Producer unknown to us
Closed leather vest
Americas, North America, Great Plains
19th/20th century
Leather, cotton fabric, beadwork
Erich Hösel (professor and sculptor) probably acquired the vest during his trip to the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904
Purchased by the museum from Herta Hösel in 1962
NAm 4728
This leather vest is covered with beadwork (white, red, green, gold, and blue) depicting abstract images. Black cotton fabric was sewn into the vest as lining, and a short fringe is attached to the bottom hem. This type of vest was found among various Sioux groups as early as the 1870s. Between the 1870s and the 1920s, in particular among the Sioux, there was a sudden increase in elaborate beadwork on leather clothing and household items. Scholars have considered this a (re)affirmation of the cultural self-confidence of Indigenous women makers in times of existential crises.
This piece was part of Erich Hösel’s estate (1869–1953). He attended the St. Louis World’s Fair and its “ethological expositions” in 1904, sparking a lifelong artistic interest in the Indigenous North America. He acquired a number of ethnographic objects of Indigenous communities and subsequently became active in German networks of collectors, for example, in the Karl May Museum in Radebeul. By purchasing a large part of his estate in 1962, the Leipzig Museum was able to partially replace its wartime losses in the North America collection.
Frank Usbeck