UNIDENTIFIED CREE ARTIST
Octopus Bag, late 19th century
trade cloth, glass beads, cotton cloth and thread, and wood, 19.25 x 14.75 x 0.75 in (48.9 x 37.5 x 1.9 cm), framed

ESTIMATE: $3,500 — $5,000

Provenance
Bonham’s Auctions, Toronto, The Canada Sale, 30 November 2009;
Private Collection, Toronto.

Despite their beginnings by Ojibwe makers, brisk and broad trade across the country spread this style of bag to Cree and Métis makers, and eventually further west to Tlingit artists. The name was likely coined by those Tlingit makers, as the distinctive shape with four appendages each ending in two points makes for a total of eight points. This lovely bag features a carefully mirrored design in the beadwork, or at least in its layout; the colour is mostly mirrored throughout the beadwork, with a small section where the pattern is repeated rather than mirrored on the central “legs” of this octopus, and a pinwheel of coloured petals on the central flower above the legs.

References: For other examples of octopus bags, see First Arts, Toronto, 14 June 2022, Lot 141, and First Arts, Toronto, 30 November 2021, Lot 28. For a discussion of octopus bags as well as illustrations (including documentary) see Kate C. Duncan, Northern Athapaskan Art: A Beadwork Tradition, (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1989), p. 180-184. See also Henry B. Collins et. al., The Far North: 2000 Years of American Eskimo and Indian Art, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), cats. 203, 204; and Bill Holm, The Box of Daylight: Northwest Coast Indian Art, (Seattle: Seattle Art Museum and Univ. of Washington Press, 1983), cats. 93-95 (Tlingit). See also Douglas C. Ewing, Pleasing the Spirits: A Catalogue of a Collection of American Indian Art, (New York: Ghylen Press, 1982), cats. 258-259.