Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas | Antiquities - 20th February 2024
Lot 49
λA Inuit snow / story knife
Estimate £5,000 - £7,000 | Hammer £16380
Inc. Buyers Premium
Description
λA Inuit snow / story knife
Arctic
walrus ivory, with a medial channel to each side of the blade and incised scenes of figures playing and hunting, birds, homes/camps, dogs pulling sleighs, figures in umiaks hunting walrus, shaman flying over the dragged walrus, drying skins, the handle with two drilled holes for binding and an incised image of a fornicating couple,
47.2cm long.
Provenance
Ernest Ohly, London.
cf. The British Museum, Am1949,22.19 with engraved scenes and a groove running along the middle of the blade and bound with baleen around the handle, previously in the collection of William Ockelford Oldman and gifted by Dorothy Oldman in 1949 and published in Hales and Conru, W O Oldman, The Remarkable Collector, 2016, fig 119.