Spanish Decorative Letters of the 8th Century

Illustration: Decorative letters from a book of the Sacraments, 8th century.

Although from the eighth century onwards Islamic decoration tended to dominate the Iberian peninsula and much has been written and identified with the long-lasting culture that derived from North Africa, it is sometimes forgotten that the Visigoths ruled the peninsula from the end of the Roman period until the invasion of Islamic forces at the beginning of the eighth century.

The Visigoths derived from Eastern Europe, though could well have had original homelands in Central Asia. They were strongly related to the Ostrogoths who made their own homeland in the Italian peninsula. Being ostensibly a Germanic tribe, the Visigoths produced decorative work that had many similarities and even origin points to that of the patchwork of Germanic tribal communities that made up much of Western and Central Europe after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. Many of these communities were to become the foundation stones of the modern European national and regional states.

The decorative letters that are illustrated in this article derive from the Spanish peninsula during the eighth century and therefore were produced at, or just after, the Islamic invasion. They are typically Germanic in flavour with references to animals, both real and mythical, along with complex pattern work. They were very often produced in bright colours, as in this particular case.

Although the Visigoths were no doubt influenced by a number of factors through their movement across various Roman provinces, as well as their eventual settling amongst the communities of the Iberian peninsula, it is interesting how little obvious classically inspired work is apparent in the lettering. The decoration and pattern work is vibrant in both colour and composition and has a real feel of youth and vitality, borrowing little if anything from the sophisticated palette of the later Roman Empire. Although adopting the Roman version of Christianity, as practiced by the local population, the decorative lettering does imply that much remained of the strong connection with both their original pagan Visigoth roots, along with a connectedness with other tribal communities across Western Europe.

By all accounts, many of the Visigoths kept themselves separate from the indigenous population of the Iberian peninsula and perhaps this helps to explain the lack of obvious impact even after nearly two centuries of rule. In many respects, the new rulers of the peninsula were still very much tribally led with different origins, social manners and customs than those communities they now found themselves ruling over. The differences could often appear to be much more fundamental, making the Visigoths at odds with the local classically raised population. Therefore, it is perhaps not so much a separation through elitism between Visigoth and indigenous communities, but perhaps more a case of few if any connecting points of common reference that kept the two communities apart.

Because the lack of an obvious significant cultural identity compared with both the Imperial Roman period and that of the Islamic, the Visigoths have often been relegated to a small interim period between the two. However, this particular Germanic tribe, although sharing many similarities with other Goth tribes, as well as with Franks, Germans, Anglo-Saxons and others, was also a unique community that approached both life and the arts with an understanding that was peculiar to themselves, their roots and their world view. 

This is true of all communities, even those that seem, on first examination, to be of one mind. The nation state of Europe is an imposed identity projected onto many small but distinct communities and regions that have their own historical pathways, and very often separate origins. Many also have very different cultural and world views than that of the ruling nation state. What this means is that nation states in Europe are a complex patchwork of successive occupations and tribal movements, with each new migration serving yet another different and uniquely individual cultural perspective. As far as the decorative arts are concerned, this complexity of cultural outlooks has added that same complexity to traditional decoration and pattern work. 

Every community, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant within the grand scheme of things has made a contribution. Therefore, the unique Visigoth approach to decoration has been incorporated into the traditions of the Iberian Peninsula along with each distinct community throughout its long history. If the Visigoths had not settled in the peninsula, the decorative arts would be the poorer as that one strand would be missing.

To understand the relevance, uniqueness but eventual collaborative nature of migrative communities as seen through the accumulation of creativity within the decorative arts, may go someway into understanding the concept of long-term European multi-culturalism.

Further reading links:
The Invasion of Europe by the Barbarians
The Goths (The Peoples of Europe)
History of the Goths
Visigothic Spain 409 - 711 (A History of Spain)
The Visigoths from the Migration Period to the Seventh Century: An Ethnographic Perspective (Studies in Historical Archaeoethnology)
The Visigoths in History and Legend (Studies and Texts)
Jews, Visigoths and Muslims in Medieval Spain: Cooperation and Conflict (Medieval Iberian Peninsula : Texts and Studies, Vol 10)
Vandals to Visigoths: Rural Settlement Patterns in Early Medieval Spain 
Hispanic Art of the Visigothic Period
The Visigothic Basilica of San Juan de Baños and Visigothic art
The Sculpture of Visigothic France
Arts of the Migration Period in the Walters Art Gallery Hunnish, Gothic, Ostrogothic, Frankish, Burgundian, Langobard, Visigothic, Avaric, Irish and Viking
The Story of Wamba: Julian of Toledo's Historia Wambae Regis
Spain a Study of her Life and Arts
Early Spanish Manuscript Illumination

Matthew Digby Wyatt and the Alhambra

Illustration: Matthew Digby Wyatt. Stucco detail from Sala del Tribunal, Alhambra, 1872.

In 1872 the English architect, designer and critic Matthew Digby Wyatt published An Architect's Note-Book in Spain Principally Illustrating the Domestic Architecture of That Country. It covered an extensive journey that Digby Wyatt had made to Spain in 1869. He had never been to Spain before, but he was obviously intrigued and duly came back with many personally drawn sketches, one hundred of which were added to the book. In many respects, the published book of 1872, contains only brief text descriptions, which duly accompany the illustrative plates. Perhaps the author thought that the architectural heritage of Spain should largely speak for itself, or perhaps he felt that by 1872 enough had been said about the architecture of Spain and so he needed to add very little as an extra.

Digby Wyatt's tour was extensive and relatively intense. He visited most, if not all of the cities and regions of Spain, including Granada from which the four examples that illustrate this article were produced. Although some of his sketches tend towards the vague, it is perhaps his close up illustration work of details found at the Alhambra that are the most interesting and informative.

Illustration: Matthew Digby Wyatt. Stucco detail from the Hall of the Ambassadors, Alhambra, 1872.

Digby Wyatt was obviously intrigued, both intellectually and creatively, by the decorative work that had been produced across the whole Alhambra complex and paid due respect to the Islamic craftsmen involved in the task of internal decoration that took generations to achieve. Interestingly, he often either quoted or guided his readers towards Owen Jones and his 1856 publication The Grammar of Ornament. This particular book had keenly championed both the Alhambra complex and Islamic decoration in general, particularly that work which centred around the Islamic culture of Southern Spain and North Africa.

Digby Wyatt and Owen Jones were close friends and both shared a passion for the broader history of the decorative arts that spread much farther than the often more familiar but narrower confines of Europe. Digby Wyatt contributed the text towards two of Jones chapters in The Grammar of Ornament, as well as being involved in a number of Jones projects including the reassembly of the Crystal Palace after its dismantling at the end of the Great Exhibition in 1851. Digby Wyatt produced three of the popular guides, the Byzantine and Romanesque court, Medieval court and Italian court for the new Crystal palace complex at Sydenham. It seems only fitting therefore that Digby Wyatt dedicate the book concerning his extensive sojourn in Spain to his friend Owen Jones.

'My dear Owen,

The last book I wrote I dedicated to my brother by blood; the present I dedicate to you - my brother in art. Let it be a record of the value I set upon all you have taught me, and upon your true friendship. 

Ever yours M. Digby Wyatt.'

It was a very generous and selfless dedication by a man who had every right to be proud of his own achievements but was more than happy to demure to the knowledge accrued by his friend and colleague Owen Jones. Unfortunately, two years later Jones died at the relatively early age of sixty-five. That Digby Wyatt himself was to die three years later at only fifty-six is all the more tragic. These two individuals were key elements in both the design reform movement, but also in the much more scholarly pursuit of the advancement of knowledge concerning the extensive history of the decorative arts.

Illustration: Matthew Digby Wyatt. Mosaic from the Hall of the Ambassadors, Alhambra, 1872.

By trying to understand and through that extend their own personal acknowledgement of the achievement of complexes such as the Alhambra, Jones and Digby Wyatt helped to make Islamic decoration in Europe an informed and much more accessible subject to both study and admire.

One of Digby Wyatt's particular aims in visiting Spain was to try to record what he saw as the fast disappearing architectural heritage of a uniquely creative region of Europe. Through revolution, neglectful indifference and sometimes deliberate vandalism, the often complex and intertwined history of Christian and Islamic Spain was surrendering to the modern world of the later nineteenth century. Many books such as Digby Wyatt's An Architects Note-Book in Spain were not necessarily published by strident conservationists who wished to see the protection of architectural heritage in all regions of the world, but more a case of records or glimpses of the surviving elements of a shared cultural heritage that was swiftly passing into oblivion.

Illustration: Matthew Digby Wyatt. Detail of glass inlay from the Hall of the Ambassadors, Alhambra, 1872.

Many in the nineteenth century saw much of what the general public assumed as fixed and intransigent aspects of the landscape, as in fact vulnerable and dangerously transient. Industrial Europe was fast engulfing areas within industrial and city landscapes, demolishing generations of architectural heritage often in a matter of a few years. That much was irrevocably demolished with the often enthusiastic consent of local authorities and centralised governments, was all the more distressing for those interested in any form of historical concept. That such writers as Digby Wyatt would not recognise much of England today, let alone Spain says much about government collusion with the less than tangible ideal of industrial, rather than creative progress.

Further reading links:
Matthew Digby Wyatt: The First Cambridge Slade Professor of Fine Art: An Inaugural Lecture
Fine Art; A Sketch of Its History, Theory, Practice, and Application to Industry
The Italian Court in the Crystal Palace (Crystal Palace Library Guides)
***RE-PRINT*** The history, theory, and practice of illuminating
The Byzantine and Romanesque Court in the Crystal Palace, Described by M.D. Wyatt and J.B. Waring
The Mediaeval Court In The Crystal Palace (1854)
Notices Of Sculpture In Ivory: Consisting Of A Lecture On The History, Methods, And Chief Productions Of The Art (1856)
**REPRINT** An architect's note-book in Spain : principally illustrating the domestic architecture of that country ... with one hundred of the author's sketches, reproduced by the auto-type mechanical process
Alhambra
The Alhambra (Wonders of the World (Harvard University Press))
ALHAMBRA OF GRANADA
The Alhambra

William Morris and the Peacock and Dragon

Illustration: William Morris. Peacock and Dragon, 1878.

The Peacock and Dragon is one of William Morris's woven, rather than printed textile designs. It was first produced in 1878 and was extremely expensive to both produce and consume.

Morris had his own carefully thought out ideas as to the hierarchy of textiles. Although producing large amounts of printed textiles himself, he firmly placed printed textiles at the bottom of the scale of skill and achievement, and interestingly he placed woven and embroidered textiles at the top. He estimated that this form of textile skill was deserving of special respect, and work produced in this medium represented some of the best examples that had been handed down through history.

Morris, because of his own philosophy regarding the merits of medieval Europe, was particularly interested in medieval woven and embroidered examples. He spent long hours exploring the details of stitch, weave and colour of both Christian and Islamic textiles held at the South Kensington Museum. It was Islamic woven textiles, and particularly those of Spain and Sicily, that gave Morris the eventual inspiration for the Peacock and Dragon design.

Illustration: Spanish Islamic weaving, 12th century.

Islamic Spain and Sicily along with Byzantium produced probably some of the finest decorative examples of woven textiles anywhere in medieval Europe. The sophistication of weave, composition and colour tone was far ahead of what could readily be achieved in the rest of Europe. Morris, ever one for gargantuan challenges, set out to produce a decorative woven pattern using the medieval Islamic examples that he had studied, as the inspirational starting point. Partially this was a personal challenge, but perhaps more importantly especially when regarding his ever-developing philosophy of creativity versus the commercial, it could be seen as a modern lesson in what could still be achieved if the time and energy of a group of individuals was harnessed towards creativity rather than profit.

Although using Islamic Spanish and Sicilian woven textiles as his inspiration, it does not mean that Morris ended up with a wholly Islamic looking textile design. The decoration, though following the general guide of medieval Islamic textile design, has much more in common with Victorian ideals and aspirations concerning medieval Europe, than that of the prospect of taking seriously the more problematic issue of the enormous influence, and in some respects guiding hand that Islam played in the development of the decorative arts in Europe.

This expensive woven textile was produced by Morris and was used within a number of interior settings, mostly as wall decoration. However, because of its fairly strident and particular design composition, it did tend to make it somewhat difficult when placing it within even a planned interior.

Illustration: William Morris. Peacock and Dragon, 1878.

Morris himself, although not a fan of geometrical decoration and pattern, was aware of the complexity and skill that was part of the Islamic decorative style. He was much more disposed towards the non-geometrical aspects of Islamic decoration, so much so that he felt able to incorporate some of the more obvious medieval Islamic aspects into a number of textile designs produced by Morris & Co after the design of 1878. Admittedly, not all were as obvious in their origin as Peacock and Dragon, but elements do show up in a number of subsequent designs, though mixed heavily with Morris's own medieval decorative ideals.

There are a couple of links should anyone be interested. The first is to a short article detailing the history of textiles within Islamic Spain, which can be found here. There is also an interesting article produced by the National Gallery of Australia concerning the conservation of a nearly three-metre piece of Morris's Peacock and Dragon textile, which can be found here. As always, there is a list of books available concerning this article in the reference links section below.

Further reading links:
Al-Andalus: The Art of Islamic Spain
Islamic Spain, 1250 to 1500
Islamic Arts from Spain
Caliphs And Kings: The Art and Influence Of Islamic Spain
Moorish Culture in Spain
The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain
Siculo-Norman Art: Islamic Culture in Medieval Sicily (Islamic Art in the Mediterranean)
History of Islamic Sicily (Islamic Surveys)
A History of Islamic Spain
A Vanished World: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Medieval Spain
Moorish Spain
Muslim Spain and Portugal: A Political History of al-Andalus
Gardens, Landscape, and Vision in the Palaces of Islamic Spain
Arabic Administration in Norman Sicily: The Royal Diwan (Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization)
The Kingdom of Sicily, 1100-1250: A Literary History (The Middle Ages Series)