Exotic Fare

Collectors headed determinedly, and by appointment only, to Tambaran Gallery this past January to view a weeklong show of Eskimo and Pacific Northwest art. Maureen Zarember—founder of the New York gallery, which specializes in tribal art—and interior designer Ned Jalbert have long had a penchant for the material. The friends mined their personal collections, as well as those of fellow collectors, to mount the exhibition of 40 works. The star, according to Zarember, was a “bound witch,” a fist-sized wood sculpture of a figure with an arched back, 1850-60, pictured. A buyer nabbed the enigmatic item early on for $350,000. Also among the first objects to sell was the piece that gave the event its title (“Through Our Eyes”): a pair of engraved ivory snow goggles, A.D. 500–1000, from the Punuk culture of St. Lawrence Island, which was priced at $225,000. Unlike many such articles, which experience wear and tear from use in caribou hunts, these glasses are believed to have been used only in rituals and thus have retained their lustrous patina and meticulous engravings. Another eye-catching item was a colorful shaman’s rattle in pristine condition that flew off the shelf at $150,000. “There are really none available of this age and quality,” says Zarember. “I had this one for quite a while.”

For Zarember, parting with the objects from her collection proved bittersweet. ”I almost hope no one buys this one,” she said a few days into the sale, pointing to an Eskimo mask of a laughing wolf. It hadn’t sold by the end of the official run, January 12 to 19, but approximately 50 percent of the exhibited works had, and plans were already under way to extend the show through mid-February.

"Exotic Fare" originally appeared in the March 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's March 2008 Table of Contents.