Title: The American Museum journal
Identifier: americanmuseumjo16amer (find matches)
Year: c1900-(1918) (c190s)
Authors: American Museum of Natural History
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York : American Museum of Natural History
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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DESIGN AND COLOR IN ANCIENT FABRICS 419 exhibit of the successful designs. Per- haps, at a later date, an exhibition may be arranged of hand-decorated textiles, and later still a large exhibition of the products of our great mills, the inspira- tion for which has been suggested by the art objects in the American Museum of Natural History. During the summer, representatives from many silk concerns and one or two cotton houses making fine novelty goods, visited the Museum and made at least a beginning of a careful research into the elements of primitive design. A very enterprising concern of silk printers was especially active, and there is in course of manufacture at this time a large number of patterns which were created from the specimens on exliibition. A well-known retailer came several times and is now using on ladies' wearing apparel the designs which he took from the same source. This aid to American designers came at a most opportune time, for the condition abroad made it impossible for our great industry to get decorative suggestions from the usual sources. It was therefore judged that this was the psychological moment to exert effort toward the development of a typically American school of design. It can be said that the practical progress being made is already astonishing. The actual wo\'en fabric is by no means the only class of objects which can suggest textile design. Basketry, pottery, carved wood, and many other objects, display designs which require only a little adaptation to become appli- cable to modern fabrics; but it would be impossible even to suggest the extent of these resources at this time and I must confine myself exclusively to fabrics. In these, Peru is easily the most valuable source — in point of beauty, technical interest, and number of specimens. About three years ago I undertook the textile analysis of the wonderful Peru- vian collection of the American Museum, and while I am now more familiar than I then was with the other collections in the
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Fragment of the border of an lea shawl, in which a basic fabric is completely covered with embroidery. The design represents the puma god destroying a man. The large shawl-like garments from lea, Peru, in the Juilliard collection of the American Museum, present grotesque animalistic designs, in which however the color combinations are incomparably beautiful

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