Curator & Collector

My second edition Shadbolt [see the preceding post] arrived some days ago, and I read the last chapter and admired all the photographs in it. The photographs are much better, for the most part: they are brighter and sharper than in the first edition. As far as I can see, the text in the bulk of the book has not been updated, but I did not look closely. I did very much enjoy the new final chapter, with a multitude of photographs, including one of Reid’s final masterpiece, the Jade Canoe. A few of the most interesting photos I saw in the new final chapter showed the beautiful box that Don Yeomans carved (the one that sits in the Bill Reid Gallery on the mezzanine level) being used to transport the smaller box that carried Reid’s ashes to his final resting place. The Yeomans box functioned as a carrying box, while the smaller box was the urn. (The carrying box was carried by hand, and also by canoe.) I couldn’t help being reminded of the story, told by Reid, of the old man with his “box which contained a box which contained an infinite number of boxes each nestled in a box slightly larger than itself until finally there was a box so small all it could contain was all the light in the universe” (Reid’s The Raven Steals the Light, p. 19).
–
By the way, I very much regret the graininess of the above picture; I find that my camera does less well indoors with no flash.