Featured Bad from good soapstone carving part 2

Here's another grouping of soapstone carvings that I think are Inuit. I numbered them this time to try to make it easier to keep them straight. Thanks in advance for any input.

 

The last two.. I think these are my favorites. I love the expression on the seal(?), and the bear actually balances on one foot (which unfortunately doesn't leave much space for the signature)...

 

This is why I love this site! Now I have/had NO interest in such things, zip. However, aren't these adorable??!! The seals are charming, and the polar bear appropriately menacing. Thank you!

 

Oh, Lord! I just figured out -- this is why I am at the computer more than I should be!

 

@Mark London

 

the way the face looks in the pic....ummm...maybe.....but it's a Dancing bear.....when standing...so hard to be menacing, while dancing !

 

yes all inuit...but the one signed Albert.....is questionable...

 

I like the seal the best too. No idea which one is worth money, if any, but the carving on the seal makes him look happy.

 

E5-1249...... simeone akkitiq Hall Beach born1952

 

Dancing bear is by Isaaci Petaulassie from Cape Dorset. The others are nice but rather generic.

 

Great info! Here are some follow up pics taken of the last two. Showing the bear doing his hand stand (with the help of a cricket who just decided to drop by) or on his belly, and hopefully better pics of the seal's markings - partially obscured by the sticker. I assume the sticker is older (since it is for "Eskimo art") but that's a guess? Writing looks to me like "T39" or "T32", sticker-KDCP or sticker-KDOP, "601" or "69". I assume I shouldn't lift off the sticker to see the full name but is that right? Can anyone hazard a guess when these (and the others) were made?

 

Signature reads Pauloosie Kavik

 

Wow, thank you! Now tell the truth - are you psychic or xray vision?

 

Not to toot my own horn but I do this full time and have done so for about 40 years. I appraise Inuit art for most major Canadian museums (and several in the USA). It helps that I am able to read syllabics (at least when they are clearly signed).

 

Yes Jeff, there are indeed some experts among us.....

 

Wow, had to look up syllabics - literally a whole other language. Like looking at japanese or chinese for me (which I'm afraid I am also clueless about though I have a collection of both). I'm afraid it is too late for me to learn any of these (though I did finally figure out japanese numbers well enough to know how much my lunch was going to cost when I was there for work).

Is the whale (number 2) decipherable or do I need a better pic?

 

I adore your agile bear with his almost human face.

 

@Mark London Hope Jeff will forgive my 'borrowing' his thread.

I have a bobcat carved in walrus tusk, very yellowed, so maybe 'fossil' tusk. It is not signed or marked in any way. Seller, who if I recall correctly was in Washington State, had bought out contents of a defunct store, which included a box of carvings about which he knew nothing. Are bobcats a subject seen in Inuit art? Or would it likely be the work of a non-Inuit native people? I have mainly Zuni pieces, but really loved this guy, wonderfully smooth & heavy in the hand.

 

Could be Alaskan but that is very much out of my wheelhouse.

 

Thank you for taking a look.