THIS beautiful box has been hand-carved by Haida brothers Gwaai and Jaalen Edenshaw over the past four weeks at Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum.
It is an exact replica of one already in the museum’s collection, known as the Great Box, carved in the tradition of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. The brothers came to the Pitt Rivers to be artists in residence for September and to “reclaim the mastery” which made the Haida masterpiece.
Gwaai said: “While we are very experienced carvers, having made boxes, totem poles, and other Haida cultural items before, we felt the artist who carved the Great Box knew the rules of Haida art so well he was playing with them.”
They brought with them a new, blank box, drawn with the designs of the historic one and in four weeks worked with the real thing to make their own copy.
On Saturday they revealed their finished facsimile in a public talk about the museum’s collection of Haida art.
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