Mai and Basket Weaving of the old Haivaiiaits^ wii/i illustrations 

 of similar luork from other parts of the Pacific. By William T. Brigham, Direflor 

 of the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Miiseiini. 



IN this essay I shall endeavor to show the Mat and Basket Work of the Hawaiians, 

 carrying the study of the textile work into the netting, of which the people made 

 great nse, not only for fishing, but for carrying unieke or bowls, and as a founda- 

 tion for the feather work already described.' All this is essentially the work of a 

 primitive people. Hand-made mats, baskets, nets are found everywhere among savage 

 races in one form or another, and however perfect the handicraft, however beautiful 

 the form or decoration, we recognize the process as of a lower order of civilization. 

 And yet there is a flavor of humanity in this simple work of untutored man that the 

 mere mechanical products of the loom or knitting machine can never show. In the 

 whirl and rush of the twentieth century there is little time for the natural work of 

 human hands fashioning a basket, plaiting a mat or knotting a net; the people who 

 can only make these things as their ancestors did long generations ago are passing 

 off the stage, and the inanimate machine, the modern slave of civilized man, is doing 

 this work, — but in how different a way ! 



Will the baskets of the Amerind, which now sometimes bear a valuation of 

 several hundred dollars, be fairly replaced b}' au}^ machine-made product ? Will any 

 loom put out such fabrics as the old Niihau mats, each one the work of years ? It is 

 the same with other hand-made fabrics. The Kashmir valley, where the songs of the 

 weavers on the banks of the Jhelum are translated into harmonious design, may still 

 smile at the fabrics of the steam-driven and ingenious looms of Jacquard in sunny 

 France. The individuality is lost in the multitude. Can the most perfect productions 

 of chromatic printing show to the critic the touch of the master whose work has been 

 copied by many and intricate processes ? When mats are produced by the yard, 

 baskets by the thousands, and nets by the mile, artistic interest departs from them 

 and we look only to their utility. Does not the father look with truer pleasure upon 

 the first ungrammatical, misspelled composition of his child than upon the correct and 

 finished writing of his maturer years ? 



Human nature also delights in rarities, and aboriginal mats and baskets are 

 fast becoming few in number as their makers are "civilized" from off the earth. We 



■ Memoirs 13. P. Bishop Museum, Vol. I, No. I. 



Memoirs B. P. B. Museum. Vol. II, No. i.— i. ( i ) 



