For Love of Boxes and Chests: Red corner boxes
While looking at NW Coast Native artifacts, every day I see new objects for the first time and fall in love, and I see old familiar ones for the hundredth time and fall in love all over again, but among Northwest Coast Native artifacts my first and enduring love is bentwood boxes and chests.
I’m eternally fascinated by how the Indigenous cultures of our coast came up with the idea of taking a plank, cutting kerfs in it, steaming it until it becomes malleable, then bending the plank to form the four sides of a box, chest or bowl. In the old days the corner where the two ends met were stitched together with spruce root and sometimes sinew. A bottom was pegged on and a lid was fashioned. Boxes are taller than they are wide, and usually square (although there are a few which vary in shape from the norm) while chests are wider than tall, and bowls have their own individual dimensions according to their use.
Many of these containers were left unadorned and served as daily functional objects. Boxes were used for food and household storage, cooking and transporting other items. Chests most frequently held regalia and large ceremonial objects. Bowls were used as communal serving dishes.
There are red corner boxes, which were used primarily for food storage and cooking. Each has the length of the four corners painted red and the lids bear a geometric design which I believe was a design “owned” by a family and allowed for quick identification of their boxes amongst many others at feasts, much as we label our dishes for retrieval at a potluck. Many red corner boxes, as well as other boxes and chests were made water tight by sealing them with seal blood and oil mixed with roasted, ground clam shells. Sometimes a similar method was employed using salmon eggs instead of seal blood and oil (de Laguna, 1972. p. 420). These water tight boxes were then used for storing water, of which there were always many inside the entrance to a house, for storing foodstuffs and used as cooking boxes. The cook filled the box with water into which hot rocks were dropped to heat the water and cook the ingredients.
Red corner boxes always please me; they are such a statement of economical function and versatility. I love the deceptive simplicity of their construction and ornamentation. I always imagine a woman with many red corner boxes couldn’t help but feel wealthy.
To be continued.
The center box is contemporary, carved and bent by Felix Solomon, painted by Melonie Ancheta.
The other two are old boxes.
While looking at NW Coast Native artifacts, every day I see new objects for the first time and fall in love, and I see old familiar ones for the hundredth time and fall in love all over again, but among Northwest Coast Native artifacts my first and enduring love is bentwood boxes and chests.
I’m eternally fascinated by how the Indigenous cultures of our coast came up with the idea of taking a plank, cutting kerfs in it, steaming it until it becomes malleable, then bending the plank to form the four sides of a box, chest or bowl. In the old days the corner where the two ends met were stitched together with spruce root and sometimes sinew. A bottom was pegged on and a lid was fashioned. Boxes are taller than they are wide, and usually square (although there are a few which vary in shape from the norm) while chests are wider than tall, and bowls have their own individual dimensions according to their use.
Many of these containers were left unadorned and served as daily functional objects. Boxes were used for food and household storage, cooking and transporting other items. Chests most frequently held regalia and large ceremonial objects. Bowls were used as communal serving dishes.
There are red corner boxes, which were used primarily for food storage and cooking. Each has the length of the four corners painted red and the lids bear a geometric design which I believe was a design “owned” by a family and allowed for quick identification of their boxes amongst many others at feasts, much as we label our dishes for retrieval at a potluck. Many red corner boxes, as well as other boxes and chests were made water tight by sealing them with seal blood and oil mixed with roasted, ground clam shells. Sometimes a similar method was employed using salmon eggs instead of seal blood and oil (de Laguna, 1972. p. 420). These water tight boxes were then used for storing water, of which there were always many inside the entrance to a house, for storing foodstuffs and used as cooking boxes. The cook filled the box with water into which hot rocks were dropped to heat the water and cook the ingredients.
Red corner boxes always please me; they are such a statement of economical function and versatility. I love the deceptive simplicity of their construction and ornamentation. I always imagine a woman with many red corner boxes couldn’t help but feel wealthy.
To be continued.
The center box is contemporary, carved and bent by Felix Solomon, painted by Melonie Ancheta.
The other two are old boxes.
