The Haida fashioned for themselves a world of
costumes and adornments,
tools and structures, with spiritual
dimensions appropriate to each. The decorations on the objects they
created were statements of social identity, or reminders of rights and
prerogatives bestowed on their ancestors by supernatural beings, or of
lessons taught to them through mythic encounters with the animals, birds,
fish or other beings whose likenesses were embodied in the
crests passed down through generations.
The abstract concept of art for art's sake had little meaning
for the Haida, but they had exceptionally high standards of
craftsmanship and the desire to constantly improve their skills. As
inhabitants of an archipelago that lacked many of the prized natural
resources available on the mainland -- such as mountain sheep or goats,
major runs of eulachon fish, mineral pigments, and specialized stones
and metals for tools -- the Haida began about 2,000 years ago to trade
in order to maintain status among their neighbours. What they offered
in exchange were products of skilled workmanship, especially their
exceptional canoes, but ranging over a great variety of objects such
as carved and painted chests, as well as other furnishings appropriate
to the potlatch feasts of all the other north coast tribes.
They imported the raw materials that they lacked and
processed them into highly refined products that they then exported to
other tribes on Vancouver Island and the mainland. Such items included
copper shields, silver and copper jewellery
(after the late eighteenth century), as well as horn
bowls, ladles,
spoons, and possibly goat's wool blankets.
The Haida excelled in making and engraving copper shields, and examples
of their work have been collected from the Tsimshian, Tlingit,
Kwakwaka'wakw (or Kwakiutl) and most other peoples of the coast.
From the first days of contact, the Haida tailored their
production of art to European and American requirements. Just as the traders
catered to the Haida by setting up the shipboard manufacture of iron
and copper implements and even items of clothing, the Haida developed
art and crafts that appealed to the traders. Most popular were small
carvings made of argillite
(a soft black stone), items of ivory and silver, as well as a wide
variety of wooden and basketry
"souvenirs." Literally thousands of such items, collected before the
end of the sea otter trade in the 1830s, have turned up in the New
England states and the British isles. Numbers of them have found
their way into museum collections.
The North Coast Art Style | Flat Design | Sculpture
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