Northwest Coast Polychromed Wood Headress, probably Nuxalk (Bella Coola)

frontlet, of convex rectangular form, finely carved with a crest animal, probably a raven, with palms held up on the lower border, each with a human face, flanking another projection with mask-like features, elegant upward curving beak slightly parted to reveal an orb-shaped implement, a fine medial ridge and gently flaring nostrils, exaggerated eye sockets with pointed oval eye rims, overlaid with pierced circular metal disks, beneath thick arching brows, and raised ears with small totemic animals in shallow relief, surmounted by a crouching bear, its front paws resting on the crown, wearing a voracious expression, the sides inlaid with brilliant plaques of hand cut abalone shell; painted in black, blue, green and vermilion red pigments.

Objects of Bright Pride (Northwest Coast Indian Art from New York Collections), The American Federation of Arts: Center for Inter-American Relations, New York, NY July 11-October 1, 1978; The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH November 19-December 24; The Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO February 4-March 18, 1979; The Museum of Natural History of Los Angeles County, Los Angeles CA April 22-August 15, 1979; The Seattle Art Museum, Seattle WA September 21-November 4 1979; and New Orleans Museum of Art, dates unknown

Overall very good condition with typical wear for its age. The left side seemed to have had a hairline crack or clean break running vertically from top to bottom. There is evidence of over-paint in blue and possible infill. No significant restoration.
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For a discussion of the frontlet tradition see Holm 1983: “The Tsimshian and their Nass and Skeena River relatives, the Nishga and the Gitksan, are credited with producing many of the finest frontlets of the Northwest Coast; they may even have been the originators of the concept itself.”

Also see Vincent, 2000, p. 358: “The origins of the dancing headdress and its associated traditions have been placed by Native oral history at the Nass River in northern British Columbia (Swanton 1909, pp. 170-173). Examination of the existing artifactual record appears to corroborate this account. Those frontlets that appear to be the oldest, and in some cases illustrate the reverse steps in the evolution of certain conceptual developments, can be traced by documentation or stylistic attribution to the Nass Valley. The frontlet concept spread outward from there to adjacent peoples through marriages or as gifts. A number of northern made frontlets have been collected in the Kwakiutl villages, such as Alert Bay or Port Hardy [see p. 361]; Brown 1995, pp. 158-159, demonstrating the migration of the tradition to that southern location. Existing 19th century Nootka versions of the frontlet concept document its arrival on the west side of Vancouver Island via the adjacent Kwakiutl, with whom the Nootka have had many interrelations.

Many of the oldest frontlets from the northern coast employ the inlay of abalone shell very sparingly, and often not at all, on the flat rim that surrounds the central figure. Fine, regular, parallel grooves frequently texture the surface of these earliest rim plaques, seemingly a conservative holdover from the era of beaver-tooth finishing tools. Usually painted in the typical pale blue of the northern palette, these textured rims have sometimes been inlaid with shell at a later date, when an increase in the trade made the abalone shells easier to obtain. (The native pale white abalone was almost never used for decorative inlay in the Northwest Coast. Haliotis fulgens from California and Mexico was the preferred species because of its rich color, iridescence and imported value).

Compact, single-image frontlets with grooved rims evolved over time to become more and more elaborate... One very early style of frontlet is composed of a formline-style face structure, relief-carved and sometimes surrounded by a bordering flat rim. Inlays, if they were included, are fitted into the eyes and other major design ovoids or circles. This concept, which may have been the prerogative of a certain clan or family line, became more and more complex through time to include richly inlaid tiny faces in the eyes and ovoids of the central image, and often rows of small, subsidiary figures parallel to the rim around the outside of the main face. Each step in these developments occurred when an artist stretched the conceptual limits of what had been done before, providing inspiration to those who would see that work and in turn stretch it further."

For a related example see Sotheby's Paris, June 2008, lot 36.