The Fundata or Netted Pattern.
Portion of a Phœnician Bowl from Cyprus.
Egyptian. Egyptian. Egyptian.
The cloud pattern is also Japanese, and is supposed to have been originally derived from Central Asia. It varies in shape, and is found as an ornament on the head of the sceptre in the collection at Nara, in Japan, which is twelve or thirteen hundred years old. There is an example of the cloud pattern in Aelfled’s embroidery at Durham; and it is often found under the feet of saints in painted glass and embroideries before the fourteenth century. A curious Indian example exists in a coverlet belonging to the Marquis of Salisbury, said to have been the property of Oliver Cromwell, on which the central medallion is filled with white horses careering amidst the cloud pattern.[126] (Pl. [30].)
The netted pattern called Fundata is extremely ancient. We find it in Egyptian mural paintings, as well as in the centre of a Phœnician bowl from Cyprus, now in the Louvre. The mediæval Fundata was a silk material, covered with what appeared to be a gold network covering the stuff. It is supposed to be the same as that worn by Constantine,[127] and is named in ecclesiastical inventories as late as the fifteenth century. (Pl. [31].)
All the wheel patterns are very ancient, and appear to be simply conventional wheels. In France they were called roés. There is a fine instance of this wheel pattern in Auberville’s “Tissus.” The wheels sometime enclose triumphal cars and other pictorial subjects. (Pl. [34].)
The patterns which are apparently composed with the intention of avoiding all meaning, are the Moorish. They are neither animal, vegetable, nor anything else. They show no motive in their complicated domes, their honeycombing, and their ingenious conventional forms; but cover equally textile fabrics or stucco ceilings without suggesting any idea, religious or symbolical.
All the splendid Italian brocades and velvet damasks were of conventional patterns, and like their Arab and Sicilian models, and also like their Spanish contemporaries, represented, and sought to represent nothing on earth. It was all floreated and meandering design; the motive reminding one of the pine-apple and the acanthus, or of vine stems meeting or parting, but never anything naturalistic for a moment. When animals were introduced it was always as a pattern doubled face to face, as if folded down a straight line.
We may say the same of the succeeding Louis Quatorze and the Louis Quinze styles, which were of the culminating period of clever and fantastic conventional decoration.
Our modern designs have phases of imitation, and the patterns of rich brocades which our great-grandmothers wore, came into fashion again about the third decade of this century. Now we have been trying to find our inspirations further back, and some of our copies of the simpler Sicilian patterns, with an occasional pair of birds, or a conventional plant, imitating the motive of the tree of life, have been very pretty. The only defect is the poverty which results from the absence of any active and informing motive. It is, however, easier to criticize than to create.