Sold for: $10,530

PROVENANCE
Private Collection, California

LITERATURE
Bill Holm, The Box of Daylight: Northwest Coast Indian Art, Seattle Art Museum, 1984, a related killer whale motif work reproduced page 124

These finely detailed bracelets are early Tlingit pieces from Sitka, Alaska. The Tlingit people’s name for themselves was Lingit – or people of the tides – and they were once the foremost traders of the Pacific Northwest. Before silver was introduced to the Northwest Coast by a Spanish expedition led by Juan Perez in 1774, First Nations people were already working with copper and iron in Alaska, and it was the Tlingit who controlled much of the copper resources that came from the Copper and Chitina Rivers. Before Europeans came to their shores, the Tlingit were already skilled metalsmiths and, in their oral history, they tell of a Chilkat woman named Shukasaka who was their first blacksmith and possessed superior ability in metalworking.

The Tlingit were a strong people and battled with the Russians for dominance at Sitka from 1802 to 1804. Sitka was the capital of Russian America from 1799 until 1867, when the United States purchased Alaska from Russia. Sitka was the leading economic centre on the West Coast and the largest European-style settlement there, thus many artists came there to sell their work. With the influx of Europeans, the rise of the fur trade and the establishment of the Hudson’s Bay Company on the coast came a steady supply of silver coins. The Tlingit and the Haida began to use this silver for objects and jewellery and, of all the jewellery produced, the bracelet was the most sought-after. The bracelets were sold to the tourist industry as well as worn by the Tlingit as personal ornamentation, and they were also given as potlatch gifts.

In their carvings, the Tlingit were known for a greater sense of realism than the Haida, best described as a stylized naturalism. Like the Haida, they used formline design and abstracted motifs such as the ovoid. Both of these bracelets have fine cross-hatching and precise craftsmanship. Each has marvellously complex imagery, one with two whales and the other with two eagles facing one another, their wrap-around motifs matching at the clasp. Both the whale and the eagle were important animal symbols in Tlingit art, and their expression in these bracelets is both strong and elegant.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars