Shoulder bag

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Porcupine quills are applied in three distinct ways on this late eighteenth-century shoulder pouch. For the horizontal panels, the artist loom wove colorfully dyed quills. Across the bottom and top, she sewed naturally white quills directly onto the black-dyed leather to create a zigzag motif. Finally, she wrapped dyed quills around alternating pairs of leather thongs for the strap, giving it a distinctive netlike structure. This type of netted quillwork disappeared by the early nineteenth century.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art