Antique Souvenir Indian Cradle Board Model Composition Doll Hide Moccasins

North America, United States, Native American style. A model of a Native American cradleboard, made as an open oval wicker frame, with a composition doll lashed in place. The frame, possibly the stripped back of a cradle, is built from slender upright rods. Its bowed rim is bound with bands of woven withes, worked densely at the head and foot and in twisted courses across the middle. The doll has a molded composition head with red-brown painted flesh, black painted hair, and inset eyes. It wears a brown twill tunic with orange rings set around the V-neck, hide fringe at the sleeves, and a hide thong belt. Its black knitted leggings, possibly wool, end in small hide moccasins, and one still carries a scatter of glass seed beads. A bead necklace with red and blue beads circles the neck. The piece is probably a souvenir or display model rather than a working cradle. The cradleboard was one of the most widespread forms of Indigenous material culture in North America. It held an infant swaddled and upright, so the child could be carried on the mother's back, propped against a tree, or hung from a saddle while she worked. Its construction varied by nation. Plains peoples favored hide-covered wooden frames, often heavily beaded. Many western and southwestern groups wove basketry cradles from willow and other plant fibers. Some Great Lakes and Northeastern nations used flat carved wooden boards fitted with a bow at the head. Around the turn of the twentieth century, the cradleboard became one of the favorite subjects of the souvenir and curio trade. Models, toy cradles, and dressed dolls were sold at trading posts, railway stops, and world's fairs, and they reached a public increasingly taken with romantic images of Native life. Dolls in that market were often commercially made and then dressed in miniature Native-style clothing, sometimes by Native makers and sometimes not. Composition was a cast mixture of sawdust or wood pulp bound with glue and similar fillers. It became the leading material for American doll heads and limbs in the early twentieth century because it was cheaper and tougher than bisque. Its painted surfaces tend to craze and lift with age, a crackle that dealers often treat as a sign of period manufacture. A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany all winning bids. Item # 206232

Estimate:£222.95

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