The Carlisle independent., 1919-06-19
ANTIQUITY OF
 DECORATIVE ART
Strange Sources From Which Pigments Used by Modern
 Painters Are Derived.
PRESERVATION OF SURFACES
Crude but Effective Processes Employ cd by the Egyptians and Greeks of Pliny's Dsy-Noah Prudently
 Wsterproofed the Ark.

swer to need for preseryative or to meet desire for beauty is question fully as knotty as the ancient one about the relative time of arrival of the chicken or the egg. It was invented though, and 1t serves both purposes equally; so whether it is an offspring of mother necessity or an adopted son of beauty remains forever disputed question.
 The first men, covering under the fierce and glaring suns of the biblical countries, constructed rude huts of wood to shelter them. The perishable nature of these structures caused rapid decay, and 1t is probable that the oc- cupants, seeking some artificial means of preservation. hit upon the pigments of the earth in their search. It is per haps natural to suppose that it was the instinct of preservation that led men to the search, although the glories of the sunsets and the beauties of the raiRbOw may have created a desire to initiate those wonders in their own dwellings
 The earliest record of the applica- tion of a preservative to a wooden structure dates from the ark, which was, according to the. Bible, pitched within and without" The pitch was a triumph of preservation whatever it lacked as thing of beauty.
 Decoration applied to buildings first comes to light with ancient Babylon, l whose walls were covered with repre- sentations of hunting scenes and of combat. These were done in red and the method followed was to paint the scene on the bricks at the time of manufacture, assuring permanence by baking. Strictly speaking, this was not painting so much as it was the earliest manifestation of our own fa- miliar kalsomining.
 The first Hebrew to mention paint ing is Moses. In the thirty-third chap ter of the book of Numbers he in- structs the Israelites, "When ye have passed over the Jordan into the land of Canaan. then shall ye drive out all the inhabitants of the land from be- fore you and destroy all their pie 1 lures.
 At later periods the Jews adopted many customs of the peoples who sue cessiyely obtained power over them and in the apocryphal book of the Maccabees is found this allusion to the art of decorating For as the mas ter builder of new house must care for the whole building, but he that undertaken to set it out and paint it, must seek out things for the adorning thereof"
 Although Homer gives credit te Greek for the discovery of paint, the allusions to it in the books of Moses the painted mummy cases of the Egyp- tians and the decorated walls of Baby Ion and Thebes fix it's origin at period long antecedent to the Grecian era. The walls of Thebes were paint ed 1900 years before the coming of Christ and 996 years before "'Omer smote his bloomin' Tyre"
 The Greeks recognized the value of paint as a preseryative and made use of something akin to it on their ships Pliny writes of the mode of boiling wax and painting ships with it, after i which, he continues, neither the sea, nor the wind, nor the sun can destroy the wood thus protected"
 The Romans, being essentially warlike people, never brought the dec oration of buildings to the high plane 1t had reached with the Greeks For all that the ruins of Pompeii show many structures whose mural decora- tions are in fair shape today. The colors used were glaring. A black background was the usual one and the combinations worked thereon red, yell low and blue.
 In the early Christian era the use of mosaics for churches somewhat sup planted mural painting. Still, during the reign of Justinian the Church of Saint Sophia was built at Constantine pie and its walls were adorned with paintings.
 In modern times the uses of paint | have come to be as numerous as its myriad shades and tints. Paint is unique in that it's name .las no syno- nym and for it there is no substitute material Bread is the staff of life, but paint is the life of the staff
 No one thinks of the exterior of wooden building now except in terms of paint coated. Interiors, too, from l painted walls and stained furniture down to the lowliest kitchen utensii. ali receive their protective covering. l Steel, so often associated with cement | re-.nforcing, is painted before it goes to give solidity to the manufactured stone. The huge girders of the sky scrapers are daubed an ugly but eff cient red underneath the surface coat of black. Perhaps the best example of the value of paint on steel Is found n the venerable Brooklyn bridge, on which . gang of painters is kept go- ing continually. It is scarce possible te tAink of . single manufactured ar- fiAla wAich dona not meet uaint nnA.