A Study of the Textile Art in its Relation to the Development of Form and Ornament | Page 5

the art. The great interest
taken in color--the great importance attached to it--is attested by the
very general use of dyes, by means of which additional variety and
brilliancy of effect are secured.
Color employed in the art is not related to use, excepting, perhaps, in
symbolic and superstitious matters; nor is it of consequence in
construction, although it derives importance from the manner in which
construction causes it to be manifested to the eye. It finds its chief use
in the field of design, in making evident to the eye the figures with
which objects of art are embellished.
Color is employed or applied in two distinct ways: it is woven or
worked into the fabric by using colored filaments or parts, or it is added
to the surface of the completed object by means of pencils, brushes, and
dies. Its employment in the latter manner is especially convenient when
complex ideographic or pictorial subjects are to be executed.
TEXTILE ORNAMENT.
DEVELOPMENT OF A GEOMETRIC SYSTEM OF DESIGN
WITHIN THE ART.
INTRODUCTION.
Having made a brief study of form and color in the textile art, I shall
now present the great group or family of phenomena whose exclusive
office is that of enhancing beauty. It will be necessary, however, to
present, besides those features of the art properly expressive of the
esthetic culture of the race, all those phenomena that, being present in

the art without man's volition, tend to suggest decorative conceptions
and give shape to them. I shall show how the latter class of features
arise as a necessity of the art, how they gradually come into notice and
are seized upon by the esthetic faculty, and how under its guidance they
assist in the development of a system of ornament of world wide
application.
For convenience of treatment esthetic phenomena may be classed as
relieved and flat. Figures or patterns of a relievo nature arise during
construction as a result of the intersections and other more complex
relations--the bindings--of the warp and woof or of inserted or applied
elements. Flat or surface features are manifested in color, either in
unison with or independent of the relieved details. Such is the nature of
the textile art that in its ordinary practice certain combinations of both
classes of features go on as a necessity of the art and wholly without
reference to the desire of the artist or to the effect of resultant patterns
upon the eye. The character of such figures depends upon the kind of
construction and upon the accidental association of natural colors in
construction.
At some period of the practice of the art these peculiar, adventitious
surface characters began to attract attention and to be cherished for the
pleasure they gave; what were at first adventitious features now took on
functions peculiar to themselves, for they were found to gratify desires
distinct from those cravings that arise directly from physical wants.
It is not to be supposed for a moment that the inception of esthetic
notions dates from this association of ideas of beauty with textile
characters. Long before textile objects of a high class were made, ideas
of an esthetic nature had been entertained by the mind, as, for example,
in connection with personal adornment. The skin had been painted,
pendants placed about the neck, and bright feathers set in the hair to
enhance attractiveness, and it is not difficult to conceive of the transfer
of such ideas from purely personal associations to the embellishment of
articles intimately associated with the person. No matter, however,
what the period or manner of the association of such ideas with the
textile art, that association may be taken as the datum point in the

development of a great system of decoration whose distinguishing
characters are the result of the geometric textile construction.
In amplifying this subject I find it convenient to treat separately the two
classes of decorative phenomena--the relieved and the
flat--notwithstanding the fact that they are for the most part intimately
associated and act together in the accomplishment of a common end.
RELIEF PHENOMENA.
Ordinary features.--The relieved surface characters of fabrics resulting
from construction and available for decoration are more or less
distinctly perceptible to the eye and to the touch and are susceptible of
unlimited variation in detail and arrangement. Such features are
familiar to all in the strongly marked ridges of basketry, and much
more pleasingly so in the delicate figures of damasks, embroideries,
and laces. So long as the figures produced are confined exclusively to
the necessary features of unembellished construction, as is the case in
very primitive work and in all plain work, the resultant patterns are
wholly geometric and by endless repetition of like parts extremely
monotonous.
In right angled weaving the figures combine in straight lines, which run
parallel or