1952.5.06.1

Collection type

Object

Description

Pair of red finger-woven garters [.1, .2] with beadwork design throughout and end tassels including quill, hair and metal cones.

Long description

Pair of garters [.1, .2] of finger-woven textile with beadwork design throughout. End tassles of quill-wrapped strands in white, black, red, with metal cones and hair tufts projecting from them. Basic ground is red, with a green band along each long edge; interwoven white beads in zigzag patterns. Garters are finger-woven, not loom woven. There is a band of green along each long edge on both. There is a tiny bit of blue or black wool in one tassel. [LPeers 4/10/2005] The red finger-woven band is probably fro re-used Stroud cloth. [JN 12/11/2012]

Geographical reference

United States of America

Northern America > North America > United States of America

Canada

Northern America > North America > Canada

Cultural groups

Native American

Person

Field collector James Bisset

PRM source Evelyn Charles Shirley

PRM source John Evelyn Shirley

Date / Period

Date made: 1730-1800

Date collected

By 1952

Acquisition information

Loaned: 05/1952 Purchased: 01/1966

Materials and processes

Material Wool Textile Animal, Material Bead, Material Animal Hair, Material Pigment, Process Woven, Process Bound, Process Plaited, Process Beadwork, Process Dyed, Process Finger Woven

Dimensions

Length: max 70 mm, Length: max 665 mm, Width: max 70 mm

Object numbers

Accession number: 1952.5.06.1 Accession number: 1952.5.06.2

Research and responses

The possibility that this was formerly the property of James Bisset and acquired by Colonel Shirley via the Leamington Museum is discussed in 'Painted Coats for a Coronation? (Research Notes)' by Linda Mowat in Journal of Museum Ethnography, no. 8 (1996), pp. 109-110 (photocopy). [JC 20 5 1996]

Revolutionary War?, last quarter of 18thC; these are of a period with 1952.5.07, a chest ornament with three panels of imitation wampum. [L Peers 4/10/2005]

Examined by the GRASAC research team on 11 December 2007 as part of a research project to create a digital database. This will incorporate information about collections of indigenous material culture from the Great Lakes region of North America that are housed in a number of museums on several continents; see https://icslac.carleton.ca/grasac/ The team identified the materials as red and green woollen yarn, white glass pony beads, metal cones, red deer hair, and porcupine quills. They have been finger-woven with a beadwork design interwoven throughout. The motif made up of parallel triple line of zigzags forming a central line of diamonds. Dated as eighteenth or early nineteenth century. North American nation of origin Anishinaabeg/ Hodenosaunee (Eastern Great Lakes, could be all the way down to Virginia). [see researchers file GRASAC]. [ZM 11/12/2007]

This object was studied by Carol James, sash weaver, on 15 October 2013. She noted that this textile was fingerwoven interlacing. [MJD 17/10/2013]

Associated publications

Illustrated in colour and listed as catalogue number 85 on page 91 of On the Trails of the Iroquois, edited by Sylvia R. Kasprycki (transl. Christian E. Feest) (Bonn: Kunst-und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 2013). Catalogue entry: '85 Garters | Iroquois or Ojibwa, late 18th/early 19th century | Red and green woollen yarn, glass beads, porcupine quills, deer hair, metal, 66.5 x 7 cm and 68 x 7 cm | Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, cat.no. 1952.5.06.1/2 (Col.Shirley coll.) | "Fingerweaving" is a term used for a form of braiding in which the threads are running diagonally to the length of a narrow textile. In its most simple form hatched or zigzag lines could be produced by threading white glass beads on the yarn. The preference for white is a carryover from the older tradition of work with shell beads. C[hristian]F[eest]. [FB 08/04/2013; JC 3 2 2016]

Search terms: Clothing Footgear, Garter