BULL. 30] 



ORNAMENT 



151 



and painting. In lertain branches of 

 art it deals principally with geometric 

 figures, but in others life motives are em- 

 ployed with consideral)le freedom, the 

 representations running through the en- 

 tire scale of convention. The work of 

 the Eskimo executed on bone and ivory 

 illustrates the more decidedly pictorial 

 phases of this branch, although there are 

 apparent traces of an earlier geometric 

 stage of engraved design. That of the 

 N. W. coast tribes, executed on wood, 



ENGRAVED DESIGNS— Slate Plaque of the haida 



bone, stone, ami metal, embodies animal 

 forms almost exclusively, and is always 

 highly conventional though never fully 

 geometric in style. That of the mound- 

 builders, wliile employing life forms to 



engraved designs — silver bracelets of the haida, with 

 Animal Figures, (niblack.) 



some extent, is largely geometric. The 

 PueVjlos relied on the brush rather than 

 on the graver for their ornament. Picto- 

 graphic inscriptions executed in incised 

 lines on rock, birchbark, and other sur- 

 faces, are not properly classed as orna- 

 ment. Engraved decoration has closely 

 associated with it in the potter's art a 

 range of imprinted and stamped figures 

 which are usually quite formal, as in 

 the ancient pottery of the Southern and 

 Eastern states and in the coil ware of the 

 ancient Pueblos. Engraved design em- 

 ployed in heraldic, totemic, and religious 

 art is usually the work of the men ; applied 

 to domestic art, as in ceramics, it is the 

 work of the women. 



(4) Embellishments in color (see Paint- 

 ing, Dry-painting, Dyes and Pigments, 



Tattooing) are applied to objects or sur- 

 faces by means of a great variety of im- 

 plements and devices, and in the form 

 of paints, dry pigments, stains, and dyes, 

 or are pricked into the skin. They take 

 a prominent place in the art of the 

 northern aborigines. Color ornament, in 

 its simplest form, consists in the appli- 

 cation of plain colors to the person and 

 to the surface of objects, but more com- 

 monly it takes the form of pictorial and 

 conventional designs of wide range; and, 



ANCIENT Pueblo Bottle 



not infrequently, sculptured and modeled 

 life forms, as in masks, totem poles, eartli- 

 en vases, etc., are colored in imitation of 

 nature, although generally in formal 

 fashion. By far the most important 

 branch of color decoration embraces con- 

 ventional delineations of life forms on 

 manufactured articles and constructions. 

 These decorations, usually symbolic, are 

 characteristically displayed on articles of 

 skin among the hunter tribes, as the 

 Sioux; on the pottery of the more seden- 



Painted Designs from Potter 



tary peoples, as the Pueblos; and on 

 houses, utensils, and ceremonial objects 

 among the N. \V. coast tribes. Although 

 the free-hand methods employed in the 

 painter's art are favorable to flowing lines 

 and the graphic reproduction of life 

 forms, the color ornament of some of the 

 tribes is almost exclusively geometric, 

 good illustrations appearing on the pot- 

 tery of the ancient Pueblos and in the 

 decoration of articles of skin by some of 

 the Plains tribes. It is probable that the 



