Ciba review 1941-1942, 1946-1947 (vegyes számok) (12 db) [antikvár]

Prehistoric Ornamentation By W. Born Prefatory Note: The nature of the subjects discussed in the Ciba Review entails frequent reproduction of patterned fabrics selected from the inexhaustible variety produced in the course of the long history of the textile crafts. It has, therefore, been deemed of some advantage to devote the present number of this journal to an account of the origin, development, and transformation of some of the principal textile ornaments. It need scarcely be stated that such an account must go beyond the mere description of particular motives into the field of historical and aesthetic considerations of a more general nature. The following articles, which convey some idea of the elements which make up the artistic value of textile products, may be instrumental in increasing the appreciation of some of our readers for the textile arts. The Editor The question of the origin of textile ornaments is inseparable from that of the origin of ornament in general. In Europe the manufacture of textiles in the late Stone Age has been established by finds in Swiss pile-dwellings and elsewhere. The majority of these fragments are unpatterned (see ill. p. 1323). However, the civilizations of the Ancient Orient, which are scarcely younger than the Swiss pile-dwellings, produced figurai scenes showing men and women dressed in patterned garments. V. Gordon Childe places the beginning of the European pile-dwelling period at the end of the third millennium B.C., and dates its latest stages, which belong to the Copper Age, at about 1500 B.C. Like all questions regarding the origin of our civilization, the problem of the origin of ornament has led to many daring hypotheses. With all due caution the following may be said of the prehistoric foundations of decoration in general and textile ornaments in particular. The examination of implements and other remnants of the Stone Age and the comparison with similar objects in use to this day among primitive peoples reveal two forms of primitive civilization. The people of the first form lived on the flesh of the animals which they hunted, those of the second subsisted on the wild plants which they could gather. The generally accepted view that mankind first passed through a hunting stage and then through an agricultural period is doubtless correct; it is, however, probable that there existed simultaneously with the palaeolithic hunting stage a "planter-economy"; that is to say, vegetable diet led at any rate to the beginnings of agriculture. The factors which induced one part of the early inhabitants of the earth to hunt and trap animals for a livelihood, whilst the others gathered fruits and herbs, and finally began to grow them, were determined by climate and environment. 1322 Carpet in Scythian style with a pattern representing a fight between two animals. Found at Noin Uta ( Mongolia).