Large Northwest Coast Model Wood Totem Pole

of tapering form with deeply hollowed back, carved at the base with an unidentified creature, with thick lips, flaring nostrils, and exaggerated eye sockets flanking a stylized formline element, surmounted in turn by a series of totemic creatures including a killer whale with a tall dorsal fin, a raven with backswept wings, a bear and an eagle with sharply downward turning beak, decorated with plaques of hand cut abalone shell.

Acquired from Pierre Langlois, Paris

Very good overall condition with typical wear for age. Over time, polish or wood oil may have been used.
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Totem poles are monumental sculptures carved from great trees, usually cedar, by a number of Indigenous cultures along the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. Symbols of a family’s clan origins, wealth and prestige, as well as the reputation of the carver, they most likely developed from other monumental carving traditions - including house posts, funerary containers and memorial markers. Standing in front of the lineage house, the totem pole was usually the tallest and most complex of the crest poles. Believed to have been developed by the Haida, totem carving most likely spread first to the Tsimshian and Tlingit and then later through British Columbia and Northern Washington.

Access to iron and steel – which may have first arrived as nails found in driftwood and slightly later with European explorers and traders – allowed a people with an existing carving tradition to create larger and much more detailed poles and other carved items with relative ease. In addition, the fur trade gave rise to a tremendous accumulation of wealth. Wealthy leaders commissioned tribal sculptors to represent their social status and the importance of their families and clans, and much wealth was spent and distributed in lavish potlatches which were frequently associated with the construction and erection of totem poles.

As the term totem (derived from the Ojibwa word odoodem, "his totem, his kinship group") would suggest, totem poles were primarily created to record and display clan lineage, and are generally considered the property of a particular clan or family group. However, these poles were also created to illustrate stories, to commemorate historic persons, to represent shamanic powers, as well as to provide objects of public ridicule. The most widely known tales, like those of the exploits of Raven or of Quats who married the bear woman, are familiar to almost every native of the area. Carvings which symbolize these tales (images of a bird with a long, massive and sharply tapered beak, or of a man whose head is being devoured by a bear) appear both on lineage poles as well as on story poles, the figures sufficiently conventionalized to be readily recognizable even by persons whose lineage did not include them in their own legendary history.

For more information on the history and genesis of the model totem pole please see MacDonald, 1996, p. 13: "Following the tragic depopulation of the late 1860s due to epidemics and the decultura­tion of the survivors by Indian agents and missionaries in the 1870s and 1880s, the monu­mental sculptural tradition was abandoned. Carvers miniaturized their production into models of houses and poles, tailoring their art to the tourist market."

 p. 211:

"The golden age of Haida art lasted half a century, beginning in the 1850s when new mar­kets opened in Victoria and elsewhere that stimulated both greater production and the development of new art forms, until the collapse of the Haida population at the begin­ning of the twentieth century. During this period, large objects were replaced by smaller replicas that could easily be taken home by tourists as mementoes of their visits to the Northwest Coast. It was a golden age because there was not only a great number of Haida artists who were well trained in their traditional style yet felt free to inno­vate and create new expressions of their rich heritage but also because there was a large and eager market for their work.

Many Haida artists successfully made the transition to creating pieces for another cultural milieu where having an identifiable style was essential in the marketplace. Even so, signing their work was not an accepted practice, and many artists resisted it, preferring to express themselves through subtle variations on traditional style (Wright 1985)."

Also see Brown, 1998, p. 101: "In the years between 1865 and 1920, before the results of these scenarios had played out, those who carried the knowledge and skills of the esoteric traditions did their best to keep the visions alive, whether they were applied to objects of cere­monial use or to ones that were produced for exchange in the developing colonial economies. Early ethnologists commissioned pieces from certain artists for display in urban museums, and collectors from varied backgrounds and nationalities came to the Northwest Coast to acquire the artistic trappings of what they saw as vanish­ing cultures. Native artists made gifts for presentation to respected dignitaries and authorities who came and worked among the First Peoples in many areas, and model canoes, model totem poles, and examples of basketry were carried to many corners of the world by missionaries, travelers, and governmental or commercial agents as mementos of their Northwest Coast duties and adventures."