Tribal Treasures
- — November 1, 2007
Jack Curtright began collecting Native American art as a teen, in Hoquiam, where unusual, finely woven baskets from coastal tribes turned up regularly at yard sales. Forty years later, Curtright is a respected preservationist, art dealer and appraiser for leading Pacific Northwest museums. His spectacular array of Native splendors and American folk art, showcased at Curtright & Son Tribal Art (708 Market St., 253.383.2969), includes a nineteenth-century Nez Perce dog-and-goat wool blanket and a Nuu-chah-nulth mortar carved from a huge whale vertebra — discovered in a Victorian home in Tacoma. An ax-like adz with vine maple handle and a blade honed from a Model A leaf spring marks a moment of Native interaction with white culture.
Photo by Chris Tumbusch
