Caroline Cox, a celebrated Mi’kmaq bead artist from Newfoundland and Labrador, has devoted her practice to the revitalization and reimagining of Indigenous traditions, particularly through the intricate and culturally rich beadwork of tea dolls. Known for her meticulous craftsmanship and deep reverence for her heritage, Cox has brought renewed visibility to the tea doll—a traditional Indigenous object used historically for both practical and spiritual purposes—and has elevated it into the realm of fine art and cultural testimony. Through her beadwork, she preserves not only a Mi’kmaq artistic legacy but also narratives of survival, adaptability, and feminine strength embedded within each tiny figure.
Tea dolls, or jipijka’qan in Mi’kmaq, originated as multifunctional tools for nomadic Mi’kmaq families who traveled great distances across the Atlantic provinces. These dolls served not just as toys for children but as cleverly disguised storage containers: their stuffed torsos and skirts were filled with loose tea, sugar, or tobacco, allowing families to conceal and transport valuable supplies without arousing colonial suspicion or burdening themselves with conspicuous goods. Over time, tea dolls evolved into symbolic objects, carrying stories, dreams, and familial memory stitched into their tiny garments and faces. Today, they are also acts of cultural resilience, embodying the blend of utility and beauty that characterizes much of Indigenous art.
Caroline Cox’s tea dolls are masterpieces of microcosmic storytelling. Each one is constructed by hand using natural materials such as deer hide, wool, cotton, and traditionally tanned leather. The foundation is a small, human-like figure, usually no more than ten inches tall, filled with herbs or tea in homage to the original function of the doll. However, it is in the beadwork that Cox’s artistry truly flourishes. Her tea dolls are dressed in elaborate regalia inspired by historical Mi’kmaq dress, each garment stitched with thousands of tiny glass beads in colors that evoke both the natural world and the sacred cosmology of her people. Her use of beads is not simply decorative but highly intentional; each color, pattern, and motif carries symbolic weight. Reds and golds may reference the fire and sun, while blues and greens often symbolize water and forest—two essential forces in Mi’kmaq life and cosmology.
The faces of Cox’s dolls are sometimes left blank, in accordance with traditional practice, symbolizing the spirit or ancestor they might represent rather than a specific individual. In other instances, she beads the features in minute detail, creating expressive faces that seem to speak across generations. Their bead-stitched eyes glimmer with lifelike precision, and their hair—sometimes braided with horsehair or dyed sinew—suggests a deep connection to lineage and ancestry. The headdresses, sashes, and moccasins worn by these dolls are miniature works of ethnographic detail, echoing traditional ceremonial dress and incorporating regionally specific motifs such as double curves and porcupine quill-inspired geometries.
One of Cox’s most notable works, Grandmother of the Red Tea, was included in a major Indigenous art exhibition in Halifax and later acquired by The Rooms, Newfoundland and Labrador’s provincial museum and gallery. This particular doll stands as a tribute to the women who held communities together during the colonial and early settlement eras. Her dress is stitched with bead patterns that mimic the movement of water flowing through birch groves, a design Cox developed after listening to oral stories from elders about water routes used by women to escape colonial patrols. The doll’s tea-filled belly is stitched in a spiral of bone white and smoky gray beads, symbolizing both the memory of survival and the sacred circularity of life.
In another series titled Children Left Behind, Cox addresses the trauma of residential schools and the intergenerational silence that followed. These dolls wear muted colors—grays, browns, and faded blues—with beadwork that forms broken patterns, incomplete flowers, and jagged lines that suggest rupture and displacement. Unlike her celebratory dolls, these figures are less adorned, their beadwork sparse and somber, emphasizing loss and the need for collective healing. Through these works, Cox extends the traditional function of the tea doll from storage and comfort to testimony and remembrance, showing how beaded art can give voice to silenced histories.
Cox’s techniques are grounded in ancestral knowledge passed through oral instruction and hands-on learning with family members and elders. She frequently collaborates with other Indigenous artists and educators to offer workshops in beadwork and doll-making, especially for youth and community members seeking to reconnect with Mi’kmaq traditions. She views her work as both a personal practice and a communal offering—a way to stitch cultural continuity into a world that has too often tried to unravel it.
Her attention to detail is extraordinary. Each bead is stitched using traditional two-needle or appliqué techniques, anchored with sinew or silk thread for both durability and precision. She sometimes incorporates found or natural materials, such as shells, seeds, and bits of birch bark, into her dolls, layering the narrative with additional tactile elements that root the work in place. The finishing of each doll—whether it involves the careful trimming of hide fringe or the binding of a tiny pouch to a doll’s waist—is executed with the same reverence one might reserve for sacred garment-making.
Caroline Cox’s Newfoundland tea dolls are not static artifacts, but living vessels of Mi’kmaq resilience and artistic evolution. They connect the past to the present in ways that are both visually stunning and emotionally charged, offering a unique lens into the role of women, memory, and survival in Indigenous history. By threading each bead with intention, Cox honors not only her ancestors but also the generations yet to come. In her hands, the tea doll becomes more than a tradition—it becomes a messenger, a healer, and a bearer of the enduring beauty and strength of Mi’kmaq culture.