Parfleche

A Niitsitapi woman decorated this hide while it was still moist, enabling the vivid green, gold, blue, and red paint to saturate the surface rather than remain on top. To prepare the material for painting, the artist first scraped and washed the hide, stretched it horizontally, and coated it with a glutinous wash. She painted the flat hide in specific sections that, when folded in the envelope form you see here, appear solely on front-facing planes. The painted sections align, allowing two rows of diamonds to run continuously across the top and bottom panels.