A Rare Salish Blanket
Softcover
1926 · New York
by Orchard, William C.
New York: Vreeland Press, 1926. Softcover. VG- (light shelfwear, top corner dog-eared with corners torn and missing on front cover and first few pages not effecting text or plates.). Tan card wraps with string tie binding. Black lettering with museum emblem on front cover. 15 pp. with tipped-on color frontis, 3 bw images tipped on, and 7 bw line drawings. No. 5 in the leaflet series of the Museum of the American Indian, New York (now part of the Smithsonian). An excellent and enlightening study of the making of a blanket by the Salish Indians of the Northwest, mostly in British Columbia. This particular blanket was obtained by a Hudson't Bay Company worker from the Chief of the Tsakuam band of the Cowichan Salish on the Lower Fraser River. The blanket is just under 4 feet square and pictured in the color frontis of the book. The Salish were known for the dogs they kept and whose hair was shorn for use in weaving blankets and other textiles. The dogs were shorn as closely as sheep. This catalogue includes a bit of history as well as the technique of blanket-making of the Salish with several illustrations of different kinds of weaves. A true treasure about Native American textile arts. (Inventory #: 154082)