#WorldOrcaDay:
Chilkat blanket with Orca design, Tsimshian (Pacific NW Coast)
Twined weave; warp of yellow cedar bark & mountain goats' wool, weft of pure mountain goats' wool
Field Museum no. 19571 (photographed on display in 2022)
More for #LoveHornbillsDay:
"Crested Hornbill" now known as the Silvery-Cheeked Hornbill (Bycanistes brevis)
painted in 1926 by Louis Agassiz Fuertes (1874-1927), reproduced in Album of Abyssinian Birds and Mammals (1930) by the Field Museum. Via BHL.
#animals in art#animal holiday#20th century art#birds in art#illustration#bird#birds#1920s#Louis Agassiz Fuertes#Field Museum#hornbill#Silvery-Cheeked Hornbill#ornithology#ornithological illustration#scientific illustration#natural history art#painting#lithograph#Album of Abyssinian Birds and Mammals#Love Hornbills Day#BHL#Biodiversity Heritage Library
For #WorldElephantDay 🐘:
Elephant masks Blue cotton cloth, colored beads Red cotton cloth, glass beads Bamiléké people (Cameroon) Field Museum 174137, 174140
Sign text:
“Elephants were royal animals
Members of secret societies- exclusive groups of men charged with maintaining the peace and safety of the kingdom - wore these elephant masks during rituals. Notice the circles that make the elephants' ears and the fancy beadwork that creates their long, flat trunks.
Images of elephants represented royalty in the sacred or precious objects of Grassfields peoples, as well as in many other African kingdoms. Grassfields kings, or fon, adopted the elephant as one of their royal animals. Objects made from elephant hide or from ivory were always reserved for fon.”
For #WorldOrcaDay here are 2 examples of #orca (aka killer whale) headdresses from the Northwest Coast that the dancer could animate with moving parts:
1. Haida - “dancer could roll its eyes or move lower jaw” Carnegie Museum of Natural History
2. Kwakiutl - “dancer pulled strings to make the pectoral fins, tail flukes & jaw move” Field Museum
For #SharkAwarenessDay:
There are so many cool animal designs on Nazca ceramics - here are two polychrome vessels ringed with vertical sharks, on display at the Field Museum:
1. c. 100 BCE - 300 CE, Ica Region, Peru
2. c. 300 - 500 CE, Ica Region, Peru
#TurtleTuesday:
“Sky Woman (she/her)” by Karen Ann Hoffman (Oneida) Wood, velvet, glass beads, Czechoslovakian crystals, cotton thread, sterling silver beads “Adopted from the artist and living with the Field Museum in 2018” from the Field Museum’s Native Truths: Our Stories, Our Voices exhibition