Alaska Eskimo Hunting Snow Goggles,hand painted, carved

       Up for bid is a pair of Hand Carved Wooden Snow Goggles.  These are carved from white spruce (6" X 2") and painted with Acrylic paint using traditional Yupik colors. The red color originally was made from iron hematite, the black from seal oil lamp black, and the white from kaolin or white clay.  In the past, they would have been mixed with fermented fish eggs and seal oil and painted with a shredded wood splinter. The designs are dots similar to the type of tatoos Yupik people use to use and there is a Yupik drummer on the left corner and a dancer on the right corner.  The tie straps are tanned caribou skin from a fall killed bull. They are signed by the artist.   The carver is Noah Wisecarver(photo 7) who is my son and he carves in the traditional style using an adze and crooked knife (photo 6).  Noah is half Yupik Eskimo and his family is from the Bering Sea Coast Village of Newtok.  It is one of the five villages of the Nelson Island people (Qalukaqmuit) (People of the Dip Net).  His mother was Margaret (Mesaq) Kilongak Wisecarver(photo 8) who passed away three years ago.  She painted the tools and masks we carved in the traditional Yupik style.  Noah both carves and paints. He signs his work and marks them with the double raven tracks, a mark he inherited from his mother. 

      The Eskimo Snow Goggles can be made from all sorts of material such as ivory, whale bone, baleen, caribou antler and hooves.  These are white spruce wood and are both strong and light.  These goggles protect the eyes of the hunter and traveler during the late winter and into the spring from the reflective glare of the sun.  Snow and sea ice last until the first week of June in Western Alaska and much longer in the Arctic.  Without the protection of the narrow slits during the spring, eyes can become sunburnt in less than an hour.  This will make your eyes water and itch and within three days they will peel and you will be temporarily blind for three days.   This can be a disaster for a hunter with a family to feed.  Our relatives now wear polaroid glasses but some of them still ask us for wooden goggles because they float when they fall from your face.  Spring is the time when most of the seal and walrus hunting takes place, and a hunter who is careless with his eyes will not be able to feed his family.

       If you have any questions about our family or the objects we create, please contact us and we will attempt to answer your questions.