LOST ART OF COLORING

A. Hyatt Verill says:

Cups, vessels, utensils, and many other objects were highly and beautifully embellished with colors applied like lacquer or enamel. Even today, after a lapse of centuries, the colors upon these are bright and fresh. Chemicals have little if any effect upon the pigments used, and they resist the action of all ordinary known solvents. No one has yet been able to learn the secret of their composition or to duplicate them, and we may consider the work as a true lost art.

In the field of textiles, the contrast between the Book of Mormon and the learned men of the nineteenth century stands out in bold relief.

The expression “bone awls” describes the archaeologist’s concepts. The Book of Mormon used the expression, “fine twined linen.”

“Behold, their women did toil and spin, and did make all manner of cloth, of fine twined linen, and cloth of every kind.”—Helaman 2:133.

“And they did have silks, and fine twined linen, and they did work all manner of cloth, that they might clothe themselves from their nakedness.”—Ether 4:73 (Jaredites).

Exploration has now brought the truth to light. In an American trade journal, Mr. Walter Beasley sums up the facts for us:

A new and noteworthy movement, in fact, an accomplished and successful work of far-reaching interest to the textile industries, is the creation of fresh artistic designs found in the burial places of the new world. The most wonderful textiles in the world, showing the highest artistic skill in weaving and decorative art, are now determined to have come from ancient Peru, and these fabrics are beyond all question the most interesting technical and artistic record of textile history—indeed in some of their techniques and color combinations, they far surpass the best modern work.

In an advertisement in the Kansas City Star for April 13, 1947, the Jones Store advertised its “First Lady” bed sheets with 140 threads to the inch as the best in Kansas City

Concerning the best fabrics of prehistoric America, Mr. Beasley says:

In harmony of color, the beauty and fastness of dyes, and the perfection of spinning and weaving, place these fabrics in a class by themselves, not only as compared to the other textiles of this land but as regards those of any other people. Many contain nearly 300 weft yarn to the inch. Mr .Crawford, in order to obtain exact information of the fineness of the weft in a fragment of tapestry, found it was impossible to count the weft with the testing lens ordinarily used in textile analysis. It was necessary to clamp an inch of the cloth on the platform of a dissecting microscope and pick off the weft yearn with a needle. The operation took three hours and a half.—Ibid.