Shoulder bag
Unknown
ca. 1780 · Tanned leather, porcupine quills, dye, metal cones, deer hair, vegetal fiber, and wool yarn · The American Wing
Porcupine quills are applied in three distinct ways on this late eighteenth-century shoulder pouch. For the horizontal panels, the artist loom wove colorfully dyed quills. Across the bottom and top, she sewed naturally white quills directly onto the black-dyed leather to create a zigzag motif. Finally, she wrapped dyed quills around alternating pairs of leather thongs for the strap, giving it a distinctive netlike structure. This type of netted quillwork disappeared by the early nineteenth century.
- Artist
- Unknown
- Date
- ca. 1780
- Medium
- Tanned leather, porcupine quills, dye, metal cones, deer hair, vegetal fiber, and wool yarn
- Culture
- Anishinaabe, probably Ojibwa, Native American
- Department
- The American Wing
- Credit line
- The Charles and Valerie Diker Collection of Native American Art, Gift of Charles and Valerie Diker, 2018
