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^[[127]]
1.

Chapter VIII.

Notes on Decorative Art.

As it has been noted previously in the chapter on ceramics, practically all classes of potteries from this site are more or less decorated. The pottery decorations are certainly one of the most important groups of materials for a study of decorative art of this period. Bronze, shell and stone works are also important. Techniques employed in the execution of the decorative art are mainly incision and inlaying; art objects in the round have been found, and comparatively highly developed.

Decorations on pottery are almost always incised, the motifs vary with classes. Some of the white and black ones are most laborously incised. The coarser ones are simpler, and in most cases are merely plain. Those decorated, are incised with a few simple patterns, a band of slanting strokes, vandyke patterns, simple or double interesting chevrons, hatchings, lattice triangles, net works, or spirals etc^[[(Plate XXIV).]] Occassionally a pair of moulded animal heads are added to a band of this decoration, and this animal head usually take the form of a [[underlined]] tao-tieh [[/underlined]] which is, in fact ^[[probably]] only a ^[[conventionalized oxhead]] (Plate ^[[XXV)]] ).

The more profusedly decorated white potteries include more developed and conventionalized patterns. The piece illustrated in ^[[XXV:4]] is a very interesting example compared with the simpler pieces ^[[(XXV:1-3)]] in the same plate; the composition is almost exactly the same, except that it is more elaborate on the white piece. There is little doubt that the moulded piece represents the same animal head, namely an ox-head, which later on became more conventionalized and known as Tao-tieh;likewise the group of chevrons carved on the white pottery is developed from the simple chevrons in Figure 3^[[. of the Plate.]] Also, it may be readily observed that the highly conventionalized triangular patterns that dovetail into the grouped chevrons is only