The curve (1. Q) is a proposition or question. It is answered or balanced by the corresponding curve (2. A), and forms the basis for a scroll design.
The five radiating lines (1) are obviously incomplete by themselves, but if we add another [36]four, in reverse order, (2) we get a centred and symmetric motive of an anthemion character.
Wall-Paper Design
Take, however, a wall-paper. The problem is to construct a design pleasant to the eye in line, form, colour, and suggestion; which will be interesting in detail, and yet repeat upon a wall-surface without flaw, and without becoming wearisome. Moreover, one which will lend itself to being cut upon wood, if for block-printing, and which may be reproduced with a due regard to economy of means. The designer may have a square of twenty-one inches in which to make his design.
z.
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.52
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 53parts 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.
GREEK VOLUTE OR MEANDER PATTERN.
CYLIX.
ANCIENT GREEK DRINKING VESSEL.
HYDRIA ANCIENT GREEK WATER VESSEL.
MODE OF CARRYING THE HYDRIA PARTHENON FRIEZE.
AMPHORA APPROACHING PITCHER FORM.
PITCHER.
ENGLISH BROWN JUG.
GERMAN BEER MUGS.
GLASS PITCHER.
BOTTLES.
DRINKING GLASSES.
ROMANO BRITISH THUMBER.
DISTILLERS COPPER FILLER.
CAN
ROMAN PEASANT WOMAN WITH COPPER WATER VESSEL.
BUCKET.
BASIN.
WATERING CAN.
.
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