The use of whalebone in the Qikiqtaaluk (Baffin) communities of Panniqtuuq (Pangnirtung) and Kangiqtugaapik (Clyde River) was tied in part to the limited local supply of carving stone. Yet artists in those communities turned to whale bone not merely out of necessity, but with real invention, making ambitious sculpture from a material whose irregular porosity demanded unusual sensitivity and control.

The present work is a particularly strong example. Rather than beginning with a regular block, the artist had to work with a broad, uneven, porous piece of bone whose pitted surface and tapering form would have made control difficult at every stage. Even so, the pair here has been fully modelled. The woman’s arm is carved free from her body, her other arm, coat, and boots are clearly defined, and the child’s face emerges distinctly from the mother’s hood, its cheeks rounded with real tenderness. That such a legible and affecting scene of maternal care could be drawn from so resistant a material is truly remarkable.