Origin and Development of Form and Ornament in Ceramic Art. / Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1882-1883, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1886, pages 437-466.

by William Henry Holmes

IDEOGRAPHIC AND PICTORIAL SUBJECTS.

Non-ideographic forms of ornament may originate in ideographic features, mnemonic, demonstrative, or symbolic. Such significant figures are borrowed by decorators from other branches of art. As time goes on they lose their significance and are subsequently treated as purely decorative elements. Subjects wholly pictorial in character, when such come to be made, may also be used as simple decoration, and by long processes of convention become geometric.

The exact amount of significance still attached to significant figures after adoption into decoration cannot be determined except in cases of actual identification by living peoples, and even when the signification is known by the more learned individuals the decorator may be wholly without knowledge of it.

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