UNPACKING THE INDIAN CORNER

Today, with the ubiquity of home decorating magazines, it is hard to believe this is a
relatively new trend. In fact, according to Elizabeth Hutchinson, it was only at the beginning
of the 20th century that people began with help from department store marketing to
express their good taste and individual style through decorating. Early in the 1900s one of
these trends was the Indian Corner. This fad involved customers buying Native American
art from department stores that they would then use to decorate a small space in their home.
In her talk for CHF, Elizabeth Hutchinson unpacks the connections among home decorating,
department store marketing, the emergence of taste, and the fad of buying Indian arts and
crafts at the beginning of the 20th century. In the process, she also raises questions about
the ethics of appropriating other cultures to make one look fashionable or stylish a
tendency that is not new though it takes different forms in the 21st century. Through the
following activities, students will have the opportunity to learn about American art, discuss
their thoughts about marketing trends, and argue in writing for their own stance on the
ethics of appropriating cultural artifacts for the sake of style.

11-12th grade
3 Day Unit
Objectives:

To understand the historical context of

the fad of the Indian Corner including:
o How department stores and the
marketing techniques they used
encouraged the collections of
Native American art
o Why Native American art might
have appealed to the modern
individual
o Where Native American art fit
into the modern art movement
To examine the ethical implications of
the way in which Native American arts
and crafts were marketed and used

Materials & Resources Needed:

Access to YouTube
Ability to display images in class

Assessment: Discussion, homework

assignments, and informal paper

DAY ONE:
Have students begin thinking about why and how people decorate their personal space. Ask
students: How have you decorated your bedroom (or other personal space)? What do your
decorative choices say about you? Why did you decorate in the first place?
Take a look at how some people decorated parts of their homes at the beginning of the 20th
century. Look at a photo of Kepplers collection (image @ 02:33 in the video) and Ayers
collection (image @ 03:40 in the video). From a comparison of these two images, how would
you describe collections of this type? What do they include? What might their purpose be?
Watch the following video clip to see how scholar Elizabeth Hutchinson characterizes these
collections.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-T9lNWj0Ms#t=1420 (1:20 - 4:15)
At the end of this segment, Hutchinson asks why this home decoration fad occurred at the
beginning of the 20th century. Take 3 minutes to do a quick-write on possible reasons for this.
At this time, what was going on in U.S. history? With Native Americans? With art history? After 3
minutes, have some students share their ideas with the class. As students are talking, create a
collective class list of possible reasons.
For homework: Either take a
photograph or find a photograph of
a contemporary department store
display. Write a detailed description
of the display. Then reflect on the
details of the display and how these
details might directly or indirectly
encourage shoppers to buy the
materials in the display.

DAY TWO:
Have students share their homework in small groups. Then have a few students share their
homework with the entire class. Use this sharing to kick off a class discussion about the
connection between a stores display and how it encourages shoppers to buy the products in
the display.
Store displays began around the beginning of the 1900s. In this clip, Hutchinson talks about the
role that stores played in promoting the fad of Indian Corners in peoples home.
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-T9lNWj0Ms#t=1420 (6:05 17:10)
As students watch the video, they should take notes on her argument.
After watching the video, debrief with the students to make sure that they understand the
argument she is making in this section. Important points that she makes are:

Stores needed to create consumers who would buy luxury items that they dont need.
This coincides with a change in how people think of themselves - modern identity
becomes based on what you consume.
This was also connected to an introduction of the notion of taste as something that
marked ones socio-economic class. In fact, there is a term for this: Conspicuous
consumption (coined by Thorstein Veblen) which is the wasteful consumption of goods
as a visible sign to others of wealth and power.
The standard of the leisure class became the standard to which the middle and lower
class held themselves and upon which their reputation of being tasteful, modern, and
socially acceptable came to be based.
Consuming Native American art in this period become good taste in this way

Based on this new information, have the class discuss how it might revise their collective list of
thoughts that they generated yesterday in response to why did this home decoration fad occur
at the beginning of the 20th century?
For homework: Read the following article that discusses the fad of Native American fashion in
2011. It addresses some of the ethical issues regarding fads that appropriate Native American
designs without permission and also includes the larger historical context around the Indian
Corner
Article link: http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/why-the-native-fashion-trend-is-pissingoff-real-native- americans/
Citation: Hix, Lisa. Why the Native Fashion Trend Is Pissing Off Real Native Americans.
Collectors Weekly. 1 December 2011.

DAY THREE:
Review with students what Hutchinson has argued so far about why Indian Corners were
popular in the U.S. in the early 1900s.
In addition to her argument from yesterdays video clip, in the following clip she makes an
argument about why the modern world caused people to desire these particular objects
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-T9lNWj0Ms#t=1420 (19:20 29:27)
As students watch the video, they should take notes on her argument.
After watching the video, debrief with the students to make sure that they understand the
argument she is making in this section. Important points that she makes are:

These cozy corners allowed people to experience another world without traveling
In this moment the home was charged with offering the human interactions, sensual
pleasures, and natural experiences that the routines of life had otherwise denied.
Because of this context, there was an interest in goods that are seen as not being part of
modernity not being from a machine world or made by machine
Link between home and an escape from modern, urban culture
These goods are not from a machine world and demonstrate a turn away from modern
industrialization
Also provided a sense of control to the individual get to choose what is in your
collection
Perhaps these works reminded individuals of quality/skills that they didnt have time to
do in their daily life anymore (quality stitch work, etc.)

Discuss the article that students read for homework. Start by focusing on new things that they
learned or what they found interesting. Then move to how the topic connects to what they have
been learning from Hutchinson. Finally, delve into the ethical issues that the article raises. Might
these issues also be applied to the Indian Corner craze? Can you collect and display materials
from a cultural group that is not your own in an ethical way?
Look at the various comments in response to the article. Have students begin thinking about
how to evaluate the quality of a comment.
For homework: Direct students to write an email to someone they respect who is thinking
about creating his/her own Indian Corner. Share what you know about their history and give
him/her advice about how to construct the corner. Include the pros and cons of creating one
and also include your own opinion regarding the ethics of Indian Corners based on what you
have learned.

UNIT ALIGNS WITH STANDARDS:

NCAS: VA:Pr6.1.Ia Analyze and describe the impact that an exhibition or collection has on personal
awareness of social, cultural, or political beliefs and understandings
NCAS: VA:Re.7.2.IIa Evaluate the effectiveness of an image or images to influence ideas, feelings, and
behaviors of specific audiences
NCAS: VA:Re8.1.IIa Identify types of contextual information useful in the process of constructing
interpretations of an artwork or collection of works
NCAS: VA:Cn11.1.IIa Compare uses of art in a variety of societal, cultural, and historical contexts and
make connections to uses of art in contemporary and local contexts
State Goal 27B.5 Analyze how the arts shape and reflect ideas, issues or themes in a particular culture
or historical period
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.11-12.10 Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research,
reflection, and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of tasks,
purposes, and audiences.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
1. An additional post from 2010 that takes issue with the appropriation of Native American attire as a
fashion statement:
http://nativeappropriations.com/2010/04/but-why-cant-i-wear-a-hipster-headdress.html
2. An article from 2014 on the Washington Redskins name change controversy:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/22/washington-redskins-native-americans_n_5607082.html
3. An article from 2013 that includes more information on modernisms reception in America:
http://www.npr.org/2013/02/17/172002686/armory-show-that-shocked-america-in-1913-celebrates-100
4. An article from 2014 on Native American mascots in professional sports:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2014/05/04/redskins-mascot-nickname-indians-wahoo-chiefsblackhawks-braves/8705159/
5. The first prominent female interior designer, Elsie De Wolfe, wrote The House in Good Taste published
in 1913. If students are interested in learning more about the interior decorating trends of the time or the
development of interior decorating itself, Project Gutenberg has a free version of the book here:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14715
6. Elizabeth Hutchinsons Biography: Hutchinson has a Ph.D. from Stanford and teaches the history of
North American art and visual culture at Barnard College and Columbia University. Her work asks how art
can help us understand modernity, particularly as it was experienced in the American West. She is the
author of, The Indian Craze, and numerous articles and exhibition catalog essays. More information on
Hutchinson can be found here:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/arthistory/faculty/Hutchinson.html
and here:
https://barnard.edu/profiles/elizabeth-hutchinson