Platter (qwa.a. qiihlaa)

Dateca. 1885

Maker Charles Edenshaw First Nations, Haida, 1839 - 1920

Label TextEdenshaw illustrates the story of “How Raven Gave Females Their tsaw (genitalia)” on three argillite platters made for the tourist trade. Edenshaw brilliantly uses the argillite market as a means to retell stories banned by missionaries. In this story, Raven undertakes a dangerous canoe journey with Fungus Man to retrieve female parts (tsaw) from a dangerous spirit on tsaw gwaayaay, an island in Haida Gwaii. Fearful but resolute, against many odds, Raven is triumphant in his perilous journey, an act that gave women their distinctive identities as matriarchs and mothers.

Argillite is a black carbonaceous shale found exclusively in a quarry near Slatechuck Creek, close to Skidegate in Haida Gwaii (the Queen Charlotte Islands). Haida artists like Charles Edensaw (da.a xiigang) have been carving argillite for more than two hundred years. Access to the quarry is allowed only to the Haida, and artists are taught never to sell a piece of raw, uncarved argillite to an outsider. Carved argillite, however, has always been created for sale. Argillite carving developed into the first tourist art on the Northwest coast. In the late nineteenth century, argillite carvers began to shape model poles, chests, and houses and Haida figural groups and platters such as this one. At the same time that traditional practices were banned and missionaries arrived, Haida artists created works of art illustrating traditional myths for sale to outsiders and as museum commissions.

Object number91.1.127

ProvenanceSotheby's; donated to Seattle Art Museum by John H. Hauberg

Photo CreditPhoto: Paul Macapia

Argillite is quite a delicate stone. Especially when it's finely carved. It should be treated like a fine piece of China.

Christian White, 2006

Exhibition HistorySeattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, The Box of Daylight, Sept. 15, 1983 - Jan. 8, 1984. Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Hauberg Collection - Parsons Gallery, Aug. 22, 1985 - Mar. 16, 1986. Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Native Visions: Northwest Coast Art, 18th Century to the Present, Oct. 18, 1998 - Jan. 10, 1999. Vancouver, British Columbia, Vancouver Art Gallery, Raven Travelling: Two Centuries of Haida Art, Mar. 1 - Sept. 17, 2006. Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Our Blue Planet: Global Visions of Water, Mar. 18 - May 30, 2022.Published ReferencesSelected Works, Seattle, Washington: Seattle Art Museum, 1991, p. 74. The Spirit Within: Northwest Coast Native Art from the John H. Hauberg Collection, Seattle, Washington: Seattle Art Museum, 1995, p. 142. Brown, Steven C., Native Visions: Evolution in Northwest Coast Art from the Eighteenth Through the Twentieth Century, Seattle, Washington: Seattle Art Museum, 1998, p. 115. Seattle Art Museum: Bridging Cultures, London: Scala Publishers Ltd. for the Seattle Art Museum, 2007, p. 32. Browne, Colin. Entering Time: The Fungus Man Platters of Charles Edenshaw. Vancouver, British Columbia: Talonbooks; p. 74, reproduced fig. 3. Brotherton, Barbara. Robert Davidson: Abstract Impulse. Exh. Cat. Seattle, Washington: Seattle Art Museum, 2013-14; p. 18, reproduced fig. 4 [not in exhibition]. Peck, Alexandra M. "Charles Edenshaw's 'Fungus Man' Platters and Tlingit Grave Effigies: Exploring Human-Fungus Relationships through Agarikon Art." Human Plant Entanglement: Thinking With Plants in the Anthropocene. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2025; pp. 38-46, fig.1.6.

Credit LineGift of John H. Hauberg

Dimensions2 1/4 x 12 15/16 in. (5.7 x 32.9 cm)

MediumArgillite