Technique of Porcupine-Quill Decoration among the North American Indians
A 1916 monograph from the Museum of the American Indian (Heye Foundation) describing how North American Indian women decorated leather, birchbark and other objects with porcupine quills. It covers the collecting, sorting, dyeing and flattening of quills, the tools used (awls, bone markers, sinew), and the stitches (spot, back, loop). It also describes folding and crossing techniques for bands, plaiting, wrapped coils and hair fillers, wrapped fringe and pipe-stem braiding, edgings, raised lines, and quilled birchbark. A woven technique using sinew warps on a bow loom with quill wefts is described as well. The text is illustrated with numbered line drawings of the stitches and foldings and with plates of museum specimens such as knife sheaths, robes, pipe-stems, pouches and a quiver.
- Type
- Monograph
- Date
- 1916
- Language
- English
- Pages
- 80