Tsimshian mask sells for $150K at auction
Source: Postmedia News
An elaborately carved aboriginal mask, believed to have been used in coming-of-age rituals among the Tsimshian people of the B.C. coast, has been sold at a Paris auction of historic native art for nearly $150,000.
The exquisite object was part of a major collection of artifacts amassed by Bernard Bottet, a well-known French enthusiast for indigenous artwork who began acquiring treasures from around the world in the 1920s.
While the specific history of the Canadian mask was not immediately available, native art curators at Christie's auction house called it a "perfect" representation of Tsimshian style: "forehead tilted from eyebrows, sharp orbits, pyramidal cheeks, wide mouth with the fine lips, aquiline nose, round nostrils and finely sculptured ears."
The mask, which drew a top bid of $148,000 at Tuesday's auction in Paris, was expected to sell for about $100,000.
The Tsimshian First Nation is centred in the Skeena River region, near Prince Rupert.
The nation's masterful carvings, typically shaped from red cedar, are renowned among collectors of native art and frequently fetch stunning prices.
In 2006, a Tsimshian shaman's mask from a controversial collection of B.C. artifacts acquired by a 19th-century Christian missionary sold at a Sotheby's auction in New York for more than $2 million.
B.C. native leaders had argued at the time of the 2006 sale that the objects -- which they described as being "as significant to Canadian heritage as the Group of Seven" -- were acquired improperly by Dundas and should have been returned to the Tsimshian people.
The mask sold on Tuesday would have been on display "during complex ceremonies where a group of supernatural entities called naxnox was performing," Christie's stated in its sale catalogue.
