I mentioned earlier that I'll post something about this, especially after the travels in the last couple of years. I still owe
'A very old kris' some replies, but please allow me to get this long overdue thread out of the way first!
So here's the key point -- religion and religious beliefs play a very significant role in the development of the design and concept of all arts and crafts of any group of people. For instance in Christianity the cross would be the predominant design motif, for reasons most of us are familiar with (and as illustrated below).
The slide below by the way (which I'm recycling from an earlier presentation) says, Beliefs + Religion = Design [of arts & crafts, etc.].