
The published works on ornamental art of various peoples of the world cover one area of art, and in most cases not entirely. There is still no work that aims to give a general picture of world ornamentation, explaining its motifs and features.
Ornament (from the Latin ornamentum – decoration), pattern (in Armenian Նախ’շ Զարդ), consists of rhythmically ordered elements. It is generally accepted that it is intended to decorate various objects (utensils, tools and weapons, textiles, furniture, books, etc.), architectural structures (both exterior and interior), works of classical art (mainly applied), and in primitive people, the human body itself (painting, tattooing).
The study of the motifs and features of world ornamentation has led the authors to conclude that the representation of most known motifs and features is based on a certain set of invariant geometric shapes, graphic elements – primitives, ideograms, archetypes of signs, symbols, and drawings. Research has shown that almost all images and graphic primitives, and their various combinations, which form the basis of the motifs and features of world ornamentation, are found in Armenian ornamentation.
The completeness and diversity of the language of graphic, figurative communication used (geometric forms, types, algorithms, and structures, the variety of geometric transformations and symmetries found in ornaments) invariants of national styles and features, forms of development of thinking and knowledge bases, both in time and space, strictly correlate with the patterns of development of figurative thinking.
This is reflected with a slight delay in the development of logical, verbal thinking, the product of which is the origin and ideological content of the main motifs of world ornamentation (and, in particular, Armenian ornamentation).
Ideas arose in ancient people who had thinking (able to reflect the surrounding reality, phenomena of nature, life, and its philosophy in the form of geometric images, primitives: from a point on a plane to a point in three-dimensional space and a line – the trajectory of a point’s movement over time). Simple ideas were further reflected through the language of ideograms.
It is obvious that ornaments, as more complex geometric objects, elements of graphic design in decorative and applied art, in modern artistic creativity and design, reflect and transmit more complex ideas, transfer and imitate – model the ancient experience, evoke memory, emotions, and feelings about nature, the beauty of the world, about space, life, and finally, recreate the history of the activities of ancestors.
Thus, ornaments should be considered as fractals, frames of the invariant language of communication and dialogue with the files of history and experience, skills and abilities, intellect and knowledge, traditions of the ancient civilization.
It is quite clear that the authors, designers, creators, and artists of ornaments possessed the ideographic tools of thinking, storing, transmitting, and disseminating knowledge and information. From the point of view of the dialectics of the development of form and content, simpler forms of ornamentation reflected simpler content.
The development of ideographic forms of content representation, following the advanced growth of the content itself, led to the creation of new forms, including modern ornamentation. Consequently, ornamentation, as a more complex form of reality reflection, incorporates the level of ideographic form development of less complex forms of experience and knowledge content reflection.
An ideogram (from the Greek word idea – idea, image, concept, and gramma), is a written sign that denotes not the sounds of any language, but an entire word or root (for example, in ancient Egyptian and Chinese hieroglyphs). Ideographic writing is a type of writing where signs denote not sounds and syllables, as in phonetic and syllabic writing, but entire words or significant parts of words-morphemes.
Since the basis of the ideographic writing of ancient peoples lies in the ancient ideographic writing of the inhabitants of the Armenian Highlands, it can be concluded that the main motifs, origin, and content of world and modern ornamentation owe their existence to the thinking and experience of the inhabitants of the highlands, whose descendants continue the traditions of ornamental creativity.
It is known that the ornamentation of various peoples abounds with similar motifs, comprehended and transmitted in their national style and uniqueness, bearing the imprint (both spatial and temporal).
Armenian rock art and the ideographic writing based on it form the basis for the creation and development of the writing of the Sumerians, Hittites, Egyptians, Indians, and other peoples. Consequently, the origin of the ornamentation of the Babylonians, Egyptians, Hittites, Assyrians, Mitanni, Chinese, Persians, Indians, Central Asians, and later Europeans is based on the main motifs and ideological content of Armenian ornamentation.
The methodology for studying the semantics of ornamental compositions should be designed based on the rules and alphabet of the ideographic method of reflecting reality (experience of cognition and thinking). The mystery of interpreting the semantics of the ornamental art of ancient peoples, including Armenians, and their contemporaries is revealed using the ideographic language of the inhabitants of the Armenian Highlands.
Thus, the questions of the commonality and origin of ornamental motifs receive a scientific resolution. “The production of ideas, representations of consciousness – is interwoven into the activity and communication of people – the language of real life” (K. Marx and F. Engels).
The representation of thinking, spiritual communication of people was initially reflected through rock drawings, then through ideograms from simple forms, points, and lines, to more complex ones, rectangles, circles, intersecting lines. Similarly, one can say about spiritual production, expressed in language (constructing the first words), morality, religion, laws, in a word, culture.
Artistic representation of the world helps to comprehend and organize reality through such simple, visual, and accessible properties of the figurative language of communication as expressiveness, compositional harmony, structural development, rhythmic completeness, and harmony. Ideographic writing is the consciousness of being, expressed in graphic form. Life determined consciousness, and consciousness, in turn, reflected development.
Ideographic forms of writing expressed the life of ancestors, determining the level of development of their consciousness. And the development of consciousness determined the level of development of ideology, which was based on the desire to preserve, help, and spread experience.
Based on the motifs used, ornamentation is divided into:
- Geometric: Consisting of abstract forms (dots, straight lines, zigzag lines, intersecting mesh lines, circles, rhombuses, polyhedrons, stars, crosses, spirals, and more complex forms).
- Vegetal: Stylizing leaves, flowers, fruits, etc.
- Zoomorphic or Animal: Stylizing figures or parts of figures of real or fantastical animals.
The following are the main types of motifs in Armenian ornamentation:
- Flowers and pistil-fruit motifs
- Grain-seed motifs
- Philosophical-material representations of nature (the four elements: earth, water, air, and sun), the struggle with the elements
- Philosophy of the origin of life (parental pair, family, tree of life), ideas of the parental pair and offspring
- Reflection of family and clan relationships
- Dual and fraternal relationships of organizations (symmetrical constructions and compositions)
- Headpieces, columns, khorans, chapels, domes, towers, temples, staffs, clothing (their ornamentation)
- Celebrations, rituals, theatrical scenes, myths, tales, mysteries, religious relationships, philosophy of “good” and “evil,” deification of heroes, love, sciences (astronomy, mathematics, etc.)
- Combined motifs
As we can see, these motifs are based on levels of understanding reality, corresponding to natural phenomena and the duration of life. Geometric motifs of ornamentation reflected social concepts that were refracted in different ways in different eras.
The complex and magnificent decorations on the margins of ancient Armenian manuscripts owe their distant origin to the representation in geometric form of the periods of life of the clan, tribe, and family monument, where the most important phenomena of the past were reflected.
Architectural motifs in ornamentation, in taraz (costume, clothing) are also associated with the most important factors of reality and concepts of the past. In their entirety, they also embody the ideas of the clan, tribe, tribal group, family, people, and then the state—all those motifs that were found in previous early types and forms.
Clothing, carpets, household utensils, tools, weapons, chandeliers, ceramics were decorated with ornaments of all forms, which characterized the life of the people, history as ideological symbols of the sun, goodness and light, life, the four elements, flowers, pistil-fruit organs, grain-seed elements, the tree of life, parental pairs, offspring, symmetrical rows indicating the eternity of life, levels of consciousness, family and clan factors, dual and fraternal organizations, traditions, and experience.
There is no area of art and culture for the inhabitants of the Armenian Highlands where the main attention would not be paid to these motifs and related issues, both in the rock art archeography, in the art of ideographic writing, and in ornamental, decorative-applied art, in carpet weaving, clothing modeling (taraz), architecture, in speech and even in the Armenian alphabet, recreated in the 5th century AD. By Mesrop Mashtots, as well as in the motifs of medieval artists. In general, both in form and content, they are different areas of understanding and expressing the philosophy of life. They served and continue to serve, first of all, the development of civilization, the growth of resilience to external and internal influences through the advanced reproduction of cultural capital.
The philosophical understanding of the need for decoration is explained by the universal human desire for communication, “interaction” with history, maintaining a continuous dialogue with ancestors when we are awake, sleep, rejoice, grieve, work, fight, educate, die, labor, create living environments, cities, houses, and apartments, create paintings, when we cover our hands and body with decorations, lay carpets on the floors, and cover the chapels, domes of buildings and structures with the most complex motifs and compositions of ornamentation.
Thus, the dialogue of cultures and their development continues. Vahanyan V., Vahanyan G., Yerevan, 2007.
Sources Used
- Ornament of all times and styles. Lorenz N. F. SPB, 1898-1899.
- Armenian ornamental art. (The origin and ideological content of the main motifs). Mnatsakanyan A. AN Arm. SSR, Yerevan, 1955.
- Ornaments of Armenian manuscripts. Yerevan, “Sovetakan Grogh”, 1978.
- Armenian rock art. Project “Karedaran” – computer database of rock images. Vahanyan G., Petrosyan S., 1991, http://www.iatp.am.
- Ornate initials (Armenian miniature), 1992, Yerevan, “Anahit”.
- Armenian rock drawings as the basis of hieroglyphs. Kocharian L., Vahanyan G. Project IATP/IREX, 2002, http://www.iatp.am.
- Armenian ornaments. Project “Zvartnots”. Vahanyan G., Mnatsakanyan G., 1993, http://www.iatp.am.
- Armenian educational portal of culture and art ArcaLer/HaykNet, 1996-2007, http://www.iatp.am.
- Yerevan State Academy of Fine Arts. Project IATP/IREX, Gevorkyan S. Z., 2001, http://www.iatp/am/yafa.
- Armenian costume. Grigoryan V., Grigoryan F. Project IATP/IREX, 2002, http://www.iatp/am.
- Computer Graphics Art in Armenia. EWV 02, East-West-Vision, International Workshop – Project Festival. Vahanyan G. September 12-13, 2002, Graz, Austria.
- Armenian hieroglyphic online editor. Vahanyan G. NAS RA. International conference. Abstracts of reports. Yerevan, September 12-17, 2005.
- Vahanyan V. Website “Armenian ornaments”. Delphi Games. International competition, Kyiv, 2005.
- Stone chronicle of civilization. Vahanyan G., Vahanyan V. Yerevan, Njar, Monograph. 2006, http://www.iatp.am/vahanyan/kamlet/index.html.
ARMENIAN DESIGNS (more than 200 geometric primitives – images, extracted from rock drawings of Armenia and more than 150 modern ornamental compositions using elements of ornaments from manuscripts, khachkars, architectural and art monuments)
The authors express special gratitude to the management of the Yerevan State Academy of Arts, teachers and students of the Department of Computer Graphics (Computer Art Design) for their help and support in preparing the book for publication. Dedicated to the memory of S. Petrosyan, G. Mnatsakanyan and F. Grigoryan.
Artatsolum





