Lot 22
Unidentified Kwakwaka'wakw Artist
Lot 22 Details
Unidentified Kwakwaka'wakw Artist
LARGE FEAST BOWL, 19TH CENTURY
wood, brass tacks
bearing an early pen and ink collection number "1508"; also inscribed with the initials "WJ"
7 x 23 x 11.5 in — 16.5 x 57.8 x 30.5 cm
Estimate $2,000-$4,000
Additional Images
Provenance:
Seahawk Auctions, Collection of Ethan Allan, Vancouver, BC, 27 Jun 2015, lot 182
Private Collection, Vancouver, BC
Note:
Although carved from a single piece of wood – rather than bent with steam– this classic Kwakwaka'wakw bowl, with its bowed sides and high inwardly curved ends, is thought to relate to bowls made using steam bending and spreading techniques. The Kwakiutl made bowls of this type in a variety of sizes. George Hunt, Tlingit ethnologist and consultant to anthropologist Franz Boaz, said that a slightly larger bowl of this type measured at “four spans” (of the hand), and could be used at a feast by six men. The present old and time-worn example exhibits a surface of intermittent smooth and textured planes. The texture of crisp, roughly parallel furrows is an old Kwakwaka'wakw surface treatment, which in the earliest examples was achieved through the use of shell or beaver tooth tools.
Bill Holm and Peter L. Corey, The Box of Daylight: Northwest Coast Indian Art (Seattle, WA: Seattle Art Museum, 1983), 78.