Lot 63
Unidentified Mi'kmaq Artist
Additional Images
Provenance:
Private Collection, Ontario
Note:
This elaborate and exuberantly coloured quill box exhibits lattice work and aniline dyes typical for its circa 1900 date. Its top is embellished with a double cross design. The cross motif is one of the few Mi’kmaq designs to have been recorded during the early contact period. Father Le Clircq, an early Jesuit missionary among the Mi’kmaq in the late 17th century was told that the design was of “great power”, and had been brought to the Mi’kmaq people as a protective talisman during a bad epidemic. [1]
[1] Ruth Holmes Whitehead, Micmac Quillwork: Micmac Indian Techniques of Porcupine Quill Decoration: 1600-1950 (Halifax: The Nova Scotia Museum, 1982), 168.