Duncan, Kate Professor of Art History, Arizona State University
A Collaborative Exploration of Beaded Tlingit Tabbed (“Octopus”) Bags As an art historian trained in style analysis I combine study of documented examples of a type with undocumented examples that are stylistically very similar. When examining Athapaskan beadwork in museum collections in the 1980s, I studied and photographed hundreds of beaded bags collected in Canada and on the Northwest Coast. These included scores of tabbed bags, often called octopus bags. Although at the time the type was considered to be Athapaskan, it became clear that this was not the case. In this two part presentation I'll first show and explain the continuum of visual and physical relationships I've identified between Tlingit and Cree octopus and related panel bags, and note information in the ethnological record that may help to explain this connection. With this background we'll turn to discussion, in which I hope we together can expand understanding of the history of these bags.
