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The formline decoration of the outer surface is purely coastal, of course, and exhibits flat-design characteristics of the earliest known examples from the northern area. The formlines that delineate the shapes of the faces are broad, bordered by very thin V-cuts and narrow carved-out negative areas. This pre-contact style, the essential positive-negative structure of the northern art and how it relates to the historic southern and proto-Northwest Coast traditions is most clearly revealed (Brown 1995, Chap. 5). This style constitutes the core outline of the northern graphic conventions that evolved through time to incorporate the expansions and improvisations of many prolific 19th-century artists (c.f. fig. XX T184).
The bilaterally symmetrical form of the vessel is composed of two opposite halves, interconnected (not unlike the eagle-raven moiety system of Tlingit society), a structural form that the late Wilson Duff termed a condensed bilateral armature. It is a supreme statement of balance- each end is leaning precariously away from and simultaneously supported by its opposite half. (c.f. de Laguna 1972, pl. 118; Holm 1982, p. 58, fig. 25) Part of the original horn thickness retained to create a recurved beak on each end, the focal points of the thunderbird-type faces formlined around them. Above these semi-sculptural end-face, spanning the remaining area out to the rim, a more archaically cryptic formline face arches over the bird's forehead similar to the subsidiary faces over the bird's-head pommel of the Nuu-chah-nulth whalebone club (c.f. fig. XX T157). Squarish U-forms extend back from the bird's heads to the centerline of the dish, suggesting the wing feathers of the Thunderbird in the most minimal fashion appropriate to the time. (From the Catalog of the Thaw Collection of American Indian Art, 2nd ed.)
Exhibition History"American Indian Art from the Fenimore Art Museum: The Thaw Collection," Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, Utica, NY, October 13, 2018 - December 31, 2018.
ProvenanceShaw Gallery, Aspen, Colorado
BibliographyVincent, Gilbert et al. Art of the North American Indians: The Thaw Collection. Cooperstown, New York: Fenimore Art Museum, 2000, p.367.
Fognell, Eva and Alexander Brier Marr, eds. Art of the North American Indians: The Thaw Collection at the Fenimore Art Museum, 2nd ed. Cooperstown, New York: Fenimore Art Museum, 2016, p. 410.
Culture
Tlingit
Bowl
Date1780-1820
MediumDall mountain sheep horn
DimensionsOverall: 4 1/2 × 6 × 10 3/4 in. (11.4 × 15.2 × 27.3 cm)
Object numberT0197
Credit LineLoan from the Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw Charitable Trust
Photograph by John Bigelow Taylor, NYC
Label TextThroughout the range of their employment by coastal and interior Native peoples, the miraculous horns of the mountain sheep have been carved, boiled, and formed into beautifully shaped vessels of closely related but distinctively different lines. The geometric forms of the Bighorn sheep bowls of the Columbia River valley (T148) show an obvious relationship to the rounded, sweeping lines of this far northern, early Tlingit example, and yet the two seemingly could not be much more different in detail. The overall form and outward-flaring edges of the Tlingit dish, as well as certain aspects of the surface treatment, are the same as sheep horn dishes made by the Athabaskans of the Alaskan interior. The horn has been thinned down to a delicate minimum, facilitating the steam-induced bending of the material that creates the side flares and the turn-out of the ends, and enhancing the horn's naturally translucent qualities. The fine, transverse grooving on the side rims is consistent with the decoration of Athabaskan horn bowls, and may be the skeuomorphic echo of the structural spruce root bindings on the edges of birch bark bowls from the same region (c.f. Holm 1983b, p.77, fig.124). In addition, the shape of the dish's upswept, rounded ends and the outward flare of the sides relate directly to the forms of certain birch bark dishes of the interior, and the dynamic of raising the sweep of the ends by pressing outward on the sides of the dish is used to the same effect in both traditions.The formline decoration of the outer surface is purely coastal, of course, and exhibits flat-design characteristics of the earliest known examples from the northern area. The formlines that delineate the shapes of the faces are broad, bordered by very thin V-cuts and narrow carved-out negative areas. This pre-contact style, the essential positive-negative structure of the northern art and how it relates to the historic southern and proto-Northwest Coast traditions is most clearly revealed (Brown 1995, Chap. 5). This style constitutes the core outline of the northern graphic conventions that evolved through time to incorporate the expansions and improvisations of many prolific 19th-century artists (c.f. fig. XX T184).
The bilaterally symmetrical form of the vessel is composed of two opposite halves, interconnected (not unlike the eagle-raven moiety system of Tlingit society), a structural form that the late Wilson Duff termed a condensed bilateral armature. It is a supreme statement of balance- each end is leaning precariously away from and simultaneously supported by its opposite half. (c.f. de Laguna 1972, pl. 118; Holm 1982, p. 58, fig. 25) Part of the original horn thickness retained to create a recurved beak on each end, the focal points of the thunderbird-type faces formlined around them. Above these semi-sculptural end-face, spanning the remaining area out to the rim, a more archaically cryptic formline face arches over the bird's forehead similar to the subsidiary faces over the bird's-head pommel of the Nuu-chah-nulth whalebone club (c.f. fig. XX T157). Squarish U-forms extend back from the bird's heads to the centerline of the dish, suggesting the wing feathers of the Thunderbird in the most minimal fashion appropriate to the time. (From the Catalog of the Thaw Collection of American Indian Art, 2nd ed.)
Exhibition History"American Indian Art from the Fenimore Art Museum: The Thaw Collection," Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, Utica, NY, October 13, 2018 - December 31, 2018.
ProvenanceShaw Gallery, Aspen, Colorado
BibliographyVincent, Gilbert et al. Art of the North American Indians: The Thaw Collection. Cooperstown, New York: Fenimore Art Museum, 2000, p.367.
Fognell, Eva and Alexander Brier Marr, eds. Art of the North American Indians: The Thaw Collection at the Fenimore Art Museum, 2nd ed. Cooperstown, New York: Fenimore Art Museum, 2016, p. 410.
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