Horn spoon with carved designs on handle. Goat horn bowl with two rows of incised linear design on top and a crosshatched and carved design on the bottom, near the handle. The bone handle has horn inlay elements and carved designs, including a pair of eyes on each of two sides (three of the inlays for the 'eyes' have fallen out) and four diamond inlays on the front. The tip of the handle is carved of horn.

The Elizabeth Cole Butler Collection.

Chilkat blankets, created by a complex form of tapestry twining, are the best-known textiles of the Northwest Coast. Emblems of nobility, they are prized for their crest significance, as well as for their beauty and fine workmanship. The labor-intensive process used to create a Chilkat blanket includes procuring and processing the materials, spinning the mountain goat wool wefts and the cedar bark and wood warps, dying the wefts, and weaving the blanket. The highly abstract designs of crest animals on Chilkat blankets fill the entire design space. The center panel of this design represents a diving whale, with the broad head filling the lower half while the spread-out tail flukes occupy the space along the upper border. A rectangular human face appears in the center of the whale's body.

Museum Purchase: Indian Collection Subscription Fund, Rasmussen Collection of Northwest Coast Indian Art.

"DRAWING SHADOWS TO STONE": PHOTOGRAPHING NORTH PACIFIC PEOPLES (1897-1902) (AMNH, NEW YORK, NY, USA, 1997)