UNIDENTIFIED ARTIST, POSSIBLY TLINGIT OR TSIMSHIAN
Model Totem Pole, c. 1920s
wood and pigment, 49 x 8 x 4.75 in (124.5 x 20.3 x 12.1 cm)
unsigned.

Provenance
Important Private Collection, Canada.

Quite a tall model pole at just over four feet in height, this one includes five figures with no subsidiaries. From the top down they appear to be: a seated bear with its front paws drawn up before its chest; an indeterminate bird with its wings folded around its body, and curving incised lines to represent layered feathers; the bird is seated on the head of a beaver holding a stick in its mouth and with its tail turned up between its crouching legs; the next figure down may be an otter, facing down the pole with its legs poised as if running and the front paws carved free of the background; the bottom figure is a human with his hands clasped upon his shins.

Steven C. Brown

References: For older and contemporaneous Tlingit and Tsimshian model poles of similar scale and attenuated form see First Arts, July 2021, Lot 17; and Michael D. Hall and Pat Glascock, Carvings and Commerce: Model Totem Poles 1880-2010, (Saskatoon: Mendel Art Gallery / Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011), cat. 4 (p. 60) and cat. 56 (p. 95).