Beaded baby carrier lying flat, shown from above. Back boards angle to the right. Top is open, front center laces up with leather ties, bottom is loosely folded.
Baby carrier shown from above. Wooden boards angle out slightly from the top. Body of carrier features a white, blue, and yellow design and is laced up the front.
Detail of an object. At bottom is a dense cream and red floral print. The top edge is curved and covered in tiny blue and white beads.
Detail of an object. Portion at left is a dense cream and red floral print. At right is a section covered in tiny blue and white beads.
Detail of rows of tiny white, green, pink, and blue beads. At center left is a green notched triangle with a pink heart inside. Tan leather ties hang from top.
Detail of beaded object with leather ties hanging down and wood supports at bottom. White background beaded with pink and blue hearts and red and blue crosses.
Detail of beaded object with leather ties hanging down and wood supports at bottom. White background beaded with blue horse and colorful rider in headdress, with geometric decoration.
Detail of beaded object. White background beaded with blue horse and colorful rider in headdress, shooting an arrow. Geometric decoration at bottom. Leather lacing at top.
Detail of a beaded object with a panel of leather lacing running top to bottom.
Detail of rows of white beads and a geometric blue decoration at bottom left. A small area of the cream leather ground shows at top.
Beaded baby carrier lying flat on a surface. Back boards extend to the right. Beadwork designs in blue on white background depict horses, riders, and geometric decoration.
Detail of beaded object. White background beaded with blue horse and colorful rider in headdress. Some geometric decoration. Leather ties hanging down and lacing at top.
Beaded baby carrier lying flat on a surface. Back boards extend to the left. Beadwork designs in blue on white background depict horses, riders, and geometric decoration.
Detail of beaded object with wood supports at bottom. A yellow leather panel is loosely folded, attached to a panel densely beaded with blue horse and rider. Top is laced closed.
Detail of beaded object. White background beaded with blue horse and colorful rider in headdress, with geometric decoration. Leather lacing at top.
Interior detail of an object, covered in a dense print of cream flowers on a red background. The outer edge of the object is beaded in blue, white, and yellow.
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Unknown Maker, Ka'igwu (Kiowa)

Cradleboard

Maker

Unknown Maker, Ka'igwu (Kiowa)

Culture

Ka'igwu (Kiowa), Native North American

Title

Cradleboard

Year

ca. 1900

Medium

Materials/Techniques

Techniques

Materials

brass (alloy)

Geography

Place Made: Great Plains

Dimensions

Length: 111.1 cm (43 3/4 inches) (brace); Lenght: 69.2 cm (27 1/4 inches) (carrier)

Credit / Object Number

Credit

Museum Works of Art Fund

Object Number

44.610

Type

Publications

  • Journal

Manual / Issue 16: Intimacy

RISD Museum’s Manual 16 Embraces Intimacy

Intimacy reveals something deeply human in us. We need each other on a practical level, which means having to trust strangers. It’s analogous to what I understand prayer requires and what writing poems requires: an openness to the unknown, coupled with trust, a belief that we won’t be hurt. It’s at once akin to and the same as devotion.
-Carl Phillips

The RISD Museum’s sixteenth issue of Manual touches on the bonds of intimacy and its many expressions. This issue complements the exhibition Any distance between us, co-curated by Stephen Truax and Dominic Molon, on view at the RISD Museum through March 13, 2022.

Exhibition History

Being and Believing in the Natural World
Perspectives from the Ancient Mediterranean, Asia, and Indigenous North America
Oct 22, 2022 – Jun 04, 2023

Label copy

Throughout North America, Indigenous people make baby carriers. Note the wooden boards in this Kiowa example. In Manual 16, Kiowa maker Vanessa Paukeigope Jennings explains the first step in harvesting Osage orange wood for a cradleboard:

You don’t just take that tree, but that’s the one you talk to. And you tell him your purpose: “I’m here because there’s a little Kiowa coming along that Milky Way road, and we want to prepare a cradle for him.” And so you offer tobacco and you pray, and then you lay that tobacco down under that tree.

—SB

Form, Pattern, and Function
Design in American Indian Art
Dec 04, 1992 – Jan 24, 1993

Label copy

Indian children spent most of their first two years in a cradle, which served as a crib, playpen, carriage and highchair. Cradles were often prepared by one of the child's female relatives, an aunt or grandmother, and their elaborate ornamentation attests to the love of a child by its parents and relatives. These two cradles are beautiful examples of the late nineteenth century beader' s art. The Crow cradle is beaded in a style typical of the Indians of the Plateau or Transmontane at the end of the nineteenth century, in which designs remained similar to older patterns used on raw hide parfleches. The Kiowa cradle is beaded in a representational style which developed on the Plains around 1885, when Indian women began to depict representational scenes formerly reserved for men in painting and pipe stone sculpture.

Image use

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Public Domain This object is in the Public Domain and available under a CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication

Tombstone

Unknown Maker, Ka'igwu (Kiowa)
Cradleboard, ca. 1900
Wood, leather, beadwork, and brass tacks
Length: 111.1 cm (43 3/4 inches) (brace)<br>Lenght: 69.2 cm (27 1/4 inches) (carrier)
Museum Works of Art Fund 44.610

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