Shoshone, Great Basin / Rocky Mountain region
1880s
Rawhide with painted geometric decoration
Height 26½ in. (67.3 cm), width 13 in. (33 cm)
Provenance: Private Midwest collection
Parfleche packets of this type were produced across the Plains and Great Basin as folded rawhide containers used to store dried meat, pemmican, and personal belongings, and were essential to the material culture of nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples. This large Shoshone example is decorated with a bold geometric design in red, yellow, green, and blue on a white ground, organized into rectangular and triangular fields outlined in blue. The scale and graphic force of the painted surface place it among the more visually commanding examples of this form.
The painting is applied directly to the rawhide in a manner consistent with nineteenth-century Shoshone and neighboring Plateau and Basin traditions, using mineral and trade pigments within a structured compositional framework. Parfleche painting was primarily the work of women, with design vocabularies transmitted within family and community networks and carrying both aesthetic and cultural significance. The 1880s date places the object in the period of significant cultural disruption for Great Basin peoples, making intact painted containers of this quality increasingly rare survivals.
We ship free anywhere in the world, fully insured, packed by hand.
Shoshone, Great Basin / Rocky Mountain region
1880s
Rawhide with painted geometric decoration
Height 26½ in. (67.3 cm), width 13 in. (33 cm)
Provenance: Private Midwest collection
Parfleche packets of this type were produced across the Plains and Great Basin as folded rawhide containers used to store dried meat, pemmican, and personal belongings, and were essential to the material culture of nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples. This large Shoshone example is decorated with a bold geometric design in red, yellow, green, and blue on a white ground, organized into rectangular and triangular fields outlined in blue. The scale and graphic force of the painted surface place it among the more visually commanding examples of this form.
The painting is applied directly to the rawhide in a manner consistent with nineteenth-century Shoshone and neighboring Plateau and Basin traditions, using mineral and trade pigments within a structured compositional framework. Parfleche painting was primarily the work of women, with design vocabularies transmitted within family and community networks and carrying both aesthetic and cultural significance. The 1880s date places the object in the period of significant cultural disruption for Great Basin peoples, making intact painted containers of this quality increasingly rare survivals.
We ship free anywhere in the world, fully insured, packed by hand.
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