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1893.67.5

Plain fringed deerskin shirt with triangular neck lappets.

1893.67.5

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Collection type
Object
Description
Plain fringed deerskin shirt with triangular neck lappets.
Person
Field collector Edward Martin Hopkins
PRM source Edward Martin Hopkins
Date / Period
Date made: 1800-1842
Date collected
1841
Acquisition information
Purchased: 1893
Materials and processes
Material Deer Skin Animal
Dimensions
Length 1175 mm, Width 1425 mm tip of sleeve to tip of sleeve
Object numbers
Accession number: 1893.67.5
Research and responses

Additional Information supplied by Benson Landford 6/2000 - This plain style of shirt would have been used as everyday clothing. [MdeA 5/7/2000]

There is a discussion of possible issues around Hopkins' acquisition of the shirts in Laura Peers and Alison K. Brown, Visiting With The Ancestors: Blackfoot Shirts in Museum Spaces (Canada: Athabasca University Press, 2015), 65-72.

This shirt was researched extensively by PRM staff, Glenbow staff and Blackfoot people for the Blackfoot Shirts Project, 2010. Findings included: This is a work shirt, an ordinary covering for protecting the body from wind, from branches when walking through the bush, perhaps used as an outer layer when it was snowing. The hide on the neck flap is wrinkled as if it has been soaking wet in the rain or snow, and dried by the fire afterwards. The hide used for this shirt is not as finely tanned as the hide used on the decorated shirts in the Hopkins collection: it is rough, especially on the inside. The hide appears poorly prepared – some areas are very thin and there are several areas where the top layer of the hide has not been scraped fully during preparation. This shirt is made of a thicker hide than the hide used for the decorated shirts. Tears have been left unmended on this shirt, while on the other shirts very careful repairs have been made. On the front there is a hasty and basic repair using sinew on the right side, done before the shirt was collected. On the front of the shirt body, the lower ‘legs’ of the animal which dangle down are actually pieced together with scraps of hide added on to make the front match the back of the shirt in shape. The cuffs on this shirt look as if they might have been cut off to shorten the sleeves. We don’t know if this was the way the sleeves were originally, or whether they were made narrow and shorter at the wrists after Hopkins acquired it. There is damage around the top of the neck opening in this shirt. The shirt has been made so that there is a very small neck opening, and the wearer of the shirt has had to force it over his head, causing damage. The fringe at the sleeve/body seam has been cut after it was sewn into the shirt. Cutting the fringe has left cut marks in the body hide on the back left side of the shirt. [LPeers, 20/9/2017]

This was an 'everyday' shirt, perhaps belonging to a woman. There are extra pieces of hide stitched on at the lower corners. Knowledge shared during a research visit by Louis Melvin Soop, Piitaikihsipimii (Spotted Eagle).

Associated publications
The five Hopkins collection shirts (museum accession numbers 1893.67.1 through to 1893.67.5) are researched and discussed in detail, including illustrations, in Laura Peers and Alison K. Brown, Visiting With The Ancestors (Canada: Athabasca University Press, 2015). [ZM 13/10/2016] Exhibition Catalogue: Kaahsinooniksi Ao'toksisawooyawa: Our Ancestors Have Come to Visit: Reconnections with Historic Blackfoot Shirts. Alison K. Brown and Laura Peers. 2010. Pitt Rivers Museum. 18pp. [LPeers, 19/9/2017] Discussed in: “The Blackfoot Shirts Project: ‘Our Ancestors Have Come to Visit’”. Alison K. Brown and Laura Peers. Pp263-288 in Annie E. Coombes and Ruth B. Phillips (eds), Museum Transformations. Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. [LPeers, 19/9/2017] Discussed in: Laura Peers, “Ceremonies of Renewal: Visits, Relationships and Healing in the Museum Space,” Museum Worlds 1(1), 2013:136-152. [LPeers 19/9/2017] Illustrated and discussed on PRM Blackfoot Shirts Project website, http://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/blackfootshirts  [LPeers 19/9/2017]

Search terms: Clothing, Shirt

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