UNIDENTIFIED ARTIST, POSSIBLY TLINGIT or HAIDA
Feast Ladle, c. 1880s
hand forged, etched and repoussé copper, cow horn, copper rivets, and abalone, 12.5 x 2.25 x 13 in (31.8 x 5.7 x 33 cm)

Provenance
Important Private Collection, Canada.

A tour de force of horn work, copper repoussé and engraving, this complex, composite spoon was likely made for sale or trade outside the culture, where its unique construction and appearance would have been most valued. The double-headed eagle at the top has been deeply engraved with formline elements on the heads, body, and wings, also incorporating feather-like textures where appropriate. Then the copper was hammered outward from the back to give remarkable dimension to the engraved designs. The deepest relief areas on the front were accomplished by tapping the surface back into itself, as it were, hence the name repoussé for the technique. The copper then extends down through the frog’s head at the top of the horn section, where it once again expands through the process of repoussé, bulging into a frog’s body perched at the upper end of the horn bowl. The horn has been masterfully shaped to blend smoothly with the copper. The frog’s head and forefeet wrap around the copper, and a narrow section of horn extends up the handle where it tapers out and is riveted to the copper to strengthen the bond between the two materials. The section of horn to become the bowl is carved down to an even thinness and boiled to limber it up enough to open out into a shallow spoon, much wider than was the horn from which it was made. The translucent quality of the horn shows through beautifully in this unusual fabrication.

Steven C. Brown

References: See Bonhams Auctions, San Francisco, 1 June 2015, Lot 4077 for an equally unusual Tlingit copper and horn ladle, the handle in the form of a humanoid and killer whale. See a somewhat similar Tlingit example, with a hawk formed handle, in the Wellcome Collection, British Museum, object no, Am1954,05.987, reproduced in Ralph T. Coe, Sacred Circles: Two Thousand Years of North American Indian Art, (London, UK: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1976), fig. 331, p. 147, as “Spoon”.