24(1 



TEXTILE AK'l 



[N RELATION TO FORM AND ORNAMENl 



mail was not primarily conscious of the beauty or tituess of decora- 

 tive elements, nor did lie think of using them independently of the 

 art to which they were indigenous. Now the ceramic art gives rise 

 to comiiaratively few elements of decoration, and must therefore ac- 

 quire the great body of its decorative motives from other arts by 

 some process not primarily dependent upon the exercise of judgment 

 or taste, and yet not by direct inheritance, as the techniques of the 

 two arts are wholly distinct. 



Textile and fictile arts are, in their earlier stages, to a large ex- 

 tent, vessel making arts, the one being functionally the offshoot of 

 the other. The textile art is the parent, and, as I have already 

 shown, develops within itself a geometric system of ornament. The 

 fictile art is the offshoot and has within itself no predilection for 

 decoration. It is dependent and plastic. Its forms are to a great 

 extent modeled and molded within the textile shapes and acquire 

 automatically some of the decorative surface characters of the mold. 

 This is the beginning of the transfer, and as time goes on other 

 methods are suggested by which elements indigenous to the one art 

 are transferred to the other. Thus we explain the occurrence, the 

 constant recurrence of certain primary decorative motives in prim- 

 itive ceramics. The herring bone, the checker, the guilloche, and the 

 like are greatly the heritage of the textile art. Two forms derived 

 from textile surfaces are illustrated in Figs. S.^l and 352. In the 



hecker paltt'nis ] 



yy^y/y^y^^///yyy/ 



Fig. 35;;. llerriUK bu 



I'hecker figures in fictile fori 



first example shown, herring bone patterns appear as the result of 

 textile combination, and in the second a triangular checker is pro- 

 duced in the same way. In Fig. 352 we see the result of copying 

 these patterns in incised lines upon soft clay. 

 Again, the ancient potter, who was in the habit of modeling his 



