SHORT PAPERS 



A short paper was contributed by Professor A. D. F. Hamlin, of Columbia 

 University, on the "Sources of Savage Conventional Patterns." The speaker 

 said that, in the exhibit of the Department of the Interior, two glass cases displayed 

 side by side the handiwork of the American Indian of one hundred years ago and 

 of to-day. In the Fine Arts palace the blankets and basketry of the Navahoes 

 were shown beside the leather work and other handicrafts of white Americans. 

 In both instances the contrast between the savage and the civilized work em- 

 phasizes the fact that civilization tends to stifle or destroy the decorative instinct. 

 The savage art is spontaneous, instructive, unpremeditated. The work of the 

 civilized artist is thoughtful, carefully elaborated, intellectual. Among these 

 peoples both the crafts and the patterns are traditional, and there is little or no 

 ambition to innovate. The forms and combinations we admire in their work are 

 the result of long-continued processes of evolution and elimination in which, as in 

 the world of living organisms, the fittest have survived. The structure of savage 

 patterns is almost always extremely simple. There are three theories advanced to 

 account for them: that they were invented out of hand; that they were evolved 

 out of the technical processes, tools, and materials of primitive industry; that 

 they are descended from fetish or animistic representations of natural forms. 

 The first is the common view of laymen; the second was first expressed (though 

 chiefly with reference to civilized art) by Semper; and the third is widely enter- 

 tained by anthropologists. 



Ths savage instinct for decoration has probably developed from primitive 

 animism from that fear of the powers of nature, and that confounding of the 

 animate and inanimate world which is universally recognized as a primitive 

 trait. But once awakened in even the slightest degree, it has found exercise in 

 the operations of primitive industry, and given existence to a long series of repeti- 

 tive forms produced in weaving, basketry, string-lashing, and carving. The two 

 classes of patterns thus originated those derived from the imitation of nature 

 under fetish ideas, and those derived from technical processes have invariably 

 converged, overlapping at last in many forms of decorative art, so that the real 

 origin of a given pattern may be dual. Myths have invariably arisen to explain 

 the origin of the technical patterns, which have received magic significance and 

 names, in accordance with savage tendency to assign magical powers to all visible 

 or at least to all valued objects: all savage art is talismanic. One ought to be 

 cautious about dogmatizing as to origins in dealing with savage art, because both 

 the phenomenon of what I call convergence in ornament evolution, and that of 

 the myths, poetic faculty, and habit among savages, tend to confuse and obscure 

 the real origin of the patterns with which they deal. And finally, for the artist 

 as distinguished from the archaeologist and the theorist, the real lesson of savage 

 art is not in its origins, but in its products; in the strength, simplicity, admirable 

 distribution, and high decorative effects of poor and despised peoples. Savage 

 all-over patterns and Greek carved ornament and decorative sculpture represent 

 the opposed poles of decorative design, and both are of fundamental value as 

 objects of study for the designer. 



