Lot 87
Unidentified Haida Artist
Additional Images
Provenance:
Private Collection, Vancouver, BC
Note:
Pipes, dishes, and model totem poles carved in argillite are among some of the earliest objects made on the Northwest Coast exclusively for touristic consumption. Access to the argillite was the sole right of one Haida Skidegate Eagle clan, however beginning around the 1820s, many Haida began carving the material for trade.
Images of transformation, sometimes referred to as visual punning, abound in Haida artwork. In the 19th century ship imagery was also common, as in this pipe, in which the truncated stubby appendages of the figure on the bowl double as the trunions of a cannon, with the stem of the pipe taking the place of a barrel.