This broad-bowled ladle appears to be of sheep horn. The bowl and shank of the handle have been worked very thin and shaped by steaming and bending. The finial of the handle is left with its natural curve and carved to represent a bear-like creature and a bird. Both have eyes of abalone shell. (Holm, Crooked Beak of Heaven, 1972)

This carving may have been salvaged from a feast dish. The lower surfaces of old dishes are often rotten and riddled by insects as a result of the custom of storing them on the ground under the houses, which, in the years since the abandonment of the traditional native house, have been frame houses raised on short pilings. The head may have been cut from an old dish that had lost its function through the rotting of the bottom. (Holm, Crooked Beak of Heaven, 1972)

The echo is conceived as a human-like being with the ability to imitate the sound or voice of any creature. In the mask this is represented by mouths of many kinds which can be fitted to the mouth of the mask itself. There are four mouths with this echo mask: bear, raven, frog, and sea anemone. (Holm, Crooked Beak of Heaven, 1972)

Almost all Northwest Coast masks representing human males show a mustache, and often also a small beard on the point of the chin. The characteristic Kwakwaka'wakw use of green paint in the eyesocket is seen here as well as the customary painting of the features. A red formline design is painted on each cheek and merges with the red nostrils. (Holm, Crooked Beak of Heaven, 1972)

The speaker's staff or talking stick is an emblem of chiefly office. While making speeches, the chief or his designated speaker gives emphasis to words by gesturing with the stick or pounding it against the floor. At the top are images of a copper (see the to the left) and a whale's upturned tail, both decorated with faces.

Among the Kwakwaka'wakw the use of the clapper is reserved to the Mitla dancer, one of the performers in the Tseyka series. In the dance it is shaken rapidly and produces a staccato clattering sound. The whole instrument is carved and painted to represent the killer whale, with a thin upright dorsal fin and pectoral fins. (Holm, Crooked Beak of Heaven, 1972)

Singers who sit at the back of the house in front of a painted screen use wooden batons such as these to beat on a plank in time with their songs. The baton (in front), which has a thunderbird design, may have been carved by Willie Seaweed.

A row of fin-like protuberances along the snout and the scaly designs sweeping back from the nostrils suggest that this mask may represent not the ordinary mythical grizzly bear, but Nunis, the Grizzly Bear of the Sea. The mask is painted in black, red, green, yellow, and white. The jaw is hinged with a cord. When it is opened the teeth, which are all attached to the jaw, are exposed. (Holm, Crooked Beak of Heaven, 1972)

This panel pipe characteristic of the work of the mid-nineteenth century resembles the ship-motif pipes of the 1840s. The central element has lost its architectural character and has become a highly stylized decorative element pierced by the bowl of the pipe. Waves run the length of the base and a curious curly-haired dog with human arms and legs sits in the stern. Arching over the bow like a figurehead is a Yankee angel with long, curly hair, whiskers, and feathered wings. (Holm, Crooked Beak of Heaven, 1972)

The paint is black and red.