Sewing Bag
date: label: Accession Date
content: 26 Jan 1869
name: label: Donor Name
content: Dr. William H. Dall
notes: label: Notes
content: FROM CARD: "House wife or work bag."
label: Notes
content: This object is on loan to the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center, from 2010 through 2027.
label: Notes
content: Source of the information below: Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center Alaska Native Collections: Sharing Knowledge website, by Aron Crowell, entry on this artifact https://alaska.si.edu/record.asp?id=23 , retrieved 1-5-2022; see web page for additional information: Sewing Bag, Inupiaq. Iñupiaq women around Norton Sound used roll-up bags like this to store their sewing tools. Sewing bags have a pocket at the bottom and a U-shaped flap at the top, to which a cord with a fastener is attached. The pouches held needles, thimbles, boot-sole creasers, awls, small ulu knives, and other items. This bag is made of cloth with a tanned reindeer skin flap; the decorative strips are black rockfish skin and dyed seal esophagus; and the fur trim is river otter. Women of Norton Sound and regions to the south used roll-up bags of this type to store their needles and sewing materials. Farther north, ivory needle cases were used instead. Sewing bags have a pocket at the bottom end and a U-shaped flap at the top, to which a cord with a fastener is attached. Some were made with more than one pocket. The pouch held needles, thimbles, thimble holders, boot-sole creasers, awls, small ulu knives, and other tools for women's work. The bags were sewn from strips and pieces of various skins, usually in decorative patterns of alternating colors. White strips of winter-tanned sealskin, black-brown strips of wolf-fish skin, and red strips of alder-dyed skin were often used. "Housewives" were also trimmed with fur and decorated with beads. To close the bag, it was rolled up, wound with the cord, and secured by tucking the fastener under the cord. Bag fasteners take the form of ivory, bone or horn pins, often engraved with geometric designs and carved with the forms and features of animals and humans.
label: Record Last Modified
content: 14 Jan 2022
label: Specimen Count
content: 1
place: label: Place
content: Unalakleet, Norton Sound, Alaska, United States, North America
topic: label: Topic
content: Ethnology
culture: label: Culture
content: Eskimo, Inupiaq
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 69A00010
label: USNM Number
content: E7602-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Bag
physicalDescription: label: Length - Object
content: 46 cm