Wooden bulge bowl carved with formline designs, some elements of which appear upside down. [CAK 17/08/2009]

Collection type: Object
Description: Wooden bulge bowl carved with formline designs, some elements of which appear upside down. [CAK 17/08/2009]
Long description: Wooden bulge bowl carved with formline designs, some elements of which appear upside down. The base is carved from alder wood. The sides are carved from a single piece of red cedar wood which has been kerfed, steamed and bent to form the sides. The corner where the ends of the plank come together is sewn (probably with spruce root), and the base is both sewn with spruce root and pegged to the base. [CAK 17/08/2009] Large box with intricately carved and incised curvilinear images appearing on all four exterior walls. Some of the designs are filled with cross-hatching. The box is constructed of four walls with curved rims sewn with a fibrous cord to a flat rectangular shaped base. One corner of the box has been stitched together with the fibrous cord; this appears to be a native repair. All four corners and the interior joints have been coated with a greenish sealing agent; this also appears to have been a native repair. [NM 3/96] Note the stitching is not a repair but rather a means of joining the two ends of the bent plank to form the box. There is no evidence of a greenish sealing agent on the box. Each corner is impregnated with grease residue which has turned the wood a darker brown. [CAK 17/08/2009]
Geographical reference: Canada
Northern America > North America > Canada; British Columbia Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands) NW Coast
Cultural groups: Haida
Person: Field collector Charles Harrison; PRM source Charles Harrison
Date / Period: Date made: Before 1882-1890
Date collected: Between 1882 and 1890 ?
Acquisition information: Purchased: 02/03/1891
Materials and processes: Material Wood Plant, Material Cedar Wood Plant, Material Spruce Root Plant, Process Kerfed Grooved, Process Steamed, Process Carved, Process Stitched, Process Pegged
Dimensions: Width 225 mm, Length 270 mm
Object numbers: Accession number: 1891.49.97
Research and responses: The following information comes from Haida delegates who worked with the museum’s collection in September 2009 as part of the project “Haida Material Culture in British Museums: Generating New Forms of Knowledge”:
This vessel was viewed alongside other wood and horn dishes on Wednesday Sept 9, 2009. Delegates clarified that this is not a box because the sides bulge. They referred to it instead as a feast dish or grease dish. Gaahlaay (Lonnie Young) thought that this bowl could contain a small meal for a small family. Kwiaawah Jones identified the base of the dish as red cedar and the sides as alder wood. Alder wood was said to grow quickly, and therefore is not as dense a wood. In comparison, yew wood was said to grow slowly and produce a much denser wood. Christian White and Nika Collison both suggested that the base was sewn to the sides using spruce roots. Kwiaahwah Jones thought the design was rather ambiguous and not specific to either Raven or Eagle lineages. She wondered if there was a Haida word for designs on bowls and boxes that are purely abstract. Nika Collison suspected that this dish would have originally had a finely woven cedar bark cover. She further observed that three of the sides are carved with downward facing designs, and one side has an upward facing design [and see also 1891.49.96, for a comparison]. She recalled seeing a bentwood box at the National Museum of the American Indian where an eagle quill was inserted to repair a broken corner. Christian White characterised the overall shape of this bowl as canoe-shaped. [CAK 13/05/2010]

Search terms: Vessel, Food and Drink, Bowl, Food Accessory