Viola Garfield recorded this explanation of the house model: "The model was made by Fred Alexcee, Port Simpson, British Columbia, in 1934 for Viola E. Garfield. It represents a house with a potlatch in progress. At the back of the house is a dancer dressed in Chilkat blanket and ermine headdress accompanied by a drummer using a large box drum suspended from a beam. A chorus of women is seated on the left and a director with dance baton stands back of the dancer. In front of the house is a greeter with dance baton to direct guests to their seats. The seated figure has no special significance. (These two figures had limpet shells on their heads to represent spruce root hats.) The housefront painting represents a grizzly bear, crest of the maker of the model and his lineage. The small faces bordering the bear's face represent skulls of ancestors. Hexagonals connected by black bars above represent bones of the knees and lower limbs. These are the skeletons of ancestors who killed many mountain goats and left them to rot. In revenge, and to teach them a lesson in respect of animals, the mountain goats caused a mountain slide that destroyed many people. The facade pole on the right of the doorway represents a shaman with cedar bark head band and blanket holding a symbol of his supernatural power. The bird figure at the base is a crane. I do not recall the significance of the figures on the other pole, but they probably represent a dancer at the top and a grizzly bear at the base." Viola E. Garfield, Oct. 9, 1957 The design on the front of the house seems to be based on the design of the interior "Rain Screen" of the Gaanaxteidi Tlingit Whale House from Klukwan, Alaska. The small pole to the right seems to be based on the "Woodworm House Post," one of four interior house posts from that same house. It may be that Alexcee was looking at a photo of that house interior when he made his model, but interpreted it to match his own family history. Robin K. Wright, Feb. 8, 2006.

This pipe, apparently from the 1830s, is unfinished. The six figures represented are very difficult to identify, partly because during the period when the piece was carved Haida artists frequently used creatures that combined attributes of different animls as subjects for their work. Also of interest is the fact that some details, particulalry in the whale-like figure protruding from the bowl end of the pipe, are executed in a much later style. Perhaps the very early, unfinished piece came into the hands of an artist of the 1890 period who decided to continue the carving. (Holm, Crooked Beak of Heaven, 1972)

Pipes were made and used on the Northwest Coast from the period of White contact when the custom of smoking tobacco was introduced. They were made of many materials and in many forms. This small stone pipe utilizes the form of a frog, with the pipe bowl in his back and a hole for the stem under his chin. (Holm, Crooked Beak of Heaven, 1972)

The spruce root is natural. The spruce root is red. The bear grass is natural. The bear grass is black.