Article of the Week number thirty - Borneo beadwork

The Dyak people of Borneo use intricately beaded carriers for their babies. 

Our piece is not the entire carrier - those are generally made of wood and may have additional articles added as you can see in this link: scroll down to see a picture from the Horniman Museum collection. The piece in our collection is the same kind of image, of a stylised human with tendril limbs. The picture on this page shows how it would have originally looked with its wooden basket. 

The baby carriers are strapped to a mother's shoulders so that babies can be carried about while work is going on. For more information about these have a look at this link.