Learning from the Masters – Recarving the Great Box

Saturday Spotlight:
In September 2014 two Haida carvers, Gwaai and Jaalen Edenshaw, came to the Pitt Rivers Museum to learn by doing: to reclaim the mastery of the nineteenth century artist of the ‘Great Box’, a Haida masterpiece. While Gwaai and Jaalen are very experienced carvers, having made boxes, totem poles and other Haida cultural items before, they felt that this artist knew the rules of Haida art so well he was playing with them. They brought a new blank box, drawn with the designs of the historic box and spent four weeks working with the real thing to make their own copy of it. This talk will discuss the Museum’s work with Haida people on this and other projects and the process for remaking the Great Box.