Kawatsi or Bentwood box, made of cedar, simple design of carved horizontal lines with a 5-7cm border of plain wood
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K´awat´si

Bentwood Box

Catalogue Information

Provenance

Owned by Harry Hanuse until its forced surrender to Indian Agent William Halliday on March 25, 1922. Halliday later displayed and photographed the seized pieces at the Parish Hall in Alert Bay. After doing an inventory, he crated the items in June, and at the end of September he shipped some of them to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, on long-term loan from the National Museum of Man (now the Canadian Museum of History). They remained in the possession of the ROM until the NMM pulled its loan and returned the pieces to the Nuyumbalees and U'mista cultural societies in 1988. In September 1993 Dan Hanuse Sr. requested that his father's pieces be transferred from Nuyumbalees to U'mista as per the wishes of the majority of Harry Hanuse's descendants.

Materials

Wood, Cedar

Dimensions

55.0cm x 48.0cm x 81.0cm

Accession Number

94.09.024

Physical Description

Large bentwood box made out of cedar and left unpainted. The box consists of two panels, one of which comprises the four sides, the other comprises the bottom. The design on three sides of the box is a simple pattern of carved horizontal lines with a 5-7 cm border of plain wood. The fourth side (probably the back) is knife-carved in intaglio. The inside of the box shows adzing marks. The box is in very fragile condition and all four sides of the box have been nailed together to stabilize them. Brown.