Type of wood:   

The 100% reliable proof of authenticity....or of Indonesian origin

Year after year, thousands of Northwest Coast Native-style masks, totem poles, feast bowls, and rattles have been carved in Indonesia as a cottage industry.  They have been so widely imported since the 1970's that many collections and estates contain far more fakes than real items.  These fakes or reproductions are still being made and imported today, and nearly every auction by a major auction-house will contain some of these "NW Coast Native-style" carvings.

With some study, a buyer can learn to recognize the fakes by incorrect stylistic usages; eyes, eyebrows, noses and mouths that are shaped in ways that no native artist would tolerate.    But it can take years of hard work to develop that kind of knowledge.

• However, there is an easy and 100% certain way to identify the fakes:  by learning to recognize the types of wood which will be found in real NW Coast native items, as compared to the tropical woods used in the imports.   The single most significant aspect is whether the grain, especially the end-grain, is open or closed.   All the woods used by natives and available to them on the NW coast have a closed grain.   Maple, alder, red and yellow cedar have a tight and even side-grain, which is continuous rather than broken; round carved surfaces show curved and continuous grain-lines, reminiscent of those on a contour topographic map.  They show no open pores on the end-grain.  

By contrast, all of the common tropical woods used by the Indonesian carvers have a distinct and very open end-grain; they show open pores which are not easy to fill with any common finish.  The side-grain is streaky and shows the cross-section of those pores as broken streaks.  They do not show the even curved contour-lines of the NW woods.  Many of these tropical woods looks a bit like balsa, or like mahogany.

Tropical woods have a streaky, open-pored grain:

• It can safely be said that no Northwest Native carver would ever use an Indonesian wood.  This is as much a matter of "correctness" as of availability; cedar in particular has an important ceremonial meaning to the natives of the NW Coast.  Just as the fringe on a mask should be cedar-bark rather than raffia; the NW Coast natives always used a close-grained wood like maple, alder, red or yellow cedar.

   NW Coast spoons: yellow cedar, maple, and red cedar    

• Indonesian carvers almost never use woods from the NW Coast; it would simply not be cost-effective.  Any item made from a tropical wood is an imported fake.  Some of these will have fancy labels, perhaps from Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, or a museum label; or they  come from the estate of a well-traveled collector; and there can be many possible explanations for how that might happen.   But if it is made of Indonesian wood, the item was carved in Indonesia.

   yellow cedar has a very tight, uniform, and almost invisible grain.

    red cedar has a tight and uniform grain.

    maple has a tight uniform grain, often with some "flame."

• Tropical woods are also used by the part-Indonesian carver Floyd Fagan, who uses the signature "Freddy Fencepost." Though born in Canada, Fagan is not of Canadian First Nations ancestry. Recently, Fagen or Fencepost has stated that he has been adopted by a native tribe, and there is no reason to doubt this.  However, that is not the same as being an enrolled member of a native tribe, and does not confer the right to call one's-self a native, or to sell items as native-made. It remains true that Native artists never use non-native woods.
• There is also a story being circulated that in ancient times, native carvers would sometimes find tropical woods washed up on shore, and that old native masks were sometimes made of these "treasured" tropical woods.   There is no historic evidence whatsoever for this story, nor any examples known of such carvings.  It appears the story was invented purely to enhance the sales of non-native-made items using tropical wood.
• It remains 100% true that if the wood is tropical, it is not a native item.