And now for something completely different...

Joined
Aug 23, 2002
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As many if not most know who visit here, my first "love" is the American Frontier West of the 1800's - while guns, knives, and other sharp things and their leather gear is top of my list, I also do other types of frontier gear such as the following pipe bag and breastplate and thought ya'll might enjoy the look see........................I know this OT but there are a couple of WIP hawk heads included though…;)

While this is not an exact copy of any single existing pipe bag, it is based on/inspired by three original So. Cheyenne bags of the mid-1840's. Size of this early period pipe bag is 31" long including the fringe and 6" wide. The beads are early style pound beads and the bag body is made from brain/smoke tan deer hide that has been stained with red ocher and then the whole piece was aged to give it that used but not abused look. Included in one image is a beaded pipe tamper. Such bags began being made in the 1830's and became very popular by the 1860's and later. The haired fringe on the bag is buffalo and that on the tamper is from me own head
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The breast plate is made of bone hair pipe and is representative of those made and used post 1870, when the bone hair pipes first became widely available.
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Beautiful bag, great lazy stitch bead work. Being a Pipemaker I very much appreciate seeing it.

Best regards

Robin
 
Impressive work.

You state, "The breast plate is made of bone hair pipe and is representative of those made and used post 1870, when the bone hair pipes first became widely available." What is "bone hair pipe" and where does the phrase come from?

Paul
 
Thanks folks - comments are always welcome and appreciated (and no they do not need to be Kumbaya! :rolleyes:)
As to the hours - yep these pieces do take time, but for me it's real relaxing while yet productive on several levels.....

Incredible beading and quill work!
Howdy Peter - actually no quillwork on these but I do quillwork...here's a sheath from a bit ago......
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What is "bone hair pipe" and where does the phrase come from?
Originally hair pipe was made from shell and while the origin of the name is lost to history, my own opinion is it came form the use of the elongated "pipe" like beads that were often used as hair ornament, but that's just an educated quess. For a scholarly article on hair pipes and their origins see this article:
http://www.sil.si.edu/DigitalCollections/BAE/Bulletin164/tptoc.htm
 
^^^ I was thinking the breast plate was made with porcupine quills Chuck! I guess I didn't read carefully.

As an aside, I visited the Peaquot museum a while back at Foxwoods Casino. One item that fascinated me was "wampum". It must have been quite difficult drilling all those beads!

Peter
 
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