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Tipi Bag or Possible Bag

Arts of the Americas

Vivid blue captures the eye in these Salish or Kootenai child’s moccasins and Sioux storage bag. The blue seed beads on both objects are made of glass colored with cobalt blue. Native women made all the clothing and furnishings for their families and eagerly adopted beads as decorative embellishments because of the vast array of colors and greater convenience.
CULTURE Sioux
MEDIUM Hide, beads, tin cones, horse hair
  • Place Made: Plains, United States
  • DATES ca. 1860-1900
    DIMENSIONS 15 1/2 x 20 1/2 in. (39.4 x 52.1 cm)  (show scale)
    COLLECTIONS Arts of the Americas
    ACCESSION NUMBER X1111.1
    CREDIT LINE Brooklyn Museum Collection
    CATALOGUE DESCRIPTION Tipi bag or possible bag. The beads are sewn with sinew in a 'lazy stitch'. Kroeber called the design a transverse bar or lengthened checker pattern. Bag is beaded on one side with a decoration of crossed and abstracted forms in red, blue, gold and green. The edges are also beaded with metal jingles and orange dyed horsehair decorations. The two-ended, pitchfork-type design is classic Sioux. It is Central Plains but not Cheyenne or Arapaho. Bead workers would also do this type of beading to show off their expertise so some were also made to be ornamental or given away as gifts.
    MUSEUM LOCATION This item is not on view
    CAPTION Sioux. Tipi Bag or Possible Bag, ca. 1860-1900. Hide, beads, tin cones, horse hair, 15 1/2 x 20 1/2 in. (39.4 x 52.1 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Museum Collection, X1111.1. Creative Commons-BY (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, X1111.1_PS1.jpg)
    IMAGE overall, X1111.1_PS1.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2007
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    RIGHTS STATEMENT Creative Commons-BY
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    Sioux. <em>Tipi Bag or Possible Bag</em>, ca. 1860-1900. Hide, beads, tin cones, horse hair, 15 1/2 x 20 1/2 in. (39.4 x 52.1 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Museum Collection, X1111.1. Creative Commons-BY (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, X1111.1_PS1.jpg)

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