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Ornament · Motif

Folk & sacred symbols

Culturally coded motifs, glyphs and talismans.

A design choice in Stylogeny’s vocabulary, under ornament: how much decoration, and of what kind?

styles make it: 133
as a defining choice: 46
as a usual one: 49
now and then: 38
avoid it: 5

Styles defined by it 46

For these styles it is one of the choices that make the style.

Amazigh Sign System & Tifinaghc. 0–present · Middle East & North Africa, Sub-Saharan AfricaThe visual language shared by Amazigh communities from the Rif, Atlas and Kabylie to the Aurès and the Tuareg Sahara.
Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic & Register Compositionc. 0–394 · Middle East & North AfricaThe visual system of pharaonic Egypt, in which writing is made of pictures and pictures are ruled like writing.
Chinese Paper-Cut (Jianzhi)c. 500–present · East AsiaChina's folk art of cut paper, made mostly by rural women and passed from mother to daughter, and by town guilds and workshops.
Andean Woven Graphic Systemsc. 600–present · Latin America & CaribbeanThe graphic systems of Andean cloth, the region's most prestigious medium, in which every motif is built on the warp-and-weft grid.
Nianhua & Chinese Folk Printc. 1100–present · East AsiaWoodblock pictures bought each New Year and pasted on doors, walls and kitchen shrines to invite luck and ward off harm: paired door gods, plump babies with carp, the Kitchen God, opera scenes and auspicious rebuses.
Mixteca-Puebla Codex Paintingc. 1200–1560 · Latin America & CaribbeanThe painted screenfold books of Postclassic southern and central Mexico (not the Maya codices): long strips of gesso-coated deerskin, folded like a screen and painted on both sides.
Mongol Bichig Calligraphy & Ugalz Ornamentc. 1204–present · East AsiaMongolia's classical script and the auspicious ornament that frames it on state, Buddhist and household objects.
Mithila (Madhubani) Paintingc. 1350–present · South AsiaWomen's ritual wall and floor painting from Mithila in north Bihar and Nepal's Terai, attested from at least the 14th century, seen by W.
Tibetan Woodblock Print Culture (Pecha & Prayer Flags)c. 1410–present · East Asia, South AsiaTibetan Buddhist and Bön woodblock printing, from the first printed Kangyur (1410, cut in China) and the 15th-century presses of Gungthang to the great printing houses of Narthang, Derge and Lhasa.
Javanese Wayang Kulit (Tatah Sungging)1500–present · Southeast AsiaThe visual language of Javanese shadow puppets: flat figures cut from buffalo parchment, with head and legs in profile, shoulders turned to the front and long jointed arms worked by horn rods.
Kōwhaiwhai & Toi Māori Design1500–present · OceaniaToi Māori, the visual arts of the tangata whenua of Aotearoa, of which kōwhaiwhai, the painted scroll patterns of paddles and meeting-house rafters, is the most graphic strand.
Đông Hồ & Hàng Trống Folk Prints1600–present · Southeast AsiaVietnam's two classic folk-print schools, bought for Tết. Đông Hồ families press each colour from its own carved block onto giấy điệp, dó paper brushed with ground scallop shell whose streaked, faintly sparkling surface serves as the white, and print the black line last.
Sápmi Graphic Identity (Duodji & Gákti Colour Code)1600–present · Northern Europe, Eastern EuropeDuodji is Sámi handicraft: hard work in wood, horn and bone, soft work in skin and cloth; drums painted with alder-bark figures survive from the 17th and 18th centuries.
Adinkra & Kente Symbol Systems1700–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe Akan textile languages of Ghana.
Northwest Coast Formline Design1700–present · North AmericaThe two-dimensional design system of the northern Northwest Coast nations, painted, carved and woven onto boxes, house fronts, robes and hats, and printed as serigraphs since the 1960s.
Pacific Barkcloth (Tapa) Design1700–present · OceaniaBarkcloth beaten from paper-mulberry inner bark and decorated across Polynesia and Fiji for gift exchange at weddings, funerals and chiefly investitures.
Thai Yantra (Yant) Diagrams1700–present · Southeast AsiaThai protective diagrams in which Pali formulae, written in Khom, a sacred script derived from Khmer, are packed into squares, circles, triangles, spires and the outlines of Buddhas, monks and tigers, often framed by lines of script.
Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics (Munthe & Karelianism)1880–1922 · Northern EuropeThe flat, decorative branch of Norway's and Finland's national romanticism, which turned Viking carving, the sagas, the Kalevala and old peasant weaving into modern ornament.
Bògòlanfini Mud Cloth1900–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe mud-dyed cotton cloth of the Bamana and other Malian peoples, in which the ground rather than the motif is painted: cloth dyed yellow with n'gallama leaves is covered around each sign with fermented iron-rich mud, and the unpainted signs are then bleached pale.
Senegalese Sufi Devotional Imagery (Souwère Glass Painting and Amadou Bamba Portraits)1900–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe devotional imagery of Senegal's Sufi brotherhoods, above all the Mourides: reverse paintings on glass (souwère), made in Senegal's cities since about 1900, and the murals, banners, prints and photocopies that multiply one 1913 photograph of Sheikh Amadou Bamba across Dakar and Touba.
Uli & Nsibidi Line and Sign Tradition1900–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaTwo linked graphic languages of southeastern Nigeria.
Bezalel School1906–1929 · Middle East & North AfricaThe house style of the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, opened in Jerusalem by Boris Schatz in 1906 with E.
Arnhem Land Bark Painting & Rarrk1912–present · OceaniaPainting in ochres on flattened stringybark by Yolŋu, Kunwinjku, Kuninjku and other clans of Arnhem Land, carrying ceremonial designs into portable form; collected from 1912, painted through art centres since the 1970s.
Kultur-Lige & Yiddish Avant-Garde Book Design1917–1924 · Eastern Europe, Central EuropeThe Yiddish modernist book of the Kultur-Lige, the secular Jewish culture league founded in Kyiv in 1918, and its circle: El Lissitzky, Issachar Ber Ryback, Iosif Chaikov, Boris Aronson and others, who sought a new Jewish art in the shtetl synagogues and tombstones they had recorded and in Cubo-Futurism and Suprematism.
Harlem Renaissance Graphic Art1925–1940 · North AmericaThe illustration, cover and jacket art of the New Negro movement, set by Aaron Douglas after he moved to Harlem in 1925 and studied with Winold Reiss.
Estado Novo Folk Modernism (SPN)1933–1949 · Southern EuropeThe official image of Salazar's Estado Novo, shaped by António Ferro's Secretariado de Propaganda Nacional (SPN, 1933; SNI from 1944).
Tiki Pop (Polynesian Pop)1934–present · North AmericaThe mainland American fantasy of the South Seas, begun by Don the Beachcomber's Hollywood bar (about 1934) and Trader Vic's in Oakland and at its height in the Polynesian restaurants of the 1950s and 60s.
Cairo–Beirut Arab Modernist Book & Periodical Design1952–1990 · Middle East & North AfricaThe illustrated book, magazine and children's-book culture that ran from Cairo's post-1952 publishing houses to the Arab nationalist and leftist presses of Beirut.
Woodland School (Legend Painting)1962–present · North AmericaA school of painting from northwestern Ontario, made public when Norval Morrisseau showed at Toronto's Pollock Gallery in 1962 and carried on by Ojibwe, Odawa, Oji-Cree and Cree artists such as Daphne Odjig and Carl Ray.
Hong Kong East–West Graphic Modernism1964–present · East AsiaThe studio design of Hong Kong from the 1960s, made for banks, developers, trade bodies, hotels and cultural events in a city that had to speak Chinese and English at once.
Chicano Screenprint Poster1965–present · North AmericaThe screenprinted poster of the Chicano Movement and its heirs, made from the mid-1960s in community workshops across California and the Southwest for farmworker strikes and boycotts, teatro, dances, anti-war marches and immigrant rights.
Palestinian Resistance Poster1965–1993 · Middle East & North AfricaThe poster culture of the Palestinian national movement after 1965, issued by the PLO and its factions from Beirut and other Arab capitals for refugee camps, homes and solidarity audiences abroad.
Afrofuturist Design1970–present · North America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Global / networkedA visual language of Black futures that fuses African and diasporic iconography (pyramids and ankhs, Adinkra and Nsibidi glyphs, textile patterning) with spacecraft, cosmic fields and technology.
Warli Painting1970–present · South AsiaThe ritual wall painting of the Warli, an Adivasi people of the northern Sahyadri in Maharashtra, carried onto paper and canvas from the 1970s by Jivya Soma Mashe and others.
Western Desert Iconography1971–present · OceaniaThe acrylic painting movement that took form at Papunya in 1971, when men there painted the Honey Ant Dreaming on the school wall and then on board, carrying an older practice of sand, body and ceremonial designs into lasting form. 'Western Desert' is an umbrella name: the movement also includes Warlpiri, Anmatyerre and Arrernte painters of the Central Desert.
Roots Reggae Sleeve Art & Rasta Iconography1973–1985 · Latin America & Caribbean, Western EuropeThe record sleeves of roots reggae, from Catch a Fire (1973) until dancehall took over in the 1980s.
Iranian Revolutionary & Sacred Defence Poster1978–1988 · Middle East & North AfricaPosters, murals and stamps of the 1978–79 Iranian Revolution and the 1980–88 war with Iraq, which fused the red-white-black international revolutionary poster with Persian miniature and coffeehouse narrative painting.
Solidarność & Polish Underground Graphics1980–1989 · Eastern EuropeThe graphic language of Poland's Solidarność movement, from the August 1980 shipyard strike to the semi-free election of 4 June 1989.
Pardhan Gond Painting (Jangarh Kalam)1981–present · South AsiaPainting on paper and canvas by Pardhan Gond artists of Patangarh and Bhopal, begun when Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal, recruited Jangarh Singh Shyam in 1981; the style was later named Jangarh Kalam after him.
Global Village Coffeehouse1988–2003 · North AmericaThe faux-naive, earth-toned illustration style that late-1980s American designers set against Memphis, and that chain cafés, bookstores, packaging and clip art spread through the 1990s.
Torres Strait Islander Linocut1991–present · OceaniaRelief prints by Torres Strait Islander artists of Zenadth Kes, which grew from an Indigenous visual art course at Cairns College of TAFE by 1991 and the Mualgau Minaral collective on Mua (Moa) Island.
Indian Pop-Kitsch Design (Desi Kitsch)1997–present · South AsiaUrban Indian gift and T-shirt design from the late 1990s into the 2010s that recasts the street and bazaar as ironic, affectionate icons: truck tails and 'Horn OK Please', auto-rickshaws, Ambassadors and Chetaks, cutting chai, old Bollywood stills and dialogues, Bhagat Singh in place of Che.
Oaxacan Protest Printmaking & Street Graphics (ASARO)2006–present · Latin America & CaribbeanThe street graphics of Oaxaca City since the 2006 teachers' strike and APPO uprising, when ASARO, the stencil collective Lapiztola and later workshops such as Colectivo Subterráneos made the colonial centre's walls a newspaper.
Egyptian Revolutionary Street Art (Mohamed Mahmoud Murals)2011–2014 · Middle East & North AfricaThe street art of Egypt's 2011 revolution and the years after it, when Cairo's walls, above all around Tahrir and Mohamed Mahmoud Street, became what Ammar Abo Bakr called a newspaper.
Guochao (China-Chic National Trend)2018–present · East AsiaA Chinese branding and fashion trend, usually dated from Li-Ning's 'China Li-Ning' show at New York Fashion Week in February 2018, that redraws heritage motifs as finishes for sneakers, apparel, cosmetics and museum merchandise.
Palestinian Watermelon and Keffiyeh Graphics2021–present · Middle East & North Africa, Global / networkedGraphics of Palestinian identity and of solidarity with Palestinians, made by Palestinian artists, the diaspora and supporters worldwide and shared mainly online, above all since the Gaza war began in October 2023.

Styles that often use it 49

A characteristic choice: usual in these styles, though not essential.

Styles that use it now and then 38

An occasional choice in these styles.

It often goes with

Choices that the styles making it make more often than the atlas as a whole.

Spiritual & sacredin 87 of 133
Hand-paintedin 72 of 133
Stylised figurationin 118 of 133
Central symmetryin 103 of 133
Communal & popularin 96 of 133
Textile & craftin 55 of 133

Styles that avoid it

Styles that deliberately leave it out.

Other choices in ornament