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Artworks
ELI TAIT (1872-1949) TSIMSHIAN, METLAKATLA, ALASKA
Model Totem Pole, c. 1920s or 1930scarved and painted wood, 7.5 x 2.75 x 2 in (19.1 x 7 x 5.1 cm)
unsigned.
LOT 99
ESTIMATE: $1,200 — $1,800
PRICE REALIZED: $1,440.00
Further images
Eli Tate was one of the most important Tsimshian artists making model totem poles in what Michael Hall and Pat Glascock have termed the “Dynamic Phase” (1910-1940) of model totem...Eli Tate was one of the most important Tsimshian artists making model totem poles in what Michael Hall and Pat Glascock have termed the “Dynamic Phase” (1910-1940) of model totem production. See the small section on the artist in their book, Carvings and Commerce: Model Totem Poles 1880-2010, (Saskatoon: Mendel Art Gallery / Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press, 2011), pp. 96-98 for examples of his work and a photo of Tait at his workbench. The photo clearly shows that Eli Tait was a busy artist! This Model Totem Pole is almost identical to one by Tait in the book (p. 98, cat. 60). These delightful small poles are both models of the Chief Johnson pole in Ketchikan, Alaska, which was raised at a potlatch in 1901.
References: See the section on the artist in Michael D. Hall and Pat Glascock, Carvings and Commerce: Model Totem Poles 1880-2010, (Saskatoon: Mendel Art Gallery / Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press, 2011), pp. 96-98, with an almost identical pole illustrated on p. 98. See also Jack Davy, “The ‘Idiot Sticks’: Kwakwaka'wakw Carving and Cultural Resistance in Commercial Art Production on the Northwest Coast,” American Indian Culture and Research Journal, (42:3), 2018, p. 27–46. For a model totem with a similar flat bird motif, see First Arts Online Auction, October 2021, Lot 42.Provenance
Private Collection, Toronto.
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