Additional Images

Provenance:

First Arts, Toronto, ON, 4 Dec 2023, lot 144
Private Collection, Toronto, ON

Note:

A painted wall box attributed to Chief Willie Seaweed (Hiłamas), also known as Smoky Top (Kwaxitola), one of the great masters of Kwakwakaʼwakw art, many of whose stylistic innovations have become synonymous with the so-called “Blundon Harbour style”.

The present wall box was likely made for holding candles or other perishable materials that needed to be kept at arms length from the appetites of small vermin. Simple and unfussed in its construction, the artist’s designs have lent the humble box an unexpected aesthetic gravity.

Recognizable in the composition of the painted designs are several of what Bill Holm identifies as Seaweed’s diagnostic characteristics, eyes constructed from three, often compass drawn, eccentric circles of diminishing size, a deliberate–at times even hesitantly executed layout line, and ovoids defined by angularity in their lower corners.[1] The overall composition is laid out on a white ground typical for Blundon Harbour.

[1] Bill Holm, Smoky-Top: The Art and Times of Willie Seaweed (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1983), 35-37.