Frank Sherman Benson Fund

Rooster (Takawee)Kachina Doll Kachina body totally carved from one piece of cottonwood root. He has a muti-striped face and helmet type mask, black slit eyes and a yellow bird beak. He has a bare chest painted yellow on the PL side and blue on the PR. He wears a white cape, and holds a rattle in his PR hand and plant fibers in his PL hand. He wears a beaded necklace and jingle bells on the bands on top of his boots. This type of Kachina dates to the post-Spanish era when the Spanish brought chickens and roosters into the Hopi territory. Rooster Kachina may appear during winter kiva dances.

Brooklyn Museum Collection

Bequest of W.S. Morton Mead

Hat of handspun, hand loomed black cloth. Embellished with multi-coloured embroidery, white beads, white buttons, silvery metal discs, and red ribbon edging.

Heavy ring-shaped bracelet made of coiled rope or grass fibres around which are tightly wound, on a slight diagonal, strings of plastic beads in a pattern of solid blue divided by seven bands of alternating black and white. Beads are imbedded in a layer of reddish clay.

Large contemporary woven string bag (bilum) decorated with dyed stripes, different types of shells, chicken feathers, wooden beads, branches with seeds, small fan-shapes made of cut-up plastic packages, possum jaws, boar tusks and pieces of tapa cloth.

Artist's rendition of a pair of glasses with green plastic lenses and an elaborate crafted decorative frame painted brown, gold, red, white, yellow and black.

Heavy square canvas apron with beadwork decoration on the front. Canvas is rolled and stitched at the top edge to create a waist band, across which are stitched four strings of large white beads and through which is knotted one skin tie. A thick blue bead trim runs around the edge of the horizontal bands of beads that form a white ground, with non-beaded negative spaces at the top and dark blue, green, purple and black house designs at the bottom.

Knee-length lime green robe with long sleeves has looped buttoning from the neck across upper chest to below one arm and down the side. Bordering the entire robe , including sleeve cuffs, are wide panels of black and blue fabric decorated with colourful needle worked cutouts, wavy lengths of yellow cording, blue and green fabric overlay, ribbons of gold and silver threads, and a red trim. The back is covered with overlapping feather shapes of black, brown and blue fabric, each trimmed in blue, yellow or red and with needle worked exotic bird or flower design in the centre. There is a one piece lining of unbleached cotton.