The decorative art of the Amur tribes / by Berthold Laufer.

  • Laufer, Berthold, 1874-1934.
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The decorative art of the Amur tribes / by Berthold Laufer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    designed. Two opposite hearts divide the latter field. In the upper heart are four semicircles used as supports for leaves ; the under heart shows a tree-trunk, the top of which is adorned with an oval leaf ; while semicircles, crescents, and ovals are represented as leaf-bearing boughs. The lateral fields are occupied y fish-cocks with one head at the end of the fish-tail and two heads superposed over the fish-head. In b two branches are carried out as bird-beaks, each holding two leaves. There is a similar motive on the upper, smaller pockets, only there a cruciform leaf-cluster appears between the two deflected beaks. On the border extending from the collar to the bottom of the woman’s embroidered silk dress seen in Fig. 2, Plate xxvn, the artist has pictured single groups of facing spirals connected with conventionalized fishes, displaying the enormous variations of which these simple forms are capable. Among the twelve consecutive groups a-/, there are only three corresponding pairs ; viz., e and g, i and k, j and 1. On the garment in Fig. 3, Plate xxvn, we see combinations of two fish-spirals. One of them contains the same motive as i in Fig. 2 ; that is, spirals with two conventionalized bipartite fishes united into one figure and placed around them. The other motive is a recurved spiral worked out as a fish-body, with tail in the form of a triskeles. On the bottom edge, fish-bodies are gracefully twined close around the spirals, that terminate alternately, below, in cock’s heads. Fig. 4, Plate xxvn, shows a dress embroidered with white chain-stitching on a black background. The ornaments on the two longitudinal borders might be designated as continuous cock-spirals, for, in spite of their scroll character, the original cock motive is still rather conspicuous. Exactly in the middle we observe what are obviously cocks of Type B, their backs turned toward each other. The beaks are strongly marked. The ovals are under the throats, and the two bodies are connected above by an arc, inside of which two conventional¬ ized fishes are designed. At the beginning no less than at the end of this pattern the beak with the roundish object in front of it is distinctly visible in the fishtail-shaped triskeles ; also in the other triskeles next to the central figure the head stands out distinct from the beak of the bird, and this motive occurs also on the collar. On the upper part of the pockets sewed to both sides we note an odd figure not as yet met with. Within two crescents we find two conventionalized fishes, and over their heads the head, eye, and beak of a cock ; while over each fish-tail rises the head of a musk-deer, its two ears erect. Two combatant cocks and two deer, their heads turned so that they are looking at each other, are accordingly united in this one figure. In Fig. 1, Plate xxvm, is represented a woman’s silk-embroidered coat. On it are seen two perching cocks (a) standing opposite each other, and holding fishes in their mouths. Under each of these single cocks is a pair of combatant cocks (b) showing a much more advanced stage of conventionalization. In the cocks placed sideways (c) the pinions as well as the tail-feathers are expressed