Early 20th C. Pacific Northwest Haida Wood War Helmet

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Northwest Coast, Tribal, & Pre-Columbian Art

By Artemis Gallery

May 24, 2018

Set Reminder 2018-05-24 10:00:00 2018-05-24 10:00:00 America/New_York Bidsquare Bidsquare : Northwest Coast, Tribal, & Pre-Columbian Art https://www.bidsquare.com/auctions/artemis-gallery/northwest-coast-tribal-pre-columbian-art-3238
Featuring Pacific Northwest Coast Native American Art from respected collector / dealer, Joseph Alphabet. Artemis Gallery info@artemisgallery.com

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• Lot Description
  Native American, Pacific Northwest Coast, Haida peoples, ca. early 20th century CE. A stunning carved wooden helmet, hemispherical in form, meant to be worn during battle. The interior of the helmet is carved out with a large padded leather panel on top - to separate the warrior's head from the exposed wood - with thin fastening strips extending outwards. Several pieces of relatively smooth wood comprise the helmet and are secured to one another with small rectangular joints. A stylized wolf head projects from the top with large ovoid eyes, tall ears, a muscular jaw line, a collar of silvery fur, and an exposed tooth-filled mouth. The cap has an abstract yet colorful bear painted on the surface - with huge eyes, an enormous mouth, and geometric ears in hues of red, beige, and black - the face of which is oriented opposite that of the wolf. Very few intact Haida war helmets remain, so this is an exceptionally rare example! Custom museum-quality display stand included. Size: 11.5" W x 10.5" H (29.2 cm x 26.7 cm); 13.625" H (34.6 cm) on included custom stand.
  
  The following passage by the curatorial department of the Canadian Museum of History from their description of Haida warfare provides useful contextualization for a better understanding of the Haida people and how they conducted war: "The Haida were feared along the coast because of their practice of making lightning raids against which their enemies had little defense. Their great skills of seamanship, their superior craft and their relative protection from retaliation in their island fortress added to the aggressive posture of the Haida towards neighboring tribes. Diamond Jenness, an early anthropologist at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, caught their essence in his description of the Haida as the "Indian Vikings of the North West Coast": Those were stirring times, about a century ago, when the big Haida war canoes, each hollowed out of a single cedar tree and manned by fifty or sixty warriors, traded and raided up and down the coast from Sitka in the north to the delta of the Fraser River in the south. Each usually carried a shaman or medicine man to catch and destroy the souls of enemies before an impending battle; and the women who sometimes accompanied the warriors fought as savagely as their husbands." (https://www.historymuseum.ca/cmc/exhibitions/aborig/haida/havwa01e.shtml#top)
  
  For a similar example of a Haida wooden war helmet, please see The Metropolitan Museum of Art, accession number 2011.154.56: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/319096
  
  Provenance: private Newport Beach, California, USA collection; ex-Ben Harman collection, collected in Bella Bella, British Columbia, Canada
  
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  #133649

  Condition

  Both wolf ears restored using new material. Surface wear and abrasions commensurate with age and use as expected. Light fading and discoloration to pigmentation, minor desiccation to leather panel inside helmet, and a few stable hairline fissures around rim and interior. One leather repair patch on helmet below wolf's left eye. Light earthen deposits throughout. Old inventory label inside cavity.
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