Nothern Northwest Coast artists (Northern Wakashan, Tlingit, Tsimshian, and Haida) used an abstract two-dimensional style of design known as formline design. Abstract animal and human forms decorate the front and back of this box, with simpler bird's heads on the sides.

Square, bentcorner boxes were the principal furniture of northern Northwest Coast houses. Piled along walls and between bedroom partitions, they acted as shelves, seats, wardrobes, cupboards, pantries, containers for food and water, treasure chests, even urinals. Many were plain; some were painted only with red stripes up the corners. Those most oftwen seen in museums and private collections today are elaborately painted with formline designs and fitted with thick lids which are frequently studded with small white shells, the opercula of the red turban snail. (Holm, Spirit and Ancestor, 1987)

The Tlingit warriors who captured and destroyed the Russian fort Archangel Michael in 1802 wore helmets shaped in imitation of ferocious animals with gleaming teeth and of monstrous beings (Kyril Khlebnikov, quoted in Miller and Miller 1967:140). When Alexander Baranoff retook Sitka in 1804, he captured some of those helmets and sent them back to Russia with the Neva's commander Urey Lisiansky. They are among the many old Tlingit helmets in the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography in St. Petersburg today. This killer whale helmet is from that period, and could have even been worn in the 1802 battle, since according to Russian accounts, the plan for the general uprising was made at Angoon, the Hootsnuwoo village. (Holm, Spirit and Ancestor, 1987)

The paint is red and black.