Dynamic Symmetry: The Greek Vase

[early date, possibly three or four thousand years B. C., the Egyptians developed an empirical scheme for surveying land. This primitive scheme was born of necessity, because the annual overflow of the Nile destroyed property boundaries. To avoid disputes and to insure an equitable taxation, these had to be re-established; and of necessity, also, the method of surveying had to be practicable and simple. It required but two men and a knotted rope.

When temple and tomb building began, it became necessary to establish a right angle and lay out a full sized plan on the ground. The right angle was determined by marking off twelve units on the rope, four of these units forming one side, three the other, and five the hypotenuse of the triangle, a method which has persisted to our day. This was the origin of the historic “cording of the temple.”² From this the step to the formation of rectangular plans was simple. From the larger operation of surveying, and fixing the ground plans of buildings by the power which the right angle gave toward the defining of ratio-relationship, it was a simple matter to extend and adapt this method to the elevation plan and the detail of ornament, in short, to design in general, to the end that the architect, the artist or the craftsman might be able to control the proportioning and the spacing problems involved in the construction of buildings as well as those of pictorial composition, hieroglyphic writing and decoration. [At some time during the Sixth or Seventh Century B. C. the Greeks obtained from Egypt knowledge of this manner of correlating elements of design. In their hands it was highly perfected as a practical geometry, and for about three hundred years it provided the basic principle of design for what the writer considers the finest art of the Classic period. Euclidean geometry gives us the Greek development of the idea in pure mathematics; but the secret of its artistic application completely disappeared. Its recovery has given us dynamic symmetry—a method of establishing the relationship of areas in design-composition.]