A Tlingit Polychromed Wood Mask

composed of carved wood and pigments, probably depicting a devilfish or land otter man. 

Ralph C. Altman Memorial Exhibition, The Museum and Laboratories of Ethnic Arts and Technology, (The Fowler Museum), University of California, Los Angeles, 1968

Art of the Northwest Coast Indians, Robert Bruce Inverarity, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1950, pl. 72

Very good original condition.
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For a discussion of the use of masks within the Tlingit culture see Steve Brown, Spirits of the Water: Native Art Collected on Expeditions to Alaska  and British Columbia, 1774-1910, Seattle, 2000, pp. 50-51: "Masks were seen as repositories of supernatural power. This is the case of masks used by Tlingit shamans (shamanic art is prominent in the northern province, especially among the Tlingit). Masks carved to represent animal, bird and human spirits that were controlled by a shaman, and whose power gave him the ability to cure illness, predict the future, or counteract the power of sorcerers are among the most dramatic examples of Northwest Coast art. Other shamanic objects - rattles, amulets, robes and headdresses, for example - are equally evocative and powerful.  Haida and Tsimshian shamans used similar wonderful objects in their practice. Their images are enigmatic, typical of shamanic objects, with meanings known clearly only to the individual shamans who owned them. In this respect they are similar to the paraphernalia of southern shamans and characteristic of Northwest Coast religious material in general."

Animal motifs in Northwest Coast masks are examined in Allen Wardwell, Tangible Visions: Northwest Coast Shamanism and its Art, 1996, p. 93: "Animals form an equally large proportion of beings shown in Northwest Coast shamanic art. Some are hybrid creatures of identifiable animals, while others are fantastic monsters that have no counterpart in nature...Many of the animals in shamanic art, however, represent animal species that can be readily identified, and the reasons for their use are well known."

 

Ibid, p. 142, no. 147 for a closely related example in the collection of Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw.