Featured Help with Inuit Soapstone Seal

Hello all,

Hoping @Mark London and @komokwa might help with the age and meaning of the notations on this seal. He is 9" long, not real fancy, but I think has some age and charm.







The first number appears to be 5-19149. The second, below the C in a circle, might be 1174 or 1474. Stray scratches make it hard to be sure. There appear to be some other intentional marks to the right of the number.

Thanks in advance.

 

i would say that was a date (1974) (under the c)

 

Possibly. Good suggestion.

 

© for copyright 1974
Artists/artisans may mark their handmade items that way to claim copyright (even if they cannot afford fees to register a copyright on each piece) and deter others from copying their work without permission.

 

I thought it might be copyright, but I have never seen it on an Inuit piece like this. Waiting to hear from Mark London.

 

na Si , u ni ..... the Inuit letters...... carvers name... but rings no bells..

the likely disc number..... should only have 4 numbers after the 5 - , so I can't find that either..
The 2 on the label , I think related to the co=op or community..............

so ya , let's wait for Mark !

 

Sorry for my late arrival to the party...I tend to visit less often these days. As previously discussed, the © is a copyright symbol and the 1974 is the date. The 5-19149 (or5-14149) is an inventory number rather than a disc number and, as such, is of little use in identifying the artist. There seems to be 2 distinct words in syllabics each with 2 letters (unless there is more information hidden under the igloo label). If I remeber correctly, the #2 on the Igloo Tag indicates that the origin of the sculpture is Nunavik (Arctic Quebec). The two words transcribe as Na Si and Ah Ni. The Ah Ni is most likely Annie, an all too common given name (there are 101 Annies on Katilvik). I think that the Na Si refers to the subject rather than the artist. The Inuktitut word for seal is nattiq often spelled phonetically as either netsik or natsik.

The sculpture is lovely but I'm not sure that it will be possible to narrow it down further unless you go through Katilvik and eliminate all the Annies who are not from Nunavik and then try to do a deep dive to find examples of the remaining Annies works for comparison. While the extensive research required will increase your knowledge of the the piece, it will not effect value.

 

Thank you for your thorough reply! If you have more time, I have s few additional questions.

As I noted, the use of a copyright symbol surprised me. Was this common? Does "Annie" indicate it was a woman carver?

Thanks again, Mark.

 

It was common enough but not all carvers chose to use the symbol. Interesting to note that some Inuit believed that the C surrounded by an O meant “Oh Canada”!

yes, the carver would have been a woman named Annie.

 

Thanks again.

 

Nice to know I am not the only one that was confused.