Tlingit Feast Dish

Feasts were special events within Tlingit communities and involved the use of elaborate dishes, ladles, and spoons, which enforced notions of identity and status. Depending on the season, Northwest coast feasting bowls would often be used to serve everything from dried salmon or other fish, seal meat, berries, beaten soapberries, and fish or seal oil used to dip food. 

This elongated, rectangular bowl is decorated on either end with painted animal faces. Sometimes, such pieces were also adorned with carving or inlay of shell or opercula. On the underside of this bowl, along an old stitched break, a small carved head of a bird has been fastened to the piece.