shell, work of the northwest coast Indians.--1/4.]

Fig. 313 illustrates the use of other varieties of pendants. A feather
decked basket made by the northwest coast Indians is embellished with
pendent ornaments consisting of strings of beads tipped with bits of
bright shell. The importance of this class of work in higher forms of
textiles may be illustrated by an example from Peru. It is probable
that American art has produced few examples of tasseled work more
wonderful than that of which a fragment is shown in Fig. 314. It is a
fringed mantle, three feet in length and nearly the same in depth,
obtained from an ancient tomb. The body is made up of separately woven
bands, upon which disk-like and semilunar figures representing human
faces are stitched, covering the surface in horizontal rows. To the
center of these rosette-like parts clusters of tassels of varying
sizes are attached. The fringe, which is twenty inches deep, is
composed entirely of long strings of tassels, the larger tassels
supporting clusters of smaller ones. There are upwards of three
thousand tassels, the round heads of which are in many cases woven in
colors, ridges, and nodes to represent the human features. The general
color of the garment, which is of fine, silky wool, is a rich crimson.
The illustration can convey only a hint of the complexity and beauty
of the original.

[Illustration: FIG. 314. Tassel ornamentation from an ancient Peruvian
mantle.]

We have now seen how varied and how striking are the surface
characters of fabrics as expressed by the third dimension, by
variation from a flat, featureless surface, and how all, essential and
ornamental, are governed by the laws of geometric combination. We