The paper is white. The ink is black, red, and green.

Kwakwaka'wakw box lids characteristically have a high, raised edge along one side and it is this flange, painted with a stylized face and inlaid with sea otter teeth, which remains from the ancient lids and which had a prominent part in the ceremonial repayment of the marriage price. The goods to be transferred, among them a box containing ritual material symbolizing the dances, were gathered on the ground within a square bounded by a line of the archaic lids. (Holm, Spirit and Ancestor, 1987)