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Artworks
INUIT AND POSSIBLY THULE CULTURE MAKERS, EASTERN CANADIAN ARCTIC
Four Bird Game Pieces, before 1935mediums variable, ivory / ivory and black pigment, the largest: 0.75 x 1.75 x 0.75 in (1.9 x 4.4 x 1.9 cm)LOT 105
ESTIMATE: $500 — $800
PRICE REALIZED: $414.80Further images
Small, delicate figures of swimming birds (and sometimes bird-women) were carved already in Thule times and may have been used as amulets. At some point in the Historic Period, they...Small, delicate figures of swimming birds (and sometimes bird-women) were carved already in Thule times and may have been used as amulets. At some point in the Historic Period, they began to be used as gaming pieces by Inuit, who continued to carve the bird figures, usually in more simplified form. At least one of these four pieces is clearly older and are incised with typical Thule-style dot patterns. Likely made by four different artists and at different times, these pieces beautifully encapsulate the stylistic evolution of traditional Inuit artmaking.
References: For more examples of Thule Culture gaming pieces see George Swinton, Sculpture of the Inuit, (Toronto: M&S, 1972/92), figs. 164-165. See also Canadian Eskimo Arts Council, Sculpture / Inuit: Masterworks of the Canadian Arctic, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971), cats. 44-53; Ingo Hessel, Inuit Art: An Introduction, (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1998) pl. 12, pp. 18-19.
Provenance
Collected by William Melville MacLean (1888-1978), the Canadian Post Office official travelling to Hudson Bay, Baffin Island, and Craig Harbour on Ellesmere Island aboard the famous Arctic icebreaker Nascopie when it was rechristened the R.M.S. [Royal Mail Ship] Nascopie in 1935;
by descent in the family
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