Mongolian interlacing ornament: the history and modernity

Different nations have got the traditions of the plaiting from the various materials (threads, braids, strings etc.) during many centuries starting from the Neolithic Period. The interlacing has an alternating quality: each string goes alternately over, then under other strings at right or oblique angles to each other for creating the manifold pictures. The correlation and two-way influence of the traditions and immemorial usages and at the same time the singularity of these methods are emphasizing. In our time the Islamic and Celtic knots are well known, they come to us from Dark Ages. The plaiting and interlacing ornament was use extensively in India, Tibet, China, Japan since olden times, these methods are employing in the modern fancy-work. The interlacing ornament was created as representation of the manual plaiting. The meaning of the interlacing ornament is protective function and expressing well desires. Alike others nomadic people Buryat and Mongol every day needed with making a knots sine qua non it wasn't possible to assemble yurta (nomad's tent), to tether and hobble a horse, to tie luggage. Buryat netted and tied on fishhooks. Interlacing ornament was used by them widely for decorated of a horse harness (embodied in embossing, embroidery, application), architectural details and sticks of furniture (by carving and painting), for caparison of the native costume from a cap to boots, in the jewelry. Underlying many of the Mongolian knot patterns is a double squares lattice. And these knots are possessed with mirror (m) symmetry or rotation axis (n) or their feasible combinations. The mirror symmetry is more common for the Mongolian interlacing ornaments (leave the difference in interlacing out of account). For painting interlacing ornaments the geometrical calculations and constructions are required, manually constructions in the large fields are difficultly, so a lot of the patterns fit into the fields from 6x6 to 8x8. Most common knot in Mongolian's, Buryat's, China's, Tibet's ornamenentation is «Endless knot» of Buddhism, it fits into the field of 5x5 squares. The development of computer technology and mathematical tools has meant a great deal to the study of Mongolian patterns and create new interlacing ornaments in compliance with specified ethnic style, which enhances the potential of the decoration technique. Designer has possibility for the quick constructing many different images of one's ornament and chooses optimal from them for concrete task. The generation interlacing ornaments in Mongolian-Buryat style enable to design all probability variants of the knots and create a database from more beautiful patterns. Traditions of embellishing interlace motives and compositions of different genre articles, interior, native costume, trappings and jewelry are living at the present time and elaborated program will develop for keeping custom and will allow improving work with interlacing ornament.

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