I am at a dead end researching this pendant but what I am fairly sure of so far is that the shape is called a shield, the image was either a dogfish or grizzly and I determined dogfish since the teeth are not depicted but are in all images I could find of the grizzly. A similar image can be found via the net by artist Bill Reid though with some variation. Everything I could find about the dogfish symbol, well bluntly I am not sure if I can trust it since some Haida art is done only for the tourist trade and has variations that are possibly a bit of humour while other sites seem to be very misinformed geared to the tattoo genre. The books I own are unfortunately illustration free and geared towards legend but with the dogfish story.
I was given this and a brooch by my father in the early 70's. I'm firstly hoping to discover where my dad was when he purchased these and four other pieces (other family members have) and who were the artists that made them since each piece has a different makers mark.
It took awhile to decide which section to put this in but hopefully I have the right one. This is a Canadian First Nations piece, Northeastern Pacific, not American native.
Thank you in advance if anyone can provide any clues and I will be posting another post of the brooch to follow this post which was purchased on the same day.
