May, 1890 . 
THE ORIGIN OF DECORATIVE ART. 
109 
remote ages. I have made these few remarks upon the art 
of the important periods, the “ Drift/’ “ Cave,” and “ Neo¬ 
lithic ” periods, in order to show how incomplete is the record. 
It is clear that the relics of prehistoric times give evidence of 
marked phases or epochs in the history of art; but, even 
when treated in detail, the succession of ideas required to 
form a complete history is by no means clear. We have 
only isolated links without the means of connecting them 
into a continuous chain. 
With the lack, therefore, of direct historical record, we 
must look elsewhere for evidence of the origin and progress of 
decorative art; and, by examining the conditions to be found 
in those living races of mankind, which are most nearly 
allied to primaeval man, form from these our conclusions as 
to the actual history of art in the human race as a whole. 
We, therefore, turn to those races of modern savages which 
we believe to be the lowest in the scale of civilisation, whose 
condition of culture is in the most primitive of existing states. 
These should certainly, in some sort, supply our want, as we 
have every reason to believe that these types of mankind 
really represent, to a very great degree, the condition of Man 
in the remoter ages, when he was largely dependent upon 
natural objects, or the forms of nature but slightly modified, 
for his implements, and when the art of manufacture was 
still in its infancy. 
As in the useful arts, so also in the fine arts, we find the 
lowest savages deriving their early ideas from nature. We 
find very much that, in the matter of aesthetic achievements, 
the condition corresponds with their primitive state of culture. 
The ornamentation of their weapons, for example, is for the 
most part extremely simple (I am referring to the lowest 
savage peoples, such as the Australians, the Bosjesmans, 
Andamanese, etc.), frequently, in fact, consisting of nothing 
more than natural peculiarities in the material,—it may be 
knots in the wood or nodes on a reed stalk, which are slightly 
emphasized with colour or other means in order to produce a 
greater decorative effect. In the Pitt-Rivers collection, at 
Oxford, is an Australian “boomerang” of light-coloured 
wood, in the grain of which are a number of knots, at about 
equal distances from one another, along its length. The 
savage owner was evidently struck by the uncommon effect 
of this arrangement of the knots, and in order to increase 
this effect, he stained each knot a dark colour, thus throwing 
them into greater prominence on the light ground colour. 
Here we have an extremely simple and primitive form of 
ornamentation, suggested by a natural peculiarity in the 
