Saddle Bag in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, February 2020

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)


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.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/760047