When tagging with more than word is it best to you “and” in-between or just separate the words with a space. For example: “white and black” or “white black”.
Also, is it advisable to use multiple words together when describing and there are not enough tags allowed? For example: “texture color design pattern” or “animal vegetable mineral flower”. Or does that just throw algorithms or whatever is related way out of whack?
I don’t know this for a fact, but I strongly suspect that And, Of, The, etc. are simply dropped out of the search. I suspect this because search engines ignore them.
As for your second question about cramming basically unrelated words into a single tag, I believe this is referred to as “tag stuffing” and isn’t well thought of.
If you believe that customers might search for “animal vegetable mineral flower” and you have a product which fits that description, then that is a good tag to use. If customers are not likely to search for “animal vegetable mineral flower”, then there is no point in using that as a tag.