Commercial saddle leather was a popular trade commodity throughout the indigenous Great Plains. Combined with brass furniture tacks, Plains artists created a robust and new genre of design which forever impacted object forms like strike-a-lites, dispatch bags and knife sheaths.

In the case of the latter, commercial leather could better support larger and more cumbersome trade knifes. Northern Plains artists, it seems, consequently tailored their commercial leather sheaths to mimic their native-tanned hide predecessors. The standard Northern form consists of a top panel, an interior liner, a mid-body cut-out for a belt loop, as well as tacks where traditionally there would have been beadwork.

The sheath featured here is an exceptional example of this conversion, although it does have some atypical construction features, including a embroidered seem which runs along the straight edge of the sheath. This is typically folded leather in the case of most extant examples. There are also examples of engraved designs on the backside.

13” tall and 5” wide

Ex Trotta-Bono, NM

#51030