mask

Please enable JavaScript in your web browser to get the best experience.

Object Type
Museum number: Am,NWC.55
Description: Bird's head mask (with rattle) made of wood, stone (talc), gum (spruce), mica, feathers, sinew, limpet shells.
Production ethnic group
Excavator/field collector
Findspot: Found/Acquired: North America
Materials: wood; talc; spruce gum; mica; feather; sinew; limpet shell
Technique: carved; inlaid
Dimensions: Length: 37 centimetres; Width: 15 centimetres
Curator's comments: see JCH King `First Peoples, First Contacts' British Museum Press 1999; see JCH King `Artificial Curiosities of the North West Coast of America' BMP Ltd 1981
Bibliographic references: King 2000a / Nuu-chah-nulth Art at the British Museum (fig.1, p.260); King 1999 / First Peoples, First Contacts: Native Peoples of North America (p.137); Glenbow 1987b / The Spirit Sings: Artistic traditions of Canada's First Peoples: A Catalogue of the Exhibition (N 55, p.143); King 1981 / Artificial Curiosities of the Northwest Coast of America (col.pl.7); King 1981a / Eighteenth Century Pacific Collections in the British Museum (nos.7 & 8, p.36); Gunther 1972 / Indian Life on the Northwest Coast of North America: As Seen by the Early Explorers and Fur Traders during the Last Decades of the Eighteenth Century (app.1:147); Arima & Dewhirst 1990 / Nootkans of Vancouver Island (fig.9 b)
Location: Not on display
Exhibition history: Exhibited: 1979-1980 15 Feb-29 Sept, London, Museum of Mankind; Captain Cook in the South Seas 1988 15 Jan-1 May, Glenbow Museum, Calgary, The Spirit Sings: Artistic Traditions of Canada's First Peoples 1988 1 Jul-1 Nov, Museum of Civilization, Lorne Building, Ottawa, The Spirit Sings: Artistic Traditions of Canada's First Peoples 1993-95, London, Museum of Mankind, 'Treasures of the Americas' 1999 25 Jun-2011 2 Mar, BM Room 26; Gallery of North America, Case: "The Mowachaht of Vancouver Island" 2014 1 Nov-2015 22 Feb, London, Dulwich Picture Gallery, "From the Forest to the Sea: Emily Carr in British Columbia"
Acquisition name
Acquisition date: 1780
Acquisition notes: Collected during one of Cook's voyages.
Department: Africa, Oceania and the Americas
Registration number: Am,NWC.55
Additional IDs: CDMS number: Am1780D8.55 (old CDMS no.); Miscellaneous number: Am1780A1110.2
Conservation

Free entry

Opening hours