Quill Boxes
The art of decorating boxes and other garments with porcupine quills is unique to North America. Indians living in the Great Lakes area were doing quill work long before the first European arrived. Today, quill work on birch bark boxes is highly prized Native American art.
Making quill boxes is a time consuming and meticulous process. Quills are collected in January and February when their natural color is most vibrant. Birch bark is cut in May and June when the removal of the first layer of bark will not harm the tree. Sweetgrass is gathered in early summer, rinsed in hot water and hung to dry.
One porcupine can provide thirty to forty thousand quills, ranging in length up to five inches. Quills are washed and sorted according to length and thickness.
Quilling demands care and patience. When soaked in water (traditionally softened by holding them in the mouth), quills become pliable and can be flattened and twisted. A quill is inserted into a hole pierced along a design line. A second hole is pierced and the other end of the quill is inserted and pulled tight. The quill is held snugly because the bark tends to expand slightly after the quill is inserted, shrinking the size of the hole. This process is repeated until the design is complete.
The more elaborate quill boxes can take hundreds of hours to compete. Below is a design of renowned quill artisan, Marjorie Spanish. The fine detail and quality of her work can be seen in the image above.
Whetung Gallery holds a prized collection of porcupine quill boxes. We invite our visitors to browse through our display cases and examine these highly detailed works of art first hand.
