Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Parfleche Box
Not on view
Typical Lakota motifs with bold outlined elements are featured on two sides of this parfleche box. The opposite sides display nontraditional checkered designs—perhaps reflecting a pieced quilt or patterned fabric of the period. Rawhide boxes like this one represent the final evolution of parfleche painting. Produced almost exclusively by Lakota women, the boxes became a functional form at the end of the nineteenth century, in the early reservation period, and were useful in horse-drawn wagons. They likely imitated commercial Euro-American containers.
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