The various forms of volute, or spiral, and guilloche ornament, so much used by the ancients—Assyrian, Egyptian, and Greek—may be compared, in their structure and arrangement of line, with the form taken by the withy, or cord twisted around the upright canes or staves of a wattled fence, as seen in horizontal section. The primitive wattled structure gives the plans of these patterns. It certainly appears to account for their origin in a remarkably complete way.
GREEK ANTHEMION ORNAMENT.
WATTLED FENCE.
It is possible that another source which may have contributed to the evolution of the Greek spiral or volute was metal in the form of the thin beaten plates with which the primitive Greeks covered parts of their interior walls; but these were later times, and it is also possible that the primitive metal worker took his motive from the wattling too.
ANCIENT VOLUTE ORNAMENT.
PATTERNS FROM BRONZE SHIELDS CYPRUS.
GREEK VOLUTE OR MEANDER PATTERN.
