Larry Rosso was a highly skilled carver and design artist from Northern British Columbia. In the late-1960s, Rosso studied carving and design with ‘Namgis/Kwakwaka’wakw artist Doug Cranmer (1927–2006), and in the late-1980s, worked under Haida master carver Robert Davidson (1946-). Rosso was heavily associated with the Douglas Reynolds Gallery in Vancouver and his work can be found in a number of prominent public and private collections, including the UBC Museum of Anthropology and the Vancouver International Airport.

This is a classic Northern chief’s rattle that features a raven with a reclining human on its back, a frog touching tongues with the human, and a kingfisher. The chest of the raven features a hawk face rendered in low relief-carved formline. The rattle is painted in red, blue, and black and the handle is wrapped in deerskin. Northwest Coast raven rattles are remarkably consistent across time and regions, most with only minor changes in the configuration of carved figures on the back of the raven. Rosso did a fine job here of capturing the iconicity of the form.

— Christopher W. Smith