BOSTON — On Saturday, May 18, Skinner sold the Native American collection of well-known Americana dealer Jim Grievo and his wife, Sheryl. Unexpectedly, the top two items in the sale were masks: a late Nineteenth Century Eskimo carved wooden mask with two faces, cut-out eyes and teeth, made by the Yupik peoples of Alaska, who live in the area of the Bering sea, realized $46,125. The second mask was a very colorful circa 1930s Tlingit mask by an important, identified maker, which sold for $22,140. The combined high estimate for the two masks, which together brought more than $68,000, was $8,000. The breadth of the Grievo collection was extensive: beadwork, jewelry, catlinite, baskets, weavings, pottery and more. The geographic areas represented in the collection were also broad: Plains Indian, Northwest Coast, Eastern Woodlands as well as Canada and Greenland. Impressive was the depth — there were multiple examples of every type of article in the collection, and the overall condition was high.

A full report will follow.