Browse Items (51 total)

Nine squares containing star motifs provide an example of an overall design pattern that utilizes many colors and shapes on a plain twined bag that is completed with a leather handle.

Southwest Museum, Los Angeles

Hemp, cornhusk, natural fiber…

Not to be mistaken for tourist trinkets, personal ornaments like these earrings provide a way for Native women to both “wear” their identity and show off the virtuosity of the weaver’s craft.

Schlick Collection

Cornhusk, yarn, leather

Handbags like this are still considered standard personal accessories for Plateau women today. Highly individual in their decorative treatment, they are used on special occasions and are explicit assertions of Indian identity.

Schlick…

This bag is a classic example of a twined bag with false embroidery decoration. Bags of this size and complexity often took as long as two or three months of intermittent labor to complete.

Southwest Museum, Los Angeles

Cotton twine, cornhusk,…

This bag uses Indian hemp twine for its foundation fabric and cornhusk cord for its decorative motifs. One side of the bag features a design with colored diagonal bands that were made using natural red, blue and green dyes, while the other side…

As scholars and collectors became increasingly interested in Native American art over the course of the 20th century, more effort was made to preserve the names and identities of those craftspeople who were still actively practicing the traditional…

Possibly a handbag for a child’s doll, or a personal accessory that a senior woman might pin on her dress like a brooch, miniature bags have always been made as a way to demonstrate the weaver’s skill. This bag was made by a Yakama weaver named Lena…

"Wash~us~etan-way" weaving a large storage bag, c. 1907. It may have taken a woman two to three months to complete a bag of this size. Photo by Fanny van Duyn, Tygh Valley, Oregon. Gary Goodwin Collection, Maryhill Museum of Art cat. no. 1991.06.01.

The intricate design of roosters, eagles, and butterflies embroidered in colorful woolen yarns on this early 20th century handbag is quite unusual and must have had special meaning for the weaver who created it.

Schlick Collection

Corn husk,…

This bag is very similar to the Oberlin bag and probably nearly as old. Sturdy in construction, tightly woven to keep out dust, and naturally resistant to insects, bags like this stayed in use for many years as the repair adjacent to a large scorch…