A Study of the Textile Art in Its Relation to the Development of Form and Ornament: Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1884-'85, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1888, (pages 189-252)Holmes, William Henry
History
A Study of the Textile Art in Its Relation to the Development of Form and Ornament: Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1884-'85, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1888, (pages 189-252)
Holmes, William Henry
Decoration and ornament; Indian textile fabrics -- North America; Textile fabrics; Textile industry
I will now present the examples, which for the sake of uniformity are
in all cases of the coiled ware. If a basket is made with no other
idea than that of use the surface is apt to be pretty uniform in
color, the natural color of the woof fillets. If decoration is desired
a colored fillet is introduced, which, for the time, takes the place
and does the duty of the ordinary strand. Fig. 319 serves to show the
construction and surface appearance of the base of a coil made vessel
still quite free from any color decoration. Now, if it is desired to
begin a design, the plain wrapping thread is dropped and a colored
fillet is inserted and the coiling continues. Carried once around the
vessel we have an encircling line of dark color corresponding to the
lower line of the ornament seen in Fig. 320. If the artist is content
with a single line of color he sets the end of the dark thread and
takes up the light colored one previously dropped and continues the
coiling. If further elaboration is desired it is easily accomplished.
In the example given the workman has taken up the dark fillet again
and carried it a few times around the next turn of the warp coil; then
it has been dropped and the white thread taken up, and again, in turn,
another dark thread has been introduced and coiled for a few turns,
and so on until four encircling rows of dark, alternating rectangles
have been produced. Desiring to introduce a meandered design he has
taken the upper series of rectangles as bases and adding colored
filaments at the proper time has carried oblique lines, one to the
right and the other to the left, across the six succeeding ridges of
the warp coil. The pairs of stepped lines meeting above were joined in
rectangles like those below, and the decoration was closed by a border
line at the top. The vessel was then completed in the light colored
material. In this ornament all forms are bounded by two classes of
lines, vertical and horizontal (or, viewed from above or below, radial
and encircling), the lines of the warp and the woof. Oblique bands of
color are made up of series of rectangles, giving stepped outlines.
Although these figures are purely geometric, it is not impossible that
in their position and grouping they preserve a trace of some imitative
conception modified to this shape by the forces of the art. They serve
quite as well, however, to illustrate simple mechanical elaboration as
if entirely free from suspicion of associated ideas.
[Illustration: FIG. 321. Coiled basket with encircling bands of
ornament in white, red, and black, upon a yellowish ground. Obtained
from the Indians of the Tule River, California--1/8.]
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