At our Oxford workshop in May 2015, Object Lives participants worked with this stunning saddle. We know very little about its history, although we can tell from the style of porcupine quillwork that it is from the northern Plains and likely dates to the first half of the 19th century.
Read MoreMcCord Museum Hayter Reed Dress
We were particularly interested in a dress identified by Kate Reed (Hayter Reed’s granddaughter) as having belonged to the wife of Kainai leader and Treaty Chief Red Crow. A list of items sent by the DIA to the World’s Fair, and included among the Hayter Reed papers at the McCord, seems to support this attribution: it mentions a dress “From Mrs. Red Crow”. A closer look into the documents, however, suggested a different picture.
Read MoreMcCord Museum Dolls
I chose to look at two dolls, M976.102.13 and M976.102.14, at the McCord Museum workshop. Each was sewn by hand with cloth bodies and clothing, leather boots, and fur trim and beadwork. One has an interesting beaded disk on his parka. These dolls were made at the Parc Savard Hospital in Quebec City, sometime in the mid-1950s, part of a larger collection donated to the museum by Dr. Walter Pfeiffer.
Read MoreMontreal: McCord Museum Workshop
The “Object Lives” research group re-assembled in Montreal in early May 2016. Our hosts were two of our institutional partners in this project: the McCord Museum and the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art.
Read MoreMcCord Museum Pouch
This spectacular pouch (M740) combines a European cotton textile with a re-purposed trade silver armband, which is punched so that thin hide thongs can be threaded through and then netted. The hide netting is wrapped in porcupine quills instead of being knotted. The Thunderbird being it represents still looks out powerfully, two centuries after it was carried by one of Chief Tecumseh’s men in the War of 1812.
Read MorePRM Hide Banyan Sewing Pattern
As we continue to think about the hide banyan (PRM 1906.83.1) and its changing, complex cross-cultural meanings and histories, we have also continued to wonder how we might learn more about this intriguing garment. At PRM, Laura Peers commissioned Charlotte Linton (a textile designer and student in the Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology course) to make an actual sewing pattern from the garment.
Read MorePRM Dew Claw Bag
We held an interpretive discussion of the dew claw bag (1954.9.22) at the Pitt Rivers Museum on April 13, 2015. Though not much is known about the bag, it is most likely associated with the people of the Great Lakes in the United States. It was part of the collection of Harry Geoffrey Beasley (and his wife Irene Marguerite Beasley) who donated the bag to the Pitt Rivers Museum.
Read MoreTegiapak’s Bird
Sara Komarnisky, the Post-Doctoral Fellow for Object Lives, recently presented some of her research in a four minute talk, “Tegiapak’s Bird: Biography of a Soapstone Carving.”
Read MorePRM Metis Coat: Mr. Magnificent
PRM Tollemache Ensemble
Study of the Tollemache ensemble is a great opportunity to learn more about Wendat 19th- century commercial and diplomatic traditions and the connections and overlaps between the objects produced for these two purposes.
Read MorePRM Dog Harness
With an interest in the relationship between a number of indigenous groups and the animals they lived and travelled with, it makes sense to take a look at surviving objects that adorned the dogs of Canada’s northwest.
Read MorePower Patterns
As a researcher specializing in Icelandic-Canadian material culture, walking through the Arctic peoples installation at the Pitt Rivers Museum generated a sense of familiarity. Behind the glass evidence of numerous northern communities, including carefully crafted pieces of clothing, art and technology, spoke to the many populations- and seamstresses that have strived to make life and labour possible in very challenging landscapes.
Read MorePRM Beaded Belt
I am working with a beaded belt, also known as 1938.36.1715. The belt is loom-woven of grey thread and seed beads to make a slim band with a repeating pattern of purple and yellow pointed-figures and diamonds on a black background. I measured the object, counted the beads, read the tag, and took photographs. As I worked, I thought about how the object traveled from Minnesota, across the ocean to Oxford, to become part of the Pitt Rivers Museum collections.
Read MorePRM Saddlebag & Moccasins
This saddlebag is highly unusual, and to my knowledge no other example has come forward in the research to date.
Read MoreIntroduction
Objects record the intentions of past generations. Our aim was to uncover and assess the evidence held in selected artifacts in the collection of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford University.
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