blanket(?);
rug(?)
- Museum number
- Am1992,07.1
- Description
-
Patchwork blanket or rug, made from a series of skins of young eider duck; the skins with down only, but the border edged with feathered skin.
- Production date
- 1950-1960
- Dimensions
-
Length: 142 centimetres
-
Width: 98 centimetres
- Curator's comments
- Letter dated 12.6.92 requesting further details of acquisition; no reply as of 7.5.93. This type of blanket is poorly documented, although they seem to have been made in some numbers in the middle of this century: they turn up in textile auctions from time to time; one example is illustrated in the 'Arctic' volume of the Handbook of North American Indians, Vol 5 ed, p 709. 'Smithsonian Dept of Anthr 417,719. Eiderdown blanket with feather border. Size 105 by 144 cm; collected in West Greenland, 1956.' Example brought into Students Room for identification 12.8.94, deposit 4069. See also 'Pelican' album of photographs in Archives: one of the photographs of artefacts uses an eider blanket as a backdrop; this is a Canadian album, c 1909, so these blankets may also have been made in Canada.
See correspondence with donor. Three photographs, two black and white and one colour print [now held in library], the latter dated 1956, were also donated to the Department. The donor thought that they might be associated: however they are all of Saami (Lapps), not of Greenland Inuit.
- Location
- On display (G30/dc11)
- Exhibition history
-
Exhibited:
2020-2021 October-Feb, London, BM, Arctic: culture and climate
- Condition
- fair
- Acquisition date
- 1992
- Department
- Africa, Oceania and the Americas
- Registration number
- Am1992,07.1
