Hair-Pipe Necklace (early 1900s): Art, History and Details

Hair-Pipe Necklace (early 1900s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Among the most recognizable of Plains accouterments of the later 1800s are women’s necklaces and men’s breastplates made of so-called hair pipes, tubular beads originally made of shell. These prestigious chest ornaments became popular with the introduction of sturdier cow-bone pipes, nearly all manufactured by a mill in New Jersey and traded widely on the Plains. Bone pipes were made into many kinds of ornaments, the most elaborate being the necklaces and breastplates, today indispensable as powwow regalia. (The term “hair pipe” may stem from Native Americans’ use of smaller tubular beads as hair ornaments.)

Object facts

• Title: Hair-Pipe Necklace
• Date: early 1900s
• Culture: Native North America, Plains, Nakota (Yankton or Yanktonai Sioux)?
• Type: Jewelry
• Technique: Cow-bone hair pipes, glass beads, brass beads, silk ribbon, metal coin, Native-tanned hide or rawhide stringing, vegetable-tanned hide separators
• Dimensions: Overall: 236.2 cm (93 in.)
• Collection: AA - Native North America
• Department: Art of the Americas
• Accession number: 1932.50

A detail from the museum

Among the most spectacular of Plains ornaments are men’s breastplates and women’s necklaces made of cylindrical beads.

Collection credit

Educational Purchase Fund

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.