Thitikorn Chansasitorn
tchansasitorn@zagmail.gonzaga.edu
About Artist
The artist behind this totem pole is Charles Edenshaw. He was the owner of many prestigious Haida names. He was from the powerful Stastas Eagle lineage. Margaret B. Blackman, biographer of Florence Davidson, recorded his names as "Fairies coming to you as in a big wave," "Noise in the house pit" and "They gave 10 potlatches for him." Charles Edenshaw’s early work mostly consisted of wood carving, including masks and totem poles. His repertoire gradually came to include a wide variety of objects in wood, argillite and precious metals. His Sea Bear Bracelet, for instance, is a wide silver bracelet with an animal’s gaping, and perhaps mocking, toothy smile deeply carved into it. Other shapes coil across its surface. One beautiful early argillite platter features panicked creatures, part human, part animal, part spirit, furiously rowing a canoe while a sea monster thrashes beneath. One of his bentwood chests has heads and a huge mouth and nostrils protruding from it, flattened faces and eyes outlined in black dancing across its surface.
(Sources: Charles Edenshaw Bio)