Oil Dish Or Bowl

Item number E89136-0 from the National Museum of Natural History.

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Notes

From card: "Illus. in USNM AR, 1888; Pl. 40, fig. 204; p. 316. Illus. in The Far North catalog, Nat. Gall. of Art, 1973, p. 175. From: page 49, Boxes and Bowls catalog; Renwick Gallery; Smithsonian Press; 1974, (object illus. on same page): "Animal-form bowl; wood; carved in relief, Length: 10; Haida, Skidegate, British Columbia; 'Food dish; mountain demon and crow'; Collected by James G. Swan; October 1883." Illus.: p. 195, Pl. 240c, Celebrations catalogue, Smithsonian Press, 1982; from Celebrations caption: "Crow Feast Dish, ca. 1850-83, 4 1/8 x 10 x 6 (10.5 x 25.4 x 15.3); Wooden bowls were used to serve seal oil and candlefish oil, two highly prestigious foods. This bowl shows two aspects of the human-spirit transformation: Crow with his human soul emerging from his mouth and the shared human-bird soul with its characteristic recurved beak in Crow's tail." Loaned R. H. Lowie Museum, 12-31-1964; returned 2-15-1966. Loaned: Vancouver Art Gall. 4-18-1967; returned 12-13-1967. Loaned to the National Gallery of Art, October 20, 1972; returned 5-29-1973. Loaned Renwick Gal. 11-7-1976; loan returned 8-24-1976. Loaned to Renwick 2-4-1982; returned 6-1983. Loaned to SITES- Treasures 5-10-1984; returned 11-21-1984." Jay Stewart and Peter Macnair 7-20-2005 identify this as oil dish; raven with human.This object is on loan to the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center, from 2010 through 2027.Source of the information below: Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center Alaska Native Collections: Sharing Knowledge website, by Aron Crowell, entry on this artifact http://alaska.si.edu/record.asp?id=633 , retrieved 2-4-2022: Bowl. On this feast dish for serving seal or eulachon (candlefish) oil, a carved Raven holds a small human figure in its beak, recorded by collector James G. Swan as the representation of a "mountain spirit." A hawk with a short, curved beak is depicted on Raven's tail. The bowl came from the Haida Gwaii village of Skidegate in 1884 [sic, should be 1883], and is still saturated with the oils it once contained.

Item History

What

Name
Oil Dish Or Bowl
Identification Number
E89136-0
Type of Item
bowl

Where

Holding Institution
National Museum of Natural History
Made in
Skidegate, British Columbia, Canada
Collected in
Skidegate, British Columbia, Canada

Who

Culture
Haida
Field Collector
James G. Swan

When

Acquisition Date
on December 21, 1883

Other

Accession Number
013804

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