Origin and Development of Form and Ornament in Ceramic Art Part 1

Origin and Development of Form and Ornament in Ceramic Art.

by William Henry Holmes.

INTRODUCTORY.

For the investigation of art in its early stages and in its widest sense--there is probably no fairer field than that afforded by aboriginal America, ancient and modern.

At the period of discovery, art at a number of places on the American continent seems to have been developing surely and steadily, through the force of the innate genius of the race, and the more advanced nations were already approaching the threshold of civilization; at the same time their methods were characterized by great simplicity, and their art products are, as a consequence, exceptionally h.o.m.ogeneous.

The advent of European civilization checked the current of growth, and new and conflicting elements were introduced necessarily disastrous to the native development.

There is much, however, in the art of living tribes, especially of those least influenced by the whites, capable of throwing light upon the obscure pa.s.sages of precolumbian art. By supplementing the study of the prehistoric by that of historic art, which is still in many cases in its incipient stages, we may hope to penetrate deeply into the secrets of the past.

The advantages of this field, as compared with Greece, Egypt, and the Orient, will be apparent when we remember that the dawn of art in these countries lies hidden in the shadow of unnumbered ages, while ours stands out in the light of the very present. This is well ill.u.s.trated by a remark of Birch, who, in dwelling upon the antiquity of the fictile art, says that "the existence of earthen vessels in Egypt was at least coeval with the formation of a written language."[1] Beyond this there is acknowledged chaos. In strong contrast with this, is the fact that all precolumbian American pottery _precedes_ the acquisition of written language, and this contrast is emphasized by the additional fact that it also antedates the use of the wheel, that great perverter of the plastic tendencies of clay.

[Footnote 1: Birch: History of Ancient Pottery, 1873, p. 8.]

The material presented in the following notes is derived chiefly from the native ceramic art of the United States, but the principles involved are applicable to all times and to all art, as they are based upon the laws of nature.

Ceramic art presents two cla.s.ses of phenomena of importance in the study of the evolution of aesthetic culture. These relate, first, to _form_, and second, to _ornament_.

_Form_, as embodied in clay vessels, embraces, 1st, _useful shapes_, which may or may not be ornamental, and, 2d, _aesthetic shapes_, which are ornamental and may be useful. There are also _grotesque_ and _fanciful shapes_, which may or may not be either useful or ornamental.

No form or cla.s.s of forms can be said to characterize a particular age or stage of culture. In a general way, of course, the vessels of primitive peoples will be simple in form, while those of more advanced races will be more varied and highly specialized.

The shapes first a.s.sumed by vessels in clay depend upon the shape of the vessels employed at the time of the introduction of the art, and these depend, to a great extent, upon the kind and grade of culture of the people acquiring the art and upon the resources of the country in which they live. To ill.u.s.trate: If, for instance, some of the highly advanced Alaskan tribes which do not make pottery should migrate to another habitat, less suitable to the practice of their old arts and well adapted to art in clay, and should there acquire the art of pottery, they would doubtless, to a great extent, copy their highly developed utensils of wood, bone, ivory, and basketry, and thus reach a high grade of ceramic achievement in the first century of the practice of the art; but, on the other hand, if certain tribes, very low in intelligence and having no vessel-making arts, should undergo a corresponding change of habitat and acquire the art of pottery, they might not reach in a thousand years, if left to themselves, a grade in the art equal to that of the hypothetical Alaskan potters in the first decade. It is, therefore, not the age of the art itself that determines its forms, but the grade and kind of art with which it originates and coexists.

_Ornament_ is subject to similar laws. Where pottery is employed by peoples in very low stages of culture, its ornamentation will be of the simple archaic kind. Being a conservative art and much hampered by the restraints of convention, the elementary forms of ornament are carried a long way into the succeeding periods and have a very decided effect upon the higher stages. Pottery brought into use for the first time by more advanced races will never pa.s.s through the elementary stage of decoration, but will take its ornament greatly from existing art and carry this up in its own peculiar way through succeeding generations.

The character of the ornamentation does not therefore depend upon the age of the art so much as upon the acquirements of the potter and his people in other arts.

ORIGIN OF FORM

In order to convey a clear idea of the bearing of the preceding statements upon the history of form and ornament, it will be necessary to present a number of points in greater detail.

The following synopsis will give a connected view of various possible origins of form.

/ By advent.i.tion.

Origin of form--| By imitation--------/ Of natural models.

By invention. Of artificial models

+FORMS SUGGESTED BY ADVENt.i.tION.+

The suggestions of accident, especially in the early stages of art, are often adopted, and become fruitful sources of improvement and progress.

By such means the use of clay was discovered and the ceramic art came into existence. The accidental indentation of a ma.s.s of clay by the foot, or hand, or by a fruit-sh.e.l.l, or stone, while serving as an auxiliary in some simple art, may have suggested the making of a cup, the simplest form of vessel.

The use of clay as a cement in repairing utensils, in protecting combustible vessels from injury by fire, or in building up the walls of shallow vessels, may also have led to the formation of disks or cups, afterwards independently constructed. In any case the objects or utensils with which the clay was a.s.sociated in its earliest use would impress their forms upon it. Thus, if clay were used in deepening or mending vessels of stone by a given people, it would, when used independently by that people, tend to a.s.sume shapes suggested by stone vessels. The same may be said of its use in connection with wood and wicker, or with vessels of other materials. Forms of vessels so derived may be said to have an advent.i.tious origin, yet they are essentially copies, although not so by design, and may as readily be placed under the succeeding head.

+FORMS DERIVED BY IMITATION.+

Clay has no inherent qualities of a nature to impose a given form or cla.s.s of forms upon its products, as have wood, bark, bone, or stone. It is so mobile as to be quite free to take form from surroundings, and where extensively used will record or echo a vast deal of nature and of coexistent art.

In this observation we have a key that will unlock many of the mysteries of form.

In the investigation of this point it will be necessary to consider the processes by which an art inherits or acquires the forms of another art or of nature, and how one material imposes its peculiarities upon another material. In early stages of culture the processes of art are closely akin to those of nature, the human agent hardly ranking as more than a part of the environment. The primitive artist does not proceed by methods identical with our own. He does not deliberately and freely examine all departments of nature or art and select for models those things most convenient or most agreeable to fancy; neither does he experiment with the view of inventing new forms. What he attempts depends almost absolutely upon what happens to be suggested by preceding forms, and so narrow and so direct are the processes of his mind that, knowing his resources, we could closely predict his results.

The range of models in the ceramic art is at first very limited, and includes only those utensils devoted to the particular use to which the clay vessels are to be applied; later, closely-a.s.sociated objects and utensils are copied. In the first stages of art, when the savage makes a weapon, he modifies or copies a weapon; when he makes a vessel, he modifies or copies a vessel.

This law holds good in an inverse ratio to culture, varying to a certain extent with the character of the material used.

_Natural originals_.--Natural originals, both animal and vegetable, necessarily differ with the country and the climate, thus giving rise to individual characters in art forms often extremely persistent and surviving decided changes of environment.

The gourd is probably the most varied and suggestive natural vessel. We find that the primitive potter has often copied it in the most literal manner. One example only, out of the many available ones, is necessary.

This is from a mound in southeastern Missouri.

In Fig. 464, _a_ ill.u.s.trates a common form of the gourd, while _b_ represents the imitation in clay.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _a_, Gourd. _b_, Clay vessel. FIG. 464.--Form derived from a gourd.]

All nations situated upon the sea or upon large rivers use sh.e.l.ls of mollusks, which, without modification, make excellent receptacles for water and food. Imitations of these are often found among the products of the potter's art. A good example from the Mississippi Valley is shown in Fig. 465, _a_ being the original and _b_ the copy in clay.

In Africa, and in other countries, such natural objects as cocoanut sh.e.l.ls, and ostrich eggs are used in like manner.

Another cla.s.s of vessels, those made from the skins, bladders, and stomachs of animals, should also be mentioned in this connection, as it is certain that their influence has frequently been felt in the conformation of earthen utensils.

In searching nature, therefore, for originals of primitive ceramic forms we have little need of going outside of objects that in their natural or slightly altered state are available for vessels.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _a_, Sh.e.l.l. _b_, Clay. FIG. 465.--Form derived from a conch sh.e.l.l.]

True, other objects have been copied. We find a mult.i.tude of the higher natural forms, both animal and vegetable, embodied in vessels of clay, but their presence is indicative of a somewhat advanced stage of art, when the copying of vessels that were functionally proper antecedents had given rise to a familiarity with the use of clay and a capacity in handling it that, with advancing culture, brought all nature within the reach of the potter and made it a.s.sist in the processes of variation and development.

_Artificial originals_.--There is no doubt that among most peoples art had produced vessels in other materials antecedent to the utilization of clay. These would be legitimate models for the potter and we may therefore expect to find them repeated in earthenware. In this way the art has acquired a mult.i.tude of new forms, some of which may be natural forms at second hand, that is to say, with modifications imposed upon them by the material in which they were first shaped. But all materials other than clay are exceedingly intractable, and impress their own characters so decidedly upon forms produced in them that ultimate originals, where there are such, cannot often be traced through them.

It will be most interesting to note the influence of these peculiarities of originals upon the ceramic art.

A nation having stone vessels, like those of California, on acquiring the art of pottery would use the stone vessels as models, and such forms as that given in Fig. 466 would arise, _a_ being in stone and _b_ in clay, the former from California and the latter from Arizona.

Similar forms would just as readily come from gourds, baskets, or other globular utensils.

Nations having wooden vessels would copy them in clay on acquiring the art of pottery. This would give rise to a distinct group of forms, the result primarily of the peculiarities of the woody structure. Thus in Fig. 467, _a_, we have a form of wooden vessel, a sort of winged trough that I have frequently found copied in clay. The earthen vessel given in Fig. 467, _b_, was obtained from an ancient grave in Arkansas.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _a_, stone. _b_, clay. FIG. 466.--Form derived from a stone pot.]