Rubbings of part of the decoration of clubs; one-third natural size. Figs. 27 and 28, D’Entrecasteaux, Edinburgh Museum; Figs. 29 and 30, Cambridge Museum.
The triangular spaces left above and below the beaks in the bird-scroll pattern are usually more or less filled up with crescentic lines, as in Fig. [26]. Sometimes they are blank, and in this case the triangles may be coloured red instead of the white lime which is rubbed into the carving. The eyes of the birds are, as often as not, omitted altogether. (Figs. [27]-[30].) Their presence seems to have a conservative effect on the design, for where absent the elements of the design may slip upon or run into one another.
In Fig. [27] we have a good example of what I mean by the slipping of the elements of the design, with the result that a guilloche is arrived at. It will be noticed in this figure that the ends of the curved lines are mostly joined by an oblique bar. These oblique bars have become emphasised in Fig. [28], and a degeneration of the curved lines results in a simple pattern.
An example of the elements of the design running into one another is shown in Fig. [29], which, like the last two figures, is a reduced rubbing of part of the decoration of a sword-shaped wooden club. The band, shown in Fig. [30], is on the handle of the same club; the central pattern is clearly a simplification of that on the blade of the club, and it passes naturally into the zigzag carved below it.
Fig. 31.—Rubbing of the pattern round the upper margin of a betel-pestle in the Cambridge Museum; one-third natural size.
In a carved border round the top of a betel-pestle (Fig. [31]) the bird’s-head scroll has become simplified, and at the same time developed into a more convolute scroll. A very degraded example is seen in the upper band of Fig. [32].
It would be easy to multiply examples of simple and complex derivatives of the bird’s-head motive, but these few will serve to demonstrate the kind of modifications which occur.