Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/387

Instruments of the Toilet and Jewelry. 349 and knives, we find their handles also often modelled after animals' heads. We have already figured more than one example (Vol. I., tail-piece to chapter II., and Vol. II., tail- piece to chapter I.). But sometimes they were content with a more simple form of decoration belonging to the class of ornament we call geometrical, which they combined with those battlement shapes that, as we have seen, the enameller also borrowed from the architect (Vol. I. Fig. 118). A by no means ungraceful result was obtained by such simple means (Figs. 202 and 226). These knife-handles are interesting not so much on account of their workmanship as for their tendency and the taste they display. They were objects of daily use and manufacture. Cut from ivory and bone, they were sold in hundreds in the bazaars. But in every detail we can perceive a desire to make the work please the eye. The evidence of this desire has already struck us in Egypt ; it will be no less conspicuous in Greece. In these days, how many useful objects turned out by our machines have no such character. Those who design them think only of their use. They are afraid of causing complications by any attempt to make one different from the other or to give varied shapes to tools all meant for the same service. They renounce in advance the effort of personal invention and the love for ornament that gives an interest of its own to the slightest fragments from an ancient industry, and raises it almost to the dignity of a work of art. § 6. Instruments of the Toilet and fezvelry. The pre-occupation to which we have just alluded, the love for an agreeable effect, is strongly marked in several things which are now always left without ornament. A single example will be enough to show the difference. Nowadays all that we ask of a comb is to do its duty without hurting the head or pulling out the hair ; that its teeth shall be conveniently spaced and neither too hard nor too pliant. These conditions fulfilled, it would not be out of place in the most luxurious dressing-room. The ancients were more exacting, as a series of ebony combs in the Louvre is sufficient to show (Figs. 227 — 229). 1 They have two 1 Nos. 385-391 in De Longpérier's catalogue. These objects came from the collection of Clot-Bey, which was formed in Egypt but contained many things of