Box Corner – In Progress

A collaboration with his brother Jaalen Edenshaw, the Great Box Project took the Gwaai and Jaalen to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, England to replicate a large nineteenth century cedar bent wood box.  Carved around mid-century in Masset, the box embodies the best of Haida box design elements while also exhibiting innovations that mark its creator as an unquestioned master of the art.  Gwaai and Jaalen spent a month in the fall of 2014 in a gallery of the museum carving and painting a new box they steamed in Haida Gwaii and had shipped to England.

Having captured all they could, they returned to Haida Gwaii to finish the piece.  The replica will be kept in the community in Haida Gwaii for use in feasts and ceremonies.

On Haida Gwaii there is a lineage that reaches back 37 years, to the beginning of the Haida Gwaii rediscovery program…
Stoneribs is an honorific layed on the heads of youth who undergo a dramatic transformation, in remote ancient Haida village sites away from the trappings of modernity. It is something that young people carry with them. And it is an ideal that every person who has been touched by the program carries with them for the rest of their lives.

This eight and a half foot bronze honors that tradition, as well as the far more ancient story that this modern tradition is based on.

300 lbs of bronze has gone through a multi-stage process to achieve a finish that makes the final piece appear as argillite. The stone so famous on Haida Gwaii.

Gwaai Edenshaw has limited the bronze edition to 7.

Like fragmented artifacts or a keyhole peek at
a larger design, this is the essence of Regalia.
From an idea conceived over a decade ago,
through techniques fine tuned over the last
5 years comes a new line by designer Gwaai
Edenshaw.

At times bold, at times whimsical. Haida
forms create complex patterns on simple
elegant shapes, shapes that accentuate your
face, style or personality.

Fierce and chic, subtle and sophisticated,
Regalia compliments all your incarnations.

View the full PDF: Regalia Collection

here I am
in full regalia, recumbent
looking up at you
tongue playing between bared teeth

c’m’ere… look
DON’T’ PLAY WITH MY FOOD!
Ts’iinee unwatched
Stretches in my paw
A casual observer would be forgiven for thinking

I am playing with mine

is fun to some.

to some dum,

a silly pun

working on the figures of Five Good people standing together.

In the final piece they all got their Air Guujaaws