By Carter B. Horsley
Lot 24 is a relatively simple but quite lovely,
blue and white beaded high blanket strip that had once been given
Barry Goldwater of Arizona to the Smoki Museum.
It is 64 inches long and 11 inches wide at its greatest width.
The catalogue provides the following commentary:
"Through the mid-19th Century, bison skin
robes were the most common upper garment worn by males, and the
only winter garment for either sex. For ease in fleshing and tanning,
hides were usually split down the center and resewn. The lanket
stripe, developed as a soloution to hide the seam which was created
in the process became an important part of Native costiume as
well as status symbol. Blanket strips were in use long before
artists such as George Catlin and Karl Bodmer arrived in the West
in the 1830s and documented them in their drawings and paintings.
Strips were originally decorated with porcupine quills but by
the late 18th or early 19th Century Native artisans were incorporating
large globular glass beads from Venice, also known as 'pony beads'
as seen in this example. Pony-beaded material that predates 1850,
as this strip does, is extremely rare; this blanket strip is one
of four known to exist."
The lot has an estimate of $100,000 to $150,000.
Of 221 offered lots, 62.4 percent sold for
$2,681,697. David Roche, senior consultant for the department,
said that "Today we saw that exceptional pieces attract active
bidding and achieve strong prices," adding that "though
bidders were selective, rare works continue to be sought after
One of the most colorful American
Indian objects is the "parfleche" envelope, made of
hide and painted in bright geometric patterns. This auction has
several fine examples include Lot 36, a Nez Perce envelope that
is 26 1/2 inches long and has an estimate of $5,000 to $7,000.
The auction includes several
lots from the collection of Frieda and Milton F. Rosenthal, who
were well-known collectors not only of American Indian Art but
also of African and Oceanic Art. Mr. Rosenthal was a lawyer andt
he former chairman and CEO of Englehardt Minearals and Chemicals
and Mrs. Rosenthal was chair of the advisory council to the department
of Art History & Archaeology at Columbia University for over
20 years. She also served as chair of the Commission of the National
Museum of African Art of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington,
D.C., and was a vice chair, trustee and chair of the acquisitions
committee of the Brooklyn Museum. Mr. Rosenthal was also a trustee
of Mt. Sinai Hospital where the Frieda and Milton F. Rosenthal
Coronary Care Unit is named for the couple.
Lot 52 is a large Hopi polychromed
wood kachina doll, depicting Hemis, from the Rosenthal collection.
It is 24 1/2 inches high and has an estimate of $15,000 to $20,000.
Another Rosenthal piece is
Lot 57, a finely carved Northwest Coast Polychromed Wood Ceremonial
Dance Rattle with a superb patina. It is 13 1/2 inches long and
is of the "raven" type. "It is carved in the shape
of that bird, with upraised tail forming another bird's head and
with a reclining man on the back. Uusually the man's tongue is
protruding and held by hebeak ofthe 'tail bird' or by a frog,
which either sits on the man's chest or is itself bitten by the
tail-fird. In this very old raven rattle the tail-bird was broken
off long ago and thebreak roughly reshaped, so that there is no
way to know how it related to the man's tongue. The meaning of
this peculiar arragnement has been debated over the years, and
we are no closer now to understanding it. Recorded Indian traditions
of the origin of he rattles do not shed light on it. Most scholars
agree that the tongue held by frog or bird probably signifies
a communication or transfer of power. This leads to the assumption
that the raven rattle originated as a shaman's implement. In historic
times, however, it has been a dancing rattle, used by a noble
person performing with the frontier headdress...."
It has an estimate of $35,000
to $45,000. It sold for $74,500.
A third Rosenthal object of
note is Lot 59, a Tlingit polychromed wood comb that is 9 3/4
inches high. It is the cover illustration of the catalogue and
was acquired from Christie's in London in June, 1983. It has an
estimate of $60,000 to $80,000. It sold for $146,500.
Lot 67 is a very large and
imposing Kwakiutl polychromed wood finial that presumably depicts
a bald eagle. It is 30 inches high. It has an estimate of $40,000
Lot 68 is a quite magnificently
colored and carved Kwakiutl wood chest that is 15 1/2 inches high.
It has a modest estimate of $25,000 to $35,000.
Lot 69 is an impressive Kwakiutl
polychromedwood sun mask that is 17 3/4 inches high.
The catalogue entry by Steven
C. Brown provides the following commentary:
"Among the Kwakwaka'wakw
of northern Vancouver Island and the adjacent mainland, the sun
is a representation that is fairly often encountered in masks,
totem poles, and housefront decoration. The sun is a crest emblem,
a type of image that symbolizes family history, and is a highly
valued element of the inherited prerogatives that are passed down
from one generation to another through the potlatch system. The
relatively wide dispersal of the sun emblem in numerous families
and villages may suggest that it is a very old crest symbol, distributed
through a broadly spreading family tree by marriage and direct
inheritance. This mask, like others of its type symbolizes the
sun through its employment of an encircling corona that represents
rays of light emanating outward from the central face. The nine
rays of this mask are short and rounded, a characteristic of earlier
versions of the representation. More recently made and contemporary
sun masks have tended to employ a larger coronna and/or long,
narrow rays in an effort to produce a larger and more imposing
image. The central face of many sun masks, including this one,
carved in the form of a humanhoid bird with a strongly recurved
beak. This is often described as presenting a hawk or a thunderbird,
though other interpretations may also be possible depending on
individual family traditions. The sculpture and painting of this
mask are in the style of a well-known career of the turn of the
twentieth century, Charles James of Alert Bay, British Columbia,
whose common Kwakwala names were Yakudlas and Dak'uma.
A Kwakwaka'wakw, he was sometimes referred to as 'One-Armed James'
due to the disuse of his left arm, the result of a severe hand
injury early in his life. Nonetheless, he was a prolific and highly
accomplished artist, producing a wide array of traditional work
well into the first decades of the twentieth century....Charlie
James's most remarkable work is perhaps the interior totem pole
he carved for the Christi Church Cathedral in Victoria, B.C. ....This
finely finished and beautifully conceived totem pole includes
a thunderbird and a bear holding an asymmetrically arranged killer
whale that reaches across the composition from left to right.
The whale's pectoral and dorsal fin protrude from one side of
the pole, while its head extends outward on the other."
The lot has an estimate of
$150,000 to $250,000. It sold for $266,500, the highest price
in the auction.
Lot 75 is a16-inch-long Tsimshian
polycrhomed wood crest headdress that is carved at its front with
an animal's head of probably a bear or wolf composedof birch,
abalone and copper.
The catalogue includes the
following commentary by Steven C. Brown:
"Clan hats on the Northwest
Coast include a broad range of sculptural types and manifestations.
Some are woven spruce-root hats with painted crest-emblem designs
and often status rings atttached and some of these further have
sculptural embellishments in the form of animal heads or dorsal
fine fastened on the hat. Wooden hats that are essentially versions
of the woven hat shape vary from ones with just painted, or painted
and carved, crest-emblem designs to examples with sculptural protrusions
integral to the hat. These sculptural features often represent
the heads and/or body parts of crest animals and are usually displayed
in conjunction with two dimentional design details painted and
carved into the surface. Another general type bypasses the woven
hat form entirely and employs just a sculptural representation
of the crest animal image, which has been hallowed out to accept
the head of the wearer on the bottom of the carving. The format
or composition of the animal figure can vary widely with some
including just the salient features like the head and fins or
wings, while others include the entire body and limbs of the image.
The subject hat is one of the latter type, and is composed as
a crouching bear-on-all-fours perched on top of the wearer's head.
Several features suggest the Tsimshian attribution fort his sculpture.
These include the rounded snout of the hear, the thin lips, the
rounded modeling that sugggests an underlying bone structure about
the eyesockets and cheeks of the face, the small, thin limbs of
the bear, and the extensive use of red (and some white) dashing
in thin lines ont he body to represent the long reddish hair of
the grizzly. The ears are unnaturalistically large, but their
upright, rounded silhouettes reflect the appearance of alert bear's
years. Abaloneinlay enhances the eyes and teeth,and the incisors
are small pieces of copper sheet inset into the mouth. The blue
paint that covers most of the face is atypical characteristic
of animal masks from this area, and though this shade of blue
is a little darker than it commonly encountered it is within the
visual range of variation that exists in the mineral sources of
the color....The dashing painted on the body is a feature most
commonly seen in the Coast Tsimshian region of the northern Northern
Coast. Though it appears in other areas on occasion..., the technique
was most commonly employed by Tsimshian artists in a general time
period between about 1830 and 1865."
The lot has an estimate of
$175,000 to $225,000.
Lot 76 is a striking, polychromed
wood headdress or front that is either Tsimshian or Haida. It
is 7 1/2 inches high. It has an estimate of $60,000 to $90,000.