Featured Leaping salmon soapstone? sculpture

Hi folks

found this yesterday in my friends house clearance shop

quite large on a slate (i think) base

the sculpture stone is quite soft so guessing soapstone ?

not sure about origin, guessing maybe canadian way

any thoughts or info appreciated

 

likely Inuit but you'll never know the artist because anything close to ID would be on the base of the carving itself..

 

thanks dave and kome

do you reckon the slates been added then kome, that thought did cross my mind

think its been added to stabilize

 

yeah i'm tempted, certainly would help with posting the bugger

 

oh...ya.....that's a add-on yer sure.......
I've seen dozens of the thin carvings.....that can barely stand on their own...

 

I thought the same thing when seeing it, but I don’t know.

 

I Do !
what yer showing are bases that are part of the carving itself........ sort of ...landscape !
Charlies is a separate flat sheet of different stone..

 

here's a large one....but it's needed to show the two creatures out on the land.........and it's the same stone

 

Fish jumping over a wave or swell on water.

 

The slate appears to be an antique roofing tile, perhaps cut down in size.
I would not remove it, too much work. Suggest you sell it in as is condition.
Can set a high price on it so you will know you did fine.

 

It may well be signed.

 

Yes, it likely is, but it's probably not going to be worth more than if it is estimated as being NWP art and sold without attribution. Such collectors generally know what they are looking at without seeing the signature. I just would not want to break the slate that allows it to stand upright unprecariously. Perhaps a length of dental floss, the thicker old waxed kind, would be a tool to use to cut through whatever glue, idk.

 

I love the carving! Creative use of the material! I can’t imagine what the harm would be in taking it off the base to ID it. Ruining an old “Eskimo art” sticker that would help in dating it I guess would be the biggest problem I could see. Breaking the slate potentially would be the other but that would be easily replaced I’d think. I guess there’s a decent chance it wouldn’t add much to the value but surely there are names that would. I don’t have a lot of experience buying Inuit carvings on eBay or other online platforms but I’d think earlier ones would often do a bit better then than newer ones as well. I would be temped to look. In most cases I’m lazy enough that I don’t do much fussin around with objects before sale but this one is easy enough that I’d probably do it.