A Tsimshian Polychromed Wood Crest Headdress

with shallow domed cap, carved at the front with an animal's head, probably a bear or wolf; composed of  birch, abalone and copper.

Michael R. Johnson Gallery, Seattle

Sylvia Duryee Collection, Seattle

Donald Ellis Gallery, Dundas, Ontario

Phil Loeb Collection, Seattle

Seattle Art Museum, September 15, 1983-Janaury 8, 1984

Seattle Art Museum, February 19-May 10, 1998

Bill Holm, Box of Daylight, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1984, pl. 51

Steven C. Brown, Native Visions, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1998, pl. 4.46

Split in the wood on the forehead of the animal, about 4 in. long, stable. Otherwise, excellent original condition.
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From a written assessment on this piece by Steven C. Brown: "Clan hats on the Northwest Coast include a broad range of sculptural types and manifestations. Some are woven spruce-root hats with painted crest-emblem designs and often status rings attached, and some of these further have sculptural embellishments in the form of animal heads or dorsal fins fastened to the hat. Wooden hats that are essentially versions of the woven hat shape vary from ones with just painted, or painted and carved, crest-emblem designs to examples with sculptural protrusions integral to the hat. These sculptural features often represent the heads and/or body parts of crest animals and are usually displayed in conjunction with two-dimensional design details painted and carved into the surface. Another general type bypasses the woven hat form entirely and employs just a sculptural representation of the crest animal image, which has been hollowed out to accept the head of the wearer on the bottom of the carving. The format or composition of the animal figure can vary widely, with some including just the salient features like the head and fins or wings, while others include the entire body and limbs of the image. The subject hat is one of the latter type, and is composed as a crouching bear-on-all-fours perched on top of the wearer's head.

Several features suggest the Tsimshian attribution for this sculpture. These include the rounded head and slim, rounded snout of the bear, the thin lips, the rounded modeling that suggests an underlying bone structure about the eyesockets and cheeks of the face, the small, thin limbs of the bear, and the extensive use of red (and some white) dashing in thin lines on the body to represent the long, reddish hair of the grizzly. The ears are unnaturalistically large, but their upright, rounded silhouettes reflect the appearance of alert bear's ears. Abalone inlay enhances the eyes and teeth, and the incisors are small pieces of copper sheet inset into the mouth. The blue paint that covers most of the face is a typical characteristic of animal masks from this area, and though this shade of blue is a little darker than is commonly encountered, it is within the usual range of variation that exists in the mineral sources of the color. It appears therefore to be a native pigment, and the slight flaking of the paint suggests that the paint binder is the traditional salmon-egg protein. The bear's mask-like head is slightly elevated in an alert and aware attitude, which would further lift the bear's visage above the wearer's head. The bear's fore and hind legs are slightly separated from the lower rim of the headgear, which would serve to accentuate the free sculptural form of the image atop the head of its owner. The slightly asymmetrical tilt or turn of the bear's head adds greatly to the lively and alert appearance of the sculpture. A pair of small holes appears on each side of the hat rim just above its lower edge, which probably accommodated a thin tie-thong to secure the sculpture on one's head.

With the exception of the U-shaped formline elements in the ears, there is no two-dimensional design work displayed on the headgear. Changes in formline design style over time provides an evolutional scale that can assist in dating undocumented objects. The style of the design elements in these ears, though, is enough to suggest that the bear was carved around the mid-nineteenth century or earlier. The U-shapes are fairly broad in character, which is consistent with the early historic period style of formline design. The dashing painted on the body is a feature most commonly seen in the Coast Tsimshian region of the northern Northwest Coast. Though it appears in other areas on occasion, particularly among the Kwakwaka'wakw of Vancouver Island, the technique was most commonly employed by Tsimshian artists in a general time period between about 1830 and 1865.

Perhaps the best documented group of objects from this region and timeframe is the collection made by the Rev. Robert Dundas in the reformed Christian village of Old Metlakatla, BC in October, 1863. The collection included quite a number of ceremonial objects including masks, clappers, a shaman's rattle, and crest-emblem headpieces including a conical hat and several forehead-mask types. Several of these objects were embellished with fine red dashing on a black background similar to the technique applied here. Some parts of the Dundas collection show considerable age, even as early as the eighteenth century, while the majority of the works in that group appear to have been comparatively young when they were acquired by Rev. Dundas. The objects that display the kind of red dashing seen here appear to range in age from a few years to a few decades prior to 1863.

When compared to the appearance of the objects in the Dundas group, the overall style of work in this bear headpiece seems to be earlier than many of the similarly painted sculptures in that collection. Therefore it seems appropriate to attribute this object to sometime in the roughly 30-year period prior to the 1863 date for the Dundas material, or about 1830-1860. Worn in a ceremonial context, the image that such a magnificent headgear would have conveyed was a complex blend of history, mythology, wealth expression, status, and artistry, all encapsulated in this lively little crouching bear."