Native American material documents America's westward expansion from the 1849 California Gold Rush onward, as settlers and miners crossed tribal lands the Indians had every intention of defending. Native artwork — beadwork, native pigments, decorated everyday objects — reflects every facet of tribal culture. Native Americans wasted nothing: they tanned hides and used sinew to make clothing, moccasins, pipe bags, knife sheaths, scabbards, and cradles, turning everything into art.
The best beadworkers in history
They were, Gary writes, the best bead workers in the history of mankind — which is exactly why their work is so widely reproduced and misattributed. In an unregulated market, modern pieces are aged and sold as old, and tribal attributions are invented to raise value.
Wherever a name sells, a scoundrel will supply one.
What the chapter covers
- Reproductions aged to pass as antique
- Invented tribal attributions
- The legal weight of how Native goods are described and sold
- Patination — the place fakes most often fail