PIERCED AND REPOUSSÉE SILVER SHRINE-SCREEN: MADURA, MADRAS.
The general attributes of Indian art as displayed in the museum are richness of decoration, great manipulative skill, good taste, brilliancy, harmony of color, intricacy of decorative forms, and the due subserviency of both color and design to decorative effect. Nearly all these qualities are illustrated by the textile fabrics, the dresses and turbans, the horse and elephant caparisons, the carpets and the rich canopies of the howdahs. These are the tissues that spread the fame of India on every side. It is not known how long it has possessed the art of weaving. Possibly it originated in the Valley of Roses or by the banks of the sacred Ganges. The weaving of silk India appears to have borrowed from China, but when or how it first wove silk we cannot tell, any more than we can tell when first it wove its marvellous gold brocades or gauzy muslins. It was weaving cotton in times beyond the realm of history, and continues weaving it to-day all over the Panjab, Sindh, Rajputana, Oudh, Bengal, the Central Provinces, in Assam, Bombay and Madras. The prince of Wales obtained a few pieces of the famous muslin of Dacca, requiring about six yards to weigh an ounce. Of this kind one was called shabnam, or "dew of the evening," because if laid upon the grass it became undistinguishable from the dew; another was called bafthowa, or "woven air;" a third was called abrawan, or "running water," because when placed in water it became invisible. Even the prince's pieces weigh nearly twice as much as the older tissues. Indian lace in gold or silver, cotton or silk, is in texture and design the highest representative of that most beautiful fabric. The brocades are glories of color and rich with glittering flowers of gold, and the embroidery on velvet, silk, wool or cotton is both pleasing and rich. The museum contains several examples of the gorgeous embroideries of the Dekkan, and we find in one or two of the costumes and some of the fans a beautiful embroidery of shining green beetle-wings and gold. As to the carpets, they are as a rule satisfying to the eye and possess a general simplicity of design blended with richness of color. In all the more brilliant textile fabrics of India warmth is secured without violence of contrast; and one fact it will be well for Western manufacturers to study—namely, that floral or animal decoration is invariably flat.
SARAI DAMASCENED IN SILVER: HYDERABAD, IN THE DEKKAN.
In furniture the Hindus do not follow the prevailing American rule: with them, the less furniture the better. There are, however, specimens from Bombay of their works upon forms supplied by Europe—as, for example, two sofas and a high-backed chair, the backs of which are so perforated that they seem as cool and light as cane. A sideboard from Bombay has its top and panels so perforated that one wonders how long a time it took to weave the endless flower-stems of the design and to carve the fruits and flowers and the griffin-like monsters that support the upper shelf. Some of the heavy, deep-cut flower-stands are less pleasing. On the other hand, a dark wood stand from Ahmedabad is carved in a fine, close and perforated pattern which is altogether appropriate and admirable. It seems to have been made in parts. The bottom or stand is solid and deeply cut in twining snakes and leaves: to this is fastened the lowest section, hollow and perforated in a floral design; above this is another of a different design; a third section supports the vase and cover, which are also perforated. The work throughout is elaborate and exquisite. A good deal of the furniture and many of the tables, trays and boxes or coffers are variously lacquered and colored, but when color is used lavishly it is never inharmonious. Ivory is frequently employed in conjunction with ebony, and the effect is often striking. The carving of ivory is practised in many parts of India, and the Berhampore stately state-barges with their rowers all in position, and the elephants with howdahs on their finely-modelled backs, are all that need be mentioned, though there are numberless objects that come from Bombay carved in low relief or perforated. Even after the small ivories and the larger chess-tables, cots and palanquins in which ivory is employed, the sandal-wood carving is amongst the most attractive in the museum. There is a model of a doorway from Ahmedabad cut after a microscopic pattern, and all around are designs, some mythological and others purely naturalistic. The low-relief foliated ornamentation of Bombay seems more attractive than the mythological designs of Canara and Mysore, or than the mixed foliated and mythological designs of Ahmedabad, possibly because the Western mind finds less to sympathize with in the figures of the Hindu Pantheon than in the exuberant wealth of India's gorgeous flowers and shady groves.
There are many carvings in horn and tortoise-shell from Vizagapatam and Belgaum; pots, vases, bowls and bottles in marble of various colors, solid, mottled and variegated; in soapstone, flowers, and notably a model of a tomb, in which the most minute details are reproduced; and specimens of the original Florentine inlaid marble-work of Agra. In the latter we find white marble inlaid after various designs with agate, chalcedony, topaz, jasper, garnet, lapis-lazuli, coral, crystal, carnelian, and even with pearls, turquoises, amethysts and sapphires. It demands judgment in the selection of the stones, skill in their handling and taste in their arrangement in order to be what may worthily be called artistic. It is ever too easy to perpetrate the grossest crimes against good taste in the richest materials, and it is the crowning glory of the industrial art of India that mere richness of effect is never sought at the expense of taste.
ENAMELLED HUKU-STAND OF MOGUL PERIOD.
Lac is used in an endless variety of ways—from making lacquered walking-sticks, boxes, toys and bangles to bracelets and beads. The best work is found in house-decoration and furniture. In the case of some of the Sindh boxes the decorative design is worked out by covering the box with successive layers of variously-colored lacquer and then cutting away the pattern to the depth required by the color-treatment. Sometimes metal rings appear to be let into incisions, and again the decoration consists exclusively of surface-painting in bright colors. The latter is found upon the papier-mâché of Cashmere, which ranks with the best lac-work of India.
We pass the pottery, merely noting the beauty of the colors, and especially of the turquoise-blue, and the graceful simplicity of some of the early forms, the trappings and caparisons, and glance round the magnificent collection of arms, from the rough robbers' clubs bound with serrated iron to the finest chain-mail and rifles inlaid with gold. From Sindh comes a flintlock gun having the barrel inlaid and plated with gold at the muzzle and breech, and bearing an inscription inlaid in gold. Round the muzzle are set nine uncut rubies, and an emerald forms the "sight." The stock is rosewood, curved and expanding at the butt, enriched with mounts of chased gold, and attached to the barrel by three perforated and chased gold bands. In some cases the woodwork is almost obscured by the gold ornaments. On all sides are weapons richly chased and damascened in gold. Weapons are there of the steel that Persia, and even Damascus, never equalled, and they come, as to a masquerade of the dread weapons of war, with handles of crystal, of jade set with rubies and emeralds, of gold and green enamel set all over with table diamonds, and sheathed in green velvet scabbards gleaming with diamonds and fitted with cap, band and chape of green-enamelled gold.