Dogfish is collaboration work by three Northwest artists. I do want to say right up front that none of the artists have any claim to any First Peoples tribe. Legally, we cannot call this a native work of art. Having said that, we have lived in
the NW for a long time, I (Geoff Keyes) have spent nearly all of my life here, Marianne George is a true native having been born and raised in the Seattle area. I don't know Tom Sterling's history, but his work certainly reflects the influences
of the NW. Living where we do, the cultures of the area are all around us, and all of our singular works reflect that.
I have had a fascination with the form of the NW coast dagger (sometimes called a “slave killer”) for a long time, well back before I became a knife maker. I have found pictures of pieces made of wood, bone, and, ivory (the oldest forms), copper
(dating from the 13th century CE to the present) and iron and steel (circa 1750 to the present).
The style is often one piece with a blade, a narrow waist for the handle, and a paddle. The paddle is nearly always decorated with paint or carving of family or tribal crests. Many are intended to be weapons, they have sharp edges, some are made
for ritual use, all of them appear to denote the status of the owner. Dogfish is intended to be in the form of a ritual object.
I was in the shop one day and I had finished up the projects that I had in hand, but the fire was hot, and I didn't feel like stopping. I spotted a piece of wrought iron that I had been cutting up for various projects, and the idea just popped into my head. I cut a chunk of the wrought and started forging.
Wrought iron is very different from modern steels. It is made up of long strands of iron mixed with plates of slag and silicates. It is very tough, which is why it was used for structural work before modern steel was available. The best of it was used for chain and wagon tires. This piece is far from the best. It came from an 1890's era wreck on the Washington coast,and so spent a good deal of time immersed in salt water. It stinks of sulfur and salt, and silicates pour out of it while it is being forged.
The blank came together pretty well, but when I was done I really didn't know where to go next. After a bit of thought, I thought of Tom. I had met him at an event I had held at my shop a few years back (he spent the day doing engraving demonstrations) and I know his work. Taking a chance, I emailed him a picture of the blank. He got back to me in a day or so. He said that he had been going to tell me that he was very busy and that he didn't have the time. Then he said that his brain had been up all night figuring designs, so, on that basis, he was in.
He sent me a picture of a Haida design called Dogfish and it fit the paddle perfectly. Dogfish was born of that coincidence. I sent the piece off to Tom, and he got to work.
Dogfish is one of the Haida (BC Queen Charlotte islands) founder figures. The image is of a high status Haida woman with a labret piercing.
There are only a few stories about Dogfish Woman. The Haida passed through a cultural bottleneck right around the time of first contact. It might have been flu or some other disease, but most of the tribe died, and with them a wealth of unwritten knowledge was lost.
Tom carved and engraved the paddle head with a full face Dogfish image, in keeping with NW traditions, he “repaired” a crack with a pair of copper stitches. You see this kind of work in old coast items. He also included a little nest of barnacles at the base of the blade (it is a kind of signature of his work). Then he made a small copper Dogfish (a full body version) and sent those back to us.
With the finished blade in hand, I began work on a scabbard. I don't think that originals had scabbards, I've never seen one at least, but I felt that it needed something. I tried to keep the ideas close to the visual feel of the NW coast. I used cedar, copper, and abalone, and a fishy shape.
At the same time my wife, Marianne George, decided that she had something
to contribute. Marianne is a long time member of the local fur trade re-enactor community and an expert in traditional fiber techniques. She chose a pre-contact spinning technique called thigh spinning, and a hand weaving process known to one of the interior Alaskan tribes, the Chilkat. The baldric is Merino wool (historically it would have been Mountain Goat, but that is a rare commodity), hand spun, handwoven, and decorated with copper cones and a logo button made by Tom for Marianne. It also has a number of original, 200 year old, French trade beads called “greasy yellows” woven into the strap.
For the handle (and the scabbard) we wrapped pieces of tanned salmon skin around them. Salmon skin leather was used on the NW coast for outer garments and ornamentation. We took the small copper Dogfish and wrapped it onto the handle, in an Asian style. The long tails of the wrapping cord (more of the hand woven wool) end in blue top cowrie shells and beads.
All of the materials, from the wrought iron to the strap and all of the small pieces (like the brass nails and copper tacks) are things that would have been available to craftsmen on the coast, right around the time of first contact.
This has been quite journey for all of us, you can never know where a project is going when you start. Working in collaboration with other artists has been a real joy.
