126 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1910, 



I'eady classifications can be made and spoken of as Egyptian, Chinese, 

 Mesopotamian, Greek, and other styles. Underlying all these styles 

 are certain common factors of design. For instance, the arrangement 

 of their particular ornamental details or devices is subject chiefly to 

 balance, to repetition, and to symmetry. Again, ornamental details 

 or devices in all historic national styles are either representative of 

 actual things, such as plants, human and animal beings, etc., or are 

 merely abstract shapes presenting no likeness to any of these things ; 

 although some apparently abstract forms are symbols to corive}^ some 

 idea just as others are found to have descended, through manj'^ 

 changes or distortions of drawing, from an original which repre- 

 sented an actual thing. These changes or distortions occur to a 

 marked extent in the ornament of people whose ethnography is more 

 readily studied than their history. Take, for instance, Papuans, who 

 produce plentiful ornament that is of the distorted character. They 

 seem to have no regulated methods of design ; at least, none so evident 

 as those of historic nations like the Chinese, the Egyptians, the 

 dwellers in Mesopotamia, and the Greeks, all of whom had culture, 

 organization, manufactures, and commerce in a high degree. These 

 great nations possessed neither aeroplanes nor telephones, but they 

 appear to have paid better regard than many of us do nowadays to 

 the suitable ornamentation of ordinary and ceremonial objects of use, 

 including costumes and floor and furniture coverings. 



Leaving this digression, I come now to carpets and their ornamen- 

 tation. I use the word carpet in the sense of an ornamental textile 

 to be used under foot. Broadly speaking, there are two sorts of car- 

 pet — one with a flat texture and the other with a definitely raised 

 texture. It appears that in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, and Greece 

 flat-textured materials were manufactured long before those with 

 raised texture. Ornament in the ancient flat-surface stuffs was pro- 

 duced by inweaving, needlework, painting, and stamping. In pre- 

 vious lectures I have touched upon the antiquity of methods of in- 

 weaving and embroidery as practiced by famous historic nations 

 hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of years before the Christian 

 era. The inweaving corresponded precisely with tapestry weaving 

 by hand of the present day. Its texture was therefore the same as 

 that of a huge Gobelins tapestry and of a Kurdish rug. 



Here is an ordinary specimen of such a rug, which illustrates the 

 flat texture we are considering. The style of its ornament has prob- 

 abh^ endured for some centuries. The scheme or plan of its design 

 is a field of small repeated devices inclosed witliin a border. This 

 scheme or plan in connection with rugs and carpets is an old one; 

 older indeed than most of the devices in the field which are weavers' 

 renderings of sprays of blossom and leaves; the ornament of the 

 border is effective by reason of the repetition of its details. These 



