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An exceptional shaman’s amulet carved from bone with abalone shell inlay | Donald Ellis Gallery

Shaman's Amulet

Tsimshian
Northern British Columbia

ca. 1850-60

bone, abalone shell

height: 6"
width: 4 ½"

Inventory # N4230

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Provenance

Collected by the Reverend Robert James Dundas at Metlakatla, British Columbia, in 1863,

by descent to Dundas’s great-grandson, Professor Simon Carey, London, England,

by descent to his children

Related Examples

National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, Cat. No. 10/4585 – See: Wardwell, Allen. Tangible Visions: Northwest Coast Indian Shamanism and its Art. New York: The Monacelli Press, 1996, pg. 178, pl. 224 for a Tsimshian amulet collected by George Emmons on the Nass River.

National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, Cat No. 9813 – See: Ibid, pg. 183, pl. 237 for a Haida example collected ca. 1870

Thomas Burke Memorial Washington State Museum, Seattle, Cat. No. 920 – See: Ibid, pg. 179, pl. 226, for a Tlingit example collected by Emmons at Wrangell Alaska before 1905