Producer unknown to us
Shield
Americas, North America, Great Plains
19th/20th century
Leather, wool, eagle feathers
Erich Hösel (professor and sculptor) probably acquired the shield during his trip to the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904
Purchased by the museum from Herta Hösel in 1962
NAm 4735
This rawhide shield was painted with an image of a rain cloud. Sewn to the edge of the shield is a red strip of wool with a number of eagle feathers attached.
The shields of the North American warrior cultures were often highly symbolic; the motifs painted on them could bestow spiritual powers on the wearer, so they were sometimes more important than the physical protection against projectiles. This shield is most likely a purely representational item, as it lacks the multiple layers of hide and the filling between the layers of leather that would have provided protection against arrows.
The shield was part of sculptor Erich Hösel’s (1869–1953) estate. He had worked at Porcelain Manufactory Meissen for many years. He visited the St. Louis World’s Fair (1904) which sparked a lifelong artistic interested in the Indigenous North America in him. On this trip, he acquired a number of ethnographic objects of Indigenous communities and subsequently became active in German networks of collectors, for example, with the Karl May Museum in Radebeul. By purchasing a large part of his estate in 1962, the Leipzig museum could partially replace its wartime losses in the North America collection.
Frank Usbeck