Bandolier (Shoulder) Bag (1880s?): Art, History and Details

Bandolier (Shoulder) Bag (1880s?) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Inspired perhaps by British ammunition pouches, bandolier bags evolved from smaller native bags to become one of the flashiest, most important items of Woodlands formal attire during the 1800s. Europeans introduced floral motifs to Woodlands imagery, but artists’ enthusiastic response suggests the motifs struck a chord in native thought, which holds plants to be animate and powerful. This example features blueberries, literally “soul food” that refreshes the spirit of the living and the dead, and alludes to new seasonal growth.

Object facts

• Title: Bandolier (Shoulder) Bag
• Date: 1880s?
• Culture: Northeastern Woodlands, Great Lakes Region, Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) People
• Type: Textile
• Technique: plain weave cotton, twill weave wool, velvet, plaited wool binding, wool tassels, glass beads
• Dimensions: Average: 107.3 x 33 cm (42 1/4 x 13 in.)
• Collection: T - Native North American
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1982.61

Collection credit

James Albert and Mary Gardiner Ford Memorial Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. "Year in Review for 1982." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 70, no. 1 (1983)

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.