Set of 3 Antique Prints of Various Figures and Objects of Canada and Alaska

About this piece

A set of three engraved sheets on the peoples and implements of the Arctic and the northern coasts of North America, from the Iconographic Encyclopaedia of the Arts and Sciences, the work of Johann Georg Heck as revised and edited for American use by Daniel Brinton. Each sheet is headed "Americans" with a plate number and numbered captions beneath the images.

One sheet groups figures and objects: a dwelling of snow or turf, a woman in furs, a decorated bowl-shaped vessel, small tools and harpoon heads, and portraits of men with painted or tattooed faces. A second shows Arctic hooded figures in fur parkas, a full-length man in a skin suit, the interior of a house with figures seated around a lamp, a large tent on a frame and a seated figure at lower right. The third sheet is given to boats and hunting gear, with a kayak crew and a larger open skin boat, paddles, harpoons and spear shafts, goggles, carved figures, a conical tent and portraits of people in fur hoods.

Together they record the clothing, boats and shelters of northern peoples as encyclopedic illustration of the nineteenth century presented them.