Marcella Edmund

     I was at a chaotic and confusing flea market ‘out East’ and amid the myriad offerings there, on a table of mixed costume jewelry, a pair of ivory earrings caught my eye. The absent vendor had left his young daughter to tend the table, and the earrings were not marked with a price. Oh, how I wanted them! Not because of their value or provenance: I was ignorant of either. I just knew that I had never seen their like, and the workmanship was admirably fine. Eventually, with much hesitation on her part, and with my being friendly and feigning only mild interest, the young lady sold them to me, for $6.00. What a prize, and delight! It was much later that a friend identified the earrings for me, as Inuit Ulu knives; he had been to the Arctic, and knew.

     I have always appreciated the sculptural works of the Inuit carvers, and have collected a small group of their works. Following the course of my shelter creations, it seemed an obvious continuance of the themed boxes, to create an Igloo to house the growing collection. I resisted the temptation to expand the work through the furnishings, choosing to make simple fabric covered containers rather than real miniature baskets. I composed a fire pit for the center, and lashed together little ‘fish drying racks’ out of carved wood, sanded smooth and pale, to mimic whale bone. I wove miniature Hudson Bay blankets of soft angora and colored wool, and made a starry dust cover to complete the work.

     Now the joy of composing the contents has taken up my day; it is an entity, a new being in my collection of collections. The difficult challenges have passed, and now I wonder what they were all about. They fade into the mist and I only remember, in my research about the Inuit and their world, a fact that I read: for months at a time, the hunters sought their way by star light, and they could see, and they returned home, to survive, thrive, and create again.