Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Breastplate
Not on view
This breastplate, worn by a man as a personal ornament, is unique. A Kickapoo silversmith fashioned the hair pipes (long tubular beads) by cutting and cold-hammering German silver—an alloy of copper, zinc, and nickel. Typically, Native artists used shell or bone pipe commercially manufactured by Euro-Americans for these ornaments. Popular during the later half of the 1800s, men’s breastplates often covered only the upper chest. Later, women created their own versions.
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