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Course: Art of the Americas to World War I > Unit 5
Lesson 5: Northwest coast & Arctic- Tsimshian shaman’s rattle
- Reclaiming history, a Kwakwaka'wakw belt
- Transformation masks
- North Wind Mask
- Sea monster transformation mask
- Nuu-Chah-Nulth Mask Frontlet of the Wolf Dance
- Haida totem pole, from Old Kasaan
- Haida potlatch pole
- Bentwood Boxes of the Northwest Coast peoples
- Tlingit mortuary and memorial totem poles
- Proud Raven totem pole at Saxman Totem Park
- The story of the Oyster Man, a Tlingit totem pole
- The Chief Johnson Totem Pole
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Tsimshian shaman’s rattle
Tsimshian, shaman's rattle, c. 1750–80, birch, bone, hair, pigment, and metal pins, made in British Columbia, Canada, 35.6 × 22.9 × 11.4 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art); speaker: Gaylord Torrence, Fred and Virginia Merrill Senior Curator of American Indian Art, The Nelson Atkins Museum of Art. Created by Smarthistory.
Video transcript
TORRENCE: This rattle is one of the most emotionally
charged works in the Diker Collection. It’s a Shaman’s rattle. It was used in healing ceremonies. It’s essentially a portrait of the Shaman
himself or a spirit helper, somewhere between life and death. It was created by a Tsimshian artist around
the mid 1700s. The mouth is grimacing, exposing these very,
very realistic teeth, carved in bone. It’s an emaciated form. There’s a great deal of realism in the broad
plane of the forehead, and the carefully and sensitively rendered eye sockets, the cheekbones,
the jawline that curves so beautifully towards the chin. Crossing the top of this rattle is a ruff
of human hair, which certainly adds to the realism. This rattle is covered on the back with a
very, very old style of form-line design, a visual language of the Northwest coast. The depiction is so abstracted, and frankly
so archaic that it’s impossible to know for certain what is being represented here. Rattles were almost always accompanied in
healing ceremonies of shamans. It’s believed that whenever a rattle was
sounded that spirits were present. It’s carved of wood in two halves which
were then sewn together. It contained a small group of pebbles or shot
for the sound that it would create. There’s a remarkable sense of life and tension
in this face, it’s this sense of expressive power. It’s one of the great, great works of the
art of Northwest coast peoples.