Moose Hair Embroidery Birch Bark Box

Description

This vintage birch bark box has Moose Hair embroidery. It is 4″ L x 3″W X 2″ H and octagonal shaped.  It is lined with silk on the top and bottom. It was likely made between 1840s to 1880.  There is some moose  hair missing on the top.

This is one of those wonderful Indian art works sold along the St Lawrence Seaway and other eastern venues by the Huron and other Northeastern Indians to travelers and vacationers to those areas.  These were made from birch bark and embroidered with moose hair. Arther Erickson https://arthurwerickson.com/products/embroidered-case

Moose hair embroidery decorations were most often done by Indigenous peoples of the northeastern part of what is now North America. The hair most often comes from the neck and cheek of the moose. Moose hair is laid out in patterns and then “couched into place using sinew and an awl and later cotton and needle. Sometimes the moose hair bundles are twisted and attached with thread or sinew in small stitches to create the look of beads.

On this birchbark box the artist used an overlapping applique on the leaves. The hairs were inserted by using an awl. It is edged by sewing down the material.

One of the best sources of information about Moose hair embroidery is by F.C. Speck, who wrote an article on the subject for American Anthropologist in 1911. Speck gives many details and illustrations about how to carry out this form of embroidery. SPECK, F. C. (1911). ‘Huron Moose Hair Embroidery,’ American Anthropologist, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 1-14. It is available online through Jstor.