CHAPTER VIII: POST 1897 COMMERCIAL REPLICAS
Post 1897: Commercial Replicas
“It gives me greatest concern to think that in continuing this work you might get specimens that are not in reality what you and I suppose them to be.”
—Franz Boas to George Hunt, 3 January 1900
The 1897 book had a direct impact on object manufacturing along the North Pacific Coast. Although there is no evidence that the Kwakwaka’wakw initially used the book’s illustrations to inspire new material culture, commercial dealers certainly did. By 1901, Seattle merchant Joseph Standley had mounted this collage of Northwest Coast and Arctic images—many clipped from Franz Boas’s book—in front of his store, Ye Olde Curiosity Shop. He sold replicas of published objects, most made by Salish and Nuu-chah-nulth artists, to tourists and visiting museum collectors.