DESIGN AND COLOR IN ANCIENT FABRICS 



429 



ill Nedcrlandsch Indie, by J. E. Jasper 

 en Mas Pirngadie, published in 191(3. 



The collection of Koryak and Yakut 

 fur coats and leggings gives us some 

 strong Russian ideas, mixed with the 

 more primitive art of these tribes. It 

 will be rather interesting this year for 

 people who are familiar with the Ameri- 

 can Museum collections to observe how 

 modern artists have adapted these mo- 

 tives to their different techniques. 



The collection from the Philippine 

 Islands shows some very remarkable 

 methods of fabric decoration, the tie- 

 dyed or "bandanna" headdresses of the 

 Bagobo tribes, and the hemp cloths. 

 In these the warps have been tied and 

 then dyed. The design is thus produced 

 by those portions of the warp which were 

 covered by the thread which tied them 

 when they were dipped into the dye pot. 

 Curiously enough, both these methods 

 have come down to iis in modern me- 

 chanical processes. The first, " ban- 

 danna," or simple tying and dyeing, 

 corresponds to modern mastic printing, 

 in which the fabric has the][desig:i 

 printed on it in hot beeswax, and is then 

 immersed in a bath of cold dye. The 

 second corresponds to the modern 

 method of printing on warps (that is, on 

 the threads that run the length of the 

 piece) and then weaving with a plain 

 web. 



The attitude of the American Museum 

 toward artists — in fact, toward any 

 class of people seeking information — 

 has always been most gracious and gener- 

 ous. Those who have come to use the 

 collections have always found that they 

 have been met more than halfway by the 

 staff. Almost every week some one 

 comes to me outside of the Museum and 

 pays glowing tribute to some individual 

 or some collection, and these of course I 

 cannot write of, except to say that one 

 gentleman, Mr. C. W. Mead, in charge 



An interesting Jmethod of making stripes by a dye 

 process consists in rolling the cloth diagonally into a 

 sausage-like form, and tying with some thread which 

 resists the dye. After dyeing, diagonal stripes appear 

 when the fabric is unrolled. The cloth illustrated is a 

 coarse Peruvian cotton of about the same mesh as 

 modern mosquito netting 



of Sovith 'American antiquities, has re- 

 cently become acquainted with many 

 textile designers. It seems reasonable to 

 hope, from the results already accom- 



