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Hair-Pipe Necklace
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art. Free to download, adapt and use — no permission needed.
About this work
Among the most recognizable of Plains accouterments of the later 1800s are women’s necklaces and men’s breastplates made of so-called hair pipes, tubular beads originally made of shell. These prestigious chest ornaments became popular with the introduction of sturdier cow-bone pipes, nearly all manufactured by a mill in New Jersey and traded widely on the Plains. Bone pipes were made into many kinds of ornaments, the most elaborate being the necklaces and breastplates, today indispensable as powwow regalia. (The term “hair pipe” may stem from Native Americans’ use of smaller tubular beads as hair ornaments.)
Cleveland Museum of Art’s own descriptionCredit lineHair-Pipe Necklace, early 1900s. Native North America, Plains, Nakota (Yankton or Yanktonai Sioux)?. Cow-bone hair pipes, glass beads, brass beads, silk ribbon, metal coin, Native-tanned hide or rawhide stringing, vegetable-tanned hide separators; overall: 236.2 cm (93 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Educational Purchase Fund, 1932.50
