Letter Opener Item Number: 3584/10 from the MOA: University of British Columbia
Letter opener with handle carved into a seal. Seal is depicted in profile with facial features and flippers incised along body, mouth is carved open; all incisions are coloured in with pigment(?). Mouth and flipper outlines done in brown; whiskers, eyes, nostrils, and highlights along flippers are done in black. Blade extends from bottom of seal's hind flippers; rounds out slightly at centre before tapering to a sharp point. Top of blade has a central ridge; bottom is flat.
Acquired by the donor's father when he lived in Nyac, Alaska, on the Kuskokwim River, from the 1920s to 1960s.