The Frost Trade Bead Collection Gallery
Beaded Objects
Pouch
Circa 1930
59.9cm (with carrying strap) x 19.5cm
Gift of Mrs. C.W.H. Schuck
This pouch was purchased at Lac du Flambeau, Wisconsin on the Ojibwa (Chippewa) Reservation. It is made of cut and sewn soft buckskin with loomed seed beads in stepped chevron and diagonal bands. The beads are blue, pink, rose, green, black and white. The pattern is the same on both sides, but with different color sequences.
The top edge is scalloped and trimmed in red and blue seed beads. A string and bow of pink and black loomed seed beads is beneath the buckskin drawstring and between the bands of blue and red seed beads. The ends of the bow are trimmed with blue and black seed beads and larger blue, rose, green, and foil-wrapped, metallic pink-on-black beads. A lattice design of black, green, blue, and white seed beads trims the bottom edge of the pouch.
The use of pink and green beads with the black, and the diagonal bands of triangular motifs, suggest the influence of the Art Deco style in Ojibwa beadwork. Art Deco and Cubism both influenced Native American art and crafts in the 1920s, 1930s, and even later; for example, many paintings of the late Oscar Howe, the great Sioux painter, are in the Cubist style.Collection of the Illinois State Museum
Photograph by Jason Arnold, ISM
ISM Accession #: 1954-0045
