Additional Images

Provenance:

Collection of Ivan Tolkien Wotherspoon (1845-1908), Quebec
by descent to present Private Collection, Ontario

Note:

Small belt cups or so called “canoe cups” are perhaps the most iconic North American drinking vessel. Tied or cleated to a sash worn around the waist, they were used in the 19th century by First Nations, as well as by Métis, French Canadian and Scottish fur traders to drink from the abundant fresh water on which they traveled.

Few if any surviving belt cups are as elaborately carved and decorated as a class of cup associated with Northern Maine and Quebec. They are variously attributed to the peoples of the Wabanaki (Abenaki, Maliseet, Mi'kmaq, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot), to the Anishnaabe–particularly the Ottawa or Ojibwa–and by some even to the Huron-Wendat. The production of these cups spans perhaps 100 years, and share a closely related body of characteristics, including chip-carved rims, cut cross-hatch motifs, images of beavers and sometimes fish, cask-form toggles, and a general sophistication of carving which is suggestive of a role as presentation objects rather than as purely practical implements.

Two exceptional and important cups in this auction dating to the latter half of the 19th century (lots 4 and 5) exhibit several of the characteristics of the Northern Maine/Quebec-associated cups. Both belonged to Quebec resident, King’s Counsel Ivan Tolkien Wotherspoon (1845-1908) and are believed to have been first acquired in Quebec.

Notable characteristics of the Wotherspoon cups are, for the present example, the use of ash burl, a handle composed of a flat projection off of one edge of the central concavity, a chipped-carved edge design, crosshatching, a low relief carved image of two beavers and their dam, a high relief carved image of a grazing mother beaver and her two kits, and a bi-conical toggle–possibly replacing an earlier cask-form toggle. Characteristics of the second Wotherspoon cup are the use of maple burl, crosshatching, a volute-form handle, and a cask-form toggle.

While the meaning of imagery on the Wotherspoon cups as intended by the carver or carvers is not known, the representation of casks, as occurs on the one example, and possibly once present on the other, appears in other works of Woodlands art, particularly pipes and ladles. It has been suggested that images of casks relate to the consumption of alcohol, and its role in trade and ritual.[1] Likewise beaver imagery occurs with particular frequency in transcultural objects from the Eastern Woodlands and Great Lakes, where the animal was central to trade between European and First Nations. Other visual and metonymical relationships to beaver imagery in 18th and 19th century Woodlands art may be considered when assessing the imagery on the Wotherspoon cups, however at the present time the subject has been little explored by scholars.

Of known related cups, the most similar in subject and composition are a near-identical pair of cups, one collected by polymath anthropologist Charles Marius Barbeau, and the other by noted early 20th century collector of North American burl treen, Devere A. Card.[2] The former has since been acquired by collectors Charles and Valerie Diker, and is on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where it has been attributed to either an Ottawa or Ojibwa maker.[3]

The Barbeau and Card examples likely date earlier than the Wotherspoon cups and differ from the present cup in several details, most notably the use of maple burl rather than ash, in the use of small brass tacks to represent the depicted animals’ eyes, the use of low rather than high-relief carving to represent the kits, a volute-form rather than flat handle, and images of fish on the bowl. It is the high-relief carving in the Wotherspoon example– along with the exceptional execution, unique variations in composition, complexity of form, and early provenance–that place it among the best of known examples of the category.

Provenance

Both belt cups, (lots 4 and 5) of this auction, are reputed to have been collected in Quebec, and have been in the possession of the consignor’s family from the time of their first known owner, Canadian King’s Counsel, Ivan Tolkien Wotherspoon (1845-1908). Wotherspoon’s family history is a colourful one, and includes the mysterious disappearance and possible murder of his father on a wagon train West ca. 1840s, as well a connection Mary Kent, an alleged witch of Salem Massachusetts, tried in 1634, and a possible connection to Robert Giffard de Moncel, a Perche-based surgeon, apothecary, and New France's first seigneur under Samuel de Champlain.[4]

While an elaborated history of Wotherspoon's life and career will require further research, he was evidently an important and active legal practitioner in Quebec. Notably Wotherspoon maintained a correspondence with important contemporaries including former Federal Army officer, lawyer, United States Secretary of War, and son of Abraham Lincoln, Robert Todd Lincoln.[5] Family oral record suggests that Wotherspoon may have sometimes volunteered legal services on behalf of First Nations clients in Quebec. While it is not known how Wotherspoon came to own the two belt cups, his interactions with Quebec First Nations taken in combination with the association of such objects as presentation gifts or presentation purchases, suggests a possible context for the acquisition of these remarkable objects.

[1] Carpenter, Edmund. “Alcohol in the Iroquois Dream Quest.” RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, no. 1 (Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 84–87.
[2] David Penney et al., Indigenous Beauty: Masterworks of American Indian Art from the Diker Collection, (New York: Skira Rizzoli, 2015), 162.; Devere A. Card, The Use of Burl in America (New York: Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, 1971), 12, pl. 4.
[3] Metropolitan Museum of Art, Object No. L.2021.3.6, accessed 18 August, 2026, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/844515
[4] Unpublished Wotherspoon family historical and genealogical archive
[5] Unpublished letters of correspondence from the Wotherspoon family archive