Featured First Nations Bag Pouch

Discussion in 'Tribal Art' started by cxgirl, Dec 13, 2024.

  1. cxgirl

    cxgirl Well-Known Member

    Hi all, I picked this up the other day, it is 4" x 4".
    The flower makes me think Metis from Alberta, but not sure. The leather is very dry and
    has dark lines, at first I thought it was bark but once I held it you can tell it is leather - from a deer? Made as a souvenir piece?
    any information appreciated
    thanks for looking:)





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  2. komokwa

    komokwa The Truth is out there...!

    Nice...a little medicine pouch.... could be moose !
    vintage for sure...not new,, could have been for personal use.....

    [​IMG]

    this one is posted as Shoshone...
     
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  3. 2manybooks

    2manybooks Well-Known Member

    Definitely has some age. The stitching looks like it might be sinew. It also looks like the leather may have been oiled, (presumably before the beads were applied, as they look clean). If so, it may explain the stiffness and dark streaks, caused by the deterioration of the oil.
     
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  4. smallaxe

    smallaxe Well-Known Member

    Is the leather soft, stiff, or hard?
    It's hard to tell without a closup photo, but it looks like the leather was tanned with the epidermis layer left on. It is much harder to end up with a soft, pliable leather when brain tanning a skin with the epidermis left on. You can doing chemical tan though. Initially after brain tanning, leather is white. If such leather ever gets wet, it will lose much of its softness and dry back to being something between leather and rawhide (unless it's stretched and worked while it dries). I don't know the chemical reason for it, but if you smoke the leather after it's first tanned, it handles water much better, and will mostly dry soft after getting wet. As you'd imagine smoked brain tan leather is brown.
    Where I'm headed, is if the epidermis is left on, the leather starts out being less pliable. If it gets wet, it may become very stiff, especially the epidermis layer itself.
    I'm not sure about the lines. They could be scars the animal had, but there's a lot, and multiple scars are often parallel and on the back. Or, it could be from uneven shrinking after getting wet. Another possibility is little cut marks from dehairing the hide if they scraped the hair off rather than letting it slip/rot off. I'm speculating though, and don't really know.
    A closeup would help, but it kind of doesn't look like deer skin to me. I've never worked with moose hide, so I don't know if it's that, but I bet it's something bigger than a deer.
     
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  5. 2manybooks

    2manybooks Well-Known Member

    Smoking brain tanned leather introduces some tannins from the wood used. It has an effect somewhat similar to traditional vegetable tanning, where hides are soaked for long periods in tree bark or other materials containing tannins. The tannins act to displace moisture in the skin, binding to the collagen and making it less receptive to water.
     
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  6. cxgirl

    cxgirl Well-Known Member

    thank-you for all the replies folks:) I apologize for the delay in responding, my power just came back on about 30 minutes ago.

    thank-you @komokwa , I'll check out Shoshone items:)

    :)
    thank-you smallaxe, I've added some photos, hope they help. It is stiff, has cracking in areas and the tie/closing piece at the top would probably break if I tried to smooth it out.

    thank-you 2manybooks:) it could have been oiled, I'm not experienced enough to say yes or no.

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    Last edited: Dec 14, 2024
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