AUGUSTUS BEAN (1850-1926) and RUDOLPH WALTON (1867-1951), TLINGIT, SITKA, ALASKA
Double Bear Feast Bowl, c. 1900
wood, abalone, bone, and glass trade beads, 5.75 x 17 x 7.5 in (14.6 x 43.2 x 19.1 cm)
unsigned

ESTIMATE: $7,000 — $10,000

Provenance
Collection of John and Joyce Price, Seattle.

An almost whimsical composition of two bears holding onto the ends of a bowl, this sculpture is an active one, with movement planned into it. Made by the prolific duo of Rudolph Walton and Augustus Bean, craftsmen of Sitka in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, this bowl exhibits their detailed and greatly pierced style of sculpture and embellishment. The bears are floating free from the vessel itself, connected to it only at their hands and feet. The heads of the bears feature abalone shell eyes and bone teeth. The rim of the bowl is embellished with glass beads and bone inlays, almost a kind of signature of the team of Walton and Bean. The sides of the bowl feature two-dimensional bird heads facing one another, the ends of the beaks turning slightly outward at the center of the bowl, thus giving dimensionality and depth to the nostril ends. The bowl is slightly undercut around the inside of the rim, making the vessel lighter and with more internal hollow than at first appears. Bean and Walton made numbers of such bowls, each with enough differences in form and development to give them a unique appearance.

Steven C. Brown