An examination of the esthetic features of the ceramic art has proved exceptionally instructive. We find much that is worthy of attention in the forms of vases as well as in the plastic or relieved features of embellishment, and a still richer field is opened by the study of the incised and painted--the flat--decorations.
I have shown that the elements of decoration flow into the ceramic art chiefly through two channels, the one from art and the other from nature. Elements from art are mainly of mechanical origin, and are, therefore, non-imitative and geometric. Elements from nature imitate natural forms, and hence are primarily non-geometric. Elements from art, being mechanical, are meaningless or non-ideographic; those from nature are in early stages of art usually associated with mythologic conceptions, and hence are ideographic. All decorations may therefore have four dual classifications, as follows: First, with reference to method of realization, as plastic and flat; second, with reference to derivation, as mechanical and imitative; third, with reference to plan of manifestation, as geometric and non-geometric; and, fourth, with reference to the association of ideas, as significant and non-significant.
I have found that the ceramic art, having acquired the various elements of ornament, carries them by methods of its own through many strange mutations of form. The effect upon life forms is of paramount importance, as is indicated by the following broad and striking generalization: The agencies of modification inherent in the art in its practice are such that any particular animal form extensively employed in decoration is capable of changing into or giving rise to any or to all of the highly conventional decorative devices upon which our leading ornaments, such as the meander, the scroll, the fret, the chevron, and the guilloche, are based. It is further seen, however, that ideographic elements are not necessarily restricted to decorative or symbolic functions, for the processes of simplification reduce them to forms well suited to employment in hieroglyphic and even in phonetic systems of expression. Such systems are probably made up to a great extent of characters the conformation of which is due to the unthinking--the mechanical--agencies of the various arts.