The paint is red.

One of the unique technical achievements of Northwest Coast artisans was the bentwood box. Containers of many sizes were made by kerfing hand-made boards at carefully measured intervals and bending the boards at the steamed kerfs to form the continuous sides. The last corner joint and the bottom board were fastened by pegging or sewing. The plan of the box is nearly square, and two opposite sides are elaborately painted in red and black in the conventional style of box painting. (Holm, Crooked Beak of Heaven, 1972)

The cherry bark is dyed.

A game that was played over a wide stretch of western North America and is still very popular in certain areas is called slahal in Chinook jargon. It is a guessing game played with two pairs of bone cylinders and a number of sharpened counting sticks. These slahal bones are typical of the Salish area. Bones with a reputation of winning are highly prized. (Holm, Crooked Beak of Heaven, 1972)

Perhaps this small container, although tall and narrow, should be called a dish, since it has the undualting rim and slightly bulging sides characteristic of northern bentwood dishes. The organization of the elaborate distributive design is also dish-like, in depicting the represented animal, highly abstracted, wrapped entirely around the object. The head occupies one of the tall sides in a complicated bilaterally symmetrical composition. The two sides of the creature are shown on their respective sides of the container as asymmetrical designs, and the animal's hindquarters fill the remaining tall side, again in a symmetrical arrangement. (Holm, Crooked Beak of Heaven, 1972)

This early pipe combines a raven and two human figures in a compact arrangement. The raven, a favorite subject of argillite carvers in the early period, dominates the composition. (Holm, Crooked Beak of Heaven 1972)

Figures of women in the fashion of the day appear around the middle of the nineteenth century in panel pipe groups and as single figures. They are usually thought to represent white women, but some may depict Haida women in European dress which they were beginning to adopt at the time. (Holm, Crooked Beak of Heaven, 1972)

Many round plates such as this one were made in the mid-nineteenth century, very often with this kind of geometric and floral decoration. Some of the inspiration for these plates probably came from English tableware of the time, and certain of the motifs may derive from scrimshaw designs developed by American whalers, especially the wheel-like rosette, which has been likened to the jagging wheels made by the scrimshanders. The plates, like almost all argillite carvings, were purely decorative and were not intended for use. (Holm, Crooked Beak of Heaven, 1972)

This hook is lacking the lashings at the joint of the two arms and the seat of the barb. The short length of cord knotted to the carved arm is of twisted spruce root. The figures carved in the wood are a bird, perhaps an eagle, clutching the nose of a halibut with its talons. (Holm, Crooked Beak of Heaven, 1972)

Early in the argillite carving tradition, Haida artists began experimenting with exotic subject matter. At the time this pipe was carved, it was becoming popular to combine native Haida themes with figures and motifs that were part of the strange new world being opened by traders and seamen. The foreigners themselves became the subjects, and their accoutrements and equipment, even their ships, found places in this art form. (Holm, Crooked Beak of Heaven, 1972)