mains a primitive pattern, and nothing can make it artistic.
No embroidery can soften the constantly recurring angles, and only
fringes can be employed to decorate a tartan costume. Pliny tells us
of the ingenuity of Zeuxis, who, to show his wealth, had his name
embroidered in gold in the squared compartments of his outer
garment.[97]

Primitive patterns still linger in many savage nations, but especially
throughout uncivilized Africa. Curious to say, the very ancient
fossilized early art of Egypt does not assist us to trace it back to
a prehistoric style, though it may lead us into prehistoric times.

NATURALISTIC.

The phases of the naturalistic patterns are constantly recurring. Art
is always tending to realism, in the laudable effort to reach the
motive without the shackles of rules. Each phase has fallen a prey to
symbolism, to conventionalism, or to mannerism, which last symptom
marks the decline and fall of art. We shall find these phases
everywhere in the design of patterns.

Naturalism has always striven, by simple repetition, to reduce to
patterns the forms of flowers, fruits, animals, birds, insects,
reptiles, and other natural objects.

In flower patterns the simplest forms by repetition make sometimes the
richest patterns, and the most effective. (Plate 11, Nos. 1 and 2.)

It is remarkable that one very beautiful class of natural objects is
rarely employed in ancient decoration[98]--shells and corals. The
barbarous tribes of the West Coast of Africa alone seem to have
appreciated their forms, and added them to their small repertory of
naturalistic patterns. They do not appear in any European or Asiatic
textiles till the seventeenth century, when shells were much used in
the decorations of the reigns of Queen Anne and Louis Quatorze.

The first change from naturalism into the conventional was through
symbolism, and belonged to the time when unwritten thought was first
recorded by pictured signs, which then ceased to be merely decoration.
We find that the naturalism of the earliest Egyptians and Asiatics was
soon entirely absorbed by the effort to express some hidden meaning or
mystery, and then to fit the representation to a special place and
purpose, and to restore it, as it were, to decorative art.

[Illustration: Pl. 11.
1. Persian Flower Border.
2. Egyptian Border, composed of Head-dress of the god Nile
(Wilkinson's "Ancient Egyptians").
3. Assyrian.
4. Assyrian.]