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box, birchbark with moosehair embroidery
box, birchbark with moosehair embroidery
box, birchbark with moosehair embroidery
Oval shaped double-lidded birchbark box ornamented with natural and dyed moosehair embroidery depicting domestic and hunting and gathering scenes. Attributed to Wendat (Huron) or Wendat-Mohawk. Collected by Herman Ten Kate at St. Regis (Akwesasne) during the 1880s.
Museum files indicate this object came from St. Regis (Akwesasne), but it appears to strongly resemble Huron-Wendat moosehair embroidery work. According to publications it is possible that this box was created in Wendake (Lorette) and later traded into Akwesasne, or was created by a Wendat woman who married into a Mohawk family (See "The Ten Kate Collection", 2010)
Museum and publication documentation, GRASAC generated
Read More About This Relative
birchbark; moosehair, natural and dyed green, purple, possibly orange (?), possibly yellow (?), brown; black commercial thread
Oval shaped double-lidded embroidered birchbark box formed with an interior liner. Central birchbark strip on top of box is fixed and acts as a hinge allowing the two lids to open and close. Birchbark is decorated with moosehair embroidery and sewn together with commercial thread.
One lid: Woman smoking a pipe surrounded by vegetation, decorative border;
Other lid: Bird surrounded by vegetation, decorative border;
One side of box: Woman smoking a pipe, a bird, and a cookpot hanging over a tripod, surrounded by vegetation, decorative border;
Other side of box: Woman smoking a pipe, a squirrel, a cookpot hanging over a tripod, surrounded by vegetation, decorative border.
"Another box with its hinged lid takes the form of a miniature workbasket or handbag. It is ornamented with imagined scenes of the hunting and gathering life of the forest. A woman smoking is seen on the lid, and another walks through rich vegetation toward a tripod from which hangs a trade kettle. For buyers, the disproportionate scale of the humans, plants, and animals in these scenes probably added a naive charm to the scene."
Pieter Hovens, with contributions by Duane Anderson, Ted Brasser, Laura van Broekhoven et al. "The Ten Kate Collection 1882-1888". Leiden: ZKF Publishers, 2010, pp 24.
Museum collection database
Provenance
See Hovens, Pieter., and Duane Anderson. The Ten Kate Collection 1882-1888 : American Indian Material Culture. Altenstadt, Germany: ZKF Publishers, 2010.
Pieter Hovens, with contributions by Duane Anderson, Ted Brasser, Laura van Broekhoven et al. "The Ten Kate Collection 1882-1888". Leiden: ZKF Publishers, 2010.