Title
bowhead whale baleen plate
Mediumbaleen
Donor credit lineGift of the Family of Donald M. Schell
Object number2016.16.4
Institutional Credit LineCourtesy of the New Bedford Whaling Museum
ProvenanceAs per email from donor: "Donald Schell, a native of Dartmouth, Mass., who was living at Point Barrow in the mid 1960s, doing marine sciences doctoral work. At that time a local crew gave him the baleen pieces, which he sent home to his father and younger brother along with a typed letter with information on the crew that caught the whale, how baleen is used by the local Inuit people, and other information (I have the original note). Dr Schell later became a chemical oceanographer and director of the Institute of Marine Science at the University of Alaska Fairbanks School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, and became fairly well known in those circles for his research on bowhead whales.
These pieces came to me about 20 years ago when Dr Schell’s brother, David, was cleaning out the family sheds in Westport (David was my uncle-in-law). The pieces promptly went into my “shed," which I’m now cleaning out."
On View
Not on view
Circa 1840-1860
Circa 1840-1860
Tuckfield, Bobby
Tuckfield, Bobby
Tuckfield, Bobby
19th Century
