Handles.—In searching for the first suggestions of handles we must certainly go back to the very beginnings of art, when men and women employed leaves or vines to carry their children or their food, or to suspend them for safety from the trees of the forest. The art of basketry would naturally fall heir to this use of handles. Clay, bronze, and iron, when they came into use, would also inherit some of the forms thus developed. There are, however, other sources of equal importance, among which are animal forms, such as horns, and various forms of vegetable growth, such as the gourd. The latter may again serve as an illustration.
By cutting the body of the gourd longitudinally at one side of the axis, we have dippers with straight or curved necks or handles. The primitive potter would in like manner have the suggestion of a handled vessel in clay, which, carried forward by the ever active spirit of improvement, would in time give us the series shown in Figs. 215 and 216:
Fig. 215.—Origin of handles.
Fig. 216.—Origin and development of handles.
Ornament.—The shapes of vessels are, in a measure, ornamental, but it is difficult to say just how much the necessary or functional characters of particular forms have given way to decorative modifications. Pure ornament is a feature not essential to the vessel. Its ideas may be expressed by three principal methods: by relieved, by flat, and by intaglio figures.
Relief ornament was not extensively employed by the ancient Pueblos. The forms are few and simple, and nearly all are traceable to constructional or to functional features. Thus the ornamental crenulated surface of the coiled ware is constructional, consisting as it does of ridges, resulting from the method of building. The knobs, isolated coils, and festooned fillets are probably, in some cases, atrophied forms of handles.
Intaglio decoration is still more rare. It consists of incised, impressed, and punctured figures. No designs of importance are produced by this method, the most notable being the simple patterns traced by the finger or a sharp implement upon the relieved edges of fillets in the coiled ware.
With these people, the highest class of decoration consisted of designs in color. This topic is fully discussed in a subsequent section.