Exhibit Label

Asymmetrical designs are very unusual on classic northern bracelets. This Haida artist chose to depict a thunderbird in an intensely active composition of formline complexes sweeping around the bracelet from one end to the other. Most Haida flat design of the late nineteenth century is reserved and steady, with calmly symmetrical creatures whose formline structures are based on a few solid, slightly diverging curves. Here the joints and feathers shoot off at wild angles, but always eventually accomodate the formlines they join.
The U forms taper strongly and together with the broad arch of the ovoids mark an individual artist's style. He might be John Cross, as the work resembles later, signed work by that Haida artist. The background and some of the tertiary areas are hatched in single, diagonal lines. It is an integrated, energetic, and highly innovative example of Haida art. (Holm, Box of Daylight, 1983).