Origin and Development of Form and Ornament in Ceramic Art. | Page 7

of judgment and taste; but the initiatory steps could be taken--the motive could enter art--without the conscious supervision of the human agent.
+SUGGESTIONS BY FEATURES OF ARTIFICIAL OBJECTS.+
[Illustration: FIG. 477.--Ornament derived through the modification of handles.]
Functional features.--Functional features of art products liable to influence ornament comprise handles, legs, feet, rims, bands, and other peculiarities of shape originating in utility. Handles, for instance, may have been indigenous to a number of arts; they are coeval and coextensive with culture. The first load, weapon, or vessel transported by man may have been suspended by a vine or filament. Such arts as have fallen heir to handles have used them according to the capacities of the material employed. Of all the materials stone is probably the least suited to their successful use, while clay utilizes them in its own peculiar way, giving to them a great variety of expression. They are copied in clay from various models, but owing to the inadequate capacities of the material, often lose their function and degenerate into mere ornaments, which are modified as such to please the potter's fancy. Thus, for example, the series of handles placed about the neck of the vessel become, by modification in frequent copying, a mere band of ornamental figures in relief, or even finally in engraved, punctured, or painted lines, in the manner suggested in Fig. 477. Legs, pedestals, spouts, and other features may in a like manner give rise to decoration.
[Illustration: a.--Coiled fillet of clay. b.--Double coil. FIG. 478.--Scroll derived from coil of clay.]
Constructional features.-Features of vessels resulting from construction are infinitely varied and often highly suggestive of decoration. Constructional peculiarities of the clay utensils themselves are especially worthy of notice, and on account of their actual presence in the art itself are more likely to be utilized or copied for ceramic ornament than those of other materials. The coil, so universally employed in construction, has had a decided influence upon the ceramic decoration of certain peoples, as I have shown in a paper on ancient Pueblo art. From it we have not only a great variety of surface ornamentation produced by simple treatment of the coil in place, but probably many forms suggested by the use of the coil in vessel building, as, for instance, the spiral formed in beginning the base of a coiled vessel, Fig. 478 a, from which the double scroll b, as a separate feature, could readily be derived, and finally the chain of scrolls so often seen in border and zone decoration. This familiarity with the use of fillets or ropes of clay would also lead to a great variety of applied ornament, examples of which, from Pueblo art, are given in Fig. 479. The sinuous forms assumed by a rope of clay so employed would readily suggest to the Indian the form of the serpent and the means of representing it, and might thus lead to the introduction of this much revered creature into art.
[Illustration: FIG. 479.--Ornamental use of fillets.]
Of the various classes of utensils associated closely with the ceramic art, there are none so characteristically marked by constructional features as nets and wicker baskets. The twisting, interlacing, knotting, and stitching of filaments give relieved figures that by contact in manufacture impress themselves upon the plastic clay. Such impressions come in time to be regarded as pleasing features, and when free-hand methods of reproducing are finally acquired they and their derivatives become essentials of decoration. At a later stage these characters of basketry influence ceramic decoration in a somewhat different way. By the use of variously-colored fillets the woven surface displays figures in color corresponding to those in relief and varying with every new combination. Many striking patterns are thus produced, and the potter who has learned to decorate his wares by the stylus or brush reproduces these patterns by free-hand methods. We find pottery in all countries ornamented with patterns, painted, incised, stamped, and relieved, certainly derived from this source. So well is this fact known that I need hardly go into details.
In the higher stages of art the constructional characters of architecture give rise to many notions of decoration which afterwards descend to other arts, taking 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