From card: ""For woman's handiwork". Decorated on exterior with small strips of willow sewed on with horsehair. Also figures in glass beads. Has a cover."
This object is on loan to the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center, from 2010 through 2027.
Source of the information below: Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center Alaska Native Collections: Sharing Knowledge website, by Aron Crowell, entry on this artifact https://alaska.si.edu/record.asp?id=696 , retrieved 7-17-2018: Basket. The Yakut of eastern Siberia created birch-bark baskets and boxes like this cylindrical container for small personal items. It has been decorated with glass trade beads and willow strips sewn on with horsehair. Other bark vessels were made for storing food, milk, or water.
Reference: Ivanova-Unarova, Zinaida, 2017. Siberian Collections in the U.S. Museums. Yakutsk. Object is identified there: Birch bark box. Mallakhihit. 19th century, second half. Birch bark, osier-bed, horsehair, beads. Sewing, twisting, carving. H.: 18, W.: 17.4. This is a festive round box with a lid made from two layers of birch bark. The body of the box near the opening is encircled by a wide osierbed ring, sewn on using black horsehair in finger-like stitches. Narrow osier-bed sticks support the lid, the body and the base of the box. Small paired pillars are inserted vertically in the middle of the body between narrow rings. Blue, red and black beads are sewn on between two small pillars. The space between two pairs of small pillars is takenby an ornament in the form of a flower made from white and black transparent glass beads. The walls of the box and all the sticks are stitched with black horsehair in oblique parallel seams. The lid with a high wall is also decorated with ribbons of narrow sticks in a criss-cross pattern. Small ribbons of brown birch bark cut in a dentil pattern and stitched under the rings provide additional decoration.
