The Textile Art In Its Relation To The Development Of Form And Ornament Part 4

My second ill.u.s.tration (Fig. 339) is drawn from a superb example of the basketry of the Yokut Indians of California. The two figures form part of a spirally radiating band of ornament, which is shown to good advantage in the small cut. Fig. 340. It is of the coiled style of construction. The design is worked in four colors and the effect is quiet and rich.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 339. Conventional figures from a California Indian basket.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 340. Basket made by the Yokut Indians of California.]

Turning southward from California and pa.s.sing through many strange lands we find ourselves in Peru, and among a cla.s.s of remains that bespeak a high grade of culture. The inhabitants of Ancon were wonderfully skilled in the textile art, and thousands of handsome examples have been obtained from their ancient tombs. Among these relics are many neat little workbaskets woven from rushes. One of these, now in the National Museum, is encircled by a decorated belt in which are represented seven human figures woven in black filaments upon a brown ground.

The base and rim of the basket are woven in the intertwined combination, but in the decorated belt the style is changed to the plain right angled interlacing, for the reason, no doubt, that this combination was better suited to the development of the intended design. Besides the fundamental series of fillets the weaver resorted to unusual devices in order to secure certain desired results. In the first place the black horizontal series of filaments does not alternate in the simplest way with the brown series, but, where a wide s.p.a.ce of the dark color is called for, several of the brown strands are pa.s.sed over at one step, as in the head and body, and in the wider inters.p.a.ces the dark strands pa.s.s under two or more of the opposing strands. In this way broad areas of color are obtained. It will be observed, however, that the construction is weakened by this modification, and that to remedy the defect two additional extra constructive series of fillets are added. These are of much lighter weight than the main series, that they may not obscure the pattern.

Over the dark series they run vertically and over the light obliquely.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 341. Conventional human figures from an ancient Peruvian basket.]

It will be seen that the result, notwithstanding all this modification of procedure, is still remarkably like that of the preceding examples, the figures corresponding closely in kind and degree of geometricity.

The fact is that in this coa.r.s.e work refinement of drawing is absolutely unattainable. It appears that the sharply p.r.o.nounced steps exhibited in the outlines are due to the great width of the fillets used. With the finer threads employed by most nations of moderate culture the stepped effect need not obtrude itself, for smooth outlines and graceful curves are easily attainable; yet, as a rule, even the finer fabrics continue to exhibit in their decorations the p.r.o.nounced geometric character seen in ruder forms. I present a striking example of this in Fig. 342, a superb piece of Incarian gobelins, in which a gaily costumed personage is worked upon a dark red ground dotted with symbols and strange devices. The work is executed in brilliant colors and in great detail. But with all the facility afforded for the expression of minutely modulated form the straight lines and sharp angles are still present. The traditions of the art were favorable to great geometricity, and the tendencies of the warp and woof and the shape of the s.p.a.ces to be filled were decidedly in that direction.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 342. Human figure in Peruvian gobelins, showing characteristic textile convention. From chromolithographs published by Reiss and Stubel in The Necropolis of Ancon.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 343. Human figures from a Peruvian vase, done in free hand, graphic style.]

In order that the full force of my remarks may be appreciable to the eye of the reader, I give an additional ill.u.s.tration (Fig. 343). The two figures here shown, although I am not able to say positively that the work is pre-Columbian, were executed by a native artist of about the same stage of culture as was the work of the textile design. These figures are executed in color upon the smooth surface of an earthen vase and ill.u.s.trate perfectly the peculiar characters of free hand, graphic delineation. Place this and the last figure side by side and we see how vastly different is the work of two artists of equal capacity when executed in the two methods. This figure should also be compared with the embroidered figures shown in Fig. 348.

The tendencies to uniformity in textile ornament here ill.u.s.trated may be observed the world over. Every element entering the art must undergo a similar metamorphosis; hence the remarkable power of this almost universally practiced art upon the whole body of decorative design.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 344. Human figure modified by execution in concentric interlaced style of weaving--1/3.]

That the range of results produced by varying styles of weaving and of woven objects may be appreciated, I present some additional examples.

Coiled wares, for instance, present decorative phenomena strikingly at variance with those in which there is a rectangular disposition of parts. Instead of the two or more interlacing series of parallel fillets exhibited in the latter style, we have one radiate and one concentric series. The effect of this arrangement upon the introduced human figure is very striking, as will be seen by reference to Fig.

344, which represents a large tray obtained from the Moki Indians. The figure probably represents one of the mythologic personages of the Moki pantheon or some otherwise important priestly functionary, wearing the characteristic headdress of the ceremony in which the plaque was to be used. The work is executed in wicker, stained in such bright tints as were considered appropriate to the various features of the costume. Referring in detail to the shape and arrangement of the parts of the figure, it is apparent that many of the remarkable features are due to constructive peculiarities. The round face, for example, does not refer to the sun or the moon, but results from the concentric weaving. The oblique eyes have no reference to a Mongolian origin, as they only follow the direction of the ray upon which they are woven, and the headdress does not refer to the rainbow or the aurora because it is arched, but is arched because the construction forced it into this shape. The proportion of the figure is not so very bad because the Moki artist did not know better, but because the surface of the tray did not afford room to project the body and limbs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 345. Figure of a bird painted upon a Zuni s.h.i.+eld, free hand delineation.]

Now, it may be further observed that had the figure been placed at one side of the center, extending only from the border to the middle of the tray, an entirely different result would have been reached; but this is better ill.u.s.trated in a series of bird delineations presented in the following figures. With many tribes the bird is an object of superst.i.tious interest and is introduced freely into all art products suitable for its delineation. It is drawn upon walls, skins, pottery, and various utensils and weapons, especially those directly connected with ceremonies in which the mythical bird is an important factor. The bird form was probably in familiar use long before it was employed in the decoration of basketry. In Fig. 345 I present an ordinary graphic representation. It is copied from a Zuni s.h.i.+eld and is the device of an order or the totem of a clan. The style is quite conventional, as a result of the various constraints surrounding its production. But what a strange metamorphosis takes place when it is presented in the basketmaker's language. Observe the conventional pattern shown upon the surface of a Moki tray (Fig. 346). We have difficulty in recognizing the bird at all, although the conception is identical with the preceding. The positions of the head and legs and the expanded wings and tail correspond as closely as possible, but delineation is hampered by technique. The peculiar construction barely permits the presentation of a recognizable life form, and permits it in a particular way, which will be understood by a comparison with the treatment of the human figure in Fig. 344. In that case the interlaced combination gives relievo results, characterized by wide, radiating ribs and narrow, inconspicuous, concentric lines, which cross the ribs in long steps. The power of expression lies almost wholly with the concentric series, and detail must in a great measure follow the concentric lines. In the present case (Fig. 346) this is reversed and lines employed in expressing forms are radiate.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 346. Figure of a bird executed in a coiled Moki tray, textile delineation.]

The precise effect of this difference of construction upon a particular feature may be shown by the introduction of another ill.u.s.tration. In Fig. 347 we have a bird woven in a basket of the interlaced style. We see with what ease the long sharp bill and the slender tongue (shown by a red filament between the two dark mandibles) are expressed. In the other case the construction is such that the bill, if extended in the normal direction, is broad and square at the end, and the tongue, instead of lying between the mandibles, must run across the bill, totally at variance with the truth; in this case the tongue is so represented, the light vertical band seen in the cut being a yellow stripe. It will be seen that the two representations are very unlike each other, not because of differences in the conception and not wholly on account of the style of weaving, but rather because the artist chose to extend one across the whole surface of the utensil and to confine the other to one side of the center.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 347. Figure of a bird woven in interlaced wicker at one side of the center.]

It is clear, therefore, from the preceding observations that the convention of woven life forms varies with the kind of weaving, with the shape of the object, with the position upon the object, and with the shape of the s.p.a.ce occupied, as well as with the inherited style of treatment and with the capacity of the artist concerned. These varied forces and influences unite in the metamorphosis of all the incoming elements of textile embellishment.

It will be of interest to examine somewhat closely the modifications produced in pictorial motives introduced through superstructural and advent.i.tious agencies.

We are accustomed, at this age of the world, to see needlework employed successfully in the delineation of graphic forms and observe that even the Indian, under the tutelage of the European, reproduces in a more or less realistic way the forms of vegetal and animal life.

As a result we find it difficult to realize the simplicity and conservatism of primitive art. The intention of the primitive artist was generally not to depict nature, but to express an idea or decorate a s.p.a.ce, and there was no strong reason why the figures should not submit to the conventionalizing tendencies of the art.

I have already shown that embroidered designs, although not from necessity confined to geometric outlines, tend to take a purely geometric character from the fabric upon which they are executed, as well as from the mechanical processes of st.i.tching. This is well shown in Fig. 348, a fine specimen given by Wiener in his work Perou et Bolive.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 348. Embroidery upon a cotton net in which the textile combinations are followed step by step. Ancient Peruvian work.]

A life form worked upon a net does not differ essentially from the same subject woven in with the web and woof. The reason is found in the fact that in embroidery the workman was accustomed from the first to follow the geometric combination of the foundation fabric step by step, and later in life delination he pursued the same method.

It would seem natural, however, that when the foundation fabric does not exhibit well marked geometric characters, as in compactly woven canvas, the needlework would a.s.sume free hand characters and follow the curves and irregularities of the natural object depicted; but such is not the case in purely aboriginal work. An example of embroidery obtained from an ancient grave at Ancon, Peru, is shown in Fig. 349. A piece of brown cotton canvas is embellished with a border of bird figures in bright colored wool thread. The lines of the figures do not obey the web and woof strictly, as the lines are difficult to follow, but the geometric character is as perfectly preserved as if the design were woven in the goods.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 349. Embroidery in which the foundation fabric is not followed accurately, but which exhibits the full textile geometricity. Ancient Peruvian work.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 350. Design painted in color upon a woven surface, exhibiting the full degree of geometric convention. Ancient Peruvian work. Copied from The Necropolis of Ancon.]

So habit and a.s.sociation carry the geometric system into advent.i.tious decoration. When the ancient Peruvian executed a design in color upon a woven surface (Fig. 350), using a pencil or brush, the result was hardly less subject to textile restraint.

As a matter of course, since there are two distinct styles of decorative design--the textile and the free hand--there exist intermediate forms partaking of the character of both; but it is nevertheless clear that the textile system transforms or greatly modifies all nature motives a.s.sociated with it, whether introduced into the fabric or applied to its surface.

In countries where the textile art is unimportant and the textile system of decoration does not obtrude itself, free hand methods may prevail to such an extent that the geometric influence is but little felt. The Haidah Indians, for example, paint designs with great freedom and skill, and those applied to woven surfaces are identical with those executed upon skins, wood, and stone, but this art is doubtless much modified by the means and methods of Europeans. Our studies should be confined wholly to pure indigenous art.

EXTENSION OF TEXTILE ORNAMENT TO OTHER FORMS OF ART.

I have now dwelt at sufficient length upon the character of the textile system of ornament and have laid especial stress upon the manner in which it is interwoven with the technical const.i.tution of the art. I have ill.u.s.trated the remarkable power of the art by which decorative elements from without, coming once within the magic influence, are seized upon and remodeled in accordance with the laws of textile combination. Pursuing the investigation still further it is found that the dominion of the textile system is not limited to the art, but extends to other arts. Like a strong race of men it is not to be confined to its own original habitat, but spreads to other realms, stamping its own habits and character upon whatever happens to come within its reach. Its influence is felt throughout the whole range of those arts with which the esthetic sense of man seeks to a.s.sociate ideas of beauty. It is necessary, before closing this paper, to examine briefly the character and extent of this influence and to describe in some detail the agencies through which the results are accomplished. First and most important are the results of direct transmission.

House building, or architecture as it is called in the higher stages, is in primitive times to a great extent textile; as culture develops, other materials and other systems of construction are employed, and the resultant forms vary accordingly; but textile characters are especially strong and persistent in the matter of ornament, and survive all changes, howsoever complete. In a similar way other branches of art differentiated in material and function from the parent art inherit many characters of form and ornament conceived in the textile stage. It may be difficult to say with reference to any particular example of design that it had a textile origin, for there may be multiple origins to the same or to closely corresponding forms; but we may a.s.sert in a general way of the great body of geometric ornament that it owes something--if not its inspiration, its modes of expression--to the teachings of the textile system. This appears reasonable when we consider that the weaver's art, as a medium of esthetic ideas, had precedence in time over nearly all compet.i.tors.

Being first in the field it stood ready on the birth of new forms of art, whether directly related or not, to impose its characters upon them. What claim can architecture, sculpture, or ceramics have upon the decorative conceptions of the Digger Indians, or even upon those of the Zuni or Moki? The former have no architecture, sculpture, or ceramics; but their system of decoration, as we have seen, is highly developed. The Pueblo tribes at their best have barely reached the stage at which esthetic ideas are a.s.sociated with building; yet cla.s.sic art has not produced a set of geometric motives more chaste or varied. These examples of the development of high forms of decoration during the very early stages of the arts are not isolated. Others are observed in other countries, and it is probable that if we could lift the veil and peer into the far prehistoric stages of the world's greatest cultures the same condition and order would be revealed. It is no doubt true that all of the shaping arts in the fullness of their development have given rise to decorative features peculiar to themselves; for construction, whether in stone, clay, wood, or metal, in their rigid conditions, exhibits characters unknown before, many of which tend to give rise to ornament. But this ornament is generally only applicable to the art in which it develops, and is not transferable by natural processes--as of a parent to its offspring--as are the esthetic features of the weaver's art.

Besides the direct transmission of characters and forms as suggested in a preceding paragraph, there are many less direct but still efficacious methods of transfer by means of which various arts acquire textile decorative features, as will be seen by the following ill.u.s.trations.

j.a.panese art is celebrated for its exquisite decorative design. Upon superb works of porcelain we have skillful representations of subjects taken from nature and from mythology, which are set with perfect taste upon fields or within borders of elaborate geometric design. If we should ask how such motives came to be employed in ceramic decoration, the answer would be given that they were selected and employed because they were regarded as fitting and beautiful by a race of decorators whose taste is well nigh infallible. But this explanation, however satisfactory as applied to individual examples of modern art, is not at all applicable to primitive art, for the mind of man was not primarily conscious of the beauty or fitness of decorative elements, nor did he think of using them independently of the art to which they were indigenous. Now the ceramic art gives rise to comparatively few elements of decoration, and must therefore acquire the great body of its decorative motives from other arts by some process not primarily dependent upon the exercise of judgment or taste, and yet not by direct inheritance, as the techniques of the two arts are wholly distinct.

Textile and fictile arts are, in their earlier stages, to a large extent, vessel making arts, the one being functionally the offshoot of the other. The textile art is the parent, and, as I have already shown, develops within itself a geometric system of ornament. The fictile art is the offshoot and has within itself no predilection for decoration. It is dependent and plastic. Its forms are to a great extent modeled and molded within the textile shapes and acquire automatically some of the decorative surface characters of the mold.

This is the beginning of the transfer, and as time goes on other methods are suggested by which elements indigenous to the one art are transferred to the other. Thus we explain the occurrence, the constant recurrence of certain primary decorative motives in primitive ceramics. The herring bone, the checker, the guilloche, and the like are greatly the heritage of the textile art. Two forms derived from textile surfaces are ill.u.s.trated in Figs. 351 and 352. In the first example shown, herring bone patterns appear as the result of textile combination, and in the second a triangular checker is produced in the same way. In Fig. 352 we see the result of copying these patterns in incised lines upon soft clay.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 351. Herring bone and checker patterns produced in textile combinations.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 352. Herring bone and checker figures in fictile forms transferred from the textile.]

Again, the ancient potter, who was in the habit of modeling his wares within baskets, seems to have conceived the idea of building his vessels by coiling just as he built his baskets. The surface exhibits coiled ridges like basketry, as shown in Fig. 353, and the textile character was further imposed upon the clay by marking these coils with the thumb and with implements to give the effect of the transverse series of filaments, and the geometric color patterns of the basketry were reproduced in incised lines. When these peoples came to paint their wares it was natural that the colored patterns native to the basketry should also be reproduced, and many more or less literal transfers by copying are to be found. A fine example of these painted textile designs is shown in Fig. 354. It is executed in a masterly style upon a handsome vase of the white ware of ancient Tusayan. Not only are the details reproduced with all their geometric exactness, but the arrangement of the designs upon the vessel is the same as in the textile original. Nine-tenths of the more archaic, Pueblo, ceramic, ornamental designs are traceable to the textile art, and all show the influence of textile convention.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 353. Earthen vase built by coiling, exhibiting decorative characters derived from basketry.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 354. Ceramic ornament copied literally from a textile original.]

Another peculiar cla.s.s of transfers of a somewhat more indirect nature may be noticed. All the more advanced American nations were very fond of modeling the human form in clay, a large percentage of vessels having some trace of the human form or physiognomy. Now, in many cases the costume of the personage represented in the clay is also imitated, and generally in color, the details of the fabrics receiving their full share of attention. Such an example, from a sepulcher at Ancon, is shown in Fig. 355. Here the poncho or mantle thrown across the shoulders falls down upon the body in front and behind and the stripes and conventional fishes are accurately reproduced. In this way both style and matter of the textile decoration are introduced into the ceramic art.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 355. Textile patterns transferred to pottery through the copying of costume. From The Necropolis of Ancon, by Reiss and Stubel, Pl. 94.]

It will be seen by these ill.u.s.trations that there are many natural methods, automatic or semiautomatic in character, by which the one art receives aid from the other; that in the beginning of the transfer of textile ornament to fictile forms the process is purely mechanical, and that it is continued automatically without any very decided exercise of judgment or taste. As a result, these borrowed decorations are generally quite as consistent and appropriate as if developed within the art itself. Later in the course of progress the potter escapes in a measure from this narrow groove and elaborates his designs with more freedom, being governed still to a certain extent by the laws of instinctive and automatic procedure. When, finally, intellect a.s.sumes to carry on the work independently of these laws, decoration tends to become debased.

Turning to other branches of art, what traces do we find of the transfer to them of textile features? Take, for example, sculpture. In the wood carving of the Polynesians we observe a most elaborate system of decoration, more or less geometric in character. We do not need to look a second time to discover a striking likeness to the textile system, and we ask, Is it also derived from a textile source? In the first place let us seek within the art a reason for the peculiar forms. In carving wood and in tracing figures upon it with pointed tools the tendency would certainly be towards straight lines and formal combinations; but in this work there would be a lack of uniformity in execution and of persistency in narrow lines of combination, such as result from the constant necessity of counting and s.p.a.cing in the textile art. In the presentation of natural forms curved lines are called for, and there is nothing inherent in the carver's art to forbid the turning of such lines with the graver or knife. Graphic art would be realistic to an extent regulated by the skill and habits of the artist. But, in reality, the geometric character of this work is very p.r.o.nounced, and we turn naturally toward the textile art to ask whether in some way that art has not exercised an influence. The textile arts of these peoples are highly developed and were doubtless so in a degree from very early times, and must have had a close relation with the various arts, and especially so in the matter of ornament. Specific examples may be cited showing the intimacy of wood carving to textilia. Bows, spears, arrows, &c.

are bound with textile materials to increase their strength. Knives and other weapons are covered with textile sheaths and handles of certain utensils are lashed on with twisted cords. In ceremonial objects these textile features are elaborated for ornament and the characteristic features of this ornament are transferred to a.s.sociated surfaces of wood and stone by the graver. A most instructive ill.u.s.tration is seen in the ceremonial adzes so numerous in museums (Fig. 356). The cords used primarily in attaching the haft are, after loss of function, elaborately plaited and interwoven until they become an important feature and a.s.sume the character of decoration. The heavy wooden handles are elaborately carved, and the suggestions of figures given by the interlaced cords are carried out in such detail that at a little distance it is impossible to say where the real textile surface ceases and the sculptured portion begins.