Aug 07, 2002 - Sale 1941

Sale 1941 - Lot 301

Price Realized: $ 460
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 700 - $ 1,000
SYDNEY LAURENCEALASKA. Circa 1935.
39 3/4x 29 inches. Brown & Bigelow, St. Paul.
Condition B+: staning in top and bottom margin, some affecting text; minor creases and tears in margins. Paper.
Alaskans are in a decorated wooden boat with a yellow sail in the shadow of snow-capped blue and gray mountains. Originally distributed on request, this poster came with a printed explanation by Mary Lee Davis, "Potlach means giving --in the Chinook jargon of the Northwest coast--and to the Northwest Indian peoples, a potlach is a festival of giving to which one's family, neighbors, friends or even whole tribes are summoned, from far and near . . . The magnificent cedar boats of our Haida and Thlingit Indians . . . are among the most perfect treasures of American-Indian craft. [They were] worked out from giant cedar trunks by charring and chipping, sometimes nearly 100 feet in length."