July, 1890. 
THE ORIGIN OF DECORATIVE ART.. 
153 
as the skill of these people allows. This form of realistic 
decorative carving leads on to fanciful carving from the force 
of circumstances, by the sometimes necessary distortion of 
natural form or attitude, for the purpose of adapting the design 
to the object to be ornamented, which may not lend itself 
readily to a faithful life study. Take the Esquimaux imple¬ 
ments again. On many of these are carved representations of 
entire animals, and frequently we see that while the head, 
perhaps, may be faithfully rendered, yet the body, owing to 
want of space, has had to be cramped up and distorted into 
an impossible attitude, which spoils the faithfulness of the 
model. In the first stage the design is made as realistic as 
possible under the circumstances, but from this necessary 
distortion, suggesting of itself a fanciful or grotesque design, 
often the original design has been reduced to a meaningless 
decoration, in which the idea of a real object is lost, though 
the ornamental effect may very probably be increased. 
In connection with solid carving, I may give one more 
example of the manner in which a design has suggested 
itself. Among the various weapons of savages we frequently 
see clubs for the making of which small trees have been 
uprooted. The stem is rounded to form a handle, while the 
root end is trimmed to form the head or “business end,”which 
is rendered the more formidable by leaving the stumps of the 
roots projecting as points or knobs. It being found that such 
a club was the more effective when applied to an enemy’s head 
for having the root stumps remaining, other clubs not 
similarly provided with natural projections have been fur¬ 
nished with them artificially, by carving upon the heads 
projecting points in imitation of the root stumps. In the 
more carefully made clubs we find these knobs disposed far 
more regularly than would have been the case with natural 
root stumps; but they nevertheless show clearly that they 
were suggested by the latter, of which they are somewhat 
conventional imitations. Here then a design suggested by 
Nature has been perpetuated because of its obvious utility, 
though it is at the same time utilised to enhance the orna¬ 
mental effect of the weapon. 
Let me now turn to consider the application of the art of 
design to flat surfaces, as opposed to sculpture or modelling 
in the round. It is very possible that the idea of represent¬ 
ing objects in nature by means of lines upon a flat surface, 
was in the first instance suggested by the supplementary 
lines added to figures carved in complete relief, in order to 
express certain details which would not otherwise appear in 
the process of giving the shape. The use of such lines to 
