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Saddle Bag

19th century

Not on view

In Berber-speaking Tuareg society women decorate the leather saddlebags used to carry salt during migrations across the desert. They work the goatskin with impressed, stitched, or excised motifs, and attach tassels and fringe that shake with the camel’s movement for added visual impact. The colorful palette of black, green, reddish brown, and white comes from dyes made with indigo, pomegranate, sorghum, and minerals.

Saddle Bag, Leather, pigments, Tuareg peoples — Due to rights restrictions, this image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.

Title: Saddle Bag

Date: 19th century

Geography: Algeria

Culture: Tuareg peoples

Medium: Leather, pigments

Dimensions: H. 68 7/8 × W. 23 5/8 × D. 6 5/16 in. (175 × 60 × 16 cm)

Classification: Leather

Credit Line: Musée du Quai Branly–Jacques Chirac, Paris (71.1895.46.5)

The Met

The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing at The Met

The Met's collection of art of the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa, the Pacific Islands, and North, Central, and South America comprises more than eleven thousand works of art of varied materials and types, representing diverse cultural traditions from as early as 3000 B.C.E. to the present.