Made of birch bark, sweetgrass, root (possibly spruce), and porcupine quills, natural and dyed purple, reddish brown, magenta, yellow and green. Aniline dyes were used to colour the porcupine quills.

Birch bark panels are sewn together and edged with flattened root wrapping. Each side of the strap ends in three loops of braided sweetgrass. Decorated with porcupine quillwork.

Floral motifs.

This item is an example of Anishinaabeg artists' desires to push the limits of their medium and create items of a hybrid genre which were enthusiastically received by Victorian tourists. See Ruth Phillips, Trading Identities: The Souvenir in Native North American Art from the Northeast, 1700-1900 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1998), 182-3.

Regarding its resemblance to Victorian style purses, Ruth Phillips noted that in Martin Fritzer's handbook we find examples of how makers would imitate most anything in birch bark (for example, they made a bag in the form of a train conductor's bag).

British Museum accession record. Father Edward Purbrick acquired this item, along with other similarly-quilled birch bark pieces, while on a tour of inspection of Canadian Jesuit missions in the Central and Eastern Great Lakes region.

Collected by Father Edward Purbrick in 1879 and subsequently donated to Stonyhurst College, a Jesuit school in Lancashire. The Stonyhurst Collection was purchased by the British Museum in 2003.

July 2004 - 'Native American Art: Irish American Trade,' Ulster American Folk Park, Omagh, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland.

October 2004 - 'Native American Art: Irish American Trade,' Ulster Museum, Belfast, Northern Ireland

April 2005 - 'Native American Art: Irish American Trade,' Castle Museum, Enniskillen, Northern Ireland.

A description of Father Edward Purbrick's collection and a discussion on the decorative styles of many of the birch bark items is found in Ruth Phillips, Trading Identities: The Souvenir in Native North American Art from the Northeast, 1700-1900 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1998), 182-3.

Unknown Anishinaabe artist, handbag. Currently in the British Museum, Am2003,19.38. Item photographed and described as part of a GRASAC research trip December 2007; GRASAC item id 25267.

This record was created as part of a Great Lakes Research Alliance for the Study of Aboriginal Arts and Cultures (GRASAC) research trip to the Pitt Rivers Museum and British Museum, December 8-22 2007, funded by a grant from the International Opportunities fund of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

Researchers present: Heidi Bohaker (HB), John Borrows (JB), Lindsay Borrows (LB), Darlene Johnston (DJ), Jonathan King (JK), Stacey Loyer (SL), Janis Monture (JM), Bruce Morito (BM), Ruth Phillips (RP), Cory Willmott (CW).