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RARE EARLY YUPIK ESKIMO ARCHITECTURAL MASK COLLECTED IN 1845 - NO RESERVE
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RARE EARLY YUPIK ESKIMO ARCHITECTURAL MASK COLLECTED IN 1845 - NO RESERVE
Price: US $2124.00

RARE EARLY YUPIK ESKIMO ARCHITECTURAL MASK COLLECTED IN 1845 - !

WOW! This extremely rare artifact was collected in 1845 and most likely dates to the 18th century. It is EXTREMELY RARE and it is unlikely you\'ll find a piece of this sort outside of a major sale house.

Collected by Thomas Welcomes Roys on the Whaling Ship, Superior in 1845. The winner of this listing willreceive a Certificate of Authenticity statingthe 1845 Provenance.

Beautifully carved, this mask measures 11 3/4\" x 5 1/2\" inches. Read more about these incredible masks and Thomas Roys below!

Also listed this week is a rare Siberian Eskimo COMPLETE Adze!

This is one of MANY important sales this week!Be sure to view our other other listings!

  • Yup\'ik Masks (Wikipedia):\"TheYup\'ikare Eskimos of Western Alaska whose masks vary enormously but are characterised by great invention. They differ in size from forehead and finger \'maskettes\' to enormous constructions that dancers need external supports to perform with.Many of these masks were used almost as stage props, some which imbued the dancer with the spirit that they represented - and most were often destroyed after use. Others represented animal people,(yuit), and insects, berries, plants, ice and objects of everyday life.\"
  • About Thomas Welcome Roys (Wikipedia):\"By the 1850s, the Euro-American whalemen made a serious attempt at catching suchrorqualsas the blue andfin whale. This era was inaugurated by one Thomas Welcome Roys. Roys, while cruising south ofIcelandin the 441-tonHannibal, was able to kill a sulfurbottom (blue whale) with a Brown\'s bomb gun in 1855.He realized that if he had a better way to dispatch such large rorquals as the sulfurbottom that he could easily fill his ship\'s hold with whale oil. Due to his ship having taken a beating in a heavy gale in these waters, he was forced to put intoLorient, France. While there, he ordered for \"two rifles in pairs for killing [rorqual] whales,\" staying long enough inFranceto see them nearly completed, then leaving for home in a steamer, and, when finished, having the guns sent by way ofEnglandto the US.The following spring, he went out in the 175-ton brigWilliam F. Saffordto test his experimental whaling guns.The guns Roys had ordered fromFrancewere lost on the voyage out, so he had to persuade C. C. Brand ofNorwich, Conn., to let him use his bomb lance, but to increase his bomb missiles to three pounds in order to ensure greater success. Roys sailed to Bjornøya, where he encountered vast numbers of blue, fin, and humpbacks.He fired at around sixty, with only a single blue whale being saved. He then sailed toNovaya Zemlya, capturing two humpbacks there. After cruising off Russia and Norway, he came to anchor atQueenstown, Ireland, and thence went toEnglandto reconstruct his lost French-made guns.He had Sir Joseph Whitworth manufacture him some rifled whaling guns and shells. Roys returned to his ship, sailing from Queenstown on 26 November for th of Biscay. Here, when testing one of the guns, he blew off his left hand, having to amputate it \"as well as we could with razors.\" They sailed toOporto, Portugal, where Roys\'s lower arm had to be amputated.Having failed in securing whales on another cruise in 1857, Roys redesigned his gun. This time, the rocket-powered harpoons proved too weak to penetrate the whales correctly. Undaunted, he made another cruise, this time toSouth Georgia, but he wasn\'t able to take any whales.He cruised north to put intoLisbon, sailed toAfrica, then west to theWest Indiesin early 1859, where he was able to capture several humpbacks.In 1861 Roys joined forces with the wealthyNew Yorkpyrotechnic manufacturer Gustavus Adolphus Lilliendahl in order to perfect his \"whaling rocket\".In mid-May 1862 Lilliendahl purchased the 158-ton barkReindeer, appointing Roys as her master.Unfortunately, she was seized on suspicion of being a slaver, and when everything was finally cleared up, she sailed toIceland, but arrived too late for the summer whaling season, and had to return home and wait until next year.In 1863 Roys refitted theReindeerand once again sailed toIceland, but he damaged his rudder while off the coast of the island, and was only able to save one of the many whales he shot that season.Roys was much more successful the following season of 1864, saving eleven of the twenty whales that were shot, in part because he was using stronger harpoons and better lines. In November 1864 Roys obtained the rights to establish a shore station on the coast ofIcelandfrom theDanishgovernment. He acquired the twelve-ton, sixty-two-foot iron steamerVisionaryinScotland, and returned toIcelandin the spring of 1865. He arrived atSeydisfjorduron 14 May, finding his barkReindeerhad already arrived there in April, loaded with whaling equipment, boilers, steam engines, timber, bricks, and everything necessary for the construction of his shore station. Lilliendahl supplied them with defective rockets, and before the station was built, they were forced to tow the dead whales to theReindeer, where they were flensed and processed the old fashioned way.After his rockets were rebuilt, Roys and his crew set out in theVisionary, with whaleboats in tow astern, to search for rorquals. Once a whale was sighted, the crews went to their respective boats, and if a whale was successfully captured, they\'d heave the carcass to the surface with a steam winch, fasten it to the side of the ship, and tow it back toSeydisfjordur. For the 1865 season they took twenty or more whales, but also lost another twenty.The next season, 1866, he used theSilenoand the iron steamersStaperaiderandVigilant- identical ship, bark-rigged, 116-feet long, each carrying two whaleboats and equipped with steam tryworks and powerful winches to bring aboard large strips of blubber when flensing whales.They killed ninety whales this season, with forty-three or forty-four being saved to produce 3,000 barrels of oil. Roys and Lilliendahl parted company at the end of the season, with Lilliendahl continuing on in Iceland for another year. Using theVigilantandStaperaider, he only caught thirty-six whales. After this season, he departed as well.Roys and Lilliendahl found imitators inIceland, in the form of the Danish naval officer Cap. Otto C. Hammer and the Dutchman Cap. C. J. Bottemanne. The former formed the Danish Fishing Company in 1865, and wound up operations in 1871; while the latter formed the Netherlands Whaling Company in 1869, closing down operations a year after Hammer.In 1866 James Dawson, a Victorian emigrant fromClackmannanshire,Scotland, and a man named Warren tried catching whales inSaanich Inlet,British Columbia, but lost all three whales they struck to bad weather.In 1868 Dawson joined in a partnership with a 27-year-old fromSan Francisco,Abel Douglass, along with two other Californians, Bruce and Woodward.They were joined by Roys, who chartered the 83-three-foot, 25-ton steamerEmma. His first cruise was a disaster, while the second cruise from early September to October he reportedly struck four whales, killing three, but lost all three in dense fogs.Dawson began whaling on 26 August with the 47-tonKate, cruising inSaanich Inlet, where they managed to catch eight whales using bomb lances, despite thick fog.Persistent as ever, Roys formed the Victoria Whaling Adventurers Company on 22 October, and in January 1869 he sent theEmmato erect a shore station inBarkley Sound,Vancouver Island. Again, Roys was met with by failure, having made fast to only one whale. The harpoon broke free, and the whale escaped.He was defeated once more by the Dawson and Douglass Whaling Company, who took fourteen whales by mid-September 1869 to produce 20,000 gallons of oil.Dawson and Douglass then joined forces with a man named Lipsett, forming the Union Whaling Company. They only took four whales during two cruises in the winter of 1869-70, forcing the company to suspend operations as of 3 February 1870.Lipsett reorganized and formed the Howe Sound Company, while Dawson found new partners had formed the new Dawson & Douglass Whaling Company on 27 June 1870. Another unidentified group of whalemen using \"the Roys Rocket\" arrived in June, charting the schoonerSurpriseand hunting whales inBarkley Sound. Only one of the companies used a vessel equipped with a whaleboat, while the others apparently sent rowing boats out from their shore camps. The three firms only took thirty-two whales, for a yield of 75,800 gallons of oil.The next season, seemingly undeterred, Roys returned to British Columbia in the 179-ton brigByzantiumon 10 May 1871. He constructed a station atCumshewa Inletin theQueen Charlotte Islands, and fitted out theByzantiumwith proper onboard tryworks. Douglass split from Dawson and paired with the Victorian vintner and publican James Strachan, while Dawson rejoined Lipsett and formed the British Columbia Whaling Company. Dawson and Lipsett\'s company produced 20,000 gallons of oil in 1871, with Douglass and Strachan producing about 15,000. Both companies lost money on their ventures, with the former soon being liquidated. TheKateand other possessions of the company went on the sale block in March 1872. The schooner and equipment went to former company partners Robert Wallace and James Hutcheson, who unsuccessfully attempted to continue whaling operations. We last hear of them in July 1873, when theKatewas said to have been cruising near Lasqueti Island, in theStrait of Georgia, with little success. By the end of the year the schooner had been sold.As usual, Roys fared the worst. TheByzantiumstruck the rocks inWeynton Passage, Johnstone Strait, forcing the men to abandon her and row ashore, to spend a frigid night huddled on the beach. Roys never operated a whaling company again.\"
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