The great-grandson of the famous Haida artist Charles Edenshaw, Robert Davidson studied wood and argillite carving with his father Claude Davidson and his grandfather Robert Davidson Senior. Davidson went on to apprentice with Bill Reid for about a year and a half in the late 1960s, working mostly with silver; simultaneously he studied at the Vancouver School of Art. Davidson recalls the pivotal point in his efforts working in silver under Bill Reid this way:
He gave me a lot of guidance. I copied his style until he said it was time for me to do my own design for a bracelet. He stuck me in a room and took everything away, all the photographs, all the books, and told me to create my old bracelet design. I did several. He said they weren’t good enough. I was at the drawing board for four days before he finally approved a design and allowed me to engrave it on a bracelet [1].

Davidson’s early jewellery indicates that he was absorbing traditional Haida design principles, but already in 1969 he began making “non-Haida” pieces. This finely executed bracelet, carved from heavy silver, is an important example of Davidson’s early style. It is clear that here the artist was taking his cues from the more traditional designs of Reid and, directly or indirectly, from Edenshaw.

1. Ulli Steltzer and Robert Davidson, Eagle Transforming: The Art of Robert Davidson, (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1994). p. 46.

References: For several other silver bracelets by the artist from 1972 and later years see Ian M. Thom, editor, Robert Davidson: Eagle of the Dawn (Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery/Douglas & McIntyre, 1993), pp. 42,46,50,62,76,77.