No. 58. — 1907.] notes on ceylon painting, &c. 115 



districts is confined to incised lines and circles similar to 

 work from Jodhpur in India (Watt, " Indian Art at Delhi," 

 p. 179) ; but flat plates of ivory inlaid with scroll and floral 

 ornament are used in the fittings of calamander boxes made 

 in the low-country, particularly at Matara, and this style 

 reminds one of the similar methods of decorating ivory used 

 on the musical instruments still made at Tanjore. 



Returning to a consideration of the ordinary niyapoten 

 weda, it will be best to describe the process in its simplest 

 and commonest form, namely, in the decoration of a staff. 

 The stick having been shaped and smoothed, the workman 

 squats on the ground, having before him a chatty (gini kabala) 

 containing a charcoal fire. The lacworker's tools consist 

 of short sticks with a lump of coloured lac at one end of 

 each and a short strip of puskola (talipot leaf, Corypha 

 umbraculifera) . The stick is first coated with the ground colour , 

 usually red. To effect this, the stick is warmed over the fire 

 and lac applied, which lac is pressed and smoothed out with 

 the piece of talipot leaf, while still kept warm over the fire ; 

 in this way the whole stick is gradually covered with a coating 

 of red lac. It now remains to add the pattern, which may be 

 very elaborate. For this it is needful to draw out the lac into 

 strips of the desired thinness. To do this, the lump of lac 

 is well warmed, and then, a small piece being held between 

 finger and thumb, the rest is pulled away, leaving a long thin 

 connecting thread which is wound round the bent knee, into 

 a skin. After passing four or five times round the knee the 

 lac becomes cold and must be warmed afresh. Now to apply 

 a narrow band of coloured lac to the stick, the stick is warmed 

 gently, while kept continually turning by a small boy who 

 squats behind the operator, and one end of the string of lac 

 is attached to the stick by pressure, and the rest likewise as 

 the stick turns ; the thread of lac is nipped off by the thumb 

 nail when a revolution is complete. The stick is then warmed 

 again and smoothed with the leaf. For more complex patterns 

 (and some are very elaborate) string lac is applied in first 



