TLINGIT CHILKAT WOVEN POUCH REPRESENTING A KILLER WHALE

NA- 2699- THE TLINGIT CHILKAT WOVEN POUCH REPRESENTING A KILLER WHALE.
A finely woven Northwest Coast chief's or shaman's pouch depicting a fluking killer whale on one side, Tlingit Tribe,

circa third to last quarter of the 19th Century.

Woven custom, as a Chilkat blanket would be, with goat's wool, goat hair, cedar bark, and natural dyes. An exceedingly rare object.

Provenance:
1) Purchased by George G. Heye at Chilkat, Alaska.

2) Catalogued into the Museum of the American Indian, New York in 1927, Accession No. 15/4376.

3) Exchanged to the Textile Museum, Washington, D.C. in December, 1962.

4) Exchanged to the Alan R. Sawyer Collection, former director of the Textile Museum.

5) Acquired from the heirs of Alan R. Sawyer by Anthropos Fine Art. Note:

The early provenance and collection history has been verified by a research specialist for the National Museum of the American Indian.

This Chilkat woven pouch is quite possibly the only one of its kind, as finely woven as any Chilkat blanket ever made. It is the only one known on the West Coast with the blanket fringe. There is one other known, which does not have the fringe, and that is in the Southwest Museum. Other known pouches are patchwork, made from old cut-up Chilkat blankets, as are chief's leggings. This one is custom made from scratch with the same technique and materials as if weaving an entire blanket. The back side of the pouch has the design of undulating lines, identical to the design on a Chilkat tunic, which clearly shows that this pouch was made for a chief or a shaman of the highest order