Leaves, plants, flowers, insects, butterflies, shells, feathers, clouds, and countless other objects in nature can furnish us with many delightful color schemes. We can also learn much from the artistic work of people. In Indian pottery and weaving we often see fine combinations of color. The Indians understood how to make beautiful dyes from roots, berries, and other vegetable growths, and the colors obtained in this way have a peculiar quality and beauty, not found in many of the dyes in common use today. The picture on this page is from a fine specimen of Sikyatki pottery. Sikyatki was an Indian village in New Mexico, and was the home of a tribe of Pueblo Indians.
When the Indians wished to send a written message they made use of picture-writing; that is, they made pictures so simple that they are called signs or symbols. Their symbol of a tree, for instance, would look much like the tree pictures made by very little children; three short vertical marks sometimes meant three warriors; a zigzag line stood sometimes for the lightning, sometimes for a serpent; and a wavy line extending in a horizontal direction was the symbol of a brook, a river, or the great ocean.
From a good Indian bowl or basket make an exact copy, and place underneath it the scale of colors found in the object.
Using Color Schemes in Pottery.
In planning a bowl or vase like the one shown you on this page, a sketch of the front view should be made showing the diameter of the top and bottom of the bowl, its height, its shape, the color scheme, and the decoration. Such a drawing might be called a design for a bowl.
After drawing such a design, the next step is to make the bowl of clay. For the bowl represented here, a lump of clay was rolled and patted into a low, roughly shaped cylinder. The thumbs were then thrust into the middle of the cylinder, and they, together with the fingers, pushed the clay outward to form the bottom and part of the sides of the bowl. The sides were finished by adding flat pieces of clay, their edges being carefully worked until the pieces added seemed a part of the form. The sides and bottom of the bowl were kept of uniform thickness. Then the bowl was allowed to stand about a day, or until it became what is called "leather hard." The border was then painted on with potter's colors, the lower part of the bowl was colored, and the inside glazed. The bowl was again allowed to dry, this time very thoroughly. It was then fired in a potter's kiln.
Make a flower holder of clay. Use the color scheme you found in your Indian bowl or basket. If possible, fire the bowl in a kiln.