THE ORIENTAL RUG BOOK [Hardcover] Ripley, Mary

Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 edition. … chapter xxii legends and myths that may be illustrated by designs in rugs 15Y limiting the subject to the selection of those legends, and those alone, which have found illustration in symbolic design, and have passed from that to pattern with a gradual loss of meaning, we may select some about which there is sufficient authority and evidence to incite us to the study and analysis of forms that have become what they are more naturally than we would at first suspect. Such, for example, are the legends, both sacred and secular, about flowers, trees, birds, animals, colours, etc, which have appealed through the ages to the myth-loving peoples of the Orient. With acknowledgments where it is possible to secure the permission of compilers and writers, we may gather together, for purposes of comparison, a few of the vast number of myths and stories which have materially influenced the patterns of rug-weaving people. The modern student oftentimes finds it possible to interpret a design which the weavers themselves did not understand, because their work has to them been only an idle copy of a lifeless pattern which to us is evidently an evolved design which once was symbol. One by one these forms are being traced, and it is wise to insist repeatedly upon the principle we have avowed, of never trying to force meaning into design, but to wait for it to awaken recognition in our intelligence. By a definite mental process we become equipped, before we are aware, with power to discern the Oriental methods of manifesting thought in art. Foremost among flower forms the lotus lifts its regal head, supreme from east to west throughout the Orient, where