TEXTILE FABRICS OF ANCIENT PERU. 9 



strong and durable, but it is clear that durability was a secondary con- 

 sideration in a very large part of the work, and that beauty was the thing 

 most desired. It would be a great mistake to suppose that there was 

 in this embellishment any lack of retinemeut of taste as judged by 

 European standards. Many of the rich garments were doubtless in- 

 tended for display in the fantastic ceremonies of a barbarous race and 

 must have been admired for their gaudy effects, but there is throughout 

 a purity of design and a refinement of color that could be studied to 

 advantage by the foremost decorators of the world. 



A most noticeable feature of these fabrics, and one calculated to chal- 

 lenge the attention of students of art development, is the employment 

 of animate forms in decoration. Both animal and vegetable forms ap- 

 Ijear, but the former greatly predominate. This free delineation of 

 animals is characteristic of the native Americans, and is suggestive of 

 the close relationship held by them to exist between man and his brute 

 associates. In their painting upon pottery they drew their forms with 

 a free hand. They carved them in wood, stone, and shell, modeled them 

 in clay, and cast them in metal with much vigor. In fabrics the de- 

 lineations take a character of their own, a character dependent upou 

 the technical restraints of the art. The remarkable influence of the 

 web and woof upon design, and the causes thereof, have l)een fully set 

 forth in a paper in the Sixth Annual Eeport of the Bureau of Ethnology. 

 I do not need here to go over that ground, but shall call attention to 

 some especial features of the Peruvian work. 



Generally the colors employed in weaving animal figures are not ar- 

 ranged with any reference to the colors of nature, but are selected and 

 skillfully alternated to give the desired effect to the decoration. 



The cleverness shown in introducing irregular forms of nature into 

 geometric outlines without destroying them completely may be illus- 

 trated by almost any example selected at random. One furnished by 

 Mr. Barber is given in Fig. 4. Here the form of some unidentified 

 creature is imposed upon an ordinary scroll pattern, the head in each 

 repetition taking the place of the interlinked ends of the scroll units, 

 whilst the various parts of the body appear along the connecting curves. 



A still more formal treatment of animal motives is shown in Fig. 5. 



In this case it is barely possible to identify the features of a life form 

 as the lines all conform to the rectilinear geometricity of the fabric, but 

 the head with the eyes and the mouth appear at the termination of each 

 hook, and in their proper relations to one another. Beyond this very 

 formal presentation we have still higher stages of convention, in which 

 the merest traces of animal features may be found. 



A most interesting example of the conventional rendition of life forms 

 is shown in Fig. 6. The fabric is a magnificent piece of gobelins, col- 

 lected by Eeiss and Stiibel, and presented in all its rich colors in the 

 great work published by them. It had been separated into two parts 

 near the middle, and through an oversight, perhaps, these parts were 



