“REFLECTIVE OF HIS BELIEF IN UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD”

POTTER, Louis. The Soul of Alaska. New York: Gorham, 1905. Octavo, original gilt-stamped ivory wrappers, uncut. $200.

First edition of a tribute to turn-of-the-century Alaska, handsomely illustrated with frontispiece and five full-page plates of the bronze statues of Native Americans by sculptor Louis McClellan Potter, whose work is featured in the Metropolitan Museum, the Smithsonian and other museums.

This first edition of The Soul of Alaska celebrates the work of American artist Louis McClellan Potter, whose work is beautifully "reflective of his belief in universal brotherhood… After a trip to the Far West and Alaska in 1904, Potter specialized in representations of Native Americans," such as those featured in this volume's six full-page illustrations. Potter's sculptures "depicting Native American practices were, in his day, of equal ethnographic and aesthetic interest. He rendered elemental aspects of the vanishing Indian culture untainted by encroaching modernization and without hackneyed sentimentality" (American Sculpture in the Metropolitan, 568).

Text and plates fresh and clean, light soiling, slight edge-wear to wrappers. A near-fine copy.