SOLID MATERIAL
Skinner’s next American Indian & Ethnographic Art auction includes a selection of Plains and Northwest Coast material, textiles, baskets, pottery, jewelry and more.
Skinner’s next American Indian & Ethnographic Art auction includes a selection of Plains and Northwest Coast material, textiles, baskets, pottery, jewelry and more.
On May 2, at 10 a.m., Skinner Inc. will host its first American Indian & Ethnographic Art sale of the year. Featuring approximately 500 lots, the auction consists primarily of Native American art offerings, with a smattering of Pre-columbian, Oceanic and Tribal art. As with the majority of their sales in this category, there will be a strong Plains section, a number of Woodlands and Northwest Coast items, as well as artwork from tribes around the Southwest.
The Plains segment of the sale is highlighted by beadwork that will include moccasins, pipe bags, cradles and more. Among the pieces is an 1880s Lakota beaded doctor’s bag that is beautifully decorated and graphic. The work is expected to sell between $4,000 and $6,000. Another highlight is a Plains beaded hide knife case that has an estimate of $1,000 to $1,500. The work, mostly done with blue beadwork, is a Sioux piece from the fourth quarter of the 19th century. An 1870s Sioux bow case and quiver that includes a sinew bow and arrows coming from the Western Reserve Museum in Ohio is another standout, with a presale estimate of $8,000 to $12,000.
“We have our usual selection of Southwest pottery, both prehistoric and contemporary,” says Michael Evans, director of the American Indian and Ethnographic art department. “We usually get quite a lot of pots, and in this sale we probably have 20 or 30.” One item is a nice, large polychrome pottery olla from around the first quarter of the 20th century. The piece, which has a bird design and other geometrics, is estimated at $4,000 to $6,000.
There will be 20 to 30 baskets available in the auction. Most are Southwest and California baskets with a few from the Northwest Coast and Aleutian Islands. The items include small lidded baskets, small bowls, trays and a few large storage olla jars.
The auction’s highlight, however, is in the textiles segment of sale, a Navajo classic serape, circa 1860, from the collection of William H. Claflin Jr. According to Evans, “This rare wearing blanket was collected sometime in the late 19th century by Eliza Hosmer, who spent time in New Mexico in the 1890s. Hosmer managed to amass a remarkable collection of Navajo textiles, numbering between 40 and 50 examples. Sometime around 1932 William Claflin acquired this example from Hosmer’s niece Anne Lauriat Read, who had received it as a gift from her aunt.”
The majority of Claflin’s textile collection was given to the Peabody Museum, Harvard, but this item was gifted to members of his family. The work, possibly made before the Bosque Redondo episode in 1860, “embodied all the characteristics of early Classic Navajo serapes; horizontal design layout incorporating narrow bands, with wider joined diamond bands between, quarter and half diamonds, and the predominate color combination of red, blue, and white; and the use of the Saxony yarn to create an extremely tight weave in a longer-than-wide format.” It is estimated at $200,000 to $250,000.