(b Skidegate, Queen Charlotte Islands, BC, c. 1839; d 1920). Native Canadian Haida sculptor, metalworker and painter. He spent much of his adolescence at Kiusta with his maternal uncle Albert Edward Edenshaw, chief of the Haida Eagle clan, acquiring a considerable knowledge of Haida art and mythology. In 1882 the Eagle clan moved north to Masset, where, on the death of his uncle in 1884, he assumed his titles and privileges, including his chief’s name Edenshaw. Edenshaw was an imaginative craftsman who incorporated into his work technical and conceptual ideas from both native and non-native sources. He was a versatile and prolific artist who worked within the Northwest Coast tradition of two-dimensional design (see NATIVE NORTH AMERICAN ART, §III, 2). He carved both ritual and commercial objects in wood and argillite, including totem poles, masks, chests, boxes, platters and frontlets; painted designs on spruce root mats and hats, the latter often made by his wife, Isabelle; and produced silver bracelets. His commercial objects included a host of forms for non-native and market use; and his contact with a number of anthropologists and collectors resulted in a large body of well-documented, often commissioned works. The model totem poles and house models, for example, commissioned by the ethnographer and linguist John R. Swanton c. 1900 for the American Museum of Natural History, NY, are among Edenshaw’s most clearly documented works. Edenshaw is thus the first professional Haida artist whose work can be identified with certainty.

• Edenshaw, Charles
  • Davidson, Robert
  • Reid, Bill