The pattern to be produced is outlined with the point of the knife
upon the surface of the bamboo, the artist working from memory of the
desired pattern and adapting it to the proportions of the surface to
be covered. The Iban works more freely than others, working out the
pattern and modifying it to meet the exigencies of his material,
section by section, as he goes along. Others plan out the design
for the whole surface before working out any part in detail. It is
probable that in no case does a man sit down and produce a new pattern;
but the freer mode of working of the Iban leads him on to greater
modifications of the traditional designs; and it is probably partly
for this reason that a much larger variety of designs is applied in
this way by them than by the other tribes, among whom they are very
limited in number. But the greater variety of designs worked by the
Ibans is due also to the readiness with which he copies and adopts
as his own the patterns used by other tribes. The Kayans and Kenyahs
use almost exclusively varieties of the dog pattern and of the hook
and circle (see Fig. 47).
The design outlined by the point of the knife is made to stand out
boldly from the ground by darkening the latter. This is achieved in
two ways: (1) the ground is covered with parallel close-set scratches,
not running continuously throughout the larger areas of the ground,
but grouped in sets of parallel lines some few millimetres in length,
the various sets meeting at angles of all degrees; (2) the hard
surface of the bamboo is wholly scraped away from the ground areas
to a depth of about half a millimetre.
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