Bowl as a seal

This simple dish represents a seal, and has four pegs in its muzzle with traces of fur ‘whiskers’, and further pegs in the ears. The eyes are of blue beads and there is a shallow groove around the inside and outside of the rim. The base of the bowl is impregnated with oil, possibly from the seal, which was a major food resource for Inuit peoples south of the Bering Straits. The bowl probably originates from the same region as object 741, around Port Clarence, though it has affinities with seal bowls collected from southern Alaska (see King, 1981:45).

Steven Hooper, 1997

Entry taken from Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Collection, Vol. 2: Pacific, African and Native North American Art, edited by Steven Hooper (Yale University Press, 1997) p. 244