Spoon

8606

Our collection often surprises us with unexpected biographical connections. American linguist, classicist, philologist, and archaeologist Samuel Walter Miller (1864–1949) is known for leading early American excavations in Greece and for founding Stanford's Classics Department in 1894. He donated one item (we know of) in our collections. Is it from Greece? Of course not. It is from Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. A carver expertly shaped yellow cedar into this thinly carved spoon, which dates to the late 19th century (8606). A killer whale in the fluid "formline style," used by artists across the region, decorates its bowl. You can see how the creature's diagnostic dorsal fin attaches directly to its ovoid body/head, with an interior eye. Although Vancouver Island is the homeland of Kwawaka'wakw people, museum records describe the piece as Haida. We are not sure how Miller acquired this item. He and his wife Jennie Emerson Miller, also a skilled linguist (and a niece of Ralph Waldo Emerson), translated an Enlightenment text on "The Beasts of the Sea" for David Starr Jordan's The Fur Seals and Fur–Seal Islands of the North Pacific Ocean (1899). Jordan was president of Stanford, and was the one who hired Miller to lead the new Classics Department. Given the importance of seals and other sea mammals to northern Atlantic lifestyles, we wonder if the spoon was a thank you gift for this work.

H–5.5 W–5 L–16 cm

Wood

North America; Canada; British Columbia; Vancouver Island

Anthropology; North America; Northwest