Circular birch bark table-mat with red, black, yellow & white quillwork designs, white beads around edge, brown velvet on reverse. [EC 'DCF 2004-2006 What's Upstairs?' 16/2/2006]

Collection type: Object
Description: Circular birch bark table-mat with red, black, yellow & white quillwork designs, white beads around edge, brown velvet on reverse. [EC 'DCF 2004-2006 What's Upstairs?' 16/2/2006]
Geographical reference: Canada
Northern America > North America > Canada
Cultural groups: Mi'kmaq
Person: Field collector John Ward; PRM source Margaret F. Irvine
Date / Period: Date made: 1830-1870
Date collected: 1863
Acquisition information: Donated: 1956
Materials and processes: Material Silk Textile Animal, Material Birch Bark Wood Plant, Material Ribbon Textile, Material Velvet Textile, Material Porcupine Quill Animal, Material Bead, Material Cotton Seed Fibre Yarn Plant, Process Quillwork, Process Woven, Process Stitched, Process Strung, Process Appliqué, Process Dyed
Dimensions: Diameter: max 216 mm
Object numbers: Accession number: 1956.3.16
Research and responses: This item was meant to have been described in Micmac, Maliseet, Beothuk Collections in Great Britain / Inventory of Micmac, Maliseet and Beothuk Material Culture in International Collections: Great Britain (Nova Scotia Museum Curatorial Report Number 62), by Ruth Holmes Whitehead (Halifax: Nova Scotia Museum, 1988). It is described in Whitehead's draft typescript (see on) and was presumably omitted (along with 1958.2.33 and 1886.1.870) by accident. Whitehead writes: '4. MICMAC. Teapot coaster; quillwork, 1956.3.16. mid 19th century. Birchbark, porcupine quills, silk ribbon, velvet, cotton thread, glass beads. Circular sheet of birchbark, backed with brown velvet and edged with red silk ribbon applique and a border of white glass pony beads. Obverse decorated with a solid mosaic of porcupine quillwork using the bark-insertion method, around a bare-bark central circle, where the teapot is set down. Quills are dyed red, black, blue, pale yellow, green and undyed white, probably not aniline dyes, invented after 1863. DIAM: 22 cm. PROVENANCE: "Bought by John (i.e. John Ward) at Niagara Falls on our wedding trip July 1863." DD. Miss M. F. Irvine [address], 1956. CONDITION: Good.' For the Museum's copy of Whitehead's draft typescript and a set of contact prints of her photographs, see RDF: RESEARCHERS: WHITEHEAD (where there is also a copy of the related publication). [JC 20 2 2009]
Associated publications: Illustrated in black and white as Figure 6.12 on page 213 of Trading Identities: The Souvenir in Native North American Art from the Northeast, 1700-1900, by Ruth B. Phillips (Seattle and London: University of Washington / Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1998). Caption (on page 212): ‘Table mat with porcupine quill decoration, Mi‘kmaq, purchased at Niagara Falls in July 1863, birchbark, porcupine quills, brown velvet backing, diam. 21.6 cm. Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford 1956.3.16.’. [CW 17/11/99; JC 4 3 2013]

Search terms: Furniture Dwelling, Table-mat

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