Just off the coast of British Columbia – Haida Gwaii
Northwest Coast – Haida

Wood, pigment, fiber
ca. 1930s
Height: 9.5 in
Idiophone – Struck – Indirectly (Rattle)

Signed on bottom of handle

A beautiful globular Haida rattle with an abstract anthropomorphic countenance.  It is hand-carved from cedar, in low-relief style and hand-painted using a palette of red, blue, and black hues. The rattle shows a nice brown patina and is constructed from two halves that are joined together at four loci with old cord, and the interior is filled with percussive seeds. The expressive face boasts a pair of wide, circular eyes surrounded by pale blue borders, a prominent black nose with flared red nostrils, full lips slightly agape, and thick black eyebrows curving below a rounded forehead.

According to art historian Bill Holm, these rounded, hemispheric form rattles may be associated with the shape of a human skull, and thus employed by shamans as a visual metaphor. 

Resource: ‘Northwest Coast Indian Art, An Analysis of Form,’  by Bill Holm, University of Washington Press