The Cleveland Museum of Art
Collection Online as of December 21, 2025
Blanket Strip
c. 1900
Location: Not on view
Did You Know?
This beaded strip was stitched to a hide or a blanket.Description
The animal-hide robes basic to Plains attire were often ornamented with quilled or beaded strips, which also were stitched to the blankets that replaced robes. This beaded example carries the cross-in-a-circle motif that symbolizes the world, the four directions, and the sacred center, concepts central to Plains worldviews. In the 1932 words of Black Elk, the Oglala Lakota (Sioux) holy man, “[T]he power of the world always works in circles. . . . The flowering tree was at the center of the hoop, and the circle of the four quarters nourished it. . . . Everything the power of the world does is done in a circle.”- Ruggles, Ruth. "The Amelia Elizabeth White Indian Collection." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 25, no. 2 (February 1938): 25-26 Mentioned: p. 26; Reproduced: p. 35 www.jstor.org
- Native North America. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (December 4, 2021-December 4, 2022).Gallery 231 - Native North American Textile Rotation. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 26, 2014-July 29, 2015).
- {{cite web|title=Blanket Strip|url=false|author=|year=c. 1900|access-date=21 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}
Source URL:
https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1937.865