Fig. 257.—Bottle from the tumulus at Saint George.—1/3.
Examples from this and other sections could be multiplied indefinitely, but since the forms are all repeated in more highly finished pieces it is needless to present them.
PAINTED WARE.
Preliminary remarks.—It is with a peculiar sense of delight that we enter upon the study of a group of art products so full of new and interesting features. Every object of antiquity has its charm for us, but there is an especial fascination about the works of a people like the "cliff-dwellers," whose long forgotten history takes the form of a romance in our imaginations. In the study of these relics we have the additional charm engendered by a contemplation of new forms of beauty, and we follow the stages of their evolution from the initial steps to the end with ever increasing zest.
The ceramic art of classic and oriental countries has exerted a powerful influence upon existing culture, and is therefore much nearer the heart of the general student than the work of the American races; but it will not do for science to underrate the value of a study of the latter. Its thorough examination cannot fail to furnish many illustrations of the methods by which arts grow and races advance in culture, and, supplemented by a study of the art of the modern peoples, it will serve to illustrate the interesting phenomena attending the contact of widely separated grades of art. In the introductory pages I have considered many of the technical questions of construction and ornamentation. Before entering upon detailed descriptions of the specimens, I desire to give a brief review of the subject of painted decoration.
Color of designs.—The colors employed are doubtless generally of a mineral character, although carbonaceous matter derived directly from vegetable sources may have been used to some extent. They comprised white, black, red, and various shades of brown, and were applied to the surfaces of the vessels by means of brushes not inferior in efficiency to those employed by the potters of more enlightened races.
Execution.—The technical skill of the artist has not generally been of a high order, although examples are found that indicate a trained eye and a skilled hand. The designs are painted upon the show spaces of the vessels, which have been tinted and polished with especial reference to their reception. Large apertured vessels, such as dishes, cups, and bowls, are decorated chiefly upon the inner surface. The design often occupies only a band about the rim, but not infrequently covers the entire inner surface. High or incurved rims have in some cases received figures upon the exterior margin.
Vessels with constricted necks have exterior decorations only. The placing of the designs was governed, to a great extent, by the contour of the vessel, although there was no fixed rule. The grouping of the figures is possibly a little more irregular in the more archaic forms, but in nearly all cases there is a tendency toward arrangement in zones horizontally encircling the vessel. This feature is suggestive of the use of the wheel or of the influence of wheel-made decoration; but there is probably a pre-ceramic reason for this peculiarity, to be sought in the decoration of antecedent vessels of more pronounced surface or constructional characters, such as basketry. This arrangement may also be attributed in a measure to the conformation of the vessel decorated. It will be observed that generally the neck furnishes the space for one zone of devices and the body that for another, while the shoulder, where wide or particularly accentuated, suggests the introduction of a third. In vessels of irregular form the figures take such positions as happen to have been suggested to the decorator by the available spaces, by the demands of superstition, or the dictates of fancy pure and simple.
It appears that the artist never worked in a hap-hazard manner, yet never by rule or by pattern. The conception of the intended design was well formed in the mind, and the decoration commenced with a thorough understanding of the requirements of the vessel under treatment and of the effect of each added line upon the complete result. The vessels, being for the most part free-hand products, are necessarily varied in form and proportion, and the mobility of method in decoration is therefore a necessary as well as a natural condition. In accommodating the ordinary geometric figures to the variously curved and uneven surfaces, there were no erasures and, apparently, no embarrassments. This feature of the art shows it to be a native and spontaneous growth—the untrammeled working out of traditional conceptions by native gifts.
Stages of ornament.—In the transmission of a nation's art inheritance from generation to generation, all the original forms of ornament undergo changes by alterations, eliminations, or additions. At the end of a long period we find the style of decoration so modified as to be hardly recognizable as the work of the same people; yet rapid changes would not occur in the uninterrupted course of evolution, for there is a wonderful stability about the arts, institutions, and beliefs of primitive races. Change of environment has a decided tendency to modify, and contact with other peoples, especially if of a high grade of culture, is liable to revolutionize the whole character of the art. The manufactures of our modern tribes show abundant evidence of the demoralizing effect upon native art of contact with the whites. There are no such features in the prehistoric art.