The North West Bentwood Box Ring
Our Sterling Silver Northwest Box Ring was designed to symbolize floating Carved Bentwood Cedar Box full of dried Salmon or precious items swept into the river during a flood.
Northwest Indian Hand Carved CEDAR BOXES were originally created to store precious items. We all have different techniques to keep our precious supplies and food storage. The natives of the Northwest Coast have for centuries used hand carved cedar boxes; some are carved and painted with intricate family crests or designs of significance and some are painted or plain.
Decorated boxes were very important items, but no matter how intricate or decorated the box, it can never be as important as the supplies it contains – often food or family/clan regalia. The food storage would mean physical survival of course, but the regalia meant you were connected to people who loved you and whom you wanted in your life and defined who you are, thus emotional survival.
The Stonington Gallery in Seattle, WA had a show with the theme “Carved Boxes” and as metal smiths we came at it from that direction. My passion for Lost Wax Cast Sculptural Rings made my dreams of carved boxes just jump with ideas.
We had been experiencing a lot of rain living in the Great North Wet and flood is always a possibility. We live on an old village site on a peninsula and we have to cross the Nooksack River to get to our home and Studio. I had been reading about Universal Flood Myths when the Gallery invitation came so it just fell into place. The Old Spirits of the Northwest and the trials they lived through just came to mind and the Bentwood Box ring was birthed.
This beautiful carved bentwood box, maybe half full of dried Salmon, floating down the river, got away from the people in the flood that took out the village.
Now it could be the Nass River, or the Frazier, or the Skykomish at flood stage, bringing a big mess and taking the carefully wind dried precious lot of Salmon… Another name for this ring is Tschmous, meaning living snag, i.e. sunken log. We created this ring in response to a challenge to create a representation of a carved bentwood box… We imagined a village after a flood with a box of dried salmon floating downstream, waterlogged, with only one carved corner sticking up, floating by waiting to be found. Whoever can see and then catch it will be a hero to the people, physically and emotionally.
The Box Ring, # 307, is a substantial sculptural carving; 9mm high, 18mm wide, very 3-D, tapering to 5mm squared shank.
Hollowed underside and squared shank create a well-balanced, comfortable ring.
Available in sizes 6 to 15.
Hand-cast lost wax, Sterling Silver Bentwood Box ring by Janet Walker.
Very cool ring , I would like to know the price for one in size 9 1/2… thanks