Mackosi’kwe’s Baskets: Marking Relationships & Potato Stamps and Ash Splints

Mackosi’kwe (Mrs. Michel Buckshot,. Photo taken by Frank Speck.
Mss. Ms. Coll. 126, Image 1-2-b. American Philosophical Society Digital Collections.
 Image Courtesy of Penn Museum Blog.

April, 24, 2015.

Margaret Bruchac, of the Penn Museum Blog, has written a detailed and informative post about the Penn Museum's collection of dye stamps and ash splints created by Mackosi’kwe, of the River Desert Algonquian Band at the Maniwaki Reserve; now known as the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg.

"The items in the River Desert collection have been described as “common” and “utilitarian,” but they are much more. The objects created by Mackosi’kwe and other Algonquin artisans express Indigenous technology, ecological adaptability, and local aesthetics, woven into every piece of raw material, every stitch, every mark. "

-Margaret Bruchac, Penn Museum Blog

To read the full post, click here.

May 5, 2015.

Elizabeth Peng, of the Penn Museum Blog, has written a follow-up post about the Penn Museum's collection of dye stamps and ash splints created by Mrs. Michel Buckshot, of the River Desert Algonquian Band at the Maniwaki Reserve; now known as the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg.

"During the 1920s, a collection of potato die stamps illustrating the process of stamping baskets, along with the corresponding stamped ash splints, entered Johnson’s possession. He commissioned Mrs. Buckshot to create these potato die stamps, in order to show the traditional use of vegetable stamps and herbal dyes to decorate ash splint baskets. The dies, which are now preserved (likely in alcohol) inside a glass jar, consist of chunks of potatoes onto which various shapes have been carved, such as leaves and other organic shapes. Even today there are remnants of colored pigment on at least one of the stamp surfaces. "

-Elizabeth Peng, Penn Museum Blog

To read the full post, click here.

For more information,

Visit:

• Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg
• Penn Museum
• American Section
• National Museum of the American Indian
• Collections Search: All, Ontario, Québec, New York
• Denver Art Museum
• American Indian Art
• The Institute for American Indian Studies Museum & Research Center
• Baskets: Ethnographic Collections
• Canadian Museum of History, Musee Canadien de l'histoire
• First Peoples Hall
• Virtual Exhibition
• National Museum of Denmark
• Art Processes in Birchbark of the River Desert Algonquin, a Circumboreal Trait*
• Frank G. Speck, American Ethnology Bureau Bulletin 128; Anthropological Papers, 
• Replica of Original- Pages 251 to 300, Pages 26-50.
• Nipmuc Splint Basketry
• Native American Technology and Art, NativeTech.org.
• Beyond Thanksgiving: Enabling Teachers to Broaden Their Tools for Teaching Postcontact Northeastern Native America
• Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology and Brown University.
• A Woodsplint Basket: An everyday object reveals the history of New England's "disappearing" Indians
• Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Harvard Magazine, March-April 2002.
• Folkways: Cherokee Baskets Making
• PBS.
• Three Women, Three Artists, Three Paths toward One Goal: To Keep Their Culture Alive
• April 13, 2015.
• Weaving and Protecting a History: A Conversation with Basket-Maker Kelly Church (Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Ojibwe)
• April 17, 2014.

* Link provided requires a sign in to ProQuest Congressional. 

Ohio State University students can use their student log-in to access the database

through the university's library page, here.