...inspired by ancient spirits
If you lived in a lovely green land that was filled with bears both black and grizzly and did most of your traveling on the sea you would call the animal that we call a sea lion today, a Sea Bear. Grizzly bears eat salmon, sea bears eat salmon, […] Read more »
Owen Walker has been making and selling these custom made hand carved Sterling Silver Northwest Totem design rings for over 30 yrs at Walker Goldsmiths. These 5 rings shown in the photo are Eagle, Kingfisher, 2 Salmon, and Raven. These are two dimensional designs with some slight deeper carving […] Read more »
Raven Transforming It was Raven, with both human and bird qualities, which placed the sun, the moon and the stars in the heavens. First, that sly character, would devise a way to trick Grandfather Creator into letting him play with the glowing orbs in his magic box. Succeeding in that […] Read more »
These two designs are a celebration of the salmon that sustain life and culture on the North West Coast. We who live here often take the salmon for granted just as people in other places may take their daily bread for granted. Salmon may not be quite as important to […] Read more »
Orcas have shown great reasoning capabilities and creative thinking in encounters with humans. I have had many encounters with Orcas myself having been a commercial gillnet fisherman in my early years. I have never found a reliable story of an Orca harming a human in the wild. I […] Read more »
This Large Beaver Bracelet with Abalone Inlay hand carved by Owen Walker is in keeping with the Northwest Coast Indian lore that speaks of Beaver, who at first was a woman who loved to swim. Many of the stories of the first peoples are both entertainment and a cautionary tale similar […] Read more »
This Large Eagle Bracelet, hand carved by Owen Walker, is a good representation of one of the two principle clans of the North West Coast peoples. Just as elsewhere in the world, eagles are respected for their strength and acrobatic flying abilities. There are many many eagle stories most of […] Read more »
It’s 9:00 at the Walker Goldsmiths Studio and there’s incredible ZZ Top, LenneRockers and Wanda Jackson blasting out their tunes. Is this night or morning? What day is it? Rooster’s crowing and chicken politics makes a huge squabble as the neighbor’s cat wants some chasing fun. The compressor blasts off […] Read more »
Walker Goldsmiths suffered a major setback in the Studio this Spring with our necessary trusty ‘ol Rolling mill breaking down. A bearing failed, bound up and broke the shaft. It took 6 weeks to get the part from England, of course, it was all happening in the middle of the […] Read more »