Painted Leather (Drum Cover ?) Item Number: ET660-0 from the National Museum of Natural History

Notes

From card: Northwest Coast, Haida?? Possibly collected by James G. Swan?? Painted blue motifs similar to "Emmons", 1888, Pl. LII, attributed to 'Johnnie Kit Elswa', a Haida Indian. Johnny Kit Elswa was Swan's assistant and helped him collect objects, as well as being an artist himself. - F. Pickering, 2009This may indeed have been drawn by Johnny Kit Elswa. Compare the style to examples of his work in The Dr. Franz R. and Mrs. Kathryn M. Stenzel collection at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, Series II. See in particular "The man in the moon. Haida mythology. Pen-and-ink drawing", https://collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/2003286 .An illustration showing the same design as on this object is visible in a Smithsonian Bureau of American Ethnology exhibit at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, Missouri, 1904, USNM Neg. No. 16462, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 95, Box 62B, Folder 12, Image No. SIA_000095_B62B_F12_008 .