Art of engraving

History of engraving

Fig. 3 Colour painting by Louis Choris, entitled ‘Dessins traces sur des morceaux de dents de Morse par les Habitans du Golfe de Kotzebue’. It shows two drill bows with engravings, and was published in his travel account Voyage pittoresque autour du monde (Paris, 1822).



Fig. 1 Portrait of Captain James Cook (1728-79)...		Fig. 2 Engraving of the drill bow collected by...


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Late eighteenth century: the first explorers

The earliest Iñupiaq pictorial engravings in museum collections come from the voyages of early explorers such as Captain James Cook (1728-79; Fig. 1) and Captain Otto von Kotzebue (1787-1846). Both Europeans collected examples of such engravings in the Bering Strait area. David Samwell, surgeon of the Discovery on that voyage, records the purchase of some engraved ivories from a large group of Iñupiaq (?) Eskimos on 10 August 1778, probably on the western tip Seward Peninsula:

‘We bought some curious Articles of them, among which were small pieces of Ivory with the images of Dogs & rein Deer drawing Sledges & very ingeniously executed.’ (Samwell 1967: 1133).

The first recorded drill bow in museum collections today was collected around 1778-9 on Captain James Cook's Third Voyage (1776-80), and later given to the British Museum. An engraving of this drill bow was included by Thomas Pennant in his Arctic Zoology (1784-7; Fig. 2), making it the earliest British Museum object to be published after accession. It was exchanged out of the Museum around 1822, and is now in the collection of the Horniman Museum, London. Louis Choris (1795-1828), artist on Otto von Kotzebue's First Expedition, illustrated two other drill bows in his Voyage pittoresque autour du monde (1822; Fig. 3).