect concentric circles and scrolls or volutes yards long, and as regular as though drawn by a skilled artist. The circles are made by the wind driving partly broken weed-stalks around and around their places of attachment until the fibres by which they are anchored sever and the stalks are blown away. The volutes are formed by the stems of red-top grass and of a round-topped variety of the Chenopodium drifted onward by the whirlwind, yet around and around their bushy adhesive tops. The Pueblos, observing these marks, especially that they are abundant after a wind storm, have wondered at their similarity to the printed scrolls on the pottery of their ancestors. Even to-day they believe the sand marks to be the tracks of the whirlwind, which is a god in their mythology of such distinctive personality that the circling eagle is supposed to be related to him. They have naturally, therefore, explained the analogy above noted by the inference that their ancestors, in painting the volute, had intended to symbolise the whirlwind by representing his tracks. Thenceforward the scroll was drawn on certain classes of pottery to represent the whirlwind and modifications of it (for instance, by the colour-sign belonging to any one of the ‘six regions’) to signify other personified winds” (p. 515).

It is interesting to note that colours are often symbolic. Thus in a footnote to p. 111, _loc. cit._, Dr. Fewkes says:—“Red is the colour of the south, yellow of the north, blue of the west, and white of the east. For the west the available pigment used has, however, a green colour, although blue is the colour corresponding to west.” A correspondence on the colours of the winds was carried on in the _Academy_ in 1883. Dr. Whitley Stokes points out (p. 114) that among the Mayas of Yucatan red was associated with the east, white with the north, black with the west, and yellow with the south. (Cf. Brinton, _Folk-Lore Journal_, i. p. 246.) In Ireland, east was purple; south, white; north, black; and west, dun; the sub-winds between S. and E. were red and yellow respectively; between S. and W., green and blue; between N. and W., grey and dark brown; between N. and E., dark grey and speckled. Professor Max Müller (p. 302) notes that among the Navajos E. is dark; S., blue; W., yellow; N., white (cf. Mathews, _Amer. Anth._, April 1883); and in the Veda E. was red; S., white; W., dark or dark blue; and N., very dark. Lastly, Mr. Hilderic Friend (p. 318) says that in China and ancient Java there were five deities or rules—(1) black, water, N.; (2) red, fire, S.; (3) green, wood, E.; (4) white, metal, W.; (5) yellow, earth, middle. Colonel Garrick Mallery has also some notes on this subject, _Fourth Ann. Rep. Bureau Ethnol._, Washington, p. 53, and _Tenth Ann. Rep._, p. 618.

It is very rarely that landscapes are drawn by savages purely for decorative purposes. Maps or plans, or diagrams which are virtually a kind of elevation section, or even a sort of bird’s-eye view, may be limned for mnemonic or directive purposes (p. 209); but pictorial views are so rare that it is worth while giving an illustration of one (Fig. 66) which I found etched on a bamboo tobacco-pipe, from Torres Straits, in the Museum für Völkerkunde, in Berlin.

I have little doubt that the island of Mer is here intended, on account of the shape of the hill and the presence of dome-shaped structures, which I take to be the beehive huts which characterise the eastern tribe of Torres Straits. I add for comparison a rough sketch (Fig. 67) I took of this island, as seen from the south-west by west.

The natives have a legend that this hill, “Gelam,” was originally a dugong; and I believe the eye-mark in the native’s drawing is intended for the eye of Gelam, “Gelam dan,” and the projection to the extreme left to indicate Gelam’s nose, “Gelam pit,” a small jutting rocky escarpment at the head end of the island, which is enormously exaggerated in the drawing. I take it that the break in the ground of Fig. 66, below the first bird, indicates the hill “Korkor,” which forms the tail of the dugong in my sketch, and which is one end of the horse-shoe shaped crater of a volcano. The part extending beyond this is the lava-flow which forms the north-eastern half of the island.[55] The vegetation is suggested in a very perfunctory manner. I do not know what the lines that stream from the apex of the hill are intended for. I should add that to make it approximately topographically accurate, the native picture should be reversed,[56] assuming my identification to be correct. What I imagine to have occurred is as follows:—The artist intended to represent Mer (Murray Island), and he drew the peak of the principal hill, Gelam, from a very characteristic point of view (I have sketches of my own similar to this); in order to give a realistic touch he inserted the eye, which is a prominent block of volcanic ash, and added the nose. The view is suggestive, but it is an impossible one, and it appears to me that this is characteristic of a great deal of the pictorial art of savages.

[55] Cf. map by author in a paper “On the Geology of Torres
Straits,” by Professors A. C. Haddon, W. J. Sollas, and G. A.
J. Cole. _Trans. Roy. Irish Acad._, xxx., 1894, pp. 419-470.

[56] An interesting example of reversal is found on a bamboo
tobacco-pipe which I obtained on the island of Mabuiag in
Torres Straits, and which I have given to the National Museum
at Washington, U.S.A. On one side of the pipe was cut =ᑎAЯIЯ=,
and on the other =MÖRAP=; the latter is the name for a bamboo
pipe, and the former I understood was the name of the place in
Daudai where the owner had cut the bamboo from which he made
the pipe; possibly it was his own name. It will be observed
that this name, which is really =RIRAU=, is printed backwards,
and the final =U= is upside down. I suspect that the occasional
reversal of words is due to the method of counting on the
fingers which these people employ. They always begin with the
little finger of the left hand, and pass from the thumb of the
left hand to that of the right. If a man was spelling out a
word letter by letter as if he were counting he might readily
fall into the error of putting down the first letter in a place
corresponding to the little finger of the left hand, and so on.
If the man who carved the pipe began with =RIRAU=, that word
would utilise all the digits of the left hand, and so =MÖRAP=
would come right end foremost on the right hand.

2. _Biomorphs._

The terms “zoomorph” and “phyllomorph” have been employed for the representations in art of plants and animals. Although man is, zoologically considered, only a higher animal, it is convenient to retain the term “anthropomorph,” which has been used by some writers to express representations of the human form. All three terms have reference to living beings, hence the appropriateness of classing them under the general designation of “biomorph.” The biomorph is the representation of anything living in contradistinction to the skeuomorph, which, as we have seen, is the representation of anything made, or of the physicomorph which is the representation of an object or operation in the physical world.

The fact that there is life in the original of the biomorph appears in most cases to exert an influence on the biomorph itself, so that it comes to have what might almost be described as a borrowed vitality.

The distinctive activities or qualities of any living being, more especially in the case of animals, very often cause them to be taken as symbolic of that particular quality. For example, the harmless, gentle, and affectionate dove, which only busies itself with parental cares, has come to be symbolic of peace. There are other reasons to which allusion will be made which have conspired to render biomorphs very important in decorative art.

Biomorphs partake of one characteristic of their originals. They have a life-history. All organisms are born, they grow, they die. During their growth they all pass through greater or less changes. Sometimes these changes, as in the metamorphoses of most insects, have attracted the attention of the least observant, and have appeared to be of such significance as to have been utilised for the illustration of religious doctrines. Whether taking place in full daylight, open to casual observation, or hidden in obscurity, or encapsuled within an egg-shell, marvellous transformations invariably accompany the earlier stages of the development of animals, from the egg stage. The development records an evolution, the history of which is being worked out in detail by the patient investigators of one of the most fascinating of all branches of study—embryology.

We have now to trace the birth, the evolution, and the decay of biomorphs, and we shall find that the subject is scarcely less suggestive and interesting than that of the very animals themselves.

Biomorphs are represented for varied purposes, and with other representations may be classified according to the diagram given in the introductory section (p. 8).

A. _Representation of Abstract Ideas of Life._

Even such an abstract idea as the Principle of Life, or Vital Energy, has been indicated in decorative art. “On every class of food- and water-vessels, in collections of both ancient and modern Pueblo pottery (except on pitchers and some sacred receptacles), it may be observed as a singular, yet almost constant feature, that encircling lines, often even ornamental zones, are left open or not, as it were, closed at the ends,” writes Cushing[57] (p. 510), who adds, “I asked the Indian women, when I saw them making these little spaces with great care, why they took so much pains to leave them open. They replied that to close them was ‘fearful!’—that this little space through the line or zone on a vessel was the ‘exit trail of life or being.’ How it came to be first left open, and why regarded as the ‘exit trail,’ they could not tell. When a woman has made and painted a vessel she will tell you with an air of relief that it is a ‘Made Being’; as she places the vessel in the kiln, she also places in and beside it food. The noise made by a pot when struck or when simmering on the fire is supposed to be the voice of its associated being. The clang of a pot when it breaks or suddenly cracks in burning is the cry of this being as it escapes or separates from the vessel. That it has departed is argued from the fact that the vase when cracked never resounds as it did when whole. This vague existence never cries out violently unprovoked; but it is supposed to acquire the power of doing so by imitation; hence, no one sings, whistles, or makes other strange or musical sounds resembling those of earthenware under the circumstances above described during the smoothing, polishing, painting, or other processes of finishing. The being thus incited, they think, would surely strive to come out, and would break the vessel in so doing.” In their native philosophy and worship of water, the latter is supposed to contain the source of continued life, hence life also dwells in a vessel containing water, and having once held water, and in virtue of having done so, it contains the source of life. “If the encircling lines inside of the eating bowl, outside of the water jar, were closed, there would be no exit trail for this invisible source of life, or for its influence or breath.” In attempting to arrive at the origin of this, Cushing points out that it is very “difficult to smoothly join a line incised around a clay pot while still soft, and that this difficulty is greater when the ornamental band is laid on in relief. It would be a natural outgrowth of this predicament to leave the ends unjoined, which indeed the savage often did. When paint instead of incision or relief come to be the decorative agent, the lines or bands would be left unjoined in imitation. As those acquainted with Tylor’s _Early History of Mankind_ will realise, a ‘myth of observation’ like the above would come to be assigned in after ages.”

[57] F. H. Cushing, “A Study of Pueblo Pottery as illustrative
of Zuñi Culture Growth,” _Fourth Ann. Rep. Bureau Ethnol._,
1882-83. Washington, 1886.

The soul or spirit as it is supposed to emerge from a person at death is often represented in Christian art as a miniature man or as a winged monstrosity, as a butterfly by the ancient Greeks, or in various ways by different peoples. Souls of deceased persons may be enshrined in living fruit-eating bats,[58] frigate-birds,[59] crocodiles,[60] lizards,[61] sharks,[62] or other animals. Under certain conditions the representation of any of these forms would be emblematic of the soul.

[58] According to a legend collected by the author in Torres
Straits.

[59] Dr. Codrington, _The Melanesians_, p. 126.

[60] M. Uhle, “Holz- und Bambus-Geräthe aus N.W. Neu Guinea,”
_K. Eth. Mus., Dresden_, vi., 1886, p. 6.

[61] M. D’Estrey, “Étude ethnographique sur le Lézard chez les
Peuples Malais et Polynésiens,” _L’Anthropologie_, iii., 1892,
p. 711.

[62] Dr. Codrington, _The Melanesians_, p. 126.

The dove, flames (or tongues) of fire, wind, and other emblems are symbolic of spirit in Christian art.

B. _Phyllomorphs._

It has been frequently remarked that plant forms are rarely represented by savages. A possible explanation may be found in the fact that plant life is so passive, it does nothing actively or aggressively as compared with the irrepressible vitality of animals. Thus it does not impress itself on the imagination of backward peoples.

Another explanation has been suggested to me by Dr. Colley March. The need of ornament is based on expectancy. The eye is so accustomed to something in a certain association, that when this is not seen there is experienced a sense of loss. Among savage peoples the eye is accustomed to dwell on vegetal forms which are always present. It is only when they cease to be present, as in the exceptional circumstances of desert places, or walled towns, that the sense of loss can arise.

It is very probable that the reputed paucity of ornamentation derived from the vegetable world amongst primitive folk may be partly due to our not recognising it as such. Their conventions are not the same as ours, and they are often satisfied with what appears to us to be a very imperfect realism. Who, for example, would recognise in Fig. 69 the leaves of a small “cabbage”-bearing wild palm? Yet the pattern on this painted bark-tablet of the Bakaïri tribe of Central Brazil has this significance, according to Professor von den Steinen (cf. p. 175).

Backward people have to be taught to see beauty in nature, and it is very doubtful if the elegance of the form of flower or leaf appeals to them. Bright colours we know please all, and it is the colour or scent of flowers and leaves which causes them to be worn or used in decoration.

One of the very few instances known to me in which vegetable forms are employed in ornamentation by the natives of British New Guinea occurs along the Fly River (Figs. 4, 8). These natives are fond of decorating their drums with leaves, hence it may happen that, on the principle of expectancy, leaves become mentally associated with drum decoration, and in consequence often carved upon drums, and thence, by the constraint of the feeling of expectancy transferred to pipes and other objects; the casual decoration becomes an engraved ornament. On the other hand, the Fly River appears to have been a culture route (pp. 28, 70), and the employment of plant motives (if the majority of these devices are really such) may be partly due to influence from Malaysia. Dr. M. Uhle[63] points out that “The influences of the plant ornamentation of the East Indian Archipelago are also found in Western New Guinea. Although essentially peculiar to the western portion of the East Indian Archipelago it is not wanting in isolated cases in the eastern. Plant ornamentations in perforated carving are known from Halmahera which form a precise parallel with the carvings from Geelvink Bay. Further, the plant ornamentation occurs in Geelvink Bay also in isolated four-petalled flowers, as in Celebes, Halmahera, Timor, and Borneo. [Plant garlands are found on objects from the neighbourhood of Geelvink and Humboldt Bays.] A complete tendril with four-rayed leaves [or flowers] occurs as a pattern on a pottery-beater from Humboldt Bay.[64] Trustworthy examples from further east in North New Guinea are either absent or are as yet unrecorded. The influence of the western plant ornament is also felt in South-west New Guinea in the district between Kamrao and Etna Bays. The formation of a cruciform pattern through the arrangement of four Nassa shells, which occurs not only in Geelvink Bay but also in South-west New Guinea at Wamuka River, appears to be due to the influence of a plant pattern, the frequent four-petalled flower.”

[63] “Holz- und Bambus-Geräthe aus Nord West Neu Guinea,”
_Dresden Ethnograph. Mus._, 1886.

[64] P. Mantegazza, “Studii antrop. ed etnogr. sulla Nuova
Guinea,” _Arch. per l’Antrop. e la Etnol._, vii., 1877, Pl. X.,
No. 914.

In the central district of British New Guinea plant forms appear to be again met with (Fig. 21). I say “appear,” as unless there is direct information from natives it is always risky to hazard a guess as to the meaning of a particular design. The reason for these designs is at present quite obscure, but there can be no doubt that there is a reason for them, and a good one too.

Where plants are represented by savage peoples we shall probably find that as a rule their employment is primarily due to other causes than the selection of beautiful forms and graceful curves for their own sakes. A very good example of this is found among the magic patterns on the combs of the Negritos of Malacca, and I would refer the reader to the section on Sympathetic Magic (p. 235), where this is dealt with at considerable length. It may be that this four-rayed flower which is credited with magical properties is the same which, as Dr. Uhle has pointed out, is so widely spread in the decorative art of the Malay Archipelago and Northern New Guinea.

Few plants have penetrated into the psychical life of man to the same extent as the lotus. The food-plants, which afford sustenance to his body, rarely, as such, enter the portals of art. Even those used in fermentation do not necessarily fare much better. The chief exception is the vine, which from its graceful habit of growth and its decorative leaves and clusters of grapes readily lends itself to artistic treatment, but in this case it was probably on account of the “wine that maketh glad the heart of man,” rather than the beauty of the vine, that this creeper became a favourite motive in decorative art. Having once effected an entrance by appealing to the lower senses, the vine retained its position by gratifying the higher. This chapter in the history of art has, however, yet to be written.

Neither mere utility nor intrinsic beauty appear to be a necessary qualification for the establishing of plant-life in decorative art. It is only, so to speak, when plants are provided with a soul, when an inner meaning is read into them, that they become immortalised.

The best example of this is found in the history of the lotus in decorative art. Religion introduced it, symbolism established it, and habit or expectancy retained it.

_The Lotus and its Wanderings._

As many mistakes have arisen from the confusion of the Egyptian lotus with the rose water-lily it is necessary to clearly distinguish between them.

The White lotus (_Nymphæa lotus_) and the Blue lotus (_N. cœrulea_), which is only a colour variety of the former, have a disc-like leaf, cleft nearly to its centre, which floats on the surface of the water. The calyx has only four coarse sepals which are dark green in colour, and which entirely encase the bud until it begins to open. As it expands the delicate white or sapphire blue petals offer a marked contrast to the sepals. From four points of view of the open flower a central and two lateral sepals will be evident, often when the flower begins to fade the sepals bend downwards, but the petals do not expand to a greater extent than is shown in the accompanying figure (Fig. 70), in which will also be seen the characteristic seed-capsule with its rosette-like apex.

The rose water-lily, or water-bean (_Nelumbium speciosum_), according to Professor Goodyear,[65] is not represented in Egyptian pattern ornament. Its leaves (Fig. 71), standing erect out of the water, are bell-shaped and not slit. The calyx has numerous, over-lapping, scale-like sepals. The flower opens widely and the broad petals disappear from view by the expansion of the blossom. The seed-pod resembles the spout of a watering-pot. Sir J. G. Wilkinson says,[66] “The Nelumbium, common in India, grows no longer in Egypt, and the care taken in planting it formerly seems to show it was not indigenous in Egypt.”

[65] W. H. Goodyear, _The Grammar of the Lotus_, 1891.

[66] J. G. Wilkinson, _The Manners and Customs of the Ancient
Egyptians_, ii. (3rd edition), p. 407.

In every book dealing with Ancient Egypt numerous figures of the lotus will be noticed either in scenes illustrating the cult of some divinity and as sacred symbols, or in later times employed merely for decorative effect. The same remark applies, though to a less extent, to the art of Chaldea, Assyria, Persia, India, Phœnicia, and several of the Mediterranean countries.

Why should this motive be so widely spread? The most obvious answer has already been suggested. Religion introduced the lotus to art. We have already noticed the earthly original, now allusion must be briefly made to its symbolism; then its original home must be sought; and finally, some of its wanderings traced, and a few of its variations and transformations noted.

It appears that in Ancient Egypt the lotus was symbolic of the sun; a text at Denderah says, “The Sun, which was from the beginning, rises like a hawk from the midst of its lotus bud. When the doors of its leaves open in sapphire-coloured brilliancy, it has divided the night from the day.”[67] At Denderah a king makes an offering of the lotus to the Sun-god, Horus, with the words, “I offer thee the flower which was in the beginning, the glorious lily of the Great Water.”[68]

[67] Brugsch, _Religion und Mythologie der Alten Ægypter_, i.
p. 103; cf. Goodyear, p. 6.

[68] Brugsch, _Religion_, etc., i. p. 121; _loc. cit._, p. 6.

Fig. 72 is a detail taken from a plate in the second volume of the magnificent atlas by Prisse d’Avennes;[69] it is part of the offerings on an altar before Osiris, who is crowned with the solar disc. Osiris is the sun in the Lower World—_i.e._, during the night, and the father of Horus. Horus is sometimes depicted seated on a lotus.

[69] _Histoire de l’Art Egyptien d’après les Monuments_, 1878.

The various animals which were symbolic of the sun or associated with sun-divinities are also placed in direct connection with the lotus, as if to emphasise its solar significance; for example—

The solar-bull is well recognised in Egyptian mythology, the Bull-god Apis being an incarnation of Osiris, and an offspring of the Sun-god, Ptah of Memphis. Similarly also for Assyria, Merodach, “the Bull of Light,” was originally a Sun-god; his Syrian equivalent was Baal. The Phœnician Moon-goddess, Astarte, had the bull as her symbol, and the bull of Europa was its counterpart. The Taurus of the Chaldean Zodiac commenced the year.

The lion was another sun-animal both in Egypt and in Chaldea and Assyria.

Among birds the hawk and the eagle were sun symbols, especially the former, and it is sometimes depicted standing on a lotus. The solar-goose is also important in its association with the lotus. (Fig. 129, G.)

In early Cyprian pottery we find lotus derivatives grouped with the solar cross and other symbols of the sun. (Fig. 129, F.)

The association of the lotus with the sun probably led to its other symbolic relations, and these latter have rather drawn attention away from what is here regarded as the more primitive symbol.