Smoking Pipe

Although probably never intended for smoking, this elongated and heavily pierced pipe is elaborately carved with crest figures. Around 1820 the Haida began to carve objects from argillite, a black carbonaceous shale found in the Skidegate Inlet area, which they sold to traders and travelling seamen. The object is one of the eight works attributed to the Haida, one of the indigenous people of British Columbia, acquired by the Art Fund in 1949. It came from Haida Gwaii or the Queen Charlotte Islands, off the coast of Western Canada and was part of a large and varied collection of 30 works of ethnographic art, formed by W. O. Oldman, which the Art Fund presented to the nation on account of its 'exceptional merit'.