The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston is really wide and asks for enough time to visit it as it deserves. In our visit we decided to leave out european art in favour of american art, less known to european visitors.
I was intrigued by moose hair embroidery.
Moose hair was used for the embroidery. It was taken from moose hunted in winter, when hair is longer and thicke, and it was subsequently washed and dyed.
This kind of embroidery was particularly practiced by Hurons, in the Great Lakes Region. They embroidered on bark too, and made souvenirs and gifts for european travelers. At the beginning of 1700, Ursoline nuns in Lorette, Quebec, instructed Huron and mixed-blood girls in embroidery and beadwork, using european floral patterns and materials: silk thread, glass beads, velvet, wool. Later it was less expensive to use local materials, so the euroean techniques were adapted to use moose hair.
I found some interesting articles online:
- Huron Moose Hair Embroidery, by F. G. Speck – a 1911 article, from American Anthropologist, explaining the technique
- Métis Embroidery – an article from Virtualmuseum.ca
- Nuns, Ladies, and the “Queen of the Huron” – a historical essay
I discovered that, besides moose hair, also porcupine quills were used (quillwor): an interesting source is NativeTech, quillwork section.
Moose hair embroidery is a kind of appliqué: hair was laid on the fabric and attached with cotton thread, because moose hair was too short to be used as a thread.
Another technique is “tufting”: a bundle of hair, laid on the fabric, is kept in place with a stitch; the thread is pulled tight, causing the bundle of hair to stand up in a bristly tuft, and then knotted. The hair is then trimmed to the desired shape. You can see the tufts in the firescreen closeup.
In the next shots, however, I don’t understand how those objects could be embroidered with the appliqué technique: the flowers of the envelope case, with several shades, should be difficult to stitch with the stitches explained in the first article.
Envelope case - MFA Boston
Envelope case, detail - MFA Boston
Envelope case, detail - MFA Boston
The case is in bark, lined with silk fabric – mid 19th century.
Last one, the cigar case, in bark and wool, from the mid 19th century.
Cigar case - MFA Boston
