DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.42067#0175
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151
for copying a great variety of forms. Thus we find shell dishes and
spoons, gourd vessels and basket forms imitated in pottery. We
still continue doing so. We have in our China ware innumerable
instances of copies of even the finest fabrics. In Africa we find clay
lamps which are evidently derived from the forms of bronze lamps
of antiquity in which the complicated feet are imitations of wire
work, and many pottery vessels seem to be copies of baskets. For
instance, the handled ceremonial clay dishes of the Pueblo Indians
look more like baskets than like pottery forms.
On account of the great frequency of imitative forms in pottery
the theory has been advanced, that all pottery forms must have
originated from prototypes that were first made in some other
technique. Professor Schuchardt1 assumes that the first neolithic
forms which are pointed at the base, must be copies of bottles made
of hide. Cushing and Holmes2 have advocated the theory that
pottery and pottery designs developed from basketry, that pots were
first of all modeled over a basket and that the basket with its clay
cover was then fired. The basket was thus burnt and the clay
vessel remained in the form of the basket. In corroboration of
this theory it has been pointed out that actually clay covered baskets
have been found, on the surface of which the ornamental pattern
that is usually found on the basket is painted on the clay. These
attempts do not seem to me convincing. The oldest pottery that
we know is very crude and does not recall any other technical
form. The Eskimo made clay lamps of unbaked clay that seems
to be merely squeezed into shape. It seems much more likely that
the firing of clay was discovered when foods were cooked on clayey
soil or in pits in clayey ground, than that baskets should be made
watertight by an application of clay and that the basket, the making
1 Carl Schuchardt, Alteuropa, Berlin 1919, p. 44.
2 W. H. Holmes, Origin and Development of Form and Ornament in Ceramic
Art Frank Hamilton Cushing, A Study of Pueblo Pottery; Fourth Annual Report
Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, 1886. There is, however, evidence tha pots
were moulded on baskets, then removed and fired.
151
for copying a great variety of forms. Thus we find shell dishes and
spoons, gourd vessels and basket forms imitated in pottery. We
still continue doing so. We have in our China ware innumerable
instances of copies of even the finest fabrics. In Africa we find clay
lamps which are evidently derived from the forms of bronze lamps
of antiquity in which the complicated feet are imitations of wire
work, and many pottery vessels seem to be copies of baskets. For
instance, the handled ceremonial clay dishes of the Pueblo Indians
look more like baskets than like pottery forms.
On account of the great frequency of imitative forms in pottery
the theory has been advanced, that all pottery forms must have
originated from prototypes that were first made in some other
technique. Professor Schuchardt1 assumes that the first neolithic
forms which are pointed at the base, must be copies of bottles made
of hide. Cushing and Holmes2 have advocated the theory that
pottery and pottery designs developed from basketry, that pots were
first of all modeled over a basket and that the basket with its clay
cover was then fired. The basket was thus burnt and the clay
vessel remained in the form of the basket. In corroboration of
this theory it has been pointed out that actually clay covered baskets
have been found, on the surface of which the ornamental pattern
that is usually found on the basket is painted on the clay. These
attempts do not seem to me convincing. The oldest pottery that
we know is very crude and does not recall any other technical
form. The Eskimo made clay lamps of unbaked clay that seems
to be merely squeezed into shape. It seems much more likely that
the firing of clay was discovered when foods were cooked on clayey
soil or in pits in clayey ground, than that baskets should be made
watertight by an application of clay and that the basket, the making
1 Carl Schuchardt, Alteuropa, Berlin 1919, p. 44.
2 W. H. Holmes, Origin and Development of Form and Ornament in Ceramic
Art Frank Hamilton Cushing, A Study of Pueblo Pottery; Fourth Annual Report
Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, 1886. There is, however, evidence tha pots
were moulded on baskets, then removed and fired.