View allAll Photos Tagged teenthings
Happy June Teenth to you x
The top is a free gift from Rosary called Freedom
Earrings are from POM called Oprah Earrings
The hair is from Doux called Joya Hairstyle
Hair base is from Angel eyes called Baby hairs 5
Eyes are from Tville called shiny no 05 (gatcha item)
Applier is from Voguel called Kamala Skin, shade Sunkiss
Freckles are from warpaint called woke up like this 8
and i bought it at the Summer fest 2023 event
Body is Reborn from eBODY and matching skin tone is @ Velour
Tattoo is from Carol G called Aran Upper & Leg TaTToo, shade black
Skirt is from Fake Society called Rihanna Skirt, shadde Light Blue
Pose is from Boo'D Up.oses called My Beautiful Melancholy,pose 05
After months of stress and worry, the real estate mess is finally over. We are not moving; the woman whose house we were in the process of buying decided four days before the closing that she didn't want it to happen.
Although we can't say we're happy with the result, we're feeling a tremendous sense of relief that the whole ungodly train wreck has finally come to a close, and that we can get some closure on this situation. The twists and turns this thing has taken have turned our lives upside down, and it's good to feel right again, and that the carpet we're standing on isn't going to get yanked out from under our feet for the n-teenth time.
Yeah. Now we can concentrate on the fact that we're having a baby in a month!
ODC3 - At 7,641 ft, Pass Creek Summit is usually snowed under way before now. Where's the Snow? In talking to some old timers they never remember being able to drive over this pass during the middle of January. My "Four" picture turned into what was happening on Jan 14th at the top of this pass which traverses the Big Lost River and Little Lost River Valleys in SE Idaho. Taken with a Tokina 11-16mm @ 11mm. I stepped the EV down to -1.5. Taken in Manual mode.
28LA x Juneteenth Group Gift! – GIFT
media-sl.com/2021/06/27/28la-x-juneteenth-group-gift-gift/
28LA x Juneteenth Group Gift! – GIFT 28LA June·teenth/jo͞oːnˌtēːnTH,ˌjo͞onˈtēnTH,jo͞o:nˈtē:nTH/Learn to pronouncenounnoun: juneteentha holiday celebrated on 19 June…
✔️ #SecondLife ✔️ #MediaSl ✔️ #SL
join Media-SL.com Discord: discord.gg/xmHfRpD
Annoyed with myself for missing the opportunity to take a Star Wars photo on May the Fourth, so May 14th will have to do instead.
Dripz Couture
In Honor of JuneTeenth - & All the beautiful Queenz out there!
Kupra Only - 9'Teenth Tee
Available - Free
@ Mainstore
maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Southport%20Shore/103/71/3503
In yet another epic evening, I ventured back to the Ship wreck of the previous evening. this time I had fellow flickr-ites Matt and Kane in tow.
After the thousandth bad mum joke, and the um-teenth moon shadow shot, we got around to messing with fire.
Turned out alright I think.
ABOUT
- Single Frame
- ISO200, f/6.3, 185 seconds, In camera Noise Reduciton.
GEAR
- Canon 400D + Sigma 10-20mm f/4.0-5.6 DC EX HSM
- Tripod
- Triggered with Canon RC-1 Remote.
- Lack of sleep
- powered by mum jokes.
PROCESSING
- Slight curve adjustment
- Unsharp Mask
- Layer Duplicated.
- Bottom layer Gaussian blurred to 50pixels
- Top Layer opacity set to 60%
- Border applied in GIMP.
At last, / the parts fit together / the arms to the head / the legs to the body / the flesh to the skeleton. / And, on the one hundred and eight-teenth day, / a new creation has come to existence.
Assemblage, wood, metal, paint, board. size 46x45x16 cm
(all items 2nd hand, found, remnant from demolition etcetera)
contact may also via www.meurtant.exto.org
This was my favourite of the beadwork that I saw today but it was unreasonably priced, at least for what I felt like paying today. I may return and hang it with family photos. I returned and looked for it but couldn't find the vendor. I didn't make it on the third and last day of Kempenfest to continue my search.
This was for sale on eBay today.
Background:
www.nysm.nysed.gov/publications/record/vol_01/pdfs/CH04El...
IROQUOIS BEADWORK:
A Haudenosaunee Tradition and Art
Dolores Elliott
The Iroquois tradition of raised beadwork began in west- ern New York in the late eighteenth century. It is slightly older than the other great North American Indian bead- working tradition that the Lakota, Cheyenne, and other people of the Plains developed. Raised beadwork is unique to the Haudenosaunee; it is made nowhere else in the world. The Senecas, who decorated clothes, sashes, and small pincushions with small glass beads in the eigh- teenth century, probably invented the style of Iroquois beadwork that still exists today. They were making bead- ed pincushions by 1799 and purses by 1807. In the mid- nineteenth century, ethnohistorian Lewis H. Morgan noted in his League of the Ho-de’-no-sau-see, or Iroquois the “delicacy, even brilliancy of their bead-work embroidery” on women’s clothing (1851, Book 3:384), and he included illustrations of beadwork on a needle case, woman’s skirt, cradleboard, heart-shaped pincushion, and work bag, the forerunner of a modern purse. He reported that in 1849 he had purchased five varieties of work bags as well as three varieties of pin cushions and five varieties of needle books (Morgan 1850, 57).
(Figure 4.1). While they sold their goods at nearby Montreal, the Mohawks also traveled extensively throughout North America to sell at fairs, exhibitions, wild west shows, and Indian medicine shows. Some even sold their beadwork when they traveled to England to perform Indian dances at Earls Court, an exhibition ground in London. Photographs taken in 1905 show these performers attired in clothing decorated with Mohawk beadwork.
The Iroquois tradition of beadwork continued to evolve in the nineteenth century, and by 1860 Mohawks near Montreal and Tuscaroras near Niagara Falls were creating elaborate pincushions, purses, and wall hangings adorned with raised beadwork. Despite the similarity of items created, the two geographic areas developed different styles of beadwork (Table 4.1). Throughout the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, at the height of beadwork production, the Tuscaroras sold their beadwork mostly at Niagara Falls, on their reservation, and at the New York State Fair. They preferred to use small clear and white beads. During this same period, the Mohawks used larger clear beads and also employed red, blue, green, and yellow beads on most of their early pieces
Figure 4.1. Two needle cases that illustrate differences in nineteenth- century Mohawk (left) and Niagara (right) beadwork.
My personal family experience illustrates typical Iroquois beadwork transactions in the twentieth century. My story starts in 1903 when my grandmother went to the Afton Fair, a small agricultural fair in central New York. She took my nine-year-old father, but his sister, then eleven, was sick and could not go. My grandmother brought her home a present from the fair. It was a beauti- ful pink satin-covered bird-shaped pincushion that sparkled with light green beads (Figure 4.2). My aunt treasured this bird throughout her long life and displayed it proudly in her china cabinet, where I saw it when I was a child. At her death this cherished heirloom was passed on to her daughter who later donated it to the Afton Historical Society in Chenango County, where it is presently on view.
My research indicates that this bird was made by a skilled Mohawk beadworker from a Mohawk community located near Montreal and several hundred miles from the Afton Fair. This pincushion probably got to the fair with a group of Mohawks who traveled by train or wagon to perform at fairs, medicine shows, and exhibi- tions. While at these venues, they also sold their hand- made baskets and beadwork.
In 1958 I bought a small red heart-shaped pincushion at a booth in the Indian Village at the New York State Fair, which is held near Syracuse (Figure 4.3). It was a present for my mother, who displayed it prominently on her bed- room dresser for the next twenty-five years until I inher- ited it. Mary Lou Printup, a leading Tuscarora sewer, later identified this pincushion as one she had made. She, like most Tuscarora beadworkers prefer to be called “sewers,” a term not popular with some other Iroquois beadwork- ers. In my research and writing, I use the word “bead- worker” to refer to all except those individuals who specifically prefer to be called “sewers.”
When I purchased the red heart I had no idea that this pincushion had anything in common with the bird that my grandmother acquired fifty-five years earlier. I knew that I wanted to get something special for my mother, and this pincushion was special because it was beautiful and made by a native artist. In buying it I shared something with my grandmother, who died before I was born, that is, the purchase of a piece of Iroquois beadwork. Most likely the purchase of the bird was my German-born grandmother’s only interaction with a Haudenosaunee woman, and my purchase at the State Fair was my first interaction with a Tuscarora sewer, the first of many.
In a similar manner Iroquois beadworkers and their non- Indian customers, often tourists or attendees at a public entertainment venue, have been brought together by bead-work for over two centuries. These transactions undoubtedly number in the tens of thousands.1 During honeymoon trips to Niagara Falls and visits to agricultural fairs, exhibitions, and other attractions, people purchased Iroquois beadwork as mementos to remember these places and experiences. The beads often form designs featuring birds and flowers, natural themes that appealed to the Victorian women who drove the market of souvenir sales in the nine- teenth century. Studies by Beverly Gordon (1984; 1986) and Ruth B. Phillips (1998) describe the souvenir trade and point out the importance of these items to the people on both sides of the transactions.
Souvenir beadwork was so treasured that the pieces were frequently kept in cedar chests or keepsake boxes. Therefore, when unwrapped one hundred or more years later, they are often in pristine condition. Ironically, few contemporary beadworkers have samples of their ancestors’ work because it was usually made for sale to strangers, although some beadwork was created as gifts for family and friends.
Because most pieces were made for sale to tourists, many people have dismissed Iroquois beadwork as “souvenir trinkets” not important enough to collect, study, or exhibit. In fact, they are often called whimsies, a term that I believe trivializes them and diminishes their artistic and cultural value. But within the last two decades Iroquois beadwork has become the subject of serious study and museum exhibitions. At least four traveling exhibits of Iroquois beadwork have been installed in over a dozen museums and seen by thousands of museum visitors in the United States and Canada since 1999.2 This scholarly recognition has resulted in an increased appreciation of these beadwork creations and the artists who made them. What were considered curious tourist souvenirs when they were made are now generating increased respect from both the general public and the Haudenosaunee.
ry pieces, the back is a colorful calico. Some pieces, mainly in the Niagara Tradition, have a silk or cotton binding around their perimeters to cover the cut edges and attach the front and back fabrics. Tight beadwork on the edging often binds Mohawk pieces together so a cloth binding is not necessary. Flat purses as well as fist and box purses are constructed in the same manner, with cardboard as the base.
Contemporary beadworkers see their work as a signif- icant part of Haudenosaunee culture and an important link to the past. In Haudenosaunee communities bead- workers are admired as continuing a revered tradition. Although there are a few male beadworkers, the majority are women, and in a matrilineal-society with powerful clan matrons, the economic benefit of beadwork sales increases the influence of the women even more.
Pincushions were usually stuffed with sawdust, but sweet grass, cotton, cattail fluff, newspapers, and poly- ester have also been used. Contemporary craftsmen remember that their mothers preferred pine sawdust because of the nice aroma.4 Small strawberry-shaped pin- cushions are traditionally filled with emery, used to sharpen and polish needles. Velvet and twill-covered pic- ture frames and other wall hangings on cardboard bases have polished cotton backs on earlier pieces and calico on more recent ones. European glass beads were often aug- mented with metal sequins on nineteenth-century pieces and with plastic sequins and other plastic novelty beads since the late twentieth century. Bone and shell beads and leather, which are often used in other American Indian beadwork, rarely occur in Iroquois beadwork.
Iroquois beadwork is still sold at Niagara Falls, the New York State Fair, and several pow wows and festivals in the northeast; the methods of beadwork distribution have changed little over two hundred years. The bead-work itself, however, has changed tremendously. Over the last two centuries the styles of beadwork have evolved from simple small pincushions and purses to highly elaborate shapes, becoming works of art in the tra- ditional sense. The beads selected have progressed from the very small seed beads used around 1800 to the larger seed beads of 1900 and finally, by 2000, to a wider variety of bead sizes and colors.
The most common form of Iroquois beadwork, and the form most easily recognizable by people who are not familiar with Iroquois beadwork, is the flat black purse or bag featuring identical colorful, beaded floral designs on both sides. Most flat bags have flaps on both sides, but the opening is across the top where the two sides meet. The face fabric is usually black or very dark brown velvet, and the interior is often a light-colored linen or polished cot- ton. A binding, usually red, is attached around the closed sides of the purses. A beaded fringe is sometimes added. The fringe is merely sewn to the binding and does not hold the two sides of the bag together; it is purely deco- rative. The flaps usually are edged with white beads that are larger than the beads that outline the flaps and body (Figure 4.4). The flaps and body are sometimes outlined with short parallel lines like a stockade. The faces of the flap and body are covered by stylized flowers in shades of blue, red, yellow, and white connected with green stems, which are sometimes striped in two shades of green. Some bags feature a small slit pocket under one of the flaps. It may have been meant to hold a comb or mirror.
Iroquois beadwork remains a unique art form distin- guished by several characteristics found only in work created by Haudenosaunee beadworkers. Iroquois beadwork features a design in glass beads that have been sewn on a fabric that is stretched over a backing of cardboard or cloth lining. The materials used in the beadwork are predominately small seed beads, cloth, cardboard, paper, and in pincushions, a stuffing. The beads are sewn onto the fabric in geometric or natural designs using waxed, doubled white thread.3 The beads are usually sewn over a paper pattern that remains in place under the beaded elements. Although not practiced at all times in the histo- ry of Iroquois beadwork, the most distinctive trait is that the beads are raised above the surface of the cloth face. Some pieces have raised beaded elements that are over an inch high. The beads are raised by putting more beads on the thread than is needed to span the pattern so that the beads form an arch above the pattern. The amount of extra beads determines how high the arches are, that is, how much the beadwork is raised. Various velvets were and still are the favored fabrics, but other fabrics such as wool, twills, silk, and satin are also used. Pincushions often have beaded velvet fronts and polished cotton backs. Polished cotton is a shiny stiff material that is also referred to as chintz or oilcloth. On the majority of late twentieth-century and contemporary twenty-first-century...
Preserving Tradition and Understanding the Past: Papers from the Conference on Iroquois Research, 2001–2005, Edited by Christine Sternberg Patrick, New York State Museum Record 1 © 2010, by The University of the State of New York, The State Education Department, Albany, New York 12230. All rights reserved. Click on top link for more.
This was for sale on eBay today.
Background:
www.nysm.nysed.gov/publications/record/vol_01/pdfs/CH04El...
IROQUOIS BEADWORK:
A Haudenosaunee Tradition and Art
Dolores Elliott
The Iroquois tradition of raised beadwork began in west- ern New York in the late eighteenth century. It is slightly older than the other great North American Indian bead- working tradition that the Lakota, Cheyenne, and other people of the Plains developed. Raised beadwork is unique to the Haudenosaunee; it is made nowhere else in the world. The Senecas, who decorated clothes, sashes, and small pincushions with small glass beads in the eigh- teenth century, probably invented the style of Iroquois beadwork that still exists today. They were making bead- ed pincushions by 1799 and purses by 1807. In the mid- nineteenth century, ethnohistorian Lewis H. Morgan noted in his League of the Ho-de’-no-sau-see, or Iroquois the “delicacy, even brilliancy of their bead-work embroidery” on women’s clothing (1851, Book 3:384), and he included illustrations of beadwork on a needle case, woman’s skirt, cradleboard, heart-shaped pincushion, and work bag, the forerunner of a modern purse. He reported that in 1849 he had purchased five varieties of work bags as well as three varieties of pin cushions and five varieties of needle books (Morgan 1850, 57).
(Figure 4.1). While they sold their goods at nearby Montreal, the Mohawks also traveled extensively throughout North America to sell at fairs, exhibitions, wild west shows, and Indian medicine shows. Some even sold their beadwork when they traveled to England to perform Indian dances at Earls Court, an exhibition ground in London. Photographs taken in 1905 show these performers attired in clothing decorated with Mohawk beadwork.
The Iroquois tradition of beadwork continued to evolve in the nineteenth century, and by 1860 Mohawks near Montreal and Tuscaroras near Niagara Falls were creating elaborate pincushions, purses, and wall hangings adorned with raised beadwork. Despite the similarity of items created, the two geographic areas developed different styles of beadwork (Table 4.1). Throughout the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, at the height of beadwork production, the Tuscaroras sold their beadwork mostly at Niagara Falls, on their reservation, and at the New York State Fair. They preferred to use small clear and white beads. During this same period, the Mohawks used larger clear beads and also employed red, blue, green, and yellow beads on most of their early pieces
Figure 4.1. Two needle cases that illustrate differences in nineteenth- century Mohawk (left) and Niagara (right) beadwork.
My personal family experience illustrates typical Iroquois beadwork transactions in the twentieth century. My story starts in 1903 when my grandmother went to the Afton Fair, a small agricultural fair in central New York. She took my nine-year-old father, but his sister, then eleven, was sick and could not go. My grandmother brought her home a present from the fair. It was a beauti- ful pink satin-covered bird-shaped pincushion that sparkled with light green beads (Figure 4.2). My aunt treasured this bird throughout her long life and displayed it proudly in her china cabinet, where I saw it when I was a child. At her death this cherished heirloom was passed on to her daughter who later donated it to the Afton Historical Society in Chenango County, where it is presently on view.
My research indicates that this bird was made by a skilled Mohawk beadworker from a Mohawk community located near Montreal and several hundred miles from the Afton Fair. This pincushion probably got to the fair with a group of Mohawks who traveled by train or wagon to perform at fairs, medicine shows, and exhibi- tions. While at these venues, they also sold their hand- made baskets and beadwork.
In 1958 I bought a small red heart-shaped pincushion at a booth in the Indian Village at the New York State Fair, which is held near Syracuse (Figure 4.3). It was a present for my mother, who displayed it prominently on her bed- room dresser for the next twenty-five years until I inher- ited it. Mary Lou Printup, a leading Tuscarora sewer, later identified this pincushion as one she had made. She, like most Tuscarora beadworkers prefer to be called “sewers,” a term not popular with some other Iroquois beadwork- ers. In my research and writing, I use the word “bead- worker” to refer to all except those individuals who specifically prefer to be called “sewers.”
When I purchased the red heart I had no idea that this pincushion had anything in common with the bird that my grandmother acquired fifty-five years earlier. I knew that I wanted to get something special for my mother, and this pincushion was special because it was beautiful and made by a native artist. In buying it I shared something with my grandmother, who died before I was born, that is, the purchase of a piece of Iroquois beadwork. Most likely the purchase of the bird was my German-born grandmother’s only interaction with a Haudenosaunee woman, and my purchase at the State Fair was my first interaction with a Tuscarora sewer, the first of many.
In a similar manner Iroquois beadworkers and their non- Indian customers, often tourists or attendees at a public entertainment venue, have been brought together by bead-work for over two centuries. These transactions undoubtedly number in the tens of thousands.1 During honeymoon trips to Niagara Falls and visits to agricultural fairs, exhibitions, and other attractions, people purchased Iroquois beadwork as mementos to remember these places and experiences. The beads often form designs featuring birds and flowers, natural themes that appealed to the Victorian women who drove the market of souvenir sales in the nine- teenth century. Studies by Beverly Gordon (1984; 1986) and Ruth B. Phillips (1998) describe the souvenir trade and point out the importance of these items to the people on both sides of the transactions.
Souvenir beadwork was so treasured that the pieces were frequently kept in cedar chests or keepsake boxes. Therefore, when unwrapped one hundred or more years later, they are often in pristine condition. Ironically, few contemporary beadworkers have samples of their ancestors’ work because it was usually made for sale to strangers, although some beadwork was created as gifts for family and friends.
Because most pieces were made for sale to tourists, many people have dismissed Iroquois beadwork as “souvenir trinkets” not important enough to collect, study, or exhibit. In fact, they are often called whimsies, a term that I believe trivializes them and diminishes their artistic and cultural value. But within the last two decades Iroquois beadwork has become the subject of serious study and museum exhibitions. At least four traveling exhibits of Iroquois beadwork have been installed in over a dozen museums and seen by thousands of museum visitors in the United States and Canada since 1999.2 This scholarly recognition has resulted in an increased appreciation of these beadwork creations and the artists who made them. What were considered curious tourist souvenirs when they were made are now generating increased respect from both the general public and the Haudenosaunee.
ry pieces, the back is a colorful calico. Some pieces, mainly in the Niagara Tradition, have a silk or cotton binding around their perimeters to cover the cut edges and attach the front and back fabrics. Tight beadwork on the edging often binds Mohawk pieces together so a cloth binding is not necessary. Flat purses as well as fist and box purses are constructed in the same manner, with cardboard as the base.
Contemporary beadworkers see their work as a signif- icant part of Haudenosaunee culture and an important link to the past. In Haudenosaunee communities bead- workers are admired as continuing a revered tradition. Although there are a few male beadworkers, the majority are women, and in a matrilineal-society with powerful clan matrons, the economic benefit of beadwork sales increases the influence of the women even more.
Pincushions were usually stuffed with sawdust, but sweet grass, cotton, cattail fluff, newspapers, and poly- ester have also been used. Contemporary craftsmen remember that their mothers preferred pine sawdust because of the nice aroma.4 Small strawberry-shaped pin- cushions are traditionally filled with emery, used to sharpen and polish needles. Velvet and twill-covered pic- ture frames and other wall hangings on cardboard bases have polished cotton backs on earlier pieces and calico on more recent ones. European glass beads were often aug- mented with metal sequins on nineteenth-century pieces and with plastic sequins and other plastic novelty beads since the late twentieth century. Bone and shell beads and leather, which are often used in other American Indian beadwork, rarely occur in Iroquois beadwork.
Iroquois beadwork is still sold at Niagara Falls, the New York State Fair, and several pow wows and festivals in the northeast; the methods of beadwork distribution have changed little over two hundred years. The bead-work itself, however, has changed tremendously. Over the last two centuries the styles of beadwork have evolved from simple small pincushions and purses to highly elaborate shapes, becoming works of art in the tra- ditional sense. The beads selected have progressed from the very small seed beads used around 1800 to the larger seed beads of 1900 and finally, by 2000, to a wider variety of bead sizes and colors.
The most common form of Iroquois beadwork, and the form most easily recognizable by people who are not familiar with Iroquois beadwork, is the flat black purse or bag featuring identical colorful, beaded floral designs on both sides. Most flat bags have flaps on both sides, but the opening is across the top where the two sides meet. The face fabric is usually black or very dark brown velvet, and the interior is often a light-colored linen or polished cot- ton. A binding, usually red, is attached around the closed sides of the purses. A beaded fringe is sometimes added. The fringe is merely sewn to the binding and does not hold the two sides of the bag together; it is purely deco- rative. The flaps usually are edged with white beads that are larger than the beads that outline the flaps and body (Figure 4.4). The flaps and body are sometimes outlined with short parallel lines like a stockade. The faces of the flap and body are covered by stylized flowers in shades of blue, red, yellow, and white connected with green stems, which are sometimes striped in two shades of green. Some bags feature a small slit pocket under one of the flaps. It may have been meant to hold a comb or mirror.
Iroquois beadwork remains a unique art form distin- guished by several characteristics found only in work created by Haudenosaunee beadworkers. Iroquois beadwork features a design in glass beads that have been sewn on a fabric that is stretched over a backing of cardboard or cloth lining. The materials used in the beadwork are predominately small seed beads, cloth, cardboard, paper, and in pincushions, a stuffing. The beads are sewn onto the fabric in geometric or natural designs using waxed, doubled white thread.3 The beads are usually sewn over a paper pattern that remains in place under the beaded elements. Although not practiced at all times in the histo- ry of Iroquois beadwork, the most distinctive trait is that the beads are raised above the surface of the cloth face. Some pieces have raised beaded elements that are over an inch high. The beads are raised by putting more beads on the thread than is needed to span the pattern so that the beads form an arch above the pattern. The amount of extra beads determines how high the arches are, that is, how much the beadwork is raised. Various velvets were and still are the favored fabrics, but other fabrics such as wool, twills, silk, and satin are also used. Pincushions often have beaded velvet fronts and polished cotton backs. Polished cotton is a shiny stiff material that is also referred to as chintz or oilcloth. On the majority of late twentieth-century and contemporary twenty-first-century...
Preserving Tradition and Understanding the Past: Papers from the Conference on Iroquois Research, 2001–2005, Edited by Christine Sternberg Patrick, New York State Museum Record 1 © 2010, by The University of the State of New York, The State Education Department, Albany, New York 12230. All rights reserved. Click on top link for more.
Iroquois beaded Glengarry cap.
IROQUOIS BEADWORK:
A Haudenosaunee Tradition and Art
Dolores Elliott
The Iroquois tradition of raised beadwork began in west- ern New York in the late eighteenth century. It is slightly older than the other great North American Indian bead- working tradition that the Lakota, Cheyenne, and other people of the Plains developed. Raised beadwork is unique to the Haudenosaunee; it is made nowhere else in the world. The Senecas, who decorated clothes, sashes, and small pincushions with small glass beads in the eigh- teenth century, probably invented the style of Iroquois beadwork that still exists today. They were making bead- ed pincushions by 1799 and purses by 1807. In the mid- nineteenth century, ethnohistorian Lewis H. Morgan noted in his League of the Ho-de’-no-sau-see, or Iroquois the “delicacy, even brilliancy of their bead-work embroidery” on women’s clothing (1851, Book 3:384), and he included illustrations of beadwork on a needle case, woman’s skirt, cradleboard, heart-shaped pincushion, and work bag, the forerunner of a modern purse. He reported that in 1849 he had purchased five varieties of work bags as well as three varieties of pin cushions and five varieties of needle books (Morgan 1850, 57).
(Figure 4.1). While they sold their goods at nearby Montreal, the Mohawks also traveled extensively throughout North America to sell at fairs, exhibitions, wild west shows, and Indian medicine shows. Some even sold their beadwork when they traveled to England to perform Indian dances at Earls Court, an exhibition ground in London. Photographs taken in 1905 show these performers attired in clothing decorated with Mohawk beadwork.
The Iroquois tradition of beadwork continued to evolve in the nineteenth century, and by 1860 Mohawks near Montreal and Tuscaroras near Niagara Falls were creating elaborate pincushions, purses, and wall hangings adorned with raised beadwork. Despite the similarity of items created, the two geographic areas developed different styles of beadwork (Table 4.1). Throughout the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, at the height of beadwork production, the Tuscaroras sold their beadwork mostly at Niagara Falls, on their reservation, and at the New York State Fair. They preferred to use small clear and white beads. During this same period, the Mohawks used larger clear beads and also employed red, blue, green, and yellow beads on most of their early pieces
Figure 4.1. Two needle cases that illustrate differences in nineteenth- century Mohawk (left) and Niagara (right) beadwork.
My personal family experience illustrates typical Iroquois beadwork transactions in the twentieth century. My story starts in 1903 when my grandmother went to the Afton Fair, a small agricultural fair in central New York. She took my nine-year-old father, but his sister, then eleven, was sick and could not go. My grandmother brought her home a present from the fair. It was a beauti- ful pink satin-covered bird-shaped pincushion that sparkled with light green beads (Figure 4.2). My aunt treasured this bird throughout her long life and displayed it proudly in her china cabinet, where I saw it when I was a child. At her death this cherished heirloom was passed on to her daughter who later donated it to the Afton Historical Society in Chenango County, where it is presently on view.
My research indicates that this bird was made by a skilled Mohawk beadworker from a Mohawk community located near Montreal and several hundred miles from the Afton Fair. This pincushion probably got to the fair with a group of Mohawks who traveled by train or wagon to perform at fairs, medicine shows, and exhibi- tions. While at these venues, they also sold their hand- made baskets and beadwork.
In 1958 I bought a small red heart-shaped pincushion at a booth in the Indian Village at the New York State Fair, which is held near Syracuse (Figure 4.3). It was a present for my mother, who displayed it prominently on her bed- room dresser for the next twenty-five years until I inher- ited it. Mary Lou Printup, a leading Tuscarora sewer, later identified this pincushion as one she had made. She, like most Tuscarora beadworkers prefer to be called “sewers,” a term not popular with some other Iroquois beadwork- ers. In my research and writing, I use the word “bead- worker” to refer to all except those individuals who specifically prefer to be called “sewers.”
When I purchased the red heart I had no idea that this pincushion had anything in common with the bird that my grandmother acquired fifty-five years earlier. I knew that I wanted to get something special for my mother, and this pincushion was special because it was beautiful and made by a native artist. In buying it I shared something with my grandmother, who died before I was born, that is, the purchase of a piece of Iroquois beadwork. Most likely the purchase of the bird was my German-born grandmother’s only interaction with a Haudenosaunee woman, and my purchase at the State Fair was my first interaction with a Tuscarora sewer, the first of many.
In a similar manner Iroquois beadworkers and their non- Indian customers, often tourists or attendees at a public entertainment venue, have been brought together by bead-work for over two centuries. These transactions undoubtedly number in the tens of thousands.1 During honeymoon trips to Niagara Falls and visits to agricultural fairs, exhibitions, and other attractions, people purchased Iroquois beadwork as mementos to remember these places and experiences. The beads often form designs featuring birds and flowers, natural themes that appealed to the Victorian women who drove the market of souvenir sales in the nine- teenth century. Studies by Beverly Gordon (1984; 1986) and Ruth B. Phillips (1998) describe the souvenir trade and point out the importance of these items to the people on both sides of the transactions.
Souvenir beadwork was so treasured that the pieces were frequently kept in cedar chests or keepsake boxes. Therefore, when unwrapped one hundred or more years later, they are often in pristine condition. Ironically, few contemporary beadworkers have samples of their ancestors’ work because it was usually made for sale to strangers, although some beadwork was created as gifts for family and friends.
Because most pieces were made for sale to tourists, many people have dismissed Iroquois beadwork as “souvenir trinkets” not important enough to collect, study, or exhibit. In fact, they are often called whimsies, a term that I believe trivializes them and diminishes their artistic and cultural value. But within the last two decades Iroquois beadwork has become the subject of serious study and museum exhibitions. At least four traveling exhibits of Iroquois beadwork have been installed in over a dozen museums and seen by thousands of museum visitors in the United States and Canada since 1999.2 This scholarly recognition has resulted in an increased appreciation of these beadwork creations and the artists who made them. What were considered curious tourist souvenirs when they were made are now generating increased respect from both the general public and the Haudenosaunee.
ry pieces, the back is a colorful calico. Some pieces, mainly in the Niagara Tradition, have a silk or cotton binding around their perimeters to cover the cut edges and attach the front and back fabrics. Tight beadwork on the edging often binds Mohawk pieces together so a cloth binding is not necessary. Flat purses as well as fist and box purses are constructed in the same manner, with cardboard as the base.
Contemporary beadworkers see their work as a signif- icant part of Haudenosaunee culture and an important link to the past. In Haudenosaunee communities bead- workers are admired as continuing a revered tradition. Although there are a few male beadworkers, the majority are women, and in a matrilineal-society with powerful clan matrons, the economic benefit of beadwork sales increases the influence of the women even more.
Pincushions were usually stuffed with sawdust, but sweet grass, cotton, cattail fluff, newspapers, and poly- ester have also been used. Contemporary craftsmen remember that their mothers preferred pine sawdust because of the nice aroma.4 Small strawberry-shaped pin- cushions are traditionally filled with emery, used to sharpen and polish needles. Velvet and twill-covered pic- ture frames and other wall hangings on cardboard bases have polished cotton backs on earlier pieces and calico on more recent ones. European glass beads were often aug- mented with metal sequins on nineteenth-century pieces and with plastic sequins and other plastic novelty beads since the late twentieth century. Bone and shell beads and leather, which are often used in other American Indian beadwork, rarely occur in Iroquois beadwork.
Iroquois beadwork is still sold at Niagara Falls, the New York State Fair, and several pow wows and festivals in the northeast; the methods of beadwork distribution have changed little over two hundred years. The bead-work itself, however, has changed tremendously. Over the last two centuries the styles of beadwork have evolved from simple small pincushions and purses to highly elaborate shapes, becoming works of art in the tra- ditional sense. The beads selected have progressed from the very small seed beads used around 1800 to the larger seed beads of 1900 and finally, by 2000, to a wider variety of bead sizes and colors.
The most common form of Iroquois beadwork, and the form most easily recognizable by people who are not familiar with Iroquois beadwork, is the flat black purse or bag featuring identical colorful, beaded floral designs on both sides. Most flat bags have flaps on both sides, but the opening is across the top where the two sides meet. The face fabric is usually black or very dark brown velvet, and the interior is often a light-colored linen or polished cot- ton. A binding, usually red, is attached around the closed sides of the purses. A beaded fringe is sometimes added. The fringe is merely sewn to the binding and does not hold the two sides of the bag together; it is purely deco- rative. The flaps usually are edged with white beads that are larger than the beads that outline the flaps and body (Figure 4.4). The flaps and body are sometimes outlined with short parallel lines like a stockade. The faces of the flap and body are covered by stylized flowers in shades of blue, red, yellow, and white connected with green stems, which are sometimes striped in two shades of green. Some bags feature a small slit pocket under one of the flaps. It may have been meant to hold a comb or mirror.
Iroquois beadwork remains a unique art form distin- guished by several characteristics found only in work created by Haudenosaunee beadworkers. Iroquois beadwork features a design in glass beads that have been sewn on a fabric that is stretched over a backing of cardboard or cloth lining. The materials used in the beadwork are predominately small seed beads, cloth, cardboard, paper, and in pincushions, a stuffing. The beads are sewn onto the fabric in geometric or natural designs using waxed, doubled white thread.3 The beads are usually sewn over a paper pattern that remains in place under the beaded elements. Although not practiced at all times in the histo- ry of Iroquois beadwork, the most distinctive trait is that the beads are raised above the surface of the cloth face. Some pieces have raised beaded elements that are over an inch high. The beads are raised by putting more beads on the thread than is needed to span the pattern so that the beads form an arch above the pattern. The amount of extra beads determines how high the arches are, that is, how much the beadwork is raised. Various velvets were and still are the favored fabrics, but other fabrics such as wool, twills, silk, and satin are also used. Pincushions often have beaded velvet fronts and polished cotton backs. Polished cotton is a shiny stiff material that is also referred to as chintz or oilcloth. On the majority of late twentieth-century and contemporary twenty-first-century...
Preserving Tradition and Understanding the Past: Papers from the Conference on Iroquois Research, 2001–2005, Edited by Christine Sternberg Patrick, New York State Museum Record 1 © 2010, by The University of the State of New York, The State Education Department, Albany, New York 12230. All rights reserved. Click on top link for more.
This was for sale on eBay today.
Background:
www.nysm.nysed.gov/publications/record/vol_01/pdfs/CH04El...
IROQUOIS BEADWORK:
A Haudenosaunee Tradition and Art: by. Dolores Elliott
The Iroquois tradition of raised beadwork began in west- ern New York in the late eighteenth century. It is slightly older than the other great North American Indian bead- working tradition that the Lakota, Cheyenne, and other people of the Plains developed. Raised beadwork is unique to the Haudenosaunee; it is made nowhere else in the world. The Senecas, who decorated clothes, sashes, and small pincushions with small glass beads in the eigh- teenth century, probably invented the style of Iroquois beadwork that still exists today. They were making bead- ed pincushions by 1799 and purses by 1807. In the mid- nineteenth century, ethnohistorian Lewis H. Morgan noted in his League of the Ho-de’-no-sau-see, or Iroquois the “delicacy, even brilliancy of their bead-work embroidery” on women’s clothing (1851, Book 3:384), and he included illustrations of beadwork on a needle case, woman’s skirt, cradleboard, heart-shaped pincushion, and work bag, the forerunner of a modern purse. He reported that in 1849 he had purchased five varieties of work bags as well as three varieties of pin cushions and five varieties of needle books (Morgan 1850, 57).
(Figure 4.1). While they sold their goods at nearby Montreal, the Mohawks also traveled extensively throughout North America to sell at fairs, exhibitions, wild west shows, and Indian medicine shows. Some even sold their beadwork when they traveled to England to perform Indian dances at Earls Court, an exhibition ground in London. Photographs taken in 1905 show these performers attired in clothing decorated with Mohawk beadwork.
The Iroquois tradition of beadwork continued to evolve in the nineteenth century, and by 1860 Mohawks near Montreal and Tuscaroras near Niagara Falls were creating elaborate pincushions, purses, and wall hangings adorned with raised beadwork. Despite the similarity of items created, the two geographic areas developed different styles of beadwork (Table 4.1). Throughout the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, at the height of beadwork production, the Tuscaroras sold their beadwork mostly at Niagara Falls, on their reservation, and at the New York State Fair. They preferred to use small clear and white beads. During this same period, the Mohawks used larger clear beads and also employed red, blue, green, and yellow beads on most of their early pieces
Figure 4.1. Two needle cases that illustrate differences in nineteenth- century Mohawk (left) and Niagara (right) beadwork.
My personal family experience illustrates typical Iroquois beadwork transactions in the twentieth century. My story starts in 1903 when my grandmother went to the Afton Fair, a small agricultural fair in central New York. She took my nine-year-old father, but his sister, then eleven, was sick and could not go. My grandmother brought her home a present from the fair. It was a beauti- ful pink satin-covered bird-shaped pincushion that sparkled with light green beads (Figure 4.2). My aunt treasured this bird throughout her long life and displayed it proudly in her china cabinet, where I saw it when I was a child. At her death this cherished heirloom was passed on to her daughter who later donated it to the Afton Historical Society in Chenango County, where it is presently on view.
My research indicates that this bird was made by a skilled Mohawk beadworker from a Mohawk community located near Montreal and several hundred miles from the Afton Fair. This pincushion probably got to the fair with a group of Mohawks who traveled by train or wagon to perform at fairs, medicine shows, and exhibi- tions. While at these venues, they also sold their hand- made baskets and beadwork.
In 1958 I bought a small red heart-shaped pincushion at a booth in the Indian Village at the New York State Fair, which is held near Syracuse (Figure 4.3). It was a present for my mother, who displayed it prominently on her bed- room dresser for the next twenty-five years until I inher- ited it. Mary Lou Printup, a leading Tuscarora sewer, later identified this pincushion as one she had made. She, like most Tuscarora beadworkers prefer to be called “sewers,” a term not popular with some other Iroquois beadwork- ers. In my research and writing, I use the word “bead- worker” to refer to all except those individuals who specifically prefer to be called “sewers.”
When I purchased the red heart I had no idea that this pincushion had anything in common with the bird that my grandmother acquired fifty-five years earlier. I knew that I wanted to get something special for my mother, and this pincushion was special because it was beautiful and made by a native artist. In buying it I shared something with my grandmother, who died before I was born, that is, the purchase of a piece of Iroquois beadwork. Most likely the purchase of the bird was my German-born grandmother’s only interaction with a Haudenosaunee woman, and my purchase at the State Fair was my first interaction with a Tuscarora sewer, the first of many.
In a similar manner Iroquois beadworkers and their non- Indian customers, often tourists or attendees at a public entertainment venue, have been brought together by bead-work for over two centuries. These transactions undoubtedly number in the tens of thousands.1 During honeymoon trips to Niagara Falls and visits to agricultural fairs, exhibitions, and other attractions, people purchased Iroquois beadwork as mementos to remember these places and experiences. The beads often form designs featuring birds and flowers, natural themes that appealed to the Victorian women who drove the market of souvenir sales in the nine- teenth century. Studies by Beverly Gordon (1984; 1986) and Ruth B. Phillips (1998) describe the souvenir trade and point out the importance of these items to the people on both sides of the transactions.
Souvenir beadwork was so treasured that the pieces were frequently kept in cedar chests or keepsake boxes. Therefore, when unwrapped one hundred or more years later, they are often in pristine condition. Ironically, few contemporary beadworkers have samples of their ancestors’ work because it was usually made for sale to strangers, although some beadwork was created as gifts for family and friends.
Because most pieces were made for sale to tourists, many people have dismissed Iroquois beadwork as “souvenir trinkets” not important enough to collect, study, or exhibit. In fact, they are often called whimsies, a term that I believe trivializes them and diminishes their artistic and cultural value. But within the last two decades Iroquois beadwork has become the subject of serious study and museum exhibitions. At least four traveling exhibits of Iroquois beadwork have been installed in over a dozen museums and seen by thousands of museum visitors in the United States and Canada since 1999.2 This scholarly recognition has resulted in an increased appreciation of these beadwork creations and the artists who made them. What were considered curious tourist souvenirs when they were made are now generating increased respect from both the general public and the Haudenosaunee.
ry pieces, the back is a colorful calico. Some pieces, mainly in the Niagara Tradition, have a silk or cotton binding around their perimeters to cover the cut edges and attach the front and back fabrics. Tight beadwork on the edging often binds Mohawk pieces together so a cloth binding is not necessary. Flat purses as well as fist and box purses are constructed in the same manner, with cardboard as the base.
Contemporary beadworkers see their work as a signif- icant part of Haudenosaunee culture and an important link to the past. In Haudenosaunee communities bead- workers are admired as continuing a revered tradition. Although there are a few male beadworkers, the majority are women, and in a matrilineal-society with powerful clan matrons, the economic benefit of beadwork sales increases the influence of the women even more.
Pincushions were usually stuffed with sawdust, but sweet grass, cotton, cattail fluff, newspapers, and poly- ester have also been used. Contemporary craftsmen remember that their mothers preferred pine sawdust because of the nice aroma.4 Small strawberry-shaped pin- cushions are traditionally filled with emery, used to sharpen and polish needles. Velvet and twill-covered pic- ture frames and other wall hangings on cardboard bases have polished cotton backs on earlier pieces and calico on more recent ones. European glass beads were often aug- mented with metal sequins on nineteenth-century pieces and with plastic sequins and other plastic novelty beads since the late twentieth century. Bone and shell beads and leather, which are often used in other American Indian beadwork, rarely occur in Iroquois beadwork.
Iroquois beadwork is still sold at Niagara Falls, the New York State Fair, and several pow wows and festivals in the northeast; the methods of beadwork distribution have changed little over two hundred years. The bead-work itself, however, has changed tremendously. Over the last two centuries the styles of beadwork have evolved from simple small pincushions and purses to highly elaborate shapes, becoming works of art in the tra- ditional sense. The beads selected have progressed from the very small seed beads used around 1800 to the larger seed beads of 1900 and finally, by 2000, to a wider variety of bead sizes and colours.
The most common form of Iroquois beadwork, and the form most easily recognizable by people who are not familiar with Iroquois beadwork, is the flat black purse or bag featuring identical colorful, beaded floral designs on both sides. Most flat bags have flaps on both sides, but the opening is across the top where the two sides meet. The face fabric is usually black or very dark brown velvet, and the interior is often a light-colored linen or polished cot- ton. A binding, usually red, is attached around the closed sides of the purses. A beaded fringe is sometimes added. The fringe is merely sewn to the binding and does not hold the two sides of the bag together; it is purely deco- rative. The flaps usually are edged with white beads that are larger than the beads that outline the flaps and body (Figure 4.4). The flaps and body are sometimes outlined with short parallel lines like a stockade. The faces of the flap and body are covered by stylized flowers in shades of blue, red, yellow, and white connected with green stems, which are sometimes striped in two shades of green. Some bags feature a small slit pocket under one of the flaps. It may have been meant to hold a comb or mirror.
Iroquois beadwork remains a unique art form distin- guished by several characteristics found only in work created by Haudenosaunee beadworkers. Iroquois beadwork features a design in glass beads that have been sewn on a fabric that is stretched over a backing of cardboard or cloth lining. The materials used in the beadwork are predominately small seed beads, cloth, cardboard, paper, and in pincushions, a stuffing. The beads are sewn onto the fabric in geometric or natural designs using waxed, doubled white thread.3 The beads are usually sewn over a paper pattern that remains in place under the beaded elements. Although not practiced at all times in the histo- ry of Iroquois beadwork, the most distinctive trait is that the beads are raised above the surface of the cloth face. Some pieces have raised beaded elements that are over an inch high. The beads are raised by putting more beads on the thread than is needed to span the pattern so that the beads form an arch above the pattern. The amount of extra beads determines how high the arches are, that is, how much the beadwork is raised. Various velvets were and still are the favored fabrics, but other fabrics such as wool, twills, silk, and satin are also used. Pincushions often have beaded velvet fronts and polished cotton backs. Polished cotton is a shiny stiff material that is also referred to as chintz or oilcloth. On the majority of late twentieth-century and contemporary twenty-first-century...
Preserving Tradition and Understanding the Past: Papers from the Conference on Iroquois Research, 2001–2005, Edited by Christine Sternberg Patrick, New York State Museum Record 1 © 2010, by The University of the State of New York, The State Education Department, Albany, New York 12230. All rights reserved. Click on top link for more.
This was for sale on eBay today.
iroquoisbeadwork.blogspot.ca/2012/04/early-beaded-iroquoi...
Background:
www.nysm.nysed.gov/publications/record/vol_01/pdfs/CH04El...
IROQUOIS BEADWORK:
A Haudenosaunee Tradition and Art
Dolores Elliott
The Iroquois tradition of raised beadwork began in west- ern New York in the late eighteenth century. It is slightly older than the other great North American Indian bead- working tradition that the Lakota, Cheyenne, and other people of the Plains developed. Raised beadwork is unique to the Haudenosaunee; it is made nowhere else in the world. The Senecas, who decorated clothes, sashes, and small pincushions with small glass beads in the eigh- teenth century, probably invented the style of Iroquois beadwork that still exists today. They were making bead- ed pincushions by 1799 and purses by 1807. In the mid- nineteenth century, ethnohistorian Lewis H. Morgan noted in his League of the Ho-de’-no-sau-see, or Iroquois the “delicacy, even brilliancy of their bead-work embroidery” on women’s clothing (1851, Book 3:384), and he included illustrations of beadwork on a needle case, woman’s skirt, cradleboard, heart-shaped pincushion, and work bag, the forerunner of a modern purse. He reported that in 1849 he had purchased five varieties of work bags as well as three varieties of pin cushions and five varieties of needle books (Morgan 1850, 57).
(Figure 4.1). While they sold their goods at nearby Montreal, the Mohawks also traveled extensively throughout North America to sell at fairs, exhibitions, wild west shows, and Indian medicine shows. Some even sold their beadwork when they traveled to England to perform Indian dances at Earls Court, an exhibition ground in London. Photographs taken in 1905 show these performers attired in clothing decorated with Mohawk beadwork.
The Iroquois tradition of beadwork continued to evolve in the nineteenth century, and by 1860 Mohawks near Montreal and Tuscaroras near Niagara Falls were creating elaborate pincushions, purses, and wall hangings adorned with raised beadwork. Despite the similarity of items created, the two geographic areas developed different styles of beadwork (Table 4.1). Throughout the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, at the height of beadwork production, the Tuscaroras sold their beadwork mostly at Niagara Falls, on their reservation, and at the New York State Fair. They preferred to use small clear and white beads. During this same period, the Mohawks used larger clear beads and also employed red, blue, green, and yellow beads on most of their early pieces
Figure 4.1. Two needle cases that illustrate differences in nineteenth- century Mohawk (left) and Niagara (right) beadwork.
My personal family experience illustrates typical Iroquois beadwork transactions in the twentieth century. My story starts in 1903 when my grandmother went to the Afton Fair, a small agricultural fair in central New York. She took my nine-year-old father, but his sister, then eleven, was sick and could not go. My grandmother brought her home a present from the fair. It was a beauti- ful pink satin-covered bird-shaped pincushion that sparkled with light green beads (Figure 4.2). My aunt treasured this bird throughout her long life and displayed it proudly in her china cabinet, where I saw it when I was a child. At her death this cherished heirloom was passed on to her daughter who later donated it to the Afton Historical Society in Chenango County, where it is presently on view.
My research indicates that this bird was made by a skilled Mohawk beadworker from a Mohawk community located near Montreal and several hundred miles from the Afton Fair. This pincushion probably got to the fair with a group of Mohawks who traveled by train or wagon to perform at fairs, medicine shows, and exhibi- tions. While at these venues, they also sold their hand- made baskets and beadwork.
In 1958 I bought a small red heart-shaped pincushion at a booth in the Indian Village at the New York State Fair, which is held near Syracuse (Figure 4.3). It was a present for my mother, who displayed it prominently on her bed- room dresser for the next twenty-five years until I inher- ited it. Mary Lou Printup, a leading Tuscarora sewer, later identified this pincushion as one she had made. She, like most Tuscarora beadworkers prefer to be called “sewers,” a term not popular with some other Iroquois beadwork- ers. In my research and writing, I use the word “bead- worker” to refer to all except those individuals who specifically prefer to be called “sewers.”
When I purchased the red heart I had no idea that this pincushion had anything in common with the bird that my grandmother acquired fifty-five years earlier. I knew that I wanted to get something special for my mother, and this pincushion was special because it was beautiful and made by a native artist. In buying it I shared something with my grandmother, who died before I was born, that is, the purchase of a piece of Iroquois beadwork. Most likely the purchase of the bird was my German-born grandmother’s only interaction with a Haudenosaunee woman, and my purchase at the State Fair was my first interaction with a Tuscarora sewer, the first of many.
In a similar manner Iroquois beadworkers and their non- Indian customers, often tourists or attendees at a public entertainment venue, have been brought together by bead-work for over two centuries. These transactions undoubtedly number in the tens of thousands.1 During honeymoon trips to Niagara Falls and visits to agricultural fairs, exhibitions, and other attractions, people purchased Iroquois beadwork as mementos to remember these places and experiences. The beads often form designs featuring birds and flowers, natural themes that appealed to the Victorian women who drove the market of souvenir sales in the nine- teenth century. Studies by Beverly Gordon (1984; 1986) and Ruth B. Phillips (1998) describe the souvenir trade and point out the importance of these items to the people on both sides of the transactions.
Souvenir beadwork was so treasured that the pieces were frequently kept in cedar chests or keepsake boxes. Therefore, when unwrapped one hundred or more years later, they are often in pristine condition. Ironically, few contemporary beadworkers have samples of their ancestors’ work because it was usually made for sale to strangers, although some beadwork was created as gifts for family and friends.
Because most pieces were made for sale to tourists, many people have dismissed Iroquois beadwork as “souvenir trinkets” not important enough to collect, study, or exhibit. In fact, they are often called whimsies, a term that I believe trivializes them and diminishes their artistic and cultural value. But within the last two decades Iroquois beadwork has become the subject of serious study and museum exhibitions. At least four traveling exhibits of Iroquois beadwork have been installed in over a dozen museums and seen by thousands of museum visitors in the United States and Canada since 1999.2 This scholarly recognition has resulted in an increased appreciation of these beadwork creations and the artists who made them. What were considered curious tourist souvenirs when they were made are now generating increased respect from both the general public and the Haudenosaunee.
ry pieces, the back is a colorful calico. Some pieces, mainly in the Niagara Tradition, have a silk or cotton binding around their perimeters to cover the cut edges and attach the front and back fabrics. Tight beadwork on the edging often binds Mohawk pieces together so a cloth binding is not necessary. Flat purses as well as fist and box purses are constructed in the same manner, with cardboard as the base.
Contemporary beadworkers see their work as a signif- icant part of Haudenosaunee culture and an important link to the past. In Haudenosaunee communities bead- workers are admired as continuing a revered tradition. Although there are a few male beadworkers, the majority are women, and in a matrilineal-society with powerful clan matrons, the economic benefit of beadwork sales increases the influence of the women even more.
Pincushions were usually stuffed with sawdust, but sweet grass, cotton, cattail fluff, newspapers, and poly- ester have also been used. Contemporary craftsmen remember that their mothers preferred pine sawdust because of the nice aroma.4 Small strawberry-shaped pin- cushions are traditionally filled with emery, used to sharpen and polish needles. Velvet and twill-covered pic- ture frames and other wall hangings on cardboard bases have polished cotton backs on earlier pieces and calico on more recent ones. European glass beads were often aug- mented with metal sequins on nineteenth-century pieces and with plastic sequins and other plastic novelty beads since the late twentieth century. Bone and shell beads and leather, which are often used in other American Indian beadwork, rarely occur in Iroquois beadwork.
Iroquois beadwork is still sold at Niagara Falls, the New York State Fair, and several pow wows and festivals in the northeast; the methods of beadwork distribution have changed little over two hundred years. The bead-work itself, however, has changed tremendously. Over the last two centuries the styles of beadwork have evolved from simple small pincushions and purses to highly elaborate shapes, becoming works of art in the tra- ditional sense. The beads selected have progressed from the very small seed beads used around 1800 to the larger seed beads of 1900 and finally, by 2000, to a wider variety of bead sizes and colors.
The most common form of Iroquois beadwork, and the form most easily recognizable by people who are not familiar with Iroquois beadwork, is the flat black purse or bag featuring identical colorful, beaded floral designs on both sides. Most flat bags have flaps on both sides, but the opening is across the top where the two sides meet. The face fabric is usually black or very dark brown velvet, and the interior is often a light-colored linen or polished cot- ton. A binding, usually red, is attached around the closed sides of the purses. A beaded fringe is sometimes added. The fringe is merely sewn to the binding and does not hold the two sides of the bag together; it is purely deco- rative. The flaps usually are edged with white beads that are larger than the beads that outline the flaps and body (Figure 4.4). The flaps and body are sometimes outlined with short parallel lines like a stockade. The faces of the flap and body are covered by stylized flowers in shades of blue, red, yellow, and white connected with green stems, which are sometimes striped in two shades of green. Some bags feature a small slit pocket under one of the flaps. It may have been meant to hold a comb or mirror.
Iroquois beadwork remains a unique art form distin- guished by several characteristics found only in work created by Haudenosaunee beadworkers. Iroquois beadwork features a design in glass beads that have been sewn on a fabric that is stretched over a backing of cardboard or cloth lining. The materials used in the beadwork are predominately small seed beads, cloth, cardboard, paper, and in pincushions, a stuffing. The beads are sewn onto the fabric in geometric or natural designs using waxed, doubled white thread.3 The beads are usually sewn over a paper pattern that remains in place under the beaded elements. Although not practiced at all times in the histo- ry of Iroquois beadwork, the most distinctive trait is that the beads are raised above the surface of the cloth face. Some pieces have raised beaded elements that are over an inch high. The beads are raised by putting more beads on the thread than is needed to span the pattern so that the beads form an arch above the pattern. The amount of extra beads determines how high the arches are, that is, how much the beadwork is raised. Various velvets were and still are the favored fabrics, but other fabrics such as wool, twills, silk, and satin are also used. Pincushions often have beaded velvet fronts and polished cotton backs. Polished cotton is a shiny stiff material that is also referred to as chintz or oilcloth. On the majority of late twentieth-century and contemporary twenty-first-century...
Preserving Tradition and Understanding the Past: Papers from the Conference on Iroquois Research, 2001–2005, Edited by Christine Sternberg Patrick, New York State Museum Record 1 © 2010, by The University of the State of New York, The State Education Department, Albany, New York 12230. All rights reserved. Click on top link for more.
Iroquois beadwork Glengary cap on display in the halls of the Parliament Buildings. www.flickr.com/photos/21728045@N08/4722454135/in/photostr...
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glengarry
Background:
www.nysm.nysed.gov/publications/record/vol_01/pdfs/CH04El...
IROQUOIS BEADWORK:
A Haudenosaunee Tradition and Art - Dolores Elliott
The Iroquois tradition of raised beadwork began in west- ern New York in the late eighteenth century. It is slightly older than the other great North American Indian bead- working tradition that the Lakota, Cheyenne, and other people of the Plains developed. Raised beadwork is unique to the Haudenosaunee; it is made nowhere else in the world. The Senecas, who decorated clothes, sashes, and small pincushions with small glass beads in the eigh- teenth century, probably invented the style of Iroquois beadwork that still exists today. They were making bead- ed pincushions by 1799 and purses by 1807. In the mid- nineteenth century, ethnohistorian Lewis H. Morgan noted in his League of the Ho-de’-no-sau-see, or Iroquois the “delicacy, even brilliancy of their bead-work embroidery” on women’s clothing (1851, Book 3:384), and he included illustrations of beadwork on a needle case, woman’s skirt, cradleboard, heart-shaped pincushion, and work bag, the forerunner of a modern purse. He reported that in 1849 he had purchased five varieties of work bags as well as three varieties of pin cushions and five varieties of needle books (Morgan 1850, 57).
(Figure 4.1). While they sold their goods at nearby Montreal, the Mohawks also traveled extensively throughout North America to sell at fairs, exhibitions, wild west shows, and Indian medicine shows. Some even sold their beadwork when they traveled to England to perform Indian dances at Earls Court, an exhibition ground in London. Photographs taken in 1905 show these performers attired in clothing decorated with Mohawk beadwork.
The Iroquois tradition of beadwork continued to evolve in the nineteenth century, and by 1860 Mohawks near Montreal and Tuscaroras near Niagara Falls were creating elaborate pincushions, purses, and wall hangings adorned with raised beadwork. Despite the similarity of items created, the two geographic areas developed different styles of beadwork (Table 4.1). Throughout the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, at the height of beadwork production, the Tuscaroras sold their beadwork mostly at Niagara Falls, on their reservation, and at the New York State Fair. They preferred to use small clear and white beads. During this same period, the Mohawks used larger clear beads and also employed red, blue, green, and yellow beads on most of their early pieces
Figure 4.1. Two needle cases that illustrate differences in nineteenth- century Mohawk (left) and Niagara (right) beadwork.
My personal family experience illustrates typical Iroquois beadwork transactions in the twentieth century. My story starts in 1903 when my grandmother went to the Afton Fair, a small agricultural fair in central New York. She took my nine-year-old father, but his sister, then eleven, was sick and could not go. My grandmother brought her home a present from the fair. It was a beauti- ful pink satin-covered bird-shaped pincushion that sparkled with light green beads (Figure 4.2). My aunt treasured this bird throughout her long life and displayed it proudly in her china cabinet, where I saw it when I was a child. At her death this cherished heirloom was passed on to her daughter who later donated it to the Afton Historical Society in Chenango County, where it is presently on view.
My research indicates that this bird was made by a skilled Mohawk beadworker from a Mohawk community located near Montreal and several hundred miles from the Afton Fair. This pincushion probably got to the fair with a group of Mohawks who traveled by train or wagon to perform at fairs, medicine shows, and exhibi- tions. While at these venues, they also sold their hand- made baskets and beadwork.
In 1958 I bought a small red heart-shaped pincushion at a booth in the Indian Village at the New York State Fair, which is held near Syracuse (Figure 4.3). It was a present for my mother, who displayed it prominently on her bed- room dresser for the next twenty-five years until I inher- ited it. Mary Lou Printup, a leading Tuscarora sewer, later identified this pincushion as one she had made. She, like most Tuscarora beadworkers prefer to be called “sewers,” a term not popular with some other Iroquois beadwork- ers. In my research and writing, I use the word “bead- worker” to refer to all except those individuals who specifically prefer to be called “sewers.”
When I purchased the red heart I had no idea that this pincushion had anything in common with the bird that my grandmother acquired fifty-five years earlier. I knew that I wanted to get something special for my mother, and this pincushion was special because it was beautiful and made by a native artist. In buying it I shared something with my grandmother, who died before I was born, that is, the purchase of a piece of Iroquois beadwork. Most likely the purchase of the bird was my German-born grandmother’s only interaction with a Haudenosaunee woman, and my purchase at the State Fair was my first interaction with a Tuscarora sewer, the first of many.
In a similar manner Iroquois beadworkers and their non- Indian customers, often tourists or attendees at a public entertainment venue, have been brought together by bead-work for over two centuries. These transactions undoubtedly number in the tens of thousands.1 During honeymoon trips to Niagara Falls and visits to agricultural fairs, exhibitions, and other attractions, people purchased Iroquois beadwork as mementos to remember these places and experiences. The beads often form designs featuring birds and flowers, natural themes that appealed to the Victorian women who drove the market of souvenir sales in the nine- teenth century. Studies by Beverly Gordon (1984; 1986) and Ruth B. Phillips (1998) describe the souvenir trade and point out the importance of these items to the people on both sides of the transactions.
Souvenir beadwork was so treasured that the pieces were frequently kept in cedar chests or keepsake boxes. Therefore, when unwrapped one hundred or more years later, they are often in pristine condition. Ironically, few contemporary beadworkers have samples of their ancestors’ work because it was usually made for sale to strangers, although some beadwork was created as gifts for family and friends.
Because most pieces were made for sale to tourists, many people have dismissed Iroquois beadwork as “souvenir trinkets” not important enough to collect, study, or exhibit. In fact, they are often called whimsies, a term that I believe trivializes them and diminishes their artistic and cultural value. But within the last two decades Iroquois beadwork has become the subject of serious study and museum exhibitions. At least four traveling exhibits of Iroquois beadwork have been installed in over a dozen museums and seen by thousands of museum visitors in the United States and Canada since 1999.2 This scholarly recognition has resulted in an increased appreciation of these beadwork creations and the artists who made them. What were considered curious tourist souvenirs when they were made are now generating increased respect from both the general public and the Haudenosaunee.
ry pieces, the back is a colorful calico. Some pieces, mainly in the Niagara Tradition, have a silk or cotton binding around their perimeters to cover the cut edges and attach the front and back fabrics. Tight beadwork on the edging often binds Mohawk pieces together so a cloth binding is not necessary. Flat purses as well as fist and box purses are constructed in the same manner, with cardboard as the base.
Contemporary beadworkers see their work as a signif- icant part of Haudenosaunee culture and an important link to the past. In Haudenosaunee communities bead- workers are admired as continuing a revered tradition. Although there are a few male beadworkers, the majority are women, and in a matrilineal-society with powerful clan matrons, the economic benefit of beadwork sales increases the influence of the women even more.
Pincushions were usually stuffed with sawdust, but sweet grass, cotton, cattail fluff, newspapers, and poly- ester have also been used. Contemporary craftsmen remember that their mothers preferred pine sawdust because of the nice aroma.4 Small strawberry-shaped pin- cushions are traditionally filled with emery, used to sharpen and polish needles. Velvet and twill-covered pic- ture frames and other wall hangings on cardboard bases have polished cotton backs on earlier pieces and calico on more recent ones. European glass beads were often aug- mented with metal sequins on nineteenth-century pieces and with plastic sequins and other plastic novelty beads since the late twentieth century. Bone and shell beads and leather, which are often used in other American Indian beadwork, rarely occur in Iroquois beadwork.
Iroquois beadwork is still sold at Niagara Falls, the New York State Fair, and several pow wows and festivals in the northeast; the methods of beadwork distribution have changed little over two hundred years. The bead-work itself, however, has changed tremendously. Over the last two centuries the styles of beadwork have evolved from simple small pincushions and purses to highly elaborate shapes, becoming works of art in the tra- ditional sense. The beads selected have progressed from the very small seed beads used around 1800 to the larger seed beads of 1900 and finally, by 2000, to a wider variety of bead sizes and colors.
The most common form of Iroquois beadwork, and the form most easily recognizable by people who are not familiar with Iroquois beadwork, is the flat black purse or bag featuring identical colorful, beaded floral designs on both sides. Most flat bags have flaps on both sides, but the opening is across the top where the two sides meet. The face fabric is usually black or very dark brown velvet, and the interior is often a light-colored linen or polished cot- ton. A binding, usually red, is attached around the closed sides of the purses. A beaded fringe is sometimes added. The fringe is merely sewn to the binding and does not hold the two sides of the bag together; it is purely deco- rative. The flaps usually are edged with white beads that are larger than the beads that outline the flaps and body (Figure 4.4). The flaps and body are sometimes outlined with short parallel lines like a stockade. The faces of the flap and body are covered by stylized flowers in shades of blue, red, yellow, and white connected with green stems, which are sometimes striped in two shades of green. Some bags feature a small slit pocket under one of the flaps. It may have been meant to hold a comb or mirror.
Iroquois beadwork remains a unique art form distin- guished by several characteristics found only in work created by Haudenosaunee beadworkers. Iroquois beadwork features a design in glass beads that have been sewn on a fabric that is stretched over a backing of cardboard or cloth lining. The materials used in the beadwork are predominately small seed beads, cloth, cardboard, paper, and in pincushions, a stuffing. The beads are sewn onto the fabric in geometric or natural designs using waxed, doubled white thread.3 The beads are usually sewn over a paper pattern that remains in place under the beaded elements. Although not practiced at all times in the histo- ry of Iroquois beadwork, the most distinctive trait is that the beads are raised above the surface of the cloth face. Some pieces have raised beaded elements that are over an inch high. The beads are raised by putting more beads on the thread than is needed to span the pattern so that the beads form an arch above the pattern. The amount of extra beads determines how high the arches are, that is, how much the beadwork is raised. Various velvets were and still are the favored fabrics, but other fabrics such as wool, twills, silk, and satin are also used. Pincushions often have beaded velvet fronts and polished cotton backs. Polished cotton is a shiny stiff material that is also referred to as chintz or oilcloth. On the majority of late twentieth-century and contemporary twenty-first-century...
Preserving Tradition and Understanding the Past: Papers from the Conference on Iroquois Research, 2001–2005, Edited by Christine Sternberg Patrick, New York State Museum Record 1 © 2010, by The University of the State of New York, The State Education Department, Albany, New York 12230. All rights reserved. Click on top link for more.
This was for sale on eBay today.
Background:
www.nysm.nysed.gov/publications/record/vol_01/pdfs/CH04El...
IROQUOIS BEADWORK:
A Haudenosaunee Tradition and Art
Dolores Elliott
The Iroquois tradition of raised beadwork began in west- ern New York in the late eighteenth century. It is slightly older than the other great North American Indian bead- working tradition that the Lakota, Cheyenne, and other people of the Plains developed. Raised beadwork is unique to the Haudenosaunee; it is made nowhere else in the world. The Senecas, who decorated clothes, sashes, and small pincushions with small glass beads in the eigh- teenth century, probably invented the style of Iroquois beadwork that still exists today. They were making bead- ed pincushions by 1799 and purses by 1807. In the mid- nineteenth century, ethnohistorian Lewis H. Morgan noted in his League of the Ho-de’-no-sau-see, or Iroquois the “delicacy, even brilliancy of their bead-work embroidery” on women’s clothing (1851, Book 3:384), and he included illustrations of beadwork on a needle case, woman’s skirt, cradleboard, heart-shaped pincushion, and work bag, the forerunner of a modern purse. He reported that in 1849 he had purchased five varieties of work bags as well as three varieties of pin cushions and five varieties of needle books (Morgan 1850, 57).
(Figure 4.1). While they sold their goods at nearby Montreal, the Mohawks also traveled extensively throughout North America to sell at fairs, exhibitions, wild west shows, and Indian medicine shows. Some even sold their beadwork when they traveled to England to perform Indian dances at Earls Court, an exhibition ground in London. Photographs taken in 1905 show these performers attired in clothing decorated with Mohawk beadwork.
The Iroquois tradition of beadwork continued to evolve in the nineteenth century, and by 1860 Mohawks near Montreal and Tuscaroras near Niagara Falls were creating elaborate pincushions, purses, and wall hangings adorned with raised beadwork. Despite the similarity of items created, the two geographic areas developed different styles of beadwork (Table 4.1). Throughout the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, at the height of beadwork production, the Tuscaroras sold their beadwork mostly at Niagara Falls, on their reservation, and at the New York State Fair. They preferred to use small clear and white beads. During this same period, the Mohawks used larger clear beads and also employed red, blue, green, and yellow beads on most of their early pieces
Figure 4.1. Two needle cases that illustrate differences in nineteenth- century Mohawk (left) and Niagara (right) beadwork.
My personal family experience illustrates typical Iroquois beadwork transactions in the twentieth century. My story starts in 1903 when my grandmother went to the Afton Fair, a small agricultural fair in central New York. She took my nine-year-old father, but his sister, then eleven, was sick and could not go. My grandmother brought her home a present from the fair. It was a beauti- ful pink satin-covered bird-shaped pincushion that sparkled with light green beads (Figure 4.2). My aunt treasured this bird throughout her long life and displayed it proudly in her china cabinet, where I saw it when I was a child. At her death this cherished heirloom was passed on to her daughter who later donated it to the Afton Historical Society in Chenango County, where it is presently on view.
My research indicates that this bird was made by a skilled Mohawk beadworker from a Mohawk community located near Montreal and several hundred miles from the Afton Fair. This pincushion probably got to the fair with a group of Mohawks who traveled by train or wagon to perform at fairs, medicine shows, and exhibi- tions. While at these venues, they also sold their hand- made baskets and beadwork.
In 1958 I bought a small red heart-shaped pincushion at a booth in the Indian Village at the New York State Fair, which is held near Syracuse (Figure 4.3). It was a present for my mother, who displayed it prominently on her bed- room dresser for the next twenty-five years until I inher- ited it. Mary Lou Printup, a leading Tuscarora sewer, later identified this pincushion as one she had made. She, like most Tuscarora beadworkers prefer to be called “sewers,” a term not popular with some other Iroquois beadwork- ers. In my research and writing, I use the word “bead- worker” to refer to all except those individuals who specifically prefer to be called “sewers.”
When I purchased the red heart I had no idea that this pincushion had anything in common with the bird that my grandmother acquired fifty-five years earlier. I knew that I wanted to get something special for my mother, and this pincushion was special because it was beautiful and made by a native artist. In buying it I shared something with my grandmother, who died before I was born, that is, the purchase of a piece of Iroquois beadwork. Most likely the purchase of the bird was my German-born grandmother’s only interaction with a Haudenosaunee woman, and my purchase at the State Fair was my first interaction with a Tuscarora sewer, the first of many.
In a similar manner Iroquois beadworkers and their non- Indian customers, often tourists or attendees at a public entertainment venue, have been brought together by bead-work for over two centuries. These transactions undoubtedly number in the tens of thousands.1 During honeymoon trips to Niagara Falls and visits to agricultural fairs, exhibitions, and other attractions, people purchased Iroquois beadwork as mementos to remember these places and experiences. The beads often form designs featuring birds and flowers, natural themes that appealed to the Victorian women who drove the market of souvenir sales in the nine- teenth century. Studies by Beverly Gordon (1984; 1986) and Ruth B. Phillips (1998) describe the souvenir trade and point out the importance of these items to the people on both sides of the transactions.
Souvenir beadwork was so treasured that the pieces were frequently kept in cedar chests or keepsake boxes. Therefore, when unwrapped one hundred or more years later, they are often in pristine condition. Ironically, few contemporary beadworkers have samples of their ancestors’ work because it was usually made for sale to strangers, although some beadwork was created as gifts for family and friends.
Because most pieces were made for sale to tourists, many people have dismissed Iroquois beadwork as “souvenir trinkets” not important enough to collect, study, or exhibit. In fact, they are often called whimsies, a term that I believe trivializes them and diminishes their artistic and cultural value. But within the last two decades Iroquois beadwork has become the subject of serious study and museum exhibitions. At least four traveling exhibits of Iroquois beadwork have been installed in over a dozen museums and seen by thousands of museum visitors in the United States and Canada since 1999.2 This scholarly recognition has resulted in an increased appreciation of these beadwork creations and the artists who made them. What were considered curious tourist souvenirs when they were made are now generating increased respect from both the general public and the Haudenosaunee.
ry pieces, the back is a colorful calico. Some pieces, mainly in the Niagara Tradition, have a silk or cotton binding around their perimeters to cover the cut edges and attach the front and back fabrics. Tight beadwork on the edging often binds Mohawk pieces together so a cloth binding is not necessary. Flat purses as well as fist and box purses are constructed in the same manner, with cardboard as the base.
Contemporary beadworkers see their work as a signif- icant part of Haudenosaunee culture and an important link to the past. In Haudenosaunee communities bead- workers are admired as continuing a revered tradition. Although there are a few male beadworkers, the majority are women, and in a matrilineal-society with powerful clan matrons, the economic benefit of beadwork sales increases the influence of the women even more.
Pincushions were usually stuffed with sawdust, but sweet grass, cotton, cattail fluff, newspapers, and poly- ester have also been used. Contemporary craftsmen remember that their mothers preferred pine sawdust because of the nice aroma.4 Small strawberry-shaped pin- cushions are traditionally filled with emery, used to sharpen and polish needles. Velvet and twill-covered pic- ture frames and other wall hangings on cardboard bases have polished cotton backs on earlier pieces and calico on more recent ones. European glass beads were often aug- mented with metal sequins on nineteenth-century pieces and with plastic sequins and other plastic novelty beads since the late twentieth century. Bone and shell beads and leather, which are often used in other American Indian beadwork, rarely occur in Iroquois beadwork.
Iroquois beadwork is still sold at Niagara Falls, the New York State Fair, and several pow wows and festivals in the northeast; the methods of beadwork distribution have changed little over two hundred years. The bead-work itself, however, has changed tremendously. Over the last two centuries the styles of beadwork have evolved from simple small pincushions and purses to highly elaborate shapes, becoming works of art in the tra- ditional sense. The beads selected have progressed from the very small seed beads used around 1800 to the larger seed beads of 1900 and finally, by 2000, to a wider variety of bead sizes and colours.
The most common form of Iroquois beadwork, and the form most easily recognizable by people who are not familiar with Iroquois beadwork, is the flat black purse or bag featuring identical colorful, beaded floral designs on both sides. Most flat bags have flaps on both sides, but the opening is across the top where the two sides meet. The face fabric is usually black or very dark brown velvet, and the interior is often a light-colored linen or polished cot- ton. A binding, usually red, is attached around the closed sides of the purses. A beaded fringe is sometimes added. The fringe is merely sewn to the binding and does not hold the two sides of the bag together; it is purely deco- rative. The flaps usually are edged with white beads that are larger than the beads that outline the flaps and body (Figure 4.4). The flaps and body are sometimes outlined with short parallel lines like a stockade. The faces of the flap and body are covered by stylized flowers in shades of blue, red, yellow, and white connected with green stems, which are sometimes striped in two shades of green. Some bags feature a small slit pocket under one of the flaps. It may have been meant to hold a comb or mirror.
Iroquois beadwork remains a unique art form distin- guished by several characteristics found only in work created by Haudenosaunee beadworkers. Iroquois beadwork features a design in glass beads that have been sewn on a fabric that is stretched over a backing of cardboard or cloth lining. The materials used in the beadwork are predominately small seed beads, cloth, cardboard, paper, and in pincushions, a stuffing. The beads are sewn onto the fabric in geometric or natural designs using waxed, doubled white thread.3 The beads are usually sewn over a paper pattern that remains in place under the beaded elements. Although not practiced at all times in the histo- ry of Iroquois beadwork, the most distinctive trait is that the beads are raised above the surface of the cloth face. Some pieces have raised beaded elements that are over an inch high. The beads are raised by putting more beads on the thread than is needed to span the pattern so that the beads form an arch above the pattern. The amount of extra beads determines how high the arches are, that is, how much the beadwork is raised. Various velvets were and still are the favored fabrics, but other fabrics such as wool, twills, silk, and satin are also used. Pincushions often have beaded velvet fronts and polished cotton backs. Polished cotton is a shiny stiff material that is also referred to as chintz or oilcloth. On the majority of late twentieth-century and contemporary twenty-first-century...
Preserving Tradition and Understanding the Past: Papers from the Conference on Iroquois Research, 2001–2005, Edited by Christine Sternberg Patrick, New York State Museum Record 1 © 2010, by The University of the State of New York, The State Education Department, Albany, New York 12230. All rights reserved.
This was for sale on eBay today…. including an owl.
Background:
www.nysm.nysed.gov/publications/record/vol_01/pdfs/CH04El...
IROQUOIS BEADWORK:
A Haudenosaunee Tradition and Art
Dolores Elliott
The Iroquois tradition of raised beadwork began in west- ern New York in the late eighteenth century. It is slightly older than the other great North American Indian bead- working tradition that the Lakota, Cheyenne, and other people of the Plains developed. Raised beadwork is unique to the Haudenosaunee; it is made nowhere else in the world. The Senecas, who decorated clothes, sashes, and small pincushions with small glass beads in the eigh- teenth century, probably invented the style of Iroquois beadwork that still exists today. They were making bead- ed pincushions by 1799 and purses by 1807. In the mid- nineteenth century, ethnohistorian Lewis H. Morgan noted in his League of the Ho-de’-no-sau-see, or Iroquois the “delicacy, even brilliancy of their bead-work embroidery” on women’s clothing (1851, Book 3:384), and he included illustrations of beadwork on a needle case, woman’s skirt, cradleboard, heart-shaped pincushion, and work bag, the forerunner of a modern purse. He reported that in 1849 he had purchased five varieties of work bags as well as three varieties of pin cushions and five varieties of needle books (Morgan 1850, 57).
(Figure 4.1). While they sold their goods at nearby Montreal, the Mohawks also traveled extensively throughout North America to sell at fairs, exhibitions, wild west shows, and Indian medicine shows. Some even sold their beadwork when they traveled to England to perform Indian dances at Earls Court, an exhibition ground in London. Photographs taken in 1905 show these performers attired in clothing decorated with Mohawk beadwork.
The Iroquois tradition of beadwork continued to evolve in the nineteenth century, and by 1860 Mohawks near Montreal and Tuscaroras near Niagara Falls were creating elaborate pincushions, purses, and wall hangings adorned with raised beadwork. Despite the similarity of items created, the two geographic areas developed different styles of beadwork (Table 4.1). Throughout the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, at the height of beadwork production, the Tuscaroras sold their beadwork mostly at Niagara Falls, on their reservation, and at the New York State Fair. They preferred to use small clear and white beads. During this same period, the Mohawks used larger clear beads and also employed red, blue, green, and yellow beads on most of their early pieces
Figure 4.1. Two needle cases that illustrate differences in nineteenth- century Mohawk (left) and Niagara (right) beadwork.
My personal family experience illustrates typical Iroquois beadwork transactions in the twentieth century. My story starts in 1903 when my grandmother went to the Afton Fair, a small agricultural fair in central New York. She took my nine-year-old father, but his sister, then eleven, was sick and could not go. My grandmother brought her home a present from the fair. It was a beauti- ful pink satin-covered bird-shaped pincushion that sparkled with light green beads (Figure 4.2). My aunt treasured this bird throughout her long life and displayed it proudly in her china cabinet, where I saw it when I was a child. At her death this cherished heirloom was passed on to her daughter who later donated it to the Afton Historical Society in Chenango County, where it is presently on view.
My research indicates that this bird was made by a skilled Mohawk beadworker from a Mohawk community located near Montreal and several hundred miles from the Afton Fair. This pincushion probably got to the fair with a group of Mohawks who traveled by train or wagon to perform at fairs, medicine shows, and exhibi- tions. While at these venues, they also sold their hand- made baskets and beadwork.
In 1958 I bought a small red heart-shaped pincushion at a booth in the Indian Village at the New York State Fair, which is held near Syracuse (Figure 4.3). It was a present for my mother, who displayed it prominently on her bed- room dresser for the next twenty-five years until I inher- ited it. Mary Lou Printup, a leading Tuscarora sewer, later identified this pincushion as one she had made. She, like most Tuscarora beadworkers prefer to be called “sewers,” a term not popular with some other Iroquois beadwork- ers. In my research and writing, I use the word “bead- worker” to refer to all except those individuals who specifically prefer to be called “sewers.”
When I purchased the red heart I had no idea that this pincushion had anything in common with the bird that my grandmother acquired fifty-five years earlier. I knew that I wanted to get something special for my mother, and this pincushion was special because it was beautiful and made by a native artist. In buying it I shared something with my grandmother, who died before I was born, that is, the purchase of a piece of Iroquois beadwork. Most likely the purchase of the bird was my German-born grandmother’s only interaction with a Haudenosaunee woman, and my purchase at the State Fair was my first interaction with a Tuscarora sewer, the first of many.
In a similar manner Iroquois beadworkers and their non- Indian customers, often tourists or attendees at a public entertainment venue, have been brought together by bead-work for over two centuries. These transactions undoubtedly number in the tens of thousands.1 During honeymoon trips to Niagara Falls and visits to agricultural fairs, exhibitions, and other attractions, people purchased Iroquois beadwork as mementos to remember these places and experiences. The beads often form designs featuring birds and flowers, natural themes that appealed to the Victorian women who drove the market of souvenir sales in the nine- teenth century. Studies by Beverly Gordon (1984; 1986) and Ruth B. Phillips (1998) describe the souvenir trade and point out the importance of these items to the people on both sides of the transactions.
Souvenir beadwork was so treasured that the pieces were frequently kept in cedar chests or keepsake boxes. Therefore, when unwrapped one hundred or more years later, they are often in pristine condition. Ironically, few contemporary beadworkers have samples of their ancestors’ work because it was usually made for sale to strangers, although some beadwork was created as gifts for family and friends.
Because most pieces were made for sale to tourists, many people have dismissed Iroquois beadwork as “souvenir trinkets” not important enough to collect, study, or exhibit. In fact, they are often called whimsies, a term that I believe trivializes them and diminishes their artistic and cultural value. But within the last two decades Iroquois beadwork has become the subject of serious study and museum exhibitions. At least four traveling exhibits of Iroquois beadwork have been installed in over a dozen museums and seen by thousands of museum visitors in the United States and Canada since 1999.2 This scholarly recognition has resulted in an increased appreciation of these beadwork creations and the artists who made them. What were considered curious tourist souvenirs when they were made are now generating increased respect from both the general public and the Haudenosaunee.
ry pieces, the back is a colorful calico. Some pieces, mainly in the Niagara Tradition, have a silk or cotton binding around their perimeters to cover the cut edges and attach the front and back fabrics. Tight beadwork on the edging often binds Mohawk pieces together so a cloth binding is not necessary. Flat purses as well as fist and box purses are constructed in the same manner, with cardboard as the base.
Contemporary beadworkers see their work as a signif- icant part of Haudenosaunee culture and an important link to the past. In Haudenosaunee communities bead- workers are admired as continuing a revered tradition. Although there are a few male beadworkers, the majority are women, and in a matrilineal-society with powerful clan matrons, the economic benefit of beadwork sales increases the influence of the women even more.
Pincushions were usually stuffed with sawdust, but sweet grass, cotton, cattail fluff, newspapers, and poly- ester have also been used. Contemporary craftsmen remember that their mothers preferred pine sawdust because of the nice aroma.4 Small strawberry-shaped pin- cushions are traditionally filled with emery, used to sharpen and polish needles. Velvet and twill-covered pic- ture frames and other wall hangings on cardboard bases have polished cotton backs on earlier pieces and calico on more recent ones. European glass beads were often aug- mented with metal sequins on nineteenth-century pieces and with plastic sequins and other plastic novelty beads since the late twentieth century. Bone and shell beads and leather, which are often used in other American Indian beadwork, rarely occur in Iroquois beadwork.
Iroquois beadwork is still sold at Niagara Falls, the New York State Fair, and several pow wows and festivals in the northeast; the methods of beadwork distribution have changed little over two hundred years. The bead-work itself, however, has changed tremendously. Over the last two centuries the styles of beadwork have evolved from simple small pincushions and purses to highly elaborate shapes, becoming works of art in the tra- ditional sense. The beads selected have progressed from the very small seed beads used around 1800 to the larger seed beads of 1900 and finally, by 2000, to a wider variety of bead sizes and colors.
The most common form of Iroquois beadwork, and the form most easily recognizable by people who are not familiar with Iroquois beadwork, is the flat black purse or bag featuring identical colorful, beaded floral designs on both sides. Most flat bags have flaps on both sides, but the opening is across the top where the two sides meet. The face fabric is usually black or very dark brown velvet, and the interior is often a light-colored linen or polished cot- ton. A binding, usually red, is attached around the closed sides of the purses. A beaded fringe is sometimes added. The fringe is merely sewn to the binding and does not hold the two sides of the bag together; it is purely deco- rative. The flaps usually are edged with white beads that are larger than the beads that outline the flaps and body (Figure 4.4). The flaps and body are sometimes outlined with short parallel lines like a stockade. The faces of the flap and body are covered by stylized flowers in shades of blue, red, yellow, and white connected with green stems, which are sometimes striped in two shades of green. Some bags feature a small slit pocket under one of the flaps. It may have been meant to hold a comb or mirror.
Iroquois beadwork remains a unique art form distin- guished by several characteristics found only in work created by Haudenosaunee beadworkers. Iroquois beadwork features a design in glass beads that have been sewn on a fabric that is stretched over a backing of cardboard or cloth lining. The materials used in the beadwork are predominately small seed beads, cloth, cardboard, paper, and in pincushions, a stuffing. The beads are sewn onto the fabric in geometric or natural designs using waxed, doubled white thread.3 The beads are usually sewn over a paper pattern that remains in place under the beaded elements. Although not practiced at all times in the histo- ry of Iroquois beadwork, the most distinctive trait is that the beads are raised above the surface of the cloth face. Some pieces have raised beaded elements that are over an inch high. The beads are raised by putting more beads on the thread than is needed to span the pattern so that the beads form an arch above the pattern. The amount of extra beads determines how high the arches are, that is, how much the beadwork is raised. Various velvets were and still are the favored fabrics, but other fabrics such as wool, twills, silk, and satin are also used. Pincushions often have beaded velvet fronts and polished cotton backs. Polished cotton is a shiny stiff material that is also referred to as chintz or oilcloth. On the majority of late twentieth-century and contemporary twenty-first-century...
Preserving Tradition and Understanding the Past: Papers from the Conference on Iroquois Research, 2001–2005, Edited by Christine Sternberg Patrick, New York State Museum Record 1 © 2010, by The University of the State of New York, The State Education Department, Albany, New York 12230. All rights reserved. Click on top link for more.
This was for sale on eBay today.
Background:
www.nysm.nysed.gov/publications/record/vol_01/pdfs/CH04El...
IROQUOIS BEADWORK:
A Haudenosaunee Tradition and Art
Dolores Elliott
The Iroquois tradition of raised beadwork began in west- ern New York in the late eighteenth century. It is slightly older than the other great North American Indian bead- working tradition that the Lakota, Cheyenne, and other people of the Plains developed. Raised beadwork is unique to the Haudenosaunee; it is made nowhere else in the world. The Senecas, who decorated clothes, sashes, and small pincushions with small glass beads in the eigh- teenth century, probably invented the style of Iroquois beadwork that still exists today. They were making bead- ed pincushions by 1799 and purses by 1807. In the mid- nineteenth century, ethnohistorian Lewis H. Morgan noted in his League of the Ho-de’-no-sau-see, or Iroquois the “delicacy, even brilliancy of their bead-work embroidery” on women’s clothing (1851, Book 3:384), and he included illustrations of beadwork on a needle case, woman’s skirt, cradleboard, heart-shaped pincushion, and work bag, the forerunner of a modern purse. He reported that in 1849 he had purchased five varieties of work bags as well as three varieties of pin cushions and five varieties of needle books (Morgan 1850, 57).
(Figure 4.1). While they sold their goods at nearby Montreal, the Mohawks also traveled extensively throughout North America to sell at fairs, exhibitions, wild west shows, and Indian medicine shows. Some even sold their beadwork when they traveled to England to perform Indian dances at Earls Court, an exhibition ground in London. Photographs taken in 1905 show these performers attired in clothing decorated with Mohawk beadwork.
The Iroquois tradition of beadwork continued to evolve in the nineteenth century, and by 1860 Mohawks near Montreal and Tuscaroras near Niagara Falls were creating elaborate pincushions, purses, and wall hangings adorned with raised beadwork. Despite the similarity of items created, the two geographic areas developed different styles of beadwork (Table 4.1). Throughout the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, at the height of beadwork production, the Tuscaroras sold their beadwork mostly at Niagara Falls, on their reservation, and at the New York State Fair. They preferred to use small clear and white beads. During this same period, the Mohawks used larger clear beads and also employed red, blue, green, and yellow beads on most of their early pieces
Figure 4.1. Two needle cases that illustrate differences in nineteenth- century Mohawk (left) and Niagara (right) beadwork.
My personal family experience illustrates typical Iroquois beadwork transactions in the twentieth century. My story starts in 1903 when my grandmother went to the Afton Fair, a small agricultural fair in central New York. She took my nine-year-old father, but his sister, then eleven, was sick and could not go. My grandmother brought her home a present from the fair. It was a beauti- ful pink satin-covered bird-shaped pincushion that sparkled with light green beads (Figure 4.2). My aunt treasured this bird throughout her long life and displayed it proudly in her china cabinet, where I saw it when I was a child. At her death this cherished heirloom was passed on to her daughter who later donated it to the Afton Historical Society in Chenango County, where it is presently on view.
My research indicates that this bird was made by a skilled Mohawk beadworker from a Mohawk community located near Montreal and several hundred miles from the Afton Fair. This pincushion probably got to the fair with a group of Mohawks who traveled by train or wagon to perform at fairs, medicine shows, and exhibi- tions. While at these venues, they also sold their hand- made baskets and beadwork.
In 1958 I bought a small red heart-shaped pincushion at a booth in the Indian Village at the New York State Fair, which is held near Syracuse (Figure 4.3). It was a present for my mother, who displayed it prominently on her bed- room dresser for the next twenty-five years until I inher- ited it. Mary Lou Printup, a leading Tuscarora sewer, later identified this pincushion as one she had made. She, like most Tuscarora beadworkers prefer to be called “sewers,” a term not popular with some other Iroquois beadwork- ers. In my research and writing, I use the word “bead- worker” to refer to all except those individuals who specifically prefer to be called “sewers.”
When I purchased the red heart I had no idea that this pincushion had anything in common with the bird that my grandmother acquired fifty-five years earlier. I knew that I wanted to get something special for my mother, and this pincushion was special because it was beautiful and made by a native artist. In buying it I shared something with my grandmother, who died before I was born, that is, the purchase of a piece of Iroquois beadwork. Most likely the purchase of the bird was my German-born grandmother’s only interaction with a Haudenosaunee woman, and my purchase at the State Fair was my first interaction with a Tuscarora sewer, the first of many.
In a similar manner Iroquois beadworkers and their non- Indian customers, often tourists or attendees at a public entertainment venue, have been brought together by bead-work for over two centuries. These transactions undoubtedly number in the tens of thousands.1 During honeymoon trips to Niagara Falls and visits to agricultural fairs, exhibitions, and other attractions, people purchased Iroquois beadwork as mementos to remember these places and experiences. The beads often form designs featuring birds and flowers, natural themes that appealed to the Victorian women who drove the market of souvenir sales in the nine- teenth century. Studies by Beverly Gordon (1984; 1986) and Ruth B. Phillips (1998) describe the souvenir trade and point out the importance of these items to the people on both sides of the transactions.
Souvenir beadwork was so treasured that the pieces were frequently kept in cedar chests or keepsake boxes. Therefore, when unwrapped one hundred or more years later, they are often in pristine condition. Ironically, few contemporary beadworkers have samples of their ancestors’ work because it was usually made for sale to strangers, although some beadwork was created as gifts for family and friends.
Because most pieces were made for sale to tourists, many people have dismissed Iroquois beadwork as “souvenir trinkets” not important enough to collect, study, or exhibit. In fact, they are often called whimsies, a term that I believe trivializes them and diminishes their artistic and cultural value. But within the last two decades Iroquois beadwork has become the subject of serious study and museum exhibitions. At least four traveling exhibits of Iroquois beadwork have been installed in over a dozen museums and seen by thousands of museum visitors in the United States and Canada since 1999.2 This scholarly recognition has resulted in an increased appreciation of these beadwork creations and the artists who made them. What were considered curious tourist souvenirs when they were made are now generating increased respect from both the general public and the Haudenosaunee.
ry pieces, the back is a colorful calico. Some pieces, mainly in the Niagara Tradition, have a silk or cotton binding around their perimeters to cover the cut edges and attach the front and back fabrics. Tight beadwork on the edging often binds Mohawk pieces together so a cloth binding is not necessary. Flat purses as well as fist and box purses are constructed in the same manner, with cardboard as the base.
Contemporary beadworkers see their work as a signif- icant part of Haudenosaunee culture and an important link to the past. In Haudenosaunee communities bead- workers are admired as continuing a revered tradition. Although there are a few male beadworkers, the majority are women, and in a matrilineal-society with powerful clan matrons, the economic benefit of beadwork sales increases the influence of the women even more.
Pincushions were usually stuffed with sawdust, but sweet grass, cotton, cattail fluff, newspapers, and poly- ester have also been used. Contemporary craftsmen remember that their mothers preferred pine sawdust because of the nice aroma.4 Small strawberry-shaped pin- cushions are traditionally filled with emery, used to sharpen and polish needles. Velvet and twill-covered pic- ture frames and other wall hangings on cardboard bases have polished cotton backs on earlier pieces and calico on more recent ones. European glass beads were often aug- mented with metal sequins on nineteenth-century pieces and with plastic sequins and other plastic novelty beads since the late twentieth century. Bone and shell beads and leather, which are often used in other American Indian beadwork, rarely occur in Iroquois beadwork.
Iroquois beadwork is still sold at Niagara Falls, the New York State Fair, and several pow wows and festivals in the northeast; the methods of beadwork distribution have changed little over two hundred years. The bead-work itself, however, has changed tremendously. Over the last two centuries the styles of beadwork have evolved from simple small pincushions and purses to highly elaborate shapes, becoming works of art in the tra- ditional sense. The beads selected have progressed from the very small seed beads used around 1800 to the larger seed beads of 1900 and finally, by 2000, to a wider variety of bead sizes and colors.
The most common form of Iroquois beadwork, and the form most easily recognizable by people who are not familiar with Iroquois beadwork, is the flat black purse or bag featuring identical colorful, beaded floral designs on both sides. Most flat bags have flaps on both sides, but the opening is across the top where the two sides meet. The face fabric is usually black or very dark brown velvet, and the interior is often a light-colored linen or polished cot- ton. A binding, usually red, is attached around the closed sides of the purses. A beaded fringe is sometimes added. The fringe is merely sewn to the binding and does not hold the two sides of the bag together; it is purely deco- rative. The flaps usually are edged with white beads that are larger than the beads that outline the flaps and body (Figure 4.4). The flaps and body are sometimes outlined with short parallel lines like a stockade. The faces of the flap and body are covered by stylized flowers in shades of blue, red, yellow, and white connected with green stems, which are sometimes striped in two shades of green. Some bags feature a small slit pocket under one of the flaps. It may have been meant to hold a comb or mirror.
Iroquois beadwork remains a unique art form distin- guished by several characteristics found only in work created by Haudenosaunee beadworkers. Iroquois beadwork features a design in glass beads that have been sewn on a fabric that is stretched over a backing of cardboard or cloth lining. The materials used in the beadwork are predominately small seed beads, cloth, cardboard, paper, and in pincushions, a stuffing. The beads are sewn onto the fabric in geometric or natural designs using waxed, doubled white thread.3 The beads are usually sewn over a paper pattern that remains in place under the beaded elements. Although not practiced at all times in the histo- ry of Iroquois beadwork, the most distinctive trait is that the beads are raised above the surface of the cloth face. Some pieces have raised beaded elements that are over an inch high. The beads are raised by putting more beads on the thread than is needed to span the pattern so that the beads form an arch above the pattern. The amount of extra beads determines how high the arches are, that is, how much the beadwork is raised. Various velvets were and still are the favored fabrics, but other fabrics such as wool, twills, silk, and satin are also used. Pincushions often have beaded velvet fronts and polished cotton backs. Polished cotton is a shiny stiff material that is also referred to as chintz or oilcloth. On the majority of late twentieth-century and contemporary twenty-first-century...
Preserving Tradition and Understanding the Past: Papers from the Conference on Iroquois Research, 2001–2005, Edited by Christine Sternberg Patrick, New York State Museum Record 1 © 2010, by The University of the State of New York, The State Education Department, Albany, New York 12230. All rights reserved. Click on top link for more.
I saw a similar piece of cluster beadwork in a display cabinet on Parliament Hill. It may have been made by the same individual.
www.flickr.com/photos/21728045@N08/3645513503/in/photostr...
Background:
www.nysm.nysed.gov/publications/record/vol_01/pdfs/CH04El...
IROQUOIS BEADWORK:
A Haudenosaunee Tradition and Art
Dolores Elliott
The Iroquois tradition of raised beadwork began in west- ern New York in the late eighteenth century. It is slightly older than the other great North American Indian bead- working tradition that the Lakota, Cheyenne, and other people of the Plains developed. Raised beadwork is unique to the Haudenosaunee; it is made nowhere else in the world. The Senecas, who decorated clothes, sashes, and small pincushions with small glass beads in the eigh- teenth century, probably invented the style of Iroquois beadwork that still exists today. They were making bead- ed pincushions by 1799 and purses by 1807. In the mid- nineteenth century, ethnohistorian Lewis H. Morgan noted in his League of the Ho-de’-no-sau-see, or Iroquois the “delicacy, even brilliancy of their bead-work embroidery” on women’s clothing (1851, Book 3:384), and he included illustrations of beadwork on a needle case, woman’s skirt, cradleboard, heart-shaped pincushion, and work bag, the forerunner of a modern purse. He reported that in 1849 he had purchased five varieties of work bags as well as three varieties of pin cushions and five varieties of needle books (Morgan 1850, 57).
(Figure 4.1). While they sold their goods at nearby Montreal, the Mohawks also traveled extensively throughout North America to sell at fairs, exhibitions, wild west shows, and Indian medicine shows. Some even sold their beadwork when they traveled to England to perform Indian dances at Earls Court, an exhibition ground in London. Photographs taken in 1905 show these performers attired in clothing decorated with Mohawk beadwork.
The Iroquois tradition of beadwork continued to evolve in the nineteenth century, and by 1860 Mohawks near Montreal and Tuscaroras near Niagara Falls were creating elaborate pincushions, purses, and wall hangings adorned with raised beadwork. Despite the similarity of items created, the two geographic areas developed different styles of beadwork (Table 4.1). Throughout the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, at the height of beadwork production, the Tuscaroras sold their beadwork mostly at Niagara Falls, on their reservation, and at the New York State Fair. They preferred to use small clear and white beads. During this same period, the Mohawks used larger clear beads and also employed red, blue, green, and yellow beads on most of their early pieces
Figure 4.1. Two needle cases that illustrate differences in nineteenth- century Mohawk (left) and Niagara (right) beadwork.
My personal family experience illustrates typical Iroquois beadwork transactions in the twentieth century. My story starts in 1903 when my grandmother went to the Afton Fair, a small agricultural fair in central New York. She took my nine-year-old father, but his sister, then eleven, was sick and could not go. My grandmother brought her home a present from the fair. It was a beauti- ful pink satin-covered bird-shaped pincushion that sparkled with light green beads (Figure 4.2). My aunt treasured this bird throughout her long life and displayed it proudly in her china cabinet, where I saw it when I was a child. At her death this cherished heirloom was passed on to her daughter who later donated it to the Afton Historical Society in Chenango County, where it is presently on view.
My research indicates that this bird was made by a skilled Mohawk beadworker from a Mohawk community located near Montreal and several hundred miles from the Afton Fair. This pincushion probably got to the fair with a group of Mohawks who traveled by train or wagon to perform at fairs, medicine shows, and exhibi- tions. While at these venues, they also sold their hand- made baskets and beadwork.
In 1958 I bought a small red heart-shaped pincushion at a booth in the Indian Village at the New York State Fair, which is held near Syracuse (Figure 4.3). It was a present for my mother, who displayed it prominently on her bed- room dresser for the next twenty-five years until I inher- ited it. Mary Lou Printup, a leading Tuscarora sewer, later identified this pincushion as one she had made. She, like most Tuscarora beadworkers prefer to be called “sewers,” a term not popular with some other Iroquois beadwork- ers. In my research and writing, I use the word “bead- worker” to refer to all except those individuals who specifically prefer to be called “sewers.”
When I purchased the red heart I had no idea that this pincushion had anything in common with the bird that my grandmother acquired fifty-five years earlier. I knew that I wanted to get something special for my mother, and this pincushion was special because it was beautiful and made by a native artist. In buying it I shared something with my grandmother, who died before I was born, that is, the purchase of a piece of Iroquois beadwork. Most likely the purchase of the bird was my German-born grandmother’s only interaction with a Haudenosaunee woman, and my purchase at the State Fair was my first interaction with a Tuscarora sewer, the first of many.
In a similar manner Iroquois beadworkers and their non- Indian customers, often tourists or attendees at a public entertainment venue, have been brought together by bead-work for over two centuries. These transactions undoubtedly number in the tens of thousands.1 During honeymoon trips to Niagara Falls and visits to agricultural fairs, exhibitions, and other attractions, people purchased Iroquois beadwork as mementos to remember these places and experiences. The beads often form designs featuring birds and flowers, natural themes that appealed to the Victorian women who drove the market of souvenir sales in the nine- teenth century. Studies by Beverly Gordon (1984; 1986) and Ruth B. Phillips (1998) describe the souvenir trade and point out the importance of these items to the people on both sides of the transactions.
Souvenir beadwork was so treasured that the pieces were frequently kept in cedar chests or keepsake boxes. Therefore, when unwrapped one hundred or more years later, they are often in pristine condition. Ironically, few contemporary beadworkers have samples of their ancestors’ work because it was usually made for sale to strangers, although some beadwork was created as gifts for family and friends.
Because most pieces were made for sale to tourists, many people have dismissed Iroquois beadwork as “souvenir trinkets” not important enough to collect, study, or exhibit. In fact, they are often called whimsies, a term that I believe trivializes them and diminishes their artistic and cultural value. But within the last two decades Iroquois beadwork has become the subject of serious study and museum exhibitions. At least four traveling exhibits of Iroquois beadwork have been installed in over a dozen museums and seen by thousands of museum visitors in the United States and Canada since 1999.2 This scholarly recognition has resulted in an increased appreciation of these beadwork creations and the artists who made them. What were considered curious tourist souvenirs when they were made are now generating increased respect from both the general public and the Haudenosaunee.
ry pieces, the back is a colorful calico. Some pieces, mainly in the Niagara Tradition, have a silk or cotton binding around their perimeters to cover the cut edges and attach the front and back fabrics. Tight beadwork on the edging often binds Mohawk pieces together so a cloth binding is not necessary. Flat purses as well as fist and box purses are constructed in the same manner, with cardboard as the base.
Contemporary beadworkers see their work as a signif- icant part of Haudenosaunee culture and an important link to the past. In Haudenosaunee communities bead- workers are admired as continuing a revered tradition. Although there are a few male beadworkers, the majority are women, and in a matrilineal-society with powerful clan matrons, the economic benefit of beadwork sales increases the influence of the women even more.
Pincushions were usually stuffed with sawdust, but sweet grass, cotton, cattail fluff, newspapers, and poly- ester have also been used. Contemporary craftsmen remember that their mothers preferred pine sawdust because of the nice aroma.4 Small strawberry-shaped pin- cushions are traditionally filled with emery, used to sharpen and polish needles. Velvet and twill-covered pic- ture frames and other wall hangings on cardboard bases have polished cotton backs on earlier pieces and calico on more recent ones. European glass beads were often aug- mented with metal sequins on nineteenth-century pieces and with plastic sequins and other plastic novelty beads since the late twentieth century. Bone and shell beads and leather, which are often used in other American Indian beadwork, rarely occur in Iroquois beadwork.
Iroquois beadwork is still sold at Niagara Falls, the New York State Fair, and several pow wows and festivals in the northeast; the methods of beadwork distribution have changed little over two hundred years. The bead-work itself, however, has changed tremendously. Over the last two centuries the styles of beadwork have evolved from simple small pincushions and purses to highly elaborate shapes, becoming works of art in the tra- ditional sense. The beads selected have progressed from the very small seed beads used around 1800 to the larger seed beads of 1900 and finally, by 2000, to a wider variety of bead sizes and colours.
The most common form of Iroquois beadwork, and the form most easily recognizable by people who are not familiar with Iroquois beadwork, is the flat black purse or bag featuring identical colorful, beaded floral designs on both sides. Most flat bags have flaps on both sides, but the opening is across the top where the two sides meet. The face fabric is usually black or very dark brown velvet, and the interior is often a light-colored linen or polished cot- ton. A binding, usually red, is attached around the closed sides of the purses. A beaded fringe is sometimes added. The fringe is merely sewn to the binding and does not hold the two sides of the bag together; it is purely deco- rative. The flaps usually are edged with white beads that are larger than the beads that outline the flaps and body (Figure 4.4). The flaps and body are sometimes outlined with short parallel lines like a stockade. The faces of the flap and body are covered by stylized flowers in shades of blue, red, yellow, and white connected with green stems, which are sometimes striped in two shades of green. Some bags feature a small slit pocket under one of the flaps. It may have been meant to hold a comb or mirror.
Iroquois beadwork remains a unique art form distin- guished by several characteristics found only in work created by Haudenosaunee beadworkers. Iroquois beadwork features a design in glass beads that have been sewn on a fabric that is stretched over a backing of cardboard or cloth lining. The materials used in the beadwork are predominately small seed beads, cloth, cardboard, paper, and in pincushions, a stuffing. The beads are sewn onto the fabric in geometric or natural designs using waxed, doubled white thread.3 The beads are usually sewn over a paper pattern that remains in place under the beaded elements. Although not practiced at all times in the histo- ry of Iroquois beadwork, the most distinctive trait is that the beads are raised above the surface of the cloth face. Some pieces have raised beaded elements that are over an inch high. The beads are raised by putting more beads on the thread than is needed to span the pattern so that the beads form an arch above the pattern. The amount of extra beads determines how high the arches are, that is, how much the beadwork is raised. Various velvets were and still are the favored fabrics, but other fabrics such as wool, twills, silk, and satin are also used. Pincushions often have beaded velvet fronts and polished cotton backs. Polished cotton is a shiny stiff material that is also referred to as chintz or oilcloth. On the majority of late twentieth-century and contemporary twenty-first-century...
Preserving Tradition and Understanding the Past: Papers from the Conference on Iroquois Research, 2001–2005, Edited by Christine Sternberg Patrick, New York State Museum Record 1 © 2010, by The University of the State of New York, The State Education Department, Albany, New York 12230. All rights reserved. Click on top link for more.
Iroquois beaded Glengarry cap.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glengarry
Parliament buildings Ottawa cap on display:
www.flickr.com/photos/21728045@N08/3645513503
IROQUOIS BEADWORK:
A Haudenosaunee Tradition and Art
Dolores Elliott
The Iroquois tradition of raised beadwork began in west- ern New York in the late eighteenth century. It is slightly older than the other great North American Indian bead- working tradition that the Lakota, Cheyenne, and other people of the Plains developed. Raised beadwork is unique to the Haudenosaunee; it is made nowhere else in the world. The Senecas, who decorated clothes, sashes, and small pincushions with small glass beads in the eigh- teenth century, probably invented the style of Iroquois beadwork that still exists today. They were making bead- ed pincushions by 1799 and purses by 1807. In the mid- nineteenth century, ethnohistorian Lewis H. Morgan noted in his League of the Ho-de’-no-sau-see, or Iroquois the “delicacy, even brilliancy of their bead-work embroidery” on women’s clothing (1851, Book 3:384), and he included illustrations of beadwork on a needle case, woman’s skirt, cradleboard, heart-shaped pincushion, and work bag, the forerunner of a modern purse. He reported that in 1849 he had purchased five varieties of work bags as well as three varieties of pin cushions and five varieties of needle books (Morgan 1850, 57).
(Figure 4.1). While they sold their goods at nearby Montreal, the Mohawks also traveled extensively throughout North America to sell at fairs, exhibitions, wild west shows, and Indian medicine shows. Some even sold their beadwork when they traveled to England to perform Indian dances at Earls Court, an exhibition ground in London. Photographs taken in 1905 show these performers attired in clothing decorated with Mohawk beadwork.
The Iroquois tradition of beadwork continued to evolve in the nineteenth century, and by 1860 Mohawks near Montreal and Tuscaroras near Niagara Falls were creating elaborate pincushions, purses, and wall hangings adorned with raised beadwork. Despite the similarity of items created, the two geographic areas developed different styles of beadwork (Table 4.1). Throughout the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, at the height of beadwork production, the Tuscaroras sold their beadwork mostly at Niagara Falls, on their reservation, and at the New York State Fair. They preferred to use small clear and white beads. During this same period, the Mohawks used larger clear beads and also employed red, blue, green, and yellow beads on most of their early pieces
Figure 4.1. Two needle cases that illustrate differences in nineteenth- century Mohawk (left) and Niagara (right) beadwork.
My personal family experience illustrates typical Iroquois beadwork transactions in the twentieth century. My story starts in 1903 when my grandmother went to the Afton Fair, a small agricultural fair in central New York. She took my nine-year-old father, but his sister, then eleven, was sick and could not go. My grandmother brought her home a present from the fair. It was a beauti- ful pink satin-covered bird-shaped pincushion that sparkled with light green beads (Figure 4.2). My aunt treasured this bird throughout her long life and displayed it proudly in her china cabinet, where I saw it when I was a child. At her death this cherished heirloom was passed on to her daughter who later donated it to the Afton Historical Society in Chenango County, where it is presently on view.
My research indicates that this bird was made by a skilled Mohawk beadworker from a Mohawk community located near Montreal and several hundred miles from the Afton Fair. This pincushion probably got to the fair with a group of Mohawks who traveled by train or wagon to perform at fairs, medicine shows, and exhibi- tions. While at these venues, they also sold their hand- made baskets and beadwork.
In 1958 I bought a small red heart-shaped pincushion at a booth in the Indian Village at the New York State Fair, which is held near Syracuse (Figure 4.3). It was a present for my mother, who displayed it prominently on her bed- room dresser for the next twenty-five years until I inher- ited it. Mary Lou Printup, a leading Tuscarora sewer, later identified this pincushion as one she had made. She, like most Tuscarora beadworkers prefer to be called “sewers,” a term not popular with some other Iroquois beadwork- ers. In my research and writing, I use the word “bead- worker” to refer to all except those individuals who specifically prefer to be called “sewers.”
When I purchased the red heart I had no idea that this pincushion had anything in common with the bird that my grandmother acquired fifty-five years earlier. I knew that I wanted to get something special for my mother, and this pincushion was special because it was beautiful and made by a native artist. In buying it I shared something with my grandmother, who died before I was born, that is, the purchase of a piece of Iroquois beadwork. Most likely the purchase of the bird was my German-born grandmother’s only interaction with a Haudenosaunee woman, and my purchase at the State Fair was my first interaction with a Tuscarora sewer, the first of many.
In a similar manner Iroquois beadworkers and their non- Indian customers, often tourists or attendees at a public entertainment venue, have been brought together by bead-work for over two centuries. These transactions undoubtedly number in the tens of thousands.1 During honeymoon trips to Niagara Falls and visits to agricultural fairs, exhibitions, and other attractions, people purchased Iroquois beadwork as mementos to remember these places and experiences. The beads often form designs featuring birds and flowers, natural themes that appealed to the Victorian women who drove the market of souvenir sales in the nine- teenth century. Studies by Beverly Gordon (1984; 1986) and Ruth B. Phillips (1998) describe the souvenir trade and point out the importance of these items to the people on both sides of the transactions.
Souvenir beadwork was so treasured that the pieces were frequently kept in cedar chests or keepsake boxes. Therefore, when unwrapped one hundred or more years later, they are often in pristine condition. Ironically, few contemporary beadworkers have samples of their ancestors’ work because it was usually made for sale to strangers, although some beadwork was created as gifts for family and friends.
Because most pieces were made for sale to tourists, many people have dismissed Iroquois beadwork as “souvenir trinkets” not important enough to collect, study, or exhibit. In fact, they are often called whimsies, a term that I believe trivializes them and diminishes their artistic and cultural value. But within the last two decades Iroquois beadwork has become the subject of serious study and museum exhibitions. At least four traveling exhibits of Iroquois beadwork have been installed in over a dozen museums and seen by thousands of museum visitors in the United States and Canada since 1999.2 This scholarly recognition has resulted in an increased appreciation of these beadwork creations and the artists who made them. What were considered curious tourist souvenirs when they were made are now generating increased respect from both the general public and the Haudenosaunee.
ry pieces, the back is a colorful calico. Some pieces, mainly in the Niagara Tradition, have a silk or cotton binding around their perimeters to cover the cut edges and attach the front and back fabrics. Tight beadwork on the edging often binds Mohawk pieces together so a cloth binding is not necessary. Flat purses as well as fist and box purses are constructed in the same manner, with cardboard as the base.
Contemporary beadworkers see their work as a signif- icant part of Haudenosaunee culture and an important link to the past. In Haudenosaunee communities bead- workers are admired as continuing a revered tradition. Although there are a few male beadworkers, the majority are women, and in a matrilineal-society with powerful clan matrons, the economic benefit of beadwork sales increases the influence of the women even more.
Pincushions were usually stuffed with sawdust, but sweet grass, cotton, cattail fluff, newspapers, and poly- ester have also been used. Contemporary craftsmen remember that their mothers preferred pine sawdust because of the nice aroma.4 Small strawberry-shaped pin- cushions are traditionally filled with emery, used to sharpen and polish needles. Velvet and twill-covered pic- ture frames and other wall hangings on cardboard bases have polished cotton backs on earlier pieces and calico on more recent ones. European glass beads were often aug- mented with metal sequins on nineteenth-century pieces and with plastic sequins and other plastic novelty beads since the late twentieth century. Bone and shell beads and leather, which are often used in other American Indian beadwork, rarely occur in Iroquois beadwork.
Iroquois beadwork is still sold at Niagara Falls, the New York State Fair, and several pow wows and festivals in the northeast; the methods of beadwork distribution have changed little over two hundred years. The bead-work itself, however, has changed tremendously. Over the last two centuries the styles of beadwork have evolved from simple small pincushions and purses to highly elaborate shapes, becoming works of art in the tra- ditional sense. The beads selected have progressed from the very small seed beads used around 1800 to the larger seed beads of 1900 and finally, by 2000, to a wider variety of bead sizes and colors.
The most common form of Iroquois beadwork, and the form most easily recognizable by people who are not familiar with Iroquois beadwork, is the flat black purse or bag featuring identical colorful, beaded floral designs on both sides. Most flat bags have flaps on both sides, but the opening is across the top where the two sides meet. The face fabric is usually black or very dark brown velvet, and the interior is often a light-colored linen or polished cot- ton. A binding, usually red, is attached around the closed sides of the purses. A beaded fringe is sometimes added. The fringe is merely sewn to the binding and does not hold the two sides of the bag together; it is purely deco- rative. The flaps usually are edged with white beads that are larger than the beads that outline the flaps and body (Figure 4.4). The flaps and body are sometimes outlined with short parallel lines like a stockade. The faces of the flap and body are covered by stylized flowers in shades of blue, red, yellow, and white connected with green stems, which are sometimes striped in two shades of green. Some bags feature a small slit pocket under one of the flaps. It may have been meant to hold a comb or mirror.
Iroquois beadwork remains a unique art form distin- guished by several characteristics found only in work created by Haudenosaunee beadworkers. Iroquois beadwork features a design in glass beads that have been sewn on a fabric that is stretched over a backing of cardboard or cloth lining. The materials used in the beadwork are predominately small seed beads, cloth, cardboard, paper, and in pincushions, a stuffing. The beads are sewn onto the fabric in geometric or natural designs using waxed, doubled white thread.3 The beads are usually sewn over a paper pattern that remains in place under the beaded elements. Although not practiced at all times in the histo- ry of Iroquois beadwork, the most distinctive trait is that the beads are raised above the surface of the cloth face. Some pieces have raised beaded elements that are over an inch high. The beads are raised by putting more beads on the thread than is needed to span the pattern so that the beads form an arch above the pattern. The amount of extra beads determines how high the arches are, that is, how much the beadwork is raised. Various velvets were and still are the favored fabrics, but other fabrics such as wool, twills, silk, and satin are also used. Pincushions often have beaded velvet fronts and polished cotton backs. Polished cotton is a shiny stiff material that is also referred to as chintz or oilcloth. On the majority of late twentieth-century and contemporary twenty-first-century...
Preserving Tradition and Understanding the Past: Papers from the Conference on Iroquois Research, 2001–2005, Edited by Christine Sternberg Patrick, New York State Museum Record 1 © 2010, by The University of the State of New York, The State Education Department, Albany, New York 12230. All rights reserved. Click on top link for more.
This was for sale on eBay today.
Background:
www.nysm.nysed.gov/publications/record/vol_01/pdfs/CH04El...
IROQUOIS BEADWORK:
A Haudenosaunee Tradition and Art
Dolores Elliott
The Iroquois tradition of raised beadwork began in western New York in the late eighteenth century. It is slightly older than the other great North American Indian beadworking tradition that the Lakota, Cheyenne, and other people of the Plains developed. Raised beadwork is unique to the Haudenosaunee; it is made nowhere else in the world. The Senecas, who decorated clothes, sashes, and small pin cushions with small glass beads in the eighteenth century, probably invented the style of Iroquois beadwork that still exists today. They were making beaded pincushions by 1799 and purses by 1807. In the mid-nineteenth century, ethnohistorian Lewis H. Morgan noted in his League of the Ho-de’-no-sau-see, or Iroquois the “delicacy, even brilliancy of their beadwork embroidery” on women’s clothing (1851, Book 3:384), and he included illustrations of beadwork on a needle case, woman’s skirt, cradleboard, heart-shaped pincushion, and work bag, the forerunner of a modern purse. He reported that in 1849 he had purchased five varieties of work bags as well as three varieties of pin cushions and five varieties of needle books (Morgan 1850, 57).
(Figure 4.1). While they sold their goods at nearby Montreal, the Mohawks also traveled extensively throughout North America to sell at fairs, exhibitions, wild west shows, and Indian medicine shows. Some even sold their beadwork when they traveled to England to perform Indian dances at Earls Court, an exhibition ground in London. Photographs taken in 1905 show these performers attired in clothing decorated with Mohawk beadwork.
The Iroquois tradition of beadwork continued to evolve in the nineteenth century, and by 1860 Mohawks near Montreal and Tuscaroras near Niagara Falls were creating elaborate pincushions, purses, and wall hangings adorned with raised beadwork. Despite the similarity of items created, the two geographic areas developed different styles of beadwork (Table 4.1). Throughout the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, at the height of beadwork production, the Tuscaroras sold their beadwork mostly at Niagara Falls, on their reservation, and at the New York State Fair. They preferred to use small clear and white beads. During this same period, the Mohawks used larger clear beads and also employed red, blue, green, and yellow beads on most of their early pieces
Figure 4.1. Two needle cases that illustrate differences in nineteenth-century Mohawk (left) and Niagara (right) beadwork.
My personal family experience illustrates typical Iroquois beadwork transactions in the twentieth century. My story starts in 1903 when my grandmother went to the Afton Fair, a small agricultural fair in central New York. She took my nine-year-old father, but his sister, then eleven, was sick and could not go. My grandmother brought her home a present from the fair. It was a beautiful pink satin-covered bird-shaped pincushion that sparkled with light green beads (Figure 4.2). My aunt treasured this bird throughout her long life and displayed it proudly in her china cabinet, where I saw it when I was a child. At her death this cherished heirloom was passed on to her daughter who later donated it to the Afton Historical Society in Chenango County, where it is presently on view.
My research indicates that this bird was made by a skilled Mohawk beadworker from a Mohawk community located near Montreal and several hundred miles from the Afton Fair. This pincushion probably got to the fair with a group of Mohawks who traveled by train or wagon to perform at fairs, medicine shows, and exhibi- tions. While at these venues, they also sold their hand- made baskets and beadwork.
In 1958 I bought a small red heart-shaped pincushion at a booth in the Indian Village at the New York State Fair, which is held near Syracuse (Figure 4.3). It was a present for my mother, who displayed it prominently on her bedroom dresser for the next twenty-five years until I inherited it. Mary Lou Printup, a leading Tuscarora sewer, later identified this pincushion as one she had made. She, like most Tuscarora beadworkers prefer to be called “sewers,” a term not popular with some other Iroquois beadworkers. In my research and writing, I use the word “beadworker” to refer to all except those individuals who specifically prefer to be called “sewers.”
When I purchased the red heart I had no idea that this pincushion had anything in common with the bird that my grandmother acquired fifty-five years earlier. I knew that I wanted to get something special for my mother, and this pincushion was special because it was beautiful and made by a native artist. In buying it I shared something with my grandmother, who died before I was born, that is, the purchase of a piece of Iroquois beadwork. Most likely the purchase of the bird was my German-born grandmother’s only interaction with a Haudenosaunee woman, and my purchase at the State Fair was my first interaction with a Tuscarora sewer, the first of many.
In a similar manner Iroquois beadworkers and their non-Indian customers, often tourists or attendees at a public entertainment venue, have been brought together by beadwork for over two centuries. These transactions undoubtedly number in the tens of thousands.1 During honeymoon trips to Niagara Falls and visits to agricultural fairs, exhibitions, and other attractions, people purchased Iroquois beadwork as mementos to remember these places and experiences. The beads often form designs featuring birds and flowers, natural themes that appealed to the Victorian women who drove the market of souvenir sales in the nine- teenth century. Studies by Beverly Gordon (1984; 1986) and Ruth B. Phillips (1998) describe the souvenir trade and point out the importance of these items to the people on both sides of the transactions.
Souvenir beadwork was so treasured that the pieces were frequently kept in cedar chests or keepsake boxes. Therefore, when unwrapped one hundred or more years later, they are often in pristine condition. Ironically, few contemporary beadworkers have samples of their ancestors’ work because it was usually made for sale to strangers, although some beadwork was created as gifts for family and friends.
Because most pieces were made for sale to tourists, many people have dismissed Iroquois beadwork as “souvenir trinkets” not important enough to collect, study, or exhibit. In fact, they are often called whimsies, a term that I believe trivializes them and diminishes their artistic and cultural value. But within the last two decades Iroquois beadwork has become the subject of serious study and museum exhibitions. At least four traveling exhibits of Iroquois beadwork have been installed in over a dozen museums and seen by thousands of museum visitors in the United States and Canada since 1999.2 This scholarly recognition has resulted in an increased appreciation of these beadwork creations and the artists who made them. What were considered curious tourist souvenirs when they were made are now generating increased respect from both the general public and the Haudenosaunee.
ry pieces, the back is a colorful calico. Some pieces, mainly in the Niagara Tradition, have a silk or cotton binding around their perimeters to cover the cut edges and attach the front and back fabrics. Tight beadwork on the edging often binds Mohawk pieces together so a cloth binding is not necessary. Flat purses as well as fist and box purses are constructed in the same manner, with cardboard as the base.
Contemporary beadworkers see their work as a significant part of Haudenosaunee culture and an important link to the past. In Haudenosaunee communities beadworkers are admired as continuing a revered tradition. Although there are a few male beadworkers, the majority are women, and in a matrilineal-society with powerful clan matrons, the economic benefit of beadwork sales increases the influence of the women even more.
Pincushions were usually stuffed with sawdust, but sweet grass, cotton, cattail fluff, newspapers, and poly- ester have also been used. Contemporary craftsmen remember that their mothers preferred pine sawdust because of the nice aroma.4 Small strawberry-shaped pincushions are traditionally filled with emery, used to sharpen and polish needles. Velvet and twill-covered pic- ture frames and other wall hangings on cardboard bases have polished cotton backs on earlier pieces and calico on more recent ones. European glass beads were often aug- mented with metal sequins on nineteenth-century pieces and with plastic sequins and other plastic novelty beads since the late twentieth century. Bone and shell beads and leather, which are often used in other American Indian beadwork, rarely occur in Iroquois beadwork.
Iroquois beadwork is still sold at Niagara Falls, the New York State Fair, and several pow wows and festivals in the northeast; the methods of beadwork distribution have changed little over two hundred years. The bead-work itself, however, has changed tremendously. Over the last two centuries the styles of beadwork have evolved from simple small pincushions and purses to highly elaborate shapes, becoming works of art in the tra- ditional sense. The beads selected have progressed from the very small seed beads used around 1800 to the larger seed beads of 1900 and finally, by 2000, to a wider variety of bead sizes and colours.
The most common form of Iroquois beadwork, and the form most easily recognizable by people who are not familiar with Iroquois beadwork, is the flat black purse or bag featuring identical colorful, beaded floral designs on both sides. Most flat bags have flaps on both sides, but the opening is across the top where the two sides meet. The face fabric is usually black or very dark brown velvet, and the interior is often a light-colored linen or polished cot- ton. A binding, usually red, is attached around the closed sides of the purses. A beaded fringe is sometimes added. The fringe is merely sewn to the binding and does not hold the two sides of the bag together; it is purely deco- rative. The flaps usually are edged with white beads that are larger than the beads that outline the flaps and body (Figure 4.4). The flaps and body are sometimes outlined with short parallel lines like a stockade. The faces of the flap and body are covered by stylized flowers in shades of blue, red, yellow, and white connected with green stems, which are sometimes striped in two shades of green. Some bags feature a small slit pocket under one of the flaps. It may have been meant to hold a comb or mirror.
Iroquois beadwork remains a unique art form distinguished by several characteristics found only in work created by Haudenosaunee beadworkers. Iroquois beadwork features a design in glass beads that have been sewn on a fabric that is stretched over a backing of cardboard or cloth lining. The materials used in the beadwork are predominately small seed beads, cloth, cardboard, paper, and in pincushions, a stuffing. The beads are sewn onto the fabric in geometric or natural designs using waxed, doubled white thread.3 The beads are usually sewn over a paper pattern that remains in place under the beaded elements. Although not practiced at all times in the history of Iroquois beadwork, the most distinctive trait is that the beads are raised above the surface of the cloth face. Some pieces have raised beaded elements that are over an inch high. The beads are raised by putting more beads on the thread than is needed to span the pattern so that the beads form an arch above the pattern. The amount of extra beads determines how high the arches are, that is, how much the beadwork is raised. Various velvets were and still are the favored fabrics, but other fabrics such as wool, twills, silk, and satin are also used. Pincushions often have beaded velvet fronts and polished cotton backs. Polished cotton is a shiny stiff material that is also referred to as chintz or oilcloth. On the majority of late twentieth-century and contemporary twenty-first-century.
Preserving Tradition and Understanding the Past: Papers from the Conference on Iroquois Research, 2001–2005, Edited by Christine Sternberg Patrick, New York State Museum Record 1 © 2010, by The University of the State of New York, The State Education Department, Albany, New York 12230. All rights reserved.
Virginia Woolf - Writer, England
at about 18 years old
- My Heroine - (see set)
All of her non-fiction I re-read many times -it always becomes new and inspiring - especially her letters and book reviews. When I was living back home in California I once was so happy and deeply rewarded by reading her letters that I edited parts of them and created a one-woman show. I wore an antique white lace dress and sort of 'became' Virginia for a few nights.
If this were all she had ever written it would be enough:
- -Excerpt from chapter 3 of 'A Room of One's Own' - a lecture - 1929 - -
SHAKESPEARE'S SISTER
"..... I concluded, and I thought of that old gentleman, who is dead now, but was a bishop, I think, who declared that it was impossible for any woman, past, present, or to come, to have the genius of Shakespeare. He wrote to the papers about it. He also told a lady who applied to him for information that cats do not as a matter of fact go to heaven, though they have, he added, souls of a sort. How much thinking those old gentlemen used to save one! How the borders of ignorance shrank back at their approach! Cats do not go to heaven. Women cannot write the plays of Shakespeare.
Be that as it may, I could not help thinking, as I looked at the works of Shakespeare on the shelf, that the bishop was right at least in this; it would have been impossible, completely and entirely, for any woman to have written the plays of Shakespeare in the age of Shakespeare. Let me imagine, since facts are so hard to come by, what would have happened had Shakespeare had a wonderfully gifted sister, called Judith, let us say. Shakespeare himself went, very probably,—his mother was an heiress—to the grammar school, where he may have learnt Latin—Ovid, Virgil and Horace—and the elements of grammar and logic. He was, it is well known, a wild boy who poached rabbits, perhaps shot a deer, and had, rather sooner than he should have done, to marry a woman in the neighbourhood, who bore him a child rather quicker than was right. That escapade sent him to seek his fortune in London. He had, it seemed, a taste for the theatre; he began by holding horses at the stage door. Very soon he got work in the theatre, became a successful actor, and lived at the hub of the universe, meeting everybody, knowing everybody, practising his art on the boards, exercising his wits in the streets, and even getting access to the palace of the queen. Meanwhile his extraordinarily gifted sister, let us suppose, remained at home. She was as adventurous, as imaginative, as agog to see the world as he was. But she was not sent to school. She had no chance of learning grammar and logic, let alone of reading Horace and Virgil. She picked up a book now and then, one of her brother’s perhaps, and read a few pages. But then her parents came in and told her to mend the stockings or mind the stew and not moon about with books and papers. They would have spoken sharply but kindly, for they were substantial people who knew the conditions of life for a woman and loved their daughter—indeed, more likely than not she was the apple of her father’s eye. Perhaps she scribbled some pages up in an apple loft on the sly but was careful to hide them or set fire to them. Soon, however, before she was out of her teens, she was to be betrothed to the son of a neighbouring woolstapler. She cried out that marriage was hateful to her, and for that she was severely beaten by her father. Then he ceased to scold her. He begged her instead not to hurt him, not to shame him in this matter of her marriage. He would give her a chain of beads or a fine petticoat, he said; and there were tears in his eyes. How could she disobey him? How could she break his heart? The force of her own gift alone drove her to it. She made up a small parcel of her belongings, let herself down by a rope one summer’s night and took the road to London. She was not seventeen. The birds that sang in the hedge were not more musical than she was. She had the quickest fancy, a gift like her brother’s, for the tune of words. Like him, she had a taste for the theatre. She stood at the stage door; she wanted to act, she said. Men laughed in her face. The manager—a fat, looselipped man—guffawed. He bellowed something about poodles dancing and women acting—no woman, he said, could possibly be an actress. He hinted—you can imagine what. She could get no training in her craft. Could she even seek her dinner in a tavern or roam the streets at midnight? Yet her genius was for fiction and lusted to feed abundantly upon the lives of men and women and the study of their ways. At last—for she was very young, oddly like Shakespeare the poet in her face, with the same grey eyes and rounded brows—at last Nick Greene the actormanager took pity on her; she found herself with child by that gentleman and so—who shall measure the heat and violence of the poet’s heart when caught and tangled in a woman’s body?—killed herself one winter’s night and lies buried at some cross–roads where the omnibuses now stop outside the Elephant and Castle.
That, more or less, is how the story would run, I think, if a woman in Shakespeare’s day had had Shakespeare’s genius. But for my part, I agree with the deceased bishop, if such he was—it is unthinkable that any woman in Shakespeare’s day should have had Shakespeare’s genius. For genius like Shakespeare’s is not born among labouring, uneducated, servile people. It was not born in England among the Saxons and the Britons. It is not born to–day among the working classes. How, then, could it have been born among women whose work began, according to Professor Trevelyan, almost before they were out of the nursery, who were forced to it by their parents and held to it by all the power of law and custom? Yet genius of a sort must have existed among women as it must have existed among the working classes. Now and again an Emily Brontë or a Robert Burns blazes out and proves its presence. But certainly it never got itself on to paper. When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Brontë who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without singing them, was often a woman. It was a woman Edward Fitzgerald, I think, suggested who made the ballads and the folk–songs, crooning them to her children, beguiling her spinning with them, or the length of the winter’s night.
This may be true or it may be false—who can say?—but what is true in it, so it seemed to me, reviewing the story of Shakespeare’s sister as I had made it, is that any woman born with a great gift in the sixteenth century would certainly have gone crazed, shot herself, or ended her days in some lonely cottage outside the village, half witch, half wizard, feared and mocked at. For it needs little skill in psychology to be sure that a highly gifted girl who had tried to use her gift for poetry would have been so thwarted and hindered by other people, so tortured and pulled asunder by her own contrary instincts, that she must have lost her health and sanity to a certainty. No girl could have walked to London and stood at a stage door and forced her way into the presence of actor–managers without doing herself a violence and suffering an anguish which may have been irrational—for chastity may be a fetish invented by certain societies for unknown reasons—but were none the less inevitable. Chastity had then, it has even now, a religious importance in a woman’s life, and has so wrapped itself round with nerves and instincts that to cut it free and bring it to the light of day demands courage of the rarest. To have lived a free life in London in the six teenth century would have meant for a woman who was poet and playwright a nervous stress and dilemma which might well have killed her. Had she survived, whatever she had written would have been twisted and deformed, issuing from a strained and morbid imagination. And undoubtedly, I thought, looking at the shelf where there are no plays by women, her work would have gone unsigned. That refuge she would have sought certainly. It was the relic of the sense of chastity that dictated anonymity to women even so late as the nineteenth century. Currer Bell, George Eliot, George Sand, all the victims of inner strife as their writings prove, sought ineffectively to veil themselves by using the name of a man. "
The earliest reference to Dinton Church belongs to the year 1070. It is a grant by William the Conqueror of 'the Manor and Church of Daniton' to Odo, Bishop of Bayeux. No trace of the original Saxon church survives. It was probably a narrow, thatched building with very few windows. But it was replaced after a few years, when the church passed from Bishop Odo's control, and became the property of the convent at Godstow.
It was about the year 1140 that the rebuilding of Dinton Church began. The nave was laid out on its present site, and there was a solid wall at the west end, where the nave now joins the tower. The main entrance to the 1140 building was through the same beautiful south doorway which we use today, although this doorway was later moved a few yards from its original position. For the old south wall of the church was where the present line of pillars and arches stands. The font also belongs to the Norman period, and has probably been moved very little in its 800 years of constant use. The chancel was built at this time, but it has since been enlarged and restored. The lancet windows in the north and south walls of the chancel are of the same pattern as those which were used throughout the 1140 building.
If you stand at the west end of the nave, and look towards the altar (ignoring the south aisle), you can get a good idea of the shape of the old Norman church. The interior, if we could see it now, would seem rather dark—partly because of the narrow windows, and partly because of the low Norman arch which used to separate the nave from the chancel. There were no pews, and the stone bench, which is still to be seen against the north wall, provided the only form of seating. The floor sloped gradually upwards in the direction of the chancel, instead of having steps at intervals, as at present.
Just by the present pulpit is a narrow window, cut deeply into the wall, which belongs to this period. It is a `lowside window', originally set in the south wall of the church, and the clerk used to ring a handbell through it at the time of the elevation of the Host during Mass. In the fourteenth century this practice was stopped through-out the country, and church bells were rung instead. But the lowside window at Dinton can only have been used before the building of the south aisle.
This addition of a south aisle was part of a series of alterations begun about the year 1230, with the object of making the building lighter and more graceful. The low archway between the chancel and the nave was taken down, and the present one put in its place.
A door was built in the west wall-, and, most important of all, the south aisle was added to the nave. The old south wall was replaced by the present series of arches. And the beautiful south doorway was taken down and moved to its present place, where it remains one of the finest treasures of the church. Its loveliness is at once apparent. But, as we stand before it and reflect that worshippers since Norman times have entered Dinton Church through this same doorway, we are moved by something more than its outward beauty. The figures above it are said to represent St. Michael and the Dragon, and the inscription has been translated:
If anyone despairs of reward according with his merits
Let him listen to precepts, and let them be observed by him.
The other thing which the builders of 1234 did was to remake and buttress the north wall, inserting the four large windows in their present form. When this work had been completed, the nave and chancel must have looked much the same, from the inside, as they do today. From the outside, however, the church would have looked strange to us, because there was no tower yet, and no porch.
The tower was built about the year 1340, and on this occasion, too, a doorway was carefully taken down and moved from its original position. This time it was the doorway in the centre of the old west wall, which was moved and re-erected in the west wall of the tower, where it is still in use. The final alteration came with the building of the south porch in the early sixteenth century. Thus. the newest part of the building shelters the oldest part.
A small group of memorials on the north wall, near the chancel, is worth studying. A grey slate tablet is dedicated to Simon Mayne, who died in 1617, leaving Dinton Hall to his son of the same name. The latter was a prominent member of the Parliamentary Party during the Civil War, and Cromwell came to stay with him at Dinton. A member of the Long Parliament, Mayne later sat as a Judge of the High Commission Court which tried Charles the First, and was one of those who signed the king's death warrant. He was tried at the Old Bailey in 1660, and died in the Tower the following year. His body was brought back to Dinton for burial.
Simon Mayne's clerk, a man called John Bigg, became a recluse in the years following the Restoration. He lived in a cave to the west of Dinton Hall, and was known as the Dinton Hermit. Two of his boots (made of patches of leather) are still preserved today—one of them in Dinton Hall, and the other in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. It was in these home-made boots that Bigg used to walk over to Hampden every day to get food from the Hampden family. He must have been a strange sight in his queer clothes, reminiscent of the nursery rhyme, "The old man decked in leather', of which he may possibly have been the original. But the hidden retreats and secret passages, which are sometimes discovered in the district, remind us of the terror in which Mayne, Bigg and their friends lived after the Restoration. At the beginning of the last century, builders found a secret room lined with blankets in Dinton Hall. The late Mr. Skilbeck of Bledlow tells how he excavated part of an under-ground passage near Longdown Farm, in the Hampden woods, which Bigg may have built for his own protection.
Next to the Mayne tablet are the memorials of the Vanhattem family, who originally came over to England with William of Orange. They bought Dinton Hall from the Maynes in 1727, and carried out a number of improvements to the estate. It was Sir John Vanhattem who, in 1769, built 'Dinton Castle' on the main Oxford Road, as a place to house his collection of fossils. The building was never completed, and is now so completely ruined that it is often mistaken for a genuine Gothic relic.
The brasses, in the sanctuary, form a picture-gallery of fashion from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. The earliest figure, John Compton, 1424, has full plate armour. Thomas and Richard Greenaway, 1534 and 1551, illustrated the return to chain-mail, Simon Mayne, 1617, whose son signed the death warrant of Charles 1, is shown in armour with top-boots and spurs. William and Francis Lee and their wives, 1486-1558, are in civilian costume.
When the plates were taken up in 1944, they were discovered to be 'palirnpsest'—i.e. twice-used. Older brasses, plundered from monastic churches at home and abroad during the Reformation period, had evidently been cut up, turned over, and new figures engraved on the back. One was found to have commemorated a Treasurer of York Minster, another a priest in vestments, while a third was a fragment from an exquisite Flemish brass of the four-teenth century.
Between the two world-wars, the work of improvement and restoration went on. In 1927, the row of old almshouses south-east of the church porch was taken down, and the present wall and gate-way were built. Mr. Webb, of Haddenham, carried out the work-, and he used the stone which was left over to help build Bernard Hall in Cuddington.
The almshouses were in bad repair, and had long been disused. But their disappearance made a big change in one of the oldest parts of the village. Just to the south of where they stood, there are the remains of the old village stocks. And, across the road, is the original 'dower-house' of Dinton Hall—now divided into two separate houses. A little further down the hill is the forge, where horses were shod until a few years ago.
Reproduced from Church Leaflet
Juneteenth Statue / Rep. Al Edwards Statue
1859 Ashton Villa Mansion
24th and Broadway
Galveston Island, Texas, USA
This 9 foot tall bronze statue was erected in 2005 on the grounds of Ashton Villa to commemorate the 1979 passage of legislation making June 19th a holiday "memorializing" the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation at Ashton Villa on June 19, 1865.
State Rep. Al Edwards (D-Houston) introduced the legislation in 1979 making June 19th a state holiday. The statue, costing approximately $100,000.00, was created in his likeness and honors him. It was paid for with state tax dollars.
The statue is of Edwards holding up a copy of the law making June 19th a holiday. Because Edwards was still in office when the statue was unveiled, it is officially known as a "unknown lawmaker".
Al Edwards stirred controversy in his heavily Democratic Houston district by voting with the House Republican leadership on a number of issues during the 78th and 79th sessions of the legislature, in addition to introducing controversial legislation (like having a statue of himself made, using tax dollars, while he was still in office...or a bill that would have made it against the law for high school cheerleaders to "shake their booty").
He was challenged in the 2006 Democratic primary election by two other democrats, and defeated in a following run-off election. Edwards had served in the house for 27 years. (Update: He ran again in 2008 against the incumbent and won, after it was revealed that the incumbent had threatened people with a gun)
Eventually a much larger replica of this statue of Rep. Edwards is to be placed on the grounds of the Texas State Capitol in Austin -- also paid for with state tax dollars.
Its a shame that a statue honoring such a nobel (and important) event had to be politicized in the way it was....
The earliest reference to Dinton Church belongs to the year 1070. It is a grant by William the Conqueror of 'the Manor and Church of Daniton' to Odo, Bishop of Bayeux. No trace of the original Saxon church survives. It was probably a narrow, thatched building with very few windows. But it was replaced after a few years, when the church passed from Bishop Odo's control, and became the property of the convent at Godstow.
It was about the year 1140 that the rebuilding of Dinton Church began. The nave was laid out on its present site, and there was a solid wall at the west end, where the nave now joins the tower. The main entrance to the 1140 building was through the same beautiful south doorway which we use today, although this doorway was later moved a few yards from its original position. For the old south wall of the church was where the present line of pillars and arches stands. The font also belongs to the Norman period, and has probably been moved very little in its 800 years of constant use. The chancel was built at this time, but it has since been enlarged and restored. The lancet windows in the north and south walls of the chancel are of the same pattern as those which were used throughout the 1140 building.
If you stand at the west end of the nave, and look towards the altar (ignoring the south aisle), you can get a good idea of the shape of the old Norman church. The interior, if we could see it now, would seem rather dark—partly because of the narrow windows, and partly because of the low Norman arch which used to separate the nave from the chancel. There were no pews, and the stone bench, which is still to be seen against the north wall, provided the only form of seating. The floor sloped gradually upwards in the direction of the chancel, instead of having steps at intervals, as at present.
Just by the present pulpit is a narrow window, cut deeply into the wall, which belongs to this period. It is a `lowside window', originally set in the south wall of the church, and the clerk used to ring a handbell through it at the time of the elevation of the Host during Mass. In the fourteenth century this practice was stopped through-out the country, and church bells were rung instead. But the lowside window at Dinton can only have been used before the building of the south aisle.
This addition of a south aisle was part of a series of alterations begun about the year 1230, with the object of making the building lighter and more graceful. The low archway between the chancel and the nave was taken down, and the present one put in its place.
A door was built in the west wall-, and, most important of all, the south aisle was added to the nave. The old south wall was replaced by the present series of arches. And the beautiful south doorway was taken down and moved to its present place, where it remains one of the finest treasures of the church. Its loveliness is at once apparent. But, as we stand before it and reflect that worshippers since Norman times have entered Dinton Church through this same doorway, we are moved by something more than its outward beauty. The figures above it are said to represent St. Michael and the Dragon, and the inscription has been translated:
If anyone despairs of reward according with his merits
Let him listen to precepts, and let them be observed by him.
The other thing which the builders of 1234 did was to remake and buttress the north wall, inserting the four large windows in their present form. When this work had been completed, the nave and chancel must have looked much the same, from the inside, as they do today. From the outside, however, the church would have looked strange to us, because there was no tower yet, and no porch.
The tower was built about the year 1340, and on this occasion, too, a doorway was carefully taken down and moved from its original position. This time it was the doorway in the centre of the old west wall, which was moved and re-erected in the west wall of the tower, where it is still in use. The final alteration came with the building of the south porch in the early sixteenth century. Thus. the newest part of the building shelters the oldest part.
A small group of memorials on the north wall, near the chancel, is worth studying. A grey slate tablet is dedicated to Simon Mayne, who died in 1617, leaving Dinton Hall to his son of the same name. The latter was a prominent member of the Parliamentary Party during the Civil War, and Cromwell came to stay with him at Dinton. A member of the Long Parliament, Mayne later sat as a Judge of the High Commission Court which tried Charles the First, and was one of those who signed the king's death warrant. He was tried at the Old Bailey in 1660, and died in the Tower the following year. His body was brought back to Dinton for burial.
Simon Mayne's clerk, a man called John Bigg, became a recluse in the years following the Restoration. He lived in a cave to the west of Dinton Hall, and was known as the Dinton Hermit. Two of his boots (made of patches of leather) are still preserved today—one of them in Dinton Hall, and the other in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. It was in these home-made boots that Bigg used to walk over to Hampden every day to get food from the Hampden family. He must have been a strange sight in his queer clothes, reminiscent of the nursery rhyme, "The old man decked in leather', of which he may possibly have been the original. But the hidden retreats and secret passages, which are sometimes discovered in the district, remind us of the terror in which Mayne, Bigg and their friends lived after the Restoration. At the beginning of the last century, builders found a secret room lined with blankets in Dinton Hall. The late Mr. Skilbeck of Bledlow tells how he excavated part of an under-ground passage near Longdown Farm, in the Hampden woods, which Bigg may have built for his own protection.
Next to the Mayne tablet are the memorials of the Vanhattem family, who originally came over to England with William of Orange. They bought Dinton Hall from the Maynes in 1727, and carried out a number of improvements to the estate. It was Sir John Vanhattem who, in 1769, built 'Dinton Castle' on the main Oxford Road, as a place to house his collection of fossils. The building was never completed, and is now so completely ruined that it is often mistaken for a genuine Gothic relic.
The brasses, in the sanctuary, form a picture-gallery of fashion from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. The earliest figure, John Compton, 1424, has full plate armour. Thomas and Richard Greenaway, 1534 and 1551, illustrated the return to chain-mail, Simon Mayne, 1617, whose son signed the death warrant of Charles 1, is shown in armour with top-boots and spurs. William and Francis Lee and their wives, 1486-1558, are in civilian costume.
When the plates were taken up in 1944, they were discovered to be 'palirnpsest'—i.e. twice-used. Older brasses, plundered from monastic churches at home and abroad during the Reformation period, had evidently been cut up, turned over, and new figures engraved on the back. One was found to have commemorated a Treasurer of York Minster, another a priest in vestments, while a third was a fragment from an exquisite Flemish brass of the four-teenth century.
Between the two world-wars, the work of improvement and restoration went on. In 1927, the row of old almshouses south-east of the church porch was taken down, and the present wall and gate-way were built. Mr. Webb, of Haddenham, carried out the work-, and he used the stone which was left over to help build Bernard Hall in Cuddington.
The almshouses were in bad repair, and had long been disused. But their disappearance made a big change in one of the oldest parts of the village. Just to the south of where they stood, there are the remains of the old village stocks. And, across the road, is the original 'dower-house' of Dinton Hall—now divided into two separate houses. A little further down the hill is the forge, where horses were shod until a few years ago.
Reproduced from Church Leaflet
Something similar in Ottawa: www.flickr.com/photos/21728045@N08/3645513503/in/photostr...
This was for sale on eBay today.
Background:
www.nysm.nysed.gov/publications/record/vol_01/pdfs/CH04El...
IROQUOIS BEADWORK:
A Haudenosaunee Tradition and Art
Dolores Elliott
The Iroquois tradition of raised beadwork began in west- ern New York in the late eighteenth century. It is slightly older than the other great North American Indian bead- working tradition that the Lakota, Cheyenne, and other people of the Plains developed. Raised beadwork is unique to the Haudenosaunee; it is made nowhere else in the world. The Senecas, who decorated clothes, sashes, and small pincushions with small glass beads in the eigh- teenth century, probably invented the style of Iroquois beadwork that still exists today. They were making bead- ed pincushions by 1799 and purses by 1807. In the mid- nineteenth century, ethnohistorian Lewis H. Morgan noted in his League of the Ho-de’-no-sau-see, or Iroquois the “delicacy, even brilliancy of their bead-work embroidery” on women’s clothing (1851, Book 3:384), and he included illustrations of beadwork on a needle case, woman’s skirt, cradleboard, heart-shaped pincushion, and work bag, the forerunner of a modern purse. He reported that in 1849 he had purchased five varieties of work bags as well as three varieties of pin cushions and five varieties of needle books (Morgan 1850, 57).
(Figure 4.1). While they sold their goods at nearby Montreal, the Mohawks also traveled extensively throughout North America to sell at fairs, exhibitions, wild west shows, and Indian medicine shows. Some even sold their beadwork when they traveled to England to perform Indian dances at Earls Court, an exhibition ground in London. Photographs taken in 1905 show these performers attired in clothing decorated with Mohawk beadwork.
The Iroquois tradition of beadwork continued to evolve in the nineteenth century, and by 1860 Mohawks near Montreal and Tuscaroras near Niagara Falls were creating elaborate pincushions, purses, and wall hangings adorned with raised beadwork. Despite the similarity of items created, the two geographic areas developed different styles of beadwork (Table 4.1). Throughout the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, at the height of beadwork production, the Tuscaroras sold their beadwork mostly at Niagara Falls, on their reservation, and at the New York State Fair. They preferred to use small clear and white beads. During this same period, the Mohawks used larger clear beads and also employed red, blue, green, and yellow beads on most of their early pieces
Figure 4.1. Two needle cases that illustrate differences in nineteenth- century Mohawk (left) and Niagara (right) beadwork.
My personal family experience illustrates typical Iroquois beadwork transactions in the twentieth century. My story starts in 1903 when my grandmother went to the Afton Fair, a small agricultural fair in central New York. She took my nine-year-old father, but his sister, then eleven, was sick and could not go. My grandmother brought her home a present from the fair. It was a beauti- ful pink satin-covered bird-shaped pincushion that sparkled with light green beads (Figure 4.2). My aunt treasured this bird throughout her long life and displayed it proudly in her china cabinet, where I saw it when I was a child. At her death this cherished heirloom was passed on to her daughter who later donated it to the Afton Historical Society in Chenango County, where it is presently on view.
My research indicates that this bird was made by a skilled Mohawk beadworker from a Mohawk community located near Montreal and several hundred miles from the Afton Fair. This pincushion probably got to the fair with a group of Mohawks who traveled by train or wagon to perform at fairs, medicine shows, and exhibi- tions. While at these venues, they also sold their hand- made baskets and beadwork.
In 1958 I bought a small red heart-shaped pincushion at a booth in the Indian Village at the New York State Fair, which is held near Syracuse (Figure 4.3). It was a present for my mother, who displayed it prominently on her bed- room dresser for the next twenty-five years until I inher- ited it. Mary Lou Printup, a leading Tuscarora sewer, later identified this pincushion as one she had made. She, like most Tuscarora beadworkers prefer to be called “sewers,” a term not popular with some other Iroquois beadwork- ers. In my research and writing, I use the word “bead- worker” to refer to all except those individuals who specifically prefer to be called “sewers.”
When I purchased the red heart I had no idea that this pincushion had anything in common with the bird that my grandmother acquired fifty-five years earlier. I knew that I wanted to get something special for my mother, and this pincushion was special because it was beautiful and made by a native artist. In buying it I shared something with my grandmother, who died before I was born, that is, the purchase of a piece of Iroquois beadwork. Most likely the purchase of the bird was my German-born grandmother’s only interaction with a Haudenosaunee woman, and my purchase at the State Fair was my first interaction with a Tuscarora sewer, the first of many.
In a similar manner Iroquois beadworkers and their non- Indian customers, often tourists or attendees at a public entertainment venue, have been brought together by bead-work for over two centuries. These transactions undoubtedly number in the tens of thousands.1 During honeymoon trips to Niagara Falls and visits to agricultural fairs, exhibitions, and other attractions, people purchased Iroquois beadwork as mementos to remember these places and experiences. The beads often form designs featuring birds and flowers, natural themes that appealed to the Victorian women who drove the market of souvenir sales in the nine- teenth century. Studies by Beverly Gordon (1984; 1986) and Ruth B. Phillips (1998) describe the souvenir trade and point out the importance of these items to the people on both sides of the transactions.
Souvenir beadwork was so treasured that the pieces were frequently kept in cedar chests or keepsake boxes. Therefore, when unwrapped one hundred or more years later, they are often in pristine condition. Ironically, few contemporary beadworkers have samples of their ancestors’ work because it was usually made for sale to strangers, although some beadwork was created as gifts for family and friends.
Because most pieces were made for sale to tourists, many people have dismissed Iroquois beadwork as “souvenir trinkets” not important enough to collect, study, or exhibit. In fact, they are often called whimsies, a term that I believe trivializes them and diminishes their artistic and cultural value. But within the last two decades Iroquois beadwork has become the subject of serious study and museum exhibitions. At least four traveling exhibits of Iroquois beadwork have been installed in over a dozen museums and seen by thousands of museum visitors in the United States and Canada since 1999.2 This scholarly recognition has resulted in an increased appreciation of these beadwork creations and the artists who made them. What were considered curious tourist souvenirs when they were made are now generating increased respect from both the general public and the Haudenosaunee.
ry pieces, the back is a colorful calico. Some pieces, mainly in the Niagara Tradition, have a silk or cotton binding around their perimeters to cover the cut edges and attach the front and back fabrics. Tight beadwork on the edging often binds Mohawk pieces together so a cloth binding is not necessary. Flat purses as well as fist and box purses are constructed in the same manner, with cardboard as the base.
Contemporary beadworkers see their work as a signif- icant part of Haudenosaunee culture and an important link to the past. In Haudenosaunee communities bead- workers are admired as continuing a revered tradition. Although there are a few male beadworkers, the majority are women, and in a matrilineal-society with powerful clan matrons, the economic benefit of beadwork sales increases the influence of the women even more.
Pincushions were usually stuffed with sawdust, but sweet grass, cotton, cattail fluff, newspapers, and poly- ester have also been used. Contemporary craftsmen remember that their mothers preferred pine sawdust because of the nice aroma.4 Small strawberry-shaped pin- cushions are traditionally filled with emery, used to sharpen and polish needles. Velvet and twill-covered pic- ture frames and other wall hangings on cardboard bases have polished cotton backs on earlier pieces and calico on more recent ones. European glass beads were often aug- mented with metal sequins on nineteenth-century pieces and with plastic sequins and other plastic novelty beads since the late twentieth century. Bone and shell beads and leather, which are often used in other American Indian beadwork, rarely occur in Iroquois beadwork.
Iroquois beadwork is still sold at Niagara Falls, the New York State Fair, and several pow wows and festivals in the northeast; the methods of beadwork distribution have changed little over two hundred years. The bead-work itself, however, has changed tremendously. Over the last two centuries the styles of beadwork have evolved from simple small pincushions and purses to highly elaborate shapes, becoming works of art in the tra- ditional sense. The beads selected have progressed from the very small seed beads used around 1800 to the larger seed beads of 1900 and finally, by 2000, to a wider variety of bead sizes and colors.
The most common form of Iroquois beadwork, and the form most easily recognizable by people who are not familiar with Iroquois beadwork, is the flat black purse or bag featuring identical colorful, beaded floral designs on both sides. Most flat bags have flaps on both sides, but the opening is across the top where the two sides meet. The face fabric is usually black or very dark brown velvet, and the interior is often a light-colored linen or polished cot- ton. A binding, usually red, is attached around the closed sides of the purses. A beaded fringe is sometimes added. The fringe is merely sewn to the binding and does not hold the two sides of the bag together; it is purely deco- rative. The flaps usually are edged with white beads that are larger than the beads that outline the flaps and body (Figure 4.4). The flaps and body are sometimes outlined with short parallel lines like a stockade. The faces of the flap and body are covered by stylized flowers in shades of blue, red, yellow, and white connected with green stems, which are sometimes striped in two shades of green. Some bags feature a small slit pocket under one of the flaps. It may have been meant to hold a comb or mirror.
Iroquois beadwork remains a unique art form distin- guished by several characteristics found only in work created by Haudenosaunee beadworkers. Iroquois beadwork features a design in glass beads that have been sewn on a fabric that is stretched over a backing of cardboard or cloth lining. The materials used in the beadwork are predominately small seed beads, cloth, cardboard, paper, and in pincushions, a stuffing. The beads are sewn onto the fabric in geometric or natural designs using waxed, doubled white thread.3 The beads are usually sewn over a paper pattern that remains in place under the beaded elements. Although not practiced at all times in the histo- ry of Iroquois beadwork, the most distinctive trait is that the beads are raised above the surface of the cloth face. Some pieces have raised beaded elements that are over an inch high. The beads are raised by putting more beads on the thread than is needed to span the pattern so that the beads form an arch above the pattern. The amount of extra beads determines how high the arches are, that is, how much the beadwork is raised. Various velvets were and still are the favored fabrics, but other fabrics such as wool, twills, silk, and satin are also used. Pincushions often have beaded velvet fronts and polished cotton backs. Polished cotton is a shiny stiff material that is also referred to as chintz or oilcloth. On the majority of late twentieth-century and contemporary twenty-first-century...
Preserving Tradition and Understanding the Past: Papers from the Conference on Iroquois Research, 2001–2005, Edited by Christine Sternberg Patrick, New York State Museum Record 1 © 2010, by The University of the State of New York, The State Education Department, Albany, New York 12230. All rights reserved. Click on top link for more.
Joel Barlow (1754-1812) was a graduate of Yale College. He was a chaplain for three years in the Revolutionary Army. In July 1784 he established at Hartford, Conn., a weekly paper, the American Mercury. In 1786 he was admitted to the bar. Along with John Trumbull and Timothy Dwight, he was a member of the group of young writers, known as the Connecticut, or Hartford, Wits, whose patriotism led them to attempt to create a national literature
Joel Barlow aspired to write the great American epic and did so repeatedly, with his Prospect of Peace (1778), The Vision of Columbus (1787), and The Columbiad (1807). Yet he remains best remembered for his mock-heroic poem about his Connecticut childhood, The Hasty Pudding (1796). Barlow’s accomplishments as poet, chaplain, newspaper editor, bookseller, real estate agent, publisher, and diplomat are impressive, but his simple celebration of American domesticity stands as his most endearing literary contribution.
Barlow sought the patronage of French King Louis XVI by asking him to subscribe to the publication of his poem and then dedicating the poem to him. The long poem, which Barlow called The Vision of Columbus, was published in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1787.
The record in the archives of the church in Zarnowiec reads
Anno 1812, Decembris 26 at 1 o'clock P.M. before us the rector of the Zarnowiec parish and civil recorder of the village of Zarnowiec, Pilica County, Department of Cracow, there came Hon. John Blaski, postmaster and Mayor of the village Zarnowiec, residing here and thirty-six years old, and Idzi Baiorkiewicz, residing at his farm of two quarts at Zarnowiec and thirty-three years old, and declared that his Excellency, Joel Barlow, Minister Plenipotentiary at the Court of Emperor of the French and King of Italy, died on the above day at 12 o'clock at noon in the house No. 1 while journeying from Warsaw to Paris, at the age of fifty-six, son of unknown parents, and husband of her Excellency Mrs. Margaret nee Baldwin, residing in the American city of Ridgefield. After reading this to the present we undersigned it with the witnesses, Rev. Stanislaus Bajorski, civil recorder; John Blaski, witness; Idzi Baiorkiewicz, witness.
Joel Barlow was painted by Robert Fulton.
///
The Conspiracy of Kings, published in February 1792, is very much a work of its time, the first months of the constitional monarchy in France. Louis XVI and the new Legislative Assembly began their uneasy relationship in October 1792. Outside France, exiled members of the nobility campaigned to persuade the sovereigns of Europe to intervene and restore them to their privileges. On the other side, friends of the French Revolution sought to discourage intervention and to discredit the principles of legitimacy and social hierarchy that supported the old order.
Joel Barlow had arrived in France in 1788 to act as the representative of a scheme to at-tract French settlers to the western territories, in what is now Ohio. After some initial success, difficulties at the American end caused the scheme to fail, and Barlow left France for England in 1791. Having observed events in France at close hand, he had become an ardent supporter of the Revolution, and set himself to advance the cause by writing. He began his prose work, Advice to the Privileged Orders in the Several States of Europe, Resulting from the Necessity and Propriety of a General Revolution in the Principle of Government, the first four parts of which were published early in 1792; the title might serve as a summary of The Conspiracy of Kings.
For English readers, the debate over the revolution was essentially a debate over the views advanced eloquently in Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, pub-lished in November 1790. Many of the books that attacked the Reflections were published by Joseph Johnson, a well-established London bookseller and publisher with a long history of taking the dissenting side in politics and religion. (He had published the English edition of Barlow's The Vision of Columbus in 1787.) For Barlow, Burke was a particularly troubling opponent because of his earlier support of the American Revolution. The attack on Burke that makes the centerpiece of the poem is a conflicted one that shows Barlow's regret as well as his scorn for what Burke has become, and stands in sharp contrast to the ironic footnote dismissals of the Vicomte de Calonne and the Comte D'Artois, the leading figures among the exiled nobility.
Barlow has gibes for the Frederick William II of Prussia, Catherine the Great of Russia, and Leopold II of the Holy Roman Empire, but two sovereigns are conspicuous by their absence: George III of Britain and Louis XVI of France. An attack on the first would have exposed Barlow to prosecution in England. As for the second, the jury was still out on the constitutional monarchy as Barlow wrote; his objective was to direct attention from what is happening now in France to the significance of what has happened in France for the rest of Europe. There he sees much to denounce, but the poem ends on a note of hope: the enlightened king Stanslaus Poniatowski has promulgated the Constitution of May 3, 1791 to move Poland toward a more egalitarian society, and on the other side of the Atlantic the United States provides the example which may yet move the nations of Europe to reason their way to governments of that rare union, Liberty and Laws.
ETERNAL Truth, thy trump undaunted lend,
People and priests and courts and kings, attend;
While, borne on we?ern gales from that far shore
Where Justice reigns, and tyrants tread no more,
Th' unwonted voice, that no dissuasion awes,
That fears no frown, and seeks no blind applause,
Shall tell the bliss that Freedom sheds abroad,
The rights of nature and the gift of God.
////
THE ENLIGHTENMENT VIEW OF MYTH
AND JOEL BARLOW'S
Vision of Columbus
Robert D. Richardson, Jr.
UNIVERSITY OF DENVER
One of the ways to approach the problem of the role of myth in
American writing of the Revolutionary era is to ask first how the writ-
ers themselves regarded the subject. A quick survey of their terminol-
ogy, their resources, and above all their reasons for being interested in
myth provides a background, against which I shall then try to show
that Joel Barlow Vision of Columbus, to take only one of a number
of possible examples, has a complex and intentional mythic structure
that makes it a more interesting poem than is generally thought.
To begin with, it must be stressed that the word "myth" was not
used in English until the nineteenth century. The word does not occur
in eighteenth-century dictionaries or encyclopedias. When a single
myth was referred to, it was always as a "mythological fiction," a "po-
etical fiction," a "tradition," a "poetical history," or, most commonly,
a "fable." Almost everything relating to what we now think of as myth
came, for the eighteenth century, under the heading of the word "my-
thology." This word did not then mean primarily a collection of myths
or fables; it meant, first of all, an explanation or interpretation of
myths. Johnson Dictionary ( 1755 ) defines mythology as a "system of
fables; explication of the fabulous history of the gods of the heathen
world." This view is echoed as late as 1806 when Noah Webster de-
fines mythology (there being no entry for "myth" in his dictionary ei-
ther) as "a system or explanation of fables." The first edition of the En-
cyclopedia Britannica ( 1771 ) calls mythology a "science" concerned
with "the history of the gods" and "the theology of the pagans" and
maintains that "mythology, when properly treated, begins with making
learned researches into the real origin of fables, or paganism, and of
that idolatry which was its consequence." From these examples, which
could be multiplied, it should be clear that for the late eighteenth cen-
tury, mythology meant primarily what we would call myth theory,
myth scholarship, or myth criticism.
When they were looking for information about certain myths or
-34-
for collections of myths, mainly classical myths, American writers had
John Lempriere Classical Dictionary only after 1788. There was no
earlier equivalent, and writers had to rely on a variety of handbooks.
Typical of these and by far the most popular was Andrew Tooke Pan
theon of the Heathen Gods, first published in 1698, in its twenty-third
edition by 1771 and its thirty-third by 1825.1 This compendium
avoids the words mythology and mythological, takes a narrowly Chris
tian point of view, and treats classical myth simply as heathen idolatry.
Tooke assumes a Euhemerist origin for myth; he believes that the gods
began as remarkable human beings who were worshipped and deified
by later generations. This view was most fully developed in the eigh
teenth century by the Abbé Banier, whose effort to read myths as po
eticized historical events of the earliest ages lies behind most popular
eighteenth-century treatments of myth, behind Diderot Encyclopédie,
the first Britannica, and the first American dictionary of religions,
Hannah Adams Alphabetical Compendium of the Various Sects which
have Appeared in the World from the Beginning of the Christian Era
to the Present, Boston, 1784.2 This book, renamed A Dictionary of all
Religions, and reaching a fourth edition by 1817, claims that "the de
ities of almost all nations were either ancient heroes, renowned for no
ble exploits and worthy deeds, or kings and generals who had founded
empires, or women who had become illustrious by remarkable actions
or useful inventions. The merit of those eminent persons, contemplated
by their posterity with enthusiastic gratitude, was the cause of their ex.
altation to divine honours."3
The earliest reference to Dinton Church belongs to the year 1070. It is a grant by William the Conqueror of 'the Manor and Church of Daniton' to Odo, Bishop of Bayeux. No trace of the original Saxon church survives. It was probably a narrow, thatched building with very few windows. But it was replaced after a few years, when the church passed from Bishop Odo's control, and became the property of the convent at Godstow.
It was about the year 1140 that the rebuilding of Dinton Church began. The nave was laid out on its present site, and there was a solid wall at the west end, where the nave now joins the tower. The main entrance to the 1140 building was through the same beautiful south doorway which we use today, although this doorway was later moved a few yards from its original position. For the old south wall of the church was where the present line of pillars and arches stands. The font also belongs to the Norman period, and has probably been moved very little in its 800 years of constant use. The chancel was built at this time, but it has since been enlarged and restored. The lancet windows in the north and south walls of the chancel are of the same pattern as those which were used throughout the 1140 building.
If you stand at the west end of the nave, and look towards the altar (ignoring the south aisle), you can get a good idea of the shape of the old Norman church. The interior, if we could see it now, would seem rather dark—partly because of the narrow windows, and partly because of the low Norman arch which used to separate the nave from the chancel. There were no pews, and the stone bench, which is still to be seen against the north wall, provided the only form of seating. The floor sloped gradually upwards in the direction of the chancel, instead of having steps at intervals, as at present.
Just by the present pulpit is a narrow window, cut deeply into the wall, which belongs to this period. It is a `lowside window', originally set in the south wall of the church, and the clerk used to ring a handbell through it at the time of the elevation of the Host during Mass. In the fourteenth century this practice was stopped through-out the country, and church bells were rung instead. But the lowside window at Dinton can only have been used before the building of the south aisle.
This addition of a south aisle was part of a series of alterations begun about the year 1230, with the object of making the building lighter and more graceful. The low archway between the chancel and the nave was taken down, and the present one put in its place.
A door was built in the west wall-, and, most important of all, the south aisle was added to the nave. The old south wall was replaced by the present series of arches. And the beautiful south doorway was taken down and moved to its present place, where it remains one of the finest treasures of the church. Its loveliness is at once apparent. But, as we stand before it and reflect that worshippers since Norman times have entered Dinton Church through this same doorway, we are moved by something more than its outward beauty. The figures above it are said to represent St. Michael and the Dragon, and the inscription has been translated:
If anyone despairs of reward according with his merits
Let him listen to precepts, and let them be observed by him.
The other thing which the builders of 1234 did was to remake and buttress the north wall, inserting the four large windows in their present form. When this work had been completed, the nave and chancel must have looked much the same, from the inside, as they do today. From the outside, however, the church would have looked strange to us, because there was no tower yet, and no porch.
The tower was built about the year 1340, and on this occasion, too, a doorway was carefully taken down and moved from its original position. This time it was the doorway in the centre of the old west wall, which was moved and re-erected in the west wall of the tower, where it is still in use. The final alteration came with the building of the south porch in the early sixteenth century. Thus. the newest part of the building shelters the oldest part.
A small group of memorials on the north wall, near the chancel, is worth studying. A grey slate tablet is dedicated to Simon Mayne, who died in 1617, leaving Dinton Hall to his son of the same name. The latter was a prominent member of the Parliamentary Party during the Civil War, and Cromwell came to stay with him at Dinton. A member of the Long Parliament, Mayne later sat as a Judge of the High Commission Court which tried Charles the First, and was one of those who signed the king's death warrant. He was tried at the Old Bailey in 1660, and died in the Tower the following year. His body was brought back to Dinton for burial.
Simon Mayne's clerk, a man called John Bigg, became a recluse in the years following the Restoration. He lived in a cave to the west of Dinton Hall, and was known as the Dinton Hermit. Two of his boots (made of patches of leather) are still preserved today—one of them in Dinton Hall, and the other in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. It was in these home-made boots that Bigg used to walk over to Hampden every day to get food from the Hampden family. He must have been a strange sight in his queer clothes, reminiscent of the nursery rhyme, "The old man decked in leather', of which he may possibly have been the original. But the hidden retreats and secret passages, which are sometimes discovered in the district, remind us of the terror in which Mayne, Bigg and their friends lived after the Restoration. At the beginning of the last century, builders found a secret room lined with blankets in Dinton Hall. The late Mr. Skilbeck of Bledlow tells how he excavated part of an under-ground passage near Longdown Farm, in the Hampden woods, which Bigg may have built for his own protection.
Next to the Mayne tablet are the memorials of the Vanhattem family, who originally came over to England with William of Orange. They bought Dinton Hall from the Maynes in 1727, and carried out a number of improvements to the estate. It was Sir John Vanhattem who, in 1769, built 'Dinton Castle' on the main Oxford Road, as a place to house his collection of fossils. The building was never completed, and is now so completely ruined that it is often mistaken for a genuine Gothic relic.
The brasses, in the sanctuary, form a picture-gallery of fashion from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. The earliest figure, John Compton, 1424, has full plate armour. Thomas and Richard Greenaway, 1534 and 1551, illustrated the return to chain-mail, Simon Mayne, 1617, whose son signed the death warrant of Charles 1, is shown in armour with top-boots and spurs. William and Francis Lee and their wives, 1486-1558, are in civilian costume.
When the plates were taken up in 1944, they were discovered to be 'palirnpsest'—i.e. twice-used. Older brasses, plundered from monastic churches at home and abroad during the Reformation period, had evidently been cut up, turned over, and new figures engraved on the back. One was found to have commemorated a Treasurer of York Minster, another a priest in vestments, while a third was a fragment from an exquisite Flemish brass of the four-teenth century.
Between the two world-wars, the work of improvement and restoration went on. In 1927, the row of old almshouses south-east of the church porch was taken down, and the present wall and gate-way were built. Mr. Webb, of Haddenham, carried out the work-, and he used the stone which was left over to help build Bernard Hall in Cuddington.
The almshouses were in bad repair, and had long been disused. But their disappearance made a big change in one of the oldest parts of the village. Just to the south of where they stood, there are the remains of the old village stocks. And, across the road, is the original 'dower-house' of Dinton Hall—now divided into two separate houses. A little further down the hill is the forge, where horses were shod until a few years ago.
Reproduced from Church Leaflet
Artizen HDR Natural 2.9.7c
The earliest reference to Dinton Church belongs to the year 1070. It is a grant by William the Conqueror of 'the Manor and Church of Daniton' to Odo, Bishop of Bayeux. No trace of the original Saxon church survives. It was probably a narrow, thatched building with very few windows. But it was replaced after a few years, when the church passed from Bishop Odo's control, and became the property of the convent at Godstow.
It was about the year 1140 that the rebuilding of Dinton Church began. The nave was laid out on its present site, and there was a solid wall at the west end, where the nave now joins the tower. The main entrance to the 1140 building was through the same beautiful south doorway which we use today, although this doorway was later moved a few yards from its original position. For the old south wall of the church was where the present line of pillars and arches stands. The font also belongs to the Norman period, and has probably been moved very little in its 800 years of constant use. The chancel was built at this time, but it has since been enlarged and restored. The lancet windows in the north and south walls of the chancel are of the same pattern as those which were used throughout the 1140 building.
If you stand at the west end of the nave, and look towards the altar (ignoring the south aisle), you can get a good idea of the shape of the old Norman church. The interior, if we could see it now, would seem rather dark—partly because of the narrow windows, and partly because of the low Norman arch which used to separate the nave from the chancel. There were no pews, and the stone bench, which is still to be seen against the north wall, provided the only form of seating. The floor sloped gradually upwards in the direction of the chancel, instead of having steps at intervals, as at present.
Just by the present pulpit is a narrow window, cut deeply into the wall, which belongs to this period. It is a `lowside window', originally set in the south wall of the church, and the clerk used to ring a handbell through it at the time of the elevation of the Host during Mass. In the fourteenth century this practice was stopped through-out the country, and church bells were rung instead. But the lowside window at Dinton can only have been used before the building of the south aisle.
This addition of a south aisle was part of a series of alterations begun about the year 1230, with the object of making the building lighter and more graceful. The low archway between the chancel and the nave was taken down, and the present one put in its place.
A door was built in the west wall-, and, most important of all, the south aisle was added to the nave. The old south wall was replaced by the present series of arches. And the beautiful south doorway was taken down and moved to its present place, where it remains one of the finest treasures of the church. Its loveliness is at once apparent. But, as we stand before it and reflect that worshippers since Norman times have entered Dinton Church through this same doorway, we are moved by something more than its outward beauty. The figures above it are said to represent St. Michael and the Dragon, and the inscription has been translated:
If anyone despairs of reward according with his merits
Let him listen to precepts, and let them be observed by him.
The other thing which the builders of 1234 did was to remake and buttress the north wall, inserting the four large windows in their present form. When this work had been completed, the nave and chancel must have looked much the same, from the inside, as they do today. From the outside, however, the church would have looked strange to us, because there was no tower yet, and no porch.
The tower was built about the year 1340, and on this occasion, too, a doorway was carefully taken down and moved from its original position. This time it was the doorway in the centre of the old west wall, which was moved and re-erected in the west wall of the tower, where it is still in use. The final alteration came with the building of the south porch in the early sixteenth century. Thus. the newest part of the building shelters the oldest part.
A small group of memorials on the north wall, near the chancel, is worth studying. A grey slate tablet is dedicated to Simon Mayne, who died in 1617, leaving Dinton Hall to his son of the same name. The latter was a prominent member of the Parliamentary Party during the Civil War, and Cromwell came to stay with him at Dinton. A member of the Long Parliament, Mayne later sat as a Judge of the High Commission Court which tried Charles the First, and was one of those who signed the king's death warrant. He was tried at the Old Bailey in 1660, and died in the Tower the following year. His body was brought back to Dinton for burial.
Simon Mayne's clerk, a man called John Bigg, became a recluse in the years following the Restoration. He lived in a cave to the west of Dinton Hall, and was known as the Dinton Hermit. Two of his boots (made of patches of leather) are still preserved today—one of them in Dinton Hall, and the other in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. It was in these home-made boots that Bigg used to walk over to Hampden every day to get food from the Hampden family. He must have been a strange sight in his queer clothes, reminiscent of the nursery rhyme, "The old man decked in leather', of which he may possibly have been the original. But the hidden retreats and secret passages, which are sometimes discovered in the district, remind us of the terror in which Mayne, Bigg and their friends lived after the Restoration. At the beginning of the last century, builders found a secret room lined with blankets in Dinton Hall. The late Mr. Skilbeck of Bledlow tells how he excavated part of an under-ground passage near Longdown Farm, in the Hampden woods, which Bigg may have built for his own protection.
Next to the Mayne tablet are the memorials of the Vanhattem family, who originally came over to England with William of Orange. They bought Dinton Hall from the Maynes in 1727, and carried out a number of improvements to the estate. It was Sir John Vanhattem who, in 1769, built 'Dinton Castle' on the main Oxford Road, as a place to house his collection of fossils. The building was never completed, and is now so completely ruined that it is often mistaken for a genuine Gothic relic.
The brasses, in the sanctuary, form a picture-gallery of fashion from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. The earliest figure, John Compton, 1424, has full plate armour. Thomas and Richard Greenaway, 1534 and 1551, illustrated the return to chain-mail, Simon Mayne, 1617, whose son signed the death warrant of Charles 1, is shown in armour with top-boots and spurs. William and Francis Lee and their wives, 1486-1558, are in civilian costume.
When the plates were taken up in 1944, they were discovered to be 'palirnpsest'—i.e. twice-used. Older brasses, plundered from monastic churches at home and abroad during the Reformation period, had evidently been cut up, turned over, and new figures engraved on the back. One was found to have commemorated a Treasurer of York Minster, another a priest in vestments, while a third was a fragment from an exquisite Flemish brass of the four-teenth century.
Between the two world-wars, the work of improvement and restoration went on. In 1927, the row of old almshouses south-east of the church porch was taken down, and the present wall and gate-way were built. Mr. Webb, of Haddenham, carried out the work-, and he used the stone which was left over to help build Bernard Hall in Cuddington.
The almshouses were in bad repair, and had long been disused. But their disappearance made a big change in one of the oldest parts of the village. Just to the south of where they stood, there are the remains of the old village stocks. And, across the road, is the original 'dower-house' of Dinton Hall—now divided into two separate houses. A little further down the hill is the forge, where horses were shod until a few years ago.
Reproduced from Church leaflet
via Recent Uploads tagged quotes ift.tt/1hbdC6X Visit our site for inspiring quotes, tips and life lessons: thetopshape.com
The earliest reference to Dinton Church belongs to the year 1070. It is a grant by William the Conqueror of 'the Manor and Church of Daniton' to Odo, Bishop of Bayeux. No trace of the original Saxon church survives. It was probably a narrow, thatched building with very few windows. But it was replaced after a few years, when the church passed from Bishop Odo's control, and became the property of the convent at Godstow.
It was about the year 1140 that the rebuilding of Dinton Church began. The nave was laid out on its present site, and there was a solid wall at the west end, where the nave now joins the tower. The main entrance to the 1140 building was through the same beautiful south doorway which we use today, although this doorway was later moved a few yards from its original position. For the old south wall of the church was where the present line of pillars and arches stands. The font also belongs to the Norman period, and has probably been moved very little in its 800 years of constant use. The chancel was built at this time, but it has since been enlarged and restored. The lancet windows in the north and south walls of the chancel are of the same pattern as those which were used throughout the 1140 building.
If you stand at the west end of the nave, and look towards the altar (ignoring the south aisle), you can get a good idea of the shape of the old Norman church. The interior, if we could see it now, would seem rather dark—partly because of the narrow windows, and partly because of the low Norman arch which used to separate the nave from the chancel. There were no pews, and the stone bench, which is still to be seen against the north wall, provided the only form of seating. The floor sloped gradually upwards in the direction of the chancel, instead of having steps at intervals, as at present.
Just by the present pulpit is a narrow window, cut deeply into the wall, which belongs to this period. It is a `lowside window', originally set in the south wall of the church, and the clerk used to ring a handbell through it at the time of the elevation of the Host during Mass. In the fourteenth century this practice was stopped through-out the country, and church bells were rung instead. But the lowside window at Dinton can only have been used before the building of the south aisle.
This addition of a south aisle was part of a series of alterations begun about the year 1230, with the object of making the building lighter and more graceful. The low archway between the chancel and the nave was taken down, and the present one put in its place.
A door was built in the west wall-, and, most important of all, the south aisle was added to the nave. The old south wall was replaced by the present series of arches. And the beautiful south doorway was taken down and moved to its present place, where it remains one of the finest treasures of the church. Its loveliness is at once apparent. But, as we stand before it and reflect that worshippers since Norman times have entered Dinton Church through this same doorway, we are moved by something more than its outward beauty. The figures above it are said to represent St. Michael and the Dragon, and the inscription has been translated:
If anyone despairs of reward according with his merits
Let him listen to precepts, and let them be observed by him.
The other thing which the builders of 1234 did was to remake and buttress the north wall, inserting the four large windows in their present form. When this work had been completed, the nave and chancel must have looked much the same, from the inside, as they do today. From the outside, however, the church would have looked strange to us, because there was no tower yet, and no porch.
The tower was built about the year 1340, and on this occasion, too, a doorway was carefully taken down and moved from its original position. This time it was the doorway in the centre of the old west wall, which was moved and re-erected in the west wall of the tower, where it is still in use. The final alteration came with the building of the south porch in the early sixteenth century. Thus. the newest part of the building shelters the oldest part.
A small group of memorials on the north wall, near the chancel, is worth studying. A grey slate tablet is dedicated to Simon Mayne, who died in 1617, leaving Dinton Hall to his son of the same name. The latter was a prominent member of the Parliamentary Party during the Civil War, and Cromwell came to stay with him at Dinton. A member of the Long Parliament, Mayne later sat as a Judge of the High Commission Court which tried Charles the First, and was one of those who signed the king's death warrant. He was tried at the Old Bailey in 1660, and died in the Tower the following year. His body was brought back to Dinton for burial.
Simon Mayne's clerk, a man called John Bigg, became a recluse in the years following the Restoration. He lived in a cave to the west of Dinton Hall, and was known as the Dinton Hermit. Two of his boots (made of patches of leather) are still preserved today—one of them in Dinton Hall, and the other in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. It was in these home-made boots that Bigg used to walk over to Hampden every day to get food from the Hampden family. He must have been a strange sight in his queer clothes, reminiscent of the nursery rhyme, "The old man decked in leather', of which he may possibly have been the original. But the hidden retreats and secret passages, which are sometimes discovered in the district, remind us of the terror in which Mayne, Bigg and their friends lived after the Restoration. At the beginning of the last century, builders found a secret room lined with blankets in Dinton Hall. The late Mr. Skilbeck of Bledlow tells how he excavated part of an under-ground passage near Longdown Farm, in the Hampden woods, which Bigg may have built for his own protection.
Next to the Mayne tablet are the memorials of the Vanhattem family, who originally came over to England with William of Orange. They bought Dinton Hall from the Maynes in 1727, and carried out a number of improvements to the estate. It was Sir John Vanhattem who, in 1769, built 'Dinton Castle' on the main Oxford Road, as a place to house his collection of fossils. The building was never completed, and is now so completely ruined that it is often mistaken for a genuine Gothic relic.
The brasses, in the sanctuary, form a picture-gallery of fashion from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. The earliest figure, John Compton, 1424, has full plate armour. Thomas and Richard Greenaway, 1534 and 1551, illustrated the return to chain-mail, Simon Mayne, 1617, whose son signed the death warrant of Charles 1, is shown in armour with top-boots and spurs. William and Francis Lee and their wives, 1486-1558, are in civilian costume.
When the plates were taken up in 1944, they were discovered to be 'palirnpsest'—i.e. twice-used. Older brasses, plundered from monastic churches at home and abroad during the Reformation period, had evidently been cut up, turned over, and new figures engraved on the back. One was found to have commemorated a Treasurer of York Minster, another a priest in vestments, while a third was a fragment from an exquisite Flemish brass of the four-teenth century.
Between the two world-wars, the work of improvement and restoration went on. In 1927, the row of old almshouses south-east of the church porch was taken down, and the present wall and gate-way were built. Mr. Webb, of Haddenham, carried out the work-, and he used the stone which was left over to help build Bernard Hall in Cuddington.
The almshouses were in bad repair, and had long been disused. But their disappearance made a big change in one of the oldest parts of the village. Just to the south of where they stood, there are the remains of the old village stocks. And, across the road, is the original 'dower-house' of Dinton Hall—now divided into two separate houses. A little further down the hill is the forge, where horses were shod until a few years ago.
Reproduced from Church Leaflet