An Arkansas woman has given the Sheldon Museum a child-size Chilkat blanket apparently woven by a local Native woman in 1916, a donation that museum director Helen Alten called “stunning.”
The weaving is valuable partly due to its “nearly pristine condition,” including a bright coloration likely resulting from having been kept in storage, Alten said. Based on sales of other Chilkat Blankets, the value of the gift may be between $25,000 and $40,000, she said.
“It’s incredibly generous of her. She said she didn’t want to sell it and wanted it to go to a place that valued it and understood its meaning,” Alten said.
Although the museum holds several blankets it stores in trust for local Natives, it owns only a few of its own and no full-sized ones. Linda Rost of Harrison, Ark. donated the blanket she inherited from an uncle, who worked building the U.S. Army Tank Farm fuel pipeline here in the 1950s.
Papers that came with the piece include a letter from Mildred Sparks saying it was woven by Mary Willard and explains the meaning of the designs in the blanket, which tells the legend of a bear family. The piece, which includes bear crests, originates with the Kaagwaantaan clan.
Rost’s uncle, Donald McIntyre, apparently knew Sparks, and purchased it from her along with some silver jewelry, Alten said. Rost phoned the museum about donating the piece last week, but Alten said she didn’t put weight in the conversation until the blanket showed up in the mail Monday.
Besides the Mildred Sparks letter, the blanket arrived with clipped stories from Seattle newspapers in the 1980s about efforts by Chilkat Tlingits to hold on to important artifacts. McIntyre lived in Washington state after leaving Alaska.
Lee Heinmiller of Alaska Indian Arts looked at the blanket this week. He said Mary Willard was a prolific weaver, who taught the skill to a generation. “If it’s hers, it’s like a Monet. If there was a well-known weaver, she was it.”
An advanced weaver knowledgeable about robes might be able to positively identify it as Willard’s, Heinmiller said. Wrappings at blankets’ edges served as “signatures” of weavers creating blankets. The blanket’s wrapping is with dark green and black yarn.
Heinmiller said the weaving was “in really great shape” and is similar in design to one Mildred Sparks donated to the museum that is mounted on a button blanket.
The sale value of weavings can vary widely, but the blanket is likely worth between $15,000 and $25,000, Heinmiller said. The piece may have been made as a commission for cash, as Tlingit weavings already had commercial value by the time of its origin, he said.
Heinmiller said the blanket is a coup for the museum, as it’s rare for a Chilkat weaving to be given away. “This is what you sit around and wait for. The worst thing is to see one of them go up on eBay.”
Lani Hotch, executive director of Klukwan’s Jilkaat Kwaan Heritage Center, said this week she was anxious to see the weaving created by her great-grandmother.
“It’s pretty cool. I’m happy for the Sheldon Museum. They don’t have much in the way of Chilkat weavings and many of the ones they have (held in trust) will be coming here,” Hotch said. “I’m a little jealous because it was made by my great grandmom.”
Hotch said edge wrappings aren’t quite a “signature,” as some are shared by different weavers, but that individual weavers can sometimes be identified by their technique, including a weaving’s joins.
Including Ravenstail robes, Hotch said she expects to have about nine Chilkat weavings at the village heritage center, currently under construction. In her experience, spontaneous donations like the weaving are rare, Hotch said. She could remember only one to the Klukwan museum, a bracelet made by the late Dan Katzeek donated by a town family.
Sheldon Museum director Alten said she was inclined to not put the new blanket on permanent display, in order to prevent it from fading. The weaving is about three feet wide and appears to have been woven traditionally, using mountain goat hair and cedar bark, Alten said. Its colors are yellow, bluish-green and black.
Chilkat blankets are actually decorative, pentagonal robes that were typically worn during traditional ceremonies.