Brooklyn Museum Collection

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Alastair B. Martin, the Guennol Collection

This feast dish is carved in the form of a stylized whale head with eyes and mouth indicated. Blow hole appears at top of snout. In the center there is an opening on which rests a projecting dorsal fin. The bottom of the dish has a leg for support on the right side; on the left side a pole shaped runner extends horizontally from the front of the body to the back fin.

This bentwood corner bowl was made by the distinctly Northwest Coast process called kerfing. A single plank of wood is first trimmed, notched , steamed and bent. The bottom and sides were then pegged or sewn together with tree root. Finally the bowl is decorated with carving, painting and adding operculum shell trims. The large bowl would have been used for dried food. The abstracted design on the sides represents a killer whale.

Frank L. Babbott Fund

Two pieces of horn put together. The handle is black and carved, the ladle is thin and amber colored.

This box is carved on all sides with the Northwest Coast "form" style of abstracted figures representing a killer whale.It would have had a wood lid set on top.

The paint is black, white, red, green, and yellow.

The tall fin, a special mark of the killer whale, is often pierced with a round hole, or marked with a circle. One Tlingit story explains that the man who first carved killer whales of yellow cedar (he tried unsuccessfully to make them of cottonwood bark, alder, hemlock, and red cedar) carved holes in their dorsal fins and, using them as handholds, was towed away from an island on which his brothers-in-law had marooned him. Later he sent his spirit whales to revenge him by smashing their canoe. (Holm, Spirit and Ancestor, 1987)

This mask was carved by the artist, Willie Seaweed. When it is used in the Tlasula performance, the killer whale and sun mask appears following the disappearance of the headdress dancer. Moving with slow steps around the dance house, the blanketed mask dancer turns his head one way and another to display the great sun disk and killer whale glowing in the firelight amidst swirling white down blown by the attendants. (Holm, Crooked Beak of Heaven, 1972)