Potlatch figure (Man holding a copper)
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.Realistic figures were used in the ceremonial potlatch among the Kwakwaka’wakw villages of Northern Vancouver Island to advertise the hosts’ wealth and rank and to challenge rival guests. By the end of the nineteenth century, an infusion of new goods along with demographic decline had made the practice more elaborate and competitive, despite its prohibition by the colonial government. This finely carved man points to the sky in a conventional gesture of ritual oratory and claim to elevated status. He displays distinctive insignia of his chiefly position: a painted face design in black and trade vermillion pigments; a woven cedar-bark headring; and a form like a copper shield decorated with a family crest or ancestor figure. Artworks like this one asserted a vigorous indigenous presence in a precarious moment of cultural transformation.
Artwork Details
- Title: Potlatch figure (Man holding a copper)
- Artist: Unrecorded Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwakiutl) artist
- Date: ca. 1880–95
- Geography: Canada, Vancouver Island, British Columbia
- Culture: Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwakiutl)
- Medium: Red cedar, paint, nails
- Dimensions: H. 50 × W. 13 1/2 × D. 15 in. (127 × 34.3 × 38.1 cm)
- Classification: Wood-Sculpture
- Credit Line: Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection, Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, NY (T0162)
- Curatorial Department: The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing