Origin and Development of Form and Ornament in Ceramic Art. | Page 6

vessels of particular
forms to particular ceremonies.

+ORIGIN OF ORNAMENT.+
The birth of the embellishing art must be sought in that stage of animal
development when instinct began to discover that certain attributes or
adornments increased attractiveness. When art in its human sense came
into existence ideas of embellishment soon extended from the person,
with, which they had been associated, to all things with which man had
to deal. The processes of the growth of the æsthetic idea are long and
obscure and cannot be taken up in this place.
The various elements of embellishment in which the ceramic art is
interested may be assigned to two great classes, based upon the
character of the conceptions associated with them. These are
ideographic and non-ideographic. In the present paper I shall treat
chiefly of the non ideographic, reserving the ideographic for a second
paper.
Elements, non-ideographic from the start, are derived mainly from two
sources: 1st, from objects, natural or artificial, associated with the arts;
and, 2d, from the suggestions of accidents attending construction.
Natural objects abound in features highly suggestive of embellishment
and these are constantly employed in art. Artificial objects have two
classes of features capable of giving rise to ornament: these are
constructional and functional. In a late stage of development all things
in nature and in art, however complex or foreign to the art in its

practice, are subject to decorative treatment. This latter is the realistic
pictorial stage, one of which the student of native American culture
needs to take little cognizance.
Elements of design are not invented outright: man modifies, combines,
and recombines elements or ideas already in existence, but does not
create.
A classification of the sources of decorative motives employed in the
ceramic art is given in the following diagram:
/Suggestions of features of natural utensils or objects. | / | | /Handles. | |
|Legs | | Functional|Bands | | \Perforations, etc. | | |Suggestions of
features of | |artificial utensils or objects.| /The coil. | | |The seam.
Origin of ornament| |Constructional|The stitch. | | |The plait. | \ \The
twist, etc. |Suggestions from accidents /Marks of fingers. | attending
construction. |Marks of implements. | \Marks of molds, etc. | |
\Suggestions of ideographic features or pictorial delineations.
+SUGGESTIONS OF NATURAL FEATURES OF OBJECTS.+
The first articles used by men in their simple arts have in many cases
possessed features suggestive of decoration. Shells of mollusks are
exquisitely embellished with ribs, spines, nodes, and colors. The same
is true to a somewhat limited extent of the shells of the turtle and the
armadillo and of the hard cases of fruits.
These decorative features, though not essential to the utensil, are
nevertheless inseparable parts of it, and are cast or unconsciously
copied by a very primitive people when similar articles are artificially
produced in plastic material. In this way a utensil may acquire
ornamental characters long before the workman has learned to take
pleasure in such details or has conceived an idea beyond that of simple
utility. This may be called unconscious embellishment. In this
fortuitous fashion a ribbed variety of fruit shell would give rise to a
ribbed vessel in clay; one covered with spines would suggest a noded
vessel, etc. When taste came to be exercised upon such objects these
features would be retained and copied for the pleasure they afforded.

[Illustration: a.--Shell vessel. b.--Copy in clay. FIG. 475.--Scroll
derived from the spire of a conch shell.]
Passing by the many simple elements of decoration that by this
unconscious process could be derived from such sources, let me give a
single example by which it will be seen that not only elementary forms
but even so highly constituted an ornament as the scroll may have been
brought thus naturally into the realm of decorative art. The sea-shell
has always been intimately associated with the arts that utilize clay and
abounds in suggestions of embellishment. The Busycon was almost
universally employed as a vessel by the tribes of the Atlantic drainage
of North America. Usually it was trimmed down and excavated until
only about three-fourths of the outer wall of the shell remained. At one
end was the long spike-like base which served as a handle, and at the
other the flat conical apex, with its very pronounced spiral line or ridge
expanding from the center to the circumference, as seen in Fig. 475 a.
This vessel was often copied in clay, as many good examples now in
our museums testify. The notable feature is that the shell has been
copied literally, the spiral appearing in its proper place. A specimen is
illustrated in Fig. 475 b which, although simple and highly
conventionalized, still retains the spiral figure.
[Illustration: a b c FIG. 476.--Possible derivation of the current scroll.]
In another example