CHAPTER IX

FORM--_Continued_. FORM IN ABORIGINAL ART, AS AFFECTED BY MATERIALS. OLD FORMS PERSIST IN NEW MATERIALS

Nature’s gifts first used as given, then modified and copied . . . Rigid materials mean stiff patterns . . . New materials have not yet had their full effect on modern design.

Aboriginal Art.

So multiplied are the resources of modern industry that desired forms are created at will, almost without regard to the material employed. It is not so in primitive art, to which for a brief space we will now turn so that our survey of form, though all too cursory, may be refreshed by a contrast of old with new. Let us begin with a glance at some of the aids with which man first provided himself, taking the gifts of nature just as they were offered. In large areas of the Southern States, and of Central America, the gourd for ages has been a common plant, and has long served many Indian tribes as a water pitcher. On sea-shores, where the gourd did not grow, conch-shells were used instead, their users breaking away the outer spines and the inner whorls, leaving within a space clean and clear. Both gourds and shells gave their forms to the clay vessels which succeeded them.

In Zuni land, says Mr. F. H. Cushing, the first vessels for water were sections of cane or tubes of wood. We may infer that the wooden tubes were copied from the cane stems. What at first was passively accepted as nature gave it, was afterward changed a little, and then was step by step changed much, so that at length there grew up processes of manufacture. There was, for example, in California a wealth of osiers, reeds, and roots well suited for making baskets; these at last were perfected as water-tight receptacles neither brittle like a shell nor liable to a gourd’s swift decay. Beginning probably in mere wattling, in the rude plaiting of mats and roofs, the weaver came gradually upon finer and stronger materials than at first, with equal pace rising to new delicacy of finish and beauty of design. At the National Museum in Washington, the Hudson collection of Indian baskets from California includes the finest specimen in the world, a Pomo basket. Its sixty stitches to the running inch were possible only through using the carex root, easily divided into threads at once slender and strong.[11]

[11] Many of the handsomest baskets at the National Museum, as well as baskets from other great collections, are illustrated, partly in color, in “Indian Basketry,” by Otis T. Mason, curator of the ethnological department of the National Museum. The publishers are Doubleday, Page & Co., New York.

It is interesting to observe the limitation imposed upon a primitive designer by the qualities of the leaf, shell, or cane in his hands, the way in which these qualities point him to the forms in which he may excel. Of this we have capital examples in the basket-work of the North American aborigines as described by Mr. Otis T. Mason, in the report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1883-84. He says: “Along the coast of British Columbia the great cedar (_Thuja gigantea_) grows in the greatest abundance, and its bast furnishes a textile material of the greatest value. Here in the use of this pliable material the savages seem for the first time to have thought of checker-weaving. Mats, wallets, and rectangular baskets are produced by the plainest crossing of alternate strands varying in width from a millimeter to an inch. Ornamentation is effected both by introducing different-colored strands and by varying the width of the warp or the woof threads. . . . It is not astonishing that a material so easily worked should have found its way so extensively in the industries of this stock of Indians. Neither should we wonder that the checker pattern in weaving should first appear on the west coast among the only peoples possessing a material adapted to this form of ornamentation.”

Referring to the water-bottles of the Pai Utes, Mr. Mason says: “This style can be made coarse or fine, according to the material and size of the coil and outer threads. If two twigs of uniform thickness are carried around, the stitch will be hatchy and open; but if one of the twigs is larger than the other, or if yucca or other fibre replace one of them and narrower sewing material be used, the texture will be much finer.” Baskets and rain-hats, as woven by Haidas and many other tribes, are waterproof when wet, owing to the closeness of their texture.

Idiom of Material.

When reeds or somewhat rigid fibres are woven, they compel a straightness of edge in patterns and designs. A wave has to be suggested by stepped or broken lines, and so we have a rectilinear meander or fret, in contrast with its free-hand form as developed in a woven fabric. Under the constraint of her material a squaw as she weaves a design into a basket, must give squareness to a contour which would be somewhat rounded were it executed in delicate threads. This is clear in the human figures of the Pomo basket shown on page 109; and in those of a Yokut basket bowl, also in the National Museum in Washington, illustrated on the next page.

Stone and brick-work, in their rectilinear shapes, impose a rigidity in architectural design from which modern bricks, in their rich variety of flat and curved surfaces, have wrought emancipation. In the new residential streets of St. Louis, for example, the architecture owes much of its freedom and beauty to the new shapes in which brick is now manufactured. Even wider liberty than now falls to the lot of the brick-maker has always been enjoyed by the potter. In his hands clay lends itself to any desired imitation, to any fresh design however fanciful; what is more it invites those modifications of old forms in which art takes its chief forward strides. All but infinite are the variations which Japanese potters have played on the shapes of vases, jars, kettles, and basins, each clearly true to its type, while at the same time original in a pleasing way. How the Japanese artist in clay has rejoiced in his freedom is exemplified in the collection of Japanese pottery at the Museum of Fine Arts, in Boston. Says Mr. Edward S. Morse, who brought this collection together: “Utensils for every day life, terra cotta funeral urns, large terra cotta bowls, weights for fishing nets, brush handles, and even clothes-hooks are in Japan made of pottery. Where we use silver and other metals, or glass, in making articles for daily use, the Japanese use pottery.” He adds: “The prehistoric pottery of Japan was modeled by hand, and to-day in various parts of the empire, this ancient art is continued in its prehistoric form. There are many potters in Japan who are still at work using only the hand in making bowls, delicate tea-pots, and dishes of various kinds. The pottery vessels offered at Shinto shrines are usually made without the use of the wheel and are unglazed. The potter’s wheel was brought to Japan from Korea. The first was probably the kick-wheel used in Satsuma and other southern provinces.”

The Japanese employ not only clay but wood in methods that richly repay study. Says Mr. Ralph Adams Cram:--“In one respect Japanese architecture is unique: it is a style developed from the exigencies of wooden construction, and here it stands alone as the most perfect mode in wood the world has known. As such it must be judged, and not from the narrow canons of the West that presuppose masonry as the only building material. . . . Perhaps the greatest lesson one learns in Japan is that of the beauty of natural wood, and the right method of treating it. The universal custom of the West has been to look on wood as a convenient medium for the obtaining of ornamental form through carving and joinery, the quality of the material itself being seldom considered. In Japan the reverse is the case. In domestic work a Japanese builder shrinks from anything that would draw attention from the beauty of his varied woods. He treats them as we do precious marbles, and one is forced to confess that under his hand wood is found to be quite as wonderful a material as our expensive and hardly worked marbles. In Japan one comes to the final conclusion that stains, paints, and varnish, so far as interior work is concerned, are nothing short of artistic crimes.”[12]

[12] “Impressions of Japanese Architecture and the Allied Arts,” by Ralph Adams Cram. New York, Baker & Taylor Co., 1905.

In strong contrast with the art of Japan is that of Egypt; on the banks of the Nile the first buildings were of limestone, succeeded by huge structures reared from Syene granite, with no little loss in delicacy of ornamentation. It was only when marble, all but plastic under the chisel, was adopted by the Greek sculptor, that the frieze of the Parthenon could spring into life.

Here William Morris should be heard. In “Hopes and Fears for Art,” he says: “All material offers certain difficulties to be overcome and certain facilities to be made the most of. Up to a certain point you must be master of your material, but you must never be so much the master as to turn it surly, so to say. You must not make it your slave, or presently you will be its slave also. You must master it so far as to make it express a meaning, and to serve your aim at beauty. You may go beyond that necessary point for your own pleasure and amusement, and still be in the right way; but if you go on after that merely to make people stare at your dexterity in dealing with a difficult thing, you have forgotten art along with the rights of your material, and you will make not a work of art, but a mere toy; you are no longer an artist, but a juggler. The history of art gives us abundant examples and warning in this matter. First clear, steady principle, then playing with the danger, and lastly falling into the snare, mark with the utmost distinctness the times of the health, the decline, and the last sickness of art.” He illustrates this in detail from the history of mosaic in architecture.

While the modern artist duly respects the idiom of his new materials, their diversity and refinement, in granting him the utmost freedom, enable him to attain a truth of execution unknown before to-day. For writing on papyrus a brush had to be used; on vellum or paper, a pen or pencil may also be employed, tracing lines no wider than a hair. Our grandmothers were fond of sewing on a perforated card a motto or a flower in silk thread; such a sampler always had an unpleasant straightness in its outlines. When in weaving silk or linen there may be two hundred threads to the running inch instead of ten, the designer can introduce curves almost as flowing as if he were a painter. So too in architecture: the log hut was perforce straight in its every line; stone and brick made possible the arch; iron and steel are bringing in a free choice of the best lines, whether straight or curved, all with a new sprightliness, as witness the best of our office-buildings in New York, such as the Whitehall, Trinity, and Empire Buildings.

Old Forms Repeated in New Materials.

Art in its early stages seldom displays any outright invention; with all the force of habit the savage artist clings to old familiar shapes, and it is interesting to remark how dealing with a new material may lead or even oblige him to modify a traditional form. The Algonquins inhabit a country in which the birch is common. They cut and fold its bark into vessels which, when imitated in pottery, have an unusual rectangularity. In many Indian tribes it was customary to use as a water-holder the paunch of a deer or a buffalo; many ancient urns of Central America have an aperture at an upper extremity, copied from the paunch, in every case with a simplification of outline. Winged troughs of wood were undoubtedly in the mind of the man who made the earthen vessel illustrated on the next page, found in an ancient grave in Arkansas. As usual the borrower put something of himself into his work, reminding us that the law of evolution is descent with modification. An earthen vessel, illustrated on the next page, was plainly copied from a shell vessel such as the specimen found not far off, in Indiana. When the Clallam Indians, of the State of Washington, began to weave baskets, they imitated the forms of their rude wicker fish-traps. The like persistence was shown by the Haida squaws when taught by the missionaries to make mats from rags; they repeated their ancient twined model, long employed for mats and hats of vegetable fibres. As in America, so also in Europe; when the makers of celts passed from stone to copper or bronze, they reproduced the old forms, and only gradually learned to economize metal, so much stronger than stone, and so much harder to get, by narrowing and flattening their new weapons and tools.

Modern manufacture in its designs gives us a kindred persistence of old forms in new things. For electric illumination we have bulbs which recall the shape of a candle-blaze, or surmount an old-fashioned candlestick; a gas-burner, popular for fifty years, repeats in milky porcelain the whole length of a candle. Gas-grates, in uncounted thousands throughout our cities every winter, offer us flames which flicker and leap over asbestos and clay molded into the semblance of maple or charcoal. Nor is the engineer himself, for all his sternness of discipline, quite free from prolonging the reign of the past, even at unwarrantable cost. When steel was first used for steam boilers there was a period of hesitation during which the metal was used unduly thick, as if to maintain the long familiar massiveness of iron structures. When automobiles were invented, they at first closely resembled common carriages. To-day, designers have departed from tradition, and provide us with horseless vehicles which respond to their new needs in ways wholly untrammeled by inherited ideas. In an automobile, driven by steam or gasoline, there must be due disposition of fuel, of machinery, of cooling apparatus, all so combined as to bring the center of gravity as low as may be best, affording ready access to any part needing lubrication, repair, or renewal; throughout there must be the minimum of dead weight, of friction, and of liability to derangement; all with means of easy, quick, and certain control. Why should these requirements be deferred to repeating the model of a carriage drawn by a horse? In Europe, to this hour, the railroad carriages are an imitation of the old road-coaches, horse carriages slightly modified. America, fortunately, from the first has had cars directly adapted to railroad exigencies, with a thoroughfare extending the whole length of a train, avoiding the box-like compartments which may give the lunatic or the murderer an opportunity to work his will.

Sometimes an inherited form taken to a new home proves to be faulty there, and is discarded. When Normandy sent forth its children to Canada, they built on the shores of the St. Lawrence just such high-pitched roofs as had sheltered them in Caen and Rouen. An example remains at Montreal in the roof of Notre Dame de Bonsecours. But in Montreal and Quebec the snowfall is much heavier than in Northern France, and the Norman roofs at intervals from December to March were wont to let loose their avalanches with an effect at times deadly. To-day, therefore, in French Canada many of the roofs, especially in towns and cities, are flat or nearly flat, while the best models quite reverse the old design. In breadths somewhat concave they catch the snow as in a basin, and allow it to melt slowly so as to run down a pipe through the center of the building.

Under our eyes, day by day, iron and steel are taking the place of stone and wood in architecture and engineering; yet the force of habit leads us to continue in metal many troublesome details which were imperative in the weak building materials of generations past. It was as recently as the autumn of 1903 that the first large American theater was opened having no columns to obstruct views of its stage. The architects of the New Amsterdam Theater, New York, simply by availing themselves of the strength of steel cantilevers have shown that henceforth all large auditoriums may be free from obstructions to a view of the stage, pulpit or platform. See facing page 118.

Modern architecture, in the judgment of an eminent critic, has not yet fully responded to its new materials and methods. Says Mr. Russell Sturgis, of New York, in “How to Judge Architecture”:--“Every important change in building, in the past, has been accomplished by a change in the method of design, so that even in the times of avowed revival there was seen no attempt to stick to the old way of designing while the new method of construction was adopted; now in the nineteenth century, and in what we have seen of the twentieth century, our great new systems of building have flourished and developed themselves without effect as yet upon our methods of design. We still put a simulacrum of a stone wall with stone window casings and pediments and cornices and great springing arches outside of thin, light, scientifically combined, carefully calculated metal--the appearance of a solid tower supported by a reality of slender props and bars.”