Figure

Item number 3260/67 from the MOA: University of British Columbia.

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Data
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Description

Carved argillite female figure with a child in front, with inlaid carved bone faces. Woman wears a long dress with capped sleeves, pleats, and lace edging, with narrow waist and wide shoulder cape, her hair braided so that the two braids hang together in the front. Her left hand forward, resting on the child’s shoulder. The child holds a bag with her left hand.

History Of Use

Argillite carvings were considered curios by the European and Euro-American seamen and traders who purchased them from their Haida makers in the mid 1800s, and by the generations of collectors who later displayed them in their “curiosity cabinets” as exotic souvenirs. Made in a context of encounter and exchange by artists whose names were not recorded, these carvings have accumulated histories that, like the places they have travelled, are no longer known. The figure marks a moment preceding the devastating impacts of smallpox and colonization on the Northwest Coast, and belongs to a continuum of argillite carving that has been maintained by Haida artists to the present day.