For textile collectors, exploring the meaning and significance of the signs and symbols printed or sewed onto fabrics throughout the ages can hold a certain intrigue. From my own experience as a collector, I have been fascinated with exploring the meaning of designs and symbols from a cross-cultural perspective and awed by their ageless beauty. I have often found that as symbols pass through time, they gather and lose meanings, and it is in the study of these changes that has lead me to be more interested in collecting examples of symbols rather than examples of a particular style of textile. For example, instead of collecting Amish quilts or French shawls, I have found it more interesting to collect specific symbols found across such mediums.

As a result of this interest, I have spent untold hours in museums, libraries, private collections, archives, exhibits, auctions and through my travels, to study the many cultural sources and visual examples in textiles that illustrate these various universal themes. In doing so, I found that the patterns of printed cloth suggest a larger pattern that contains them. In that larger pattern, nothing appears out of nowhere, nothing disappears. Motifs, myths, signs and symbols repeat over the course of centuries only to be translated in newer cultural expressions, moving at different speeds, coming and going in different rhythms. These images predate the modern textile industry by millions of years having first appeared on prehistoric cave walls, Persian carpets, Chinese robes, Egyptian hieroglyphics, Tibetan thankas, Pygmy pongos, Celtic manuscripts, pre-Columbian textiles, Islamic mosaics. The context may change but the symbol endures eternally.

In textile patterns we see an immense library of images, which, according to Carl Jung, are part of the collective unconscious, made manifest through this warehouse of symbols with which we surround ourselves. From the clothing in which we dress our children, such as Tibetan children’s hats loaded with symbols to insure health, happiness, good fortune and long life, to the carpets upon which we walk, these elements are pervasive in every culture on earth.

As these symbols pass through time sometimes they gather, lose, and change meaning. Perhaps one of the most infamous examples is, of course, the swastika, which is found in almost every ancient culture from Asia to Native America. When the Nazis appropriated it in the twentieth century, the formerly positive cultural symbol was supplanted by another, very disturbing, one. In contrast, a swastika in Chinese carpets has ‘wan-fu’ meaning, “may we enjoy happiness.”

As a student, I became interested in finding out about shapes and symbols found in the art of textiles throughout cultures and time, and what meaning humans attribute to them. In my research, I discovered that there are five basic shapes that appear in the textile arts of many cultures: the spiral, the circle, the square, the triangle and the cross.

The Cross

Crosses appear in every culture, but for Christians it has heightened religious meaning. Most societies see the symbol of the cross as two parts merging to create a greater whole. In Egyptian hieroglyphics, the cross stands for life and living and forms part of such words as health and happiness. These examples explain the major cross-cultural functions attributed to the cross – the process of relationship, balance and integration.

The Circle

In every culture, the circle symbolizes wholeness and the experience of unity. The circle is represented in Hindu mandala, where concentric circles are an instrument of contemplative meditation for the purposes of the spirit. In Black Elk Speaks, tribal elder Black Elk describes the meaning of circles in Native American culture, “Everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round. The sky is round, and…the earth is round like a ball. And so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nests in circles for theirs is the same religion as ours. The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon does the same, and both are round. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves.”

The Spiral

The spiral symbolizes the process of growth and evolution. The life renewing potential of the spiral appears in weaving and spinning stories from all cultures and times including our present day Spider Man to the fairy tale of Rumpelstiltskin. The spiral metaphor and the spiral in art, from prehistoric cave drawings to the delicate scroll atop an Ionic column, to the Mola designs of the Kuna Indians of Panama, are all symbols for the same universal process of growth. All announce diverse, yet universal, expressions of creativity.

The Triangle

The triangle is the universal shape associated with the attainment of desired goals and dreams, and envisioning new possibilities. It carries the theme of self-discovery and revelation. Symbolically, it represents one of the four elements, fire, and, on a spiritual plane, the Trinity. It is associated with arrowheads, pyramids, and mountains. In the pyramid, whose sides are all triangles, it is an emblem of immortality and symbolic power, as evidenced on the back of the one-dollar bill.

Climbing a mountain often describes the process or quest of attaining a goal, manifesting a dream, finding a lost treasure. To Westerners, this is reminiscent of the quest for the Holy Grail; and in the Native American culture, the Vision Quest or rite of passage for young adults. All of these stories demonstrate how goals and dreams are necessary in order to manifest creative results.

The Square

After the circle, the square is the most common geometric shape printed on textiles. Its equal proportions give it a feeling of stability, solidity, security and rationality. In many cultures, the four points of the square symbolize the foundations of life: the four seasons, the four directions, the four elements. The process of stability is being reinforced whenever a square appears in art and whenever examples of foundation metaphors are expressed in religious lessons such as the four Gospels, or the four truths of Buddhism.

These five symbols are found in the textile arts of many cultures and continents from around the world, which shows their pervasiveness and timelessness. Collectors can use the information in this article and in other texts about signs and symbols to discover their own individual preference for a specific symbol or symbols that speak to their inner processes and sensibilities. One can then begin to build a collection based upon signs or symbols that span through various cultures, belief structures and forms of expression.

Whether a European ceramic tile or an Amish quilt, the collector’s consciousness evolves through experiencing the object’s intrinsic beauty, and the understanding of its symbolism enhances it. As in all forms of artistic expression the context may change, but the secret language of symbols endures eternally. Which universal signs and symbols speak to you as a collector?