In Store: Two Worlds Collide

Flury & Company keeps one of Seattle’s oldest photographers alive and moving

In 1895, on the streets of Seattle, a young photographer met a princess. Edward Curtis, who had become a professional photographer in St. Paul, Minnesota, before heading west, met Princess Angeline, the daughter of Chief Sealth, and photographed her. He paid her one dollar for each picture made. The photographs represent Curtis’s first portraits of a Native American. He would gain worldwide fame for his photos of North American Indians, and today people can still see and purchase Curtis’s works in Pioneer Square at Flury & Company Ltd.

Edward Curtis took over forty thousand photographic images from over eighty Native American tribes, such as these portraits of Princess Angeline (center and left). Photograph by Andrew Waits for City Arts.

At its present location since 1981, it is one of the world’s foremost galleries in the purchase and sale of Curtis’s photographic works. In fact, it boasts one of the largest collections of his work in the world. The gallery is owned by Lois Flury, a preeminent expert in the field who discovered Curtis’s work in the 1970s. She purchased a group of photogravures and then began to collect Curtis in earnest with her husband and partner, James Flury. They soon met some of Curtis’s surviving family members, and as they learned more, they began to appreciate Curtis’s art more fully. They also found the individual who had purchased Curtis’s personal collection from his oldest daughter, Beth. Lois and James gained exclusive rights to those materials, which included not only photographs and photogravures, but goldtones, manuscript materials, field notes and miscellaneous ephemera as well.

Lois and James soon moved to Seattle to open their private gallery. It was, and is, only a few blocks from where Curtis’s first photographic studio once stood. In 1993 they expanded, making way for two additional galleries, dedicated to the buying and selling of Native American art including totems, carvings, ivory, textiles, beadwork, basketry, pottery and jewelry.

Curtis died in 1952 of a heart attack in Whittier, California. Princess Angeline died well before him, in 1896. Though they are both long gone, the fruits of their meeting are still with us and the legacy of Curtis lives on thanks to people like Lois Flury. •

Flury & Company
322 1st Ave S., 206.587.0260, fluryco.com