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Container with lid
Native American, possibly Maliseet or Passamaquoddy
about 1800
Object Place: Maine (Northeastern) or southern coastal or interior New Brunswick, United States, Northeast
Medium/Technique
Elm bark, split root, black dye
Dimensions
19.05 x 21.59 x 40 cm (7 1/2 x 8 1/2 x 15 3/4 in.)
Credit Line
Museum purchase with funds donated by a friend of the Department of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture in honor of Nina Fletcher and Bertram K. Little
Accession Number1994.20a-b
NOT ON VIEW
CollectionsAmericas
ClassificationsBasketry
DescriptionOval box incised with symbols composed nearly wholly of circles and half-circles with interior parallel lines. Container sides are ringed with full concentric circles with inside black irregular squares, inside of which are white circles. Wide diagonal black lines join the circles from top to bottom. White zig-zag borders the container top and bottom between half-circles. Lid top is plain bark; the wide lip is incised with painted black ground. Half-circles alternate directions against the top and bottom edges.
Marks
Label on cover in inked script: This box was left / behind by the Indians when / they burnt the town of Medfield / Feb 21 1675. Mass / But one house left standing.
ProvenanceBy 1980, Bertram Kimball Little (b. 1899 – d. 1993) and Nina Fletcher Little (b. 1903 – d. 1993), Brookline, MA; January 29, 1994, posthumous Little collection sale, part 1, Sotheby’s, New York, lot 155, to Northeast Auctions, Portsmouth, NH, for the MFA. (Accession Date: February 23, 1994)
NOTE: A nineteenth-century label on the box reads: "This box was left / behind by the Indians when / they burnt the town of Medfield / Feb 21 1675. Mass / But one house left standing." The box, however, dates to around 1800, long after the event described.
NOTE: A nineteenth-century label on the box reads: "This box was left / behind by the Indians when / they burnt the town of Medfield / Feb 21 1675. Mass / But one house left standing." The box, however, dates to around 1800, long after the event described.