Origin and Development of Form and Ornament in Ceramic Art. | Page 8

greatly divergent forms. Aboriginal architecture in
some parts of America had reached a development capable of wielding
a strong influence. This is not true, however, of any part of the United
States.
+SUGGESTIONS OF ACCIDENTS.+

Besides the suggestions of surface features impressed in manufacture or
intentionally copied as indicated above, we have also those of
accidental imprints of implements or of the fingers in manufacture.
From this source there are necessarily many suggestions of ornament,
at first of indented figures, but later, after long employment, extending
to the other modes of representation.
+IDEOGRAPHIC AND PICTORIAL SUBJECTS.+
Non-ideographic forms of ornament may originate in ideographic
features, mnemonic, demonstrative, or symbolic. Such significant
figures are borrowed by decorators from other branches of art. As time
goes on they lose their significance and are subsequently treated as
purely decorative elements. Subjects wholly pictorial in character,
when such come to be made, may also be used as simple decoration,
and by long processes of convention become geometric.
The exact amount of significance still attached to significant figures
after adoption into decoration cannot be determined except in cases of
actual identification by living peoples, and even when the signification
is known by the more learned individuals the decorator may be wholly
without knowledge of it.

MODIFICATION OF ORNAMENT.
There are comparatively few elementary ideas prominently and
generally employed in primitive decorative art. New ideas are acquired,
as already shown, all along the pathway of progress. None of these
ideas retain a uniform expression, however, as they are subject to
modification by environment just as are the forms of living organisms.
A brief classification of the causes of modification is given in the
following synopsis:
/Through material. Modification of ornament------|Through form.
\Through, methods of realization.
Through material.--It is evident at a glance that material must have a

strong influence upon the forms assumed by the various decorative
motives, however derived. Thus stone, clay, wood, bone, and copper,
although they readily borrow from nature and from each other,
necessarily show different decorative results. Stone is massive and
takes form slowly and by peculiar processes. Clay is more versatile and
decoration may be scratched, incised, painted, or modeled in relief with
equal facility, while wood and metal engender details having characters
peculiar to themselves, producing different results from the same
motives or elements. Much of the diversity displayed by the art
products of different countries and climates is due to this cause.
Peoples dwelling in arctic climates are limited, by their materials, to
particular modes of expression. Bone and ivory as shaped for use in the
arts of subsistence afford facilities for the employment of a very
restricted class of linear decoration, such chiefly as could be scratched
with a hard point upon small irregular, often cylindrical, implements.
Skins and other animal tissues are not favorable to the development of
ornament, and the textile arts--the greatest agents of convention--do not
readily find suitable materials in which to work.
Decorative art carried to a high stage under arctic environment would
be more likely to achieve unconventional and realistic forms than if
developed in more highly favored countries. The accurate geometric
and linear patterns would hardly arise.
Through form.--Forms of decorated objects exercise a strong influence
upon the decorative designs employed. It would be more difficult to
tattoo the human face or body with straight lines or rectilinear patterns
than with curved ones. An ornament applied originally to a vessel of a
given form would accommodate itself to that form pretty much as
costume becomes adjusted to the individual. When it came to be
required for another form of vessel, very decided changes might be
necessary.
With the ancient Pueblo peoples rectilinear forms of meander patterns
were very much in favor and many earthen vessels are found in which
bands of beautiful angular geometric figures occupy the peripheral zone,
Fig. 480 a, but when the artist takes up a mug having a row of

hemispherical nodes about the body, b, he finds it very difficult to
apply his favorite forms and is almost compelled to run spiral curves
about the nodes in order to secure a neat adjustment.
[Illustration: FIG. 480.--Variations in a motive through the influence of
form.]
Through methods of realisation.--It will readily be seen that the forms
assumed by a motive depend greatly upon the character of the
mechanical devices employed. In the potter's art devices for holding
and turning the vessel under manipulation produce peculiar results.
In applying a given idea to clay much depends upon the method of
executing it. It will take widely differing forms when executed by
incising, by modeling, by painting, and by stamping.
Intimately associated with methods of execution are peculiarities of
construction, the two agencies working together in the processes of
modification and development of ornament.
I have previously shown how our