Daron Letts
Northern News Services

Toronto (Nov 21/05) - A sale of Inuit art at Waddington's auction house in Toronto attracted international buyers willing to pay record sums for vintage carvings and engravings earlier this month.

This nine-inch muskox by carver George Tataniq (1910-1991) sold for $31,000.

More than 875 pieces sold for $1.7 million during two days of bidding on Nov. 7-8.

About half the works sold on the first night for a total of $1.3 million. All the pieces were created between 1950-1975. The media included ivory, bone, soapstone and engravings.

"It's a very strong market, ever-expanding with more and more countries involved," said Waddington's president Duncan McLean, who heads the company's Inuit and Native North American art departments.

"It's part of a trend that we've been watching and enjoying. The market has been getting better for years."

Foreign collectors made up about 40 per cent of the buyers. They came from Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland and the U.S.

The two-day auction also included a presentation on experimental printmaking and a display of portrait photographs of artists from Rankin Inlet by Michael Mitchell.

"The people who collect Inuit art are very interested in the people and the culture," McLean said.

Waddington's has dealt in Inuit art since 1978. The annual spring auction recorded sales of $1 million.

Although Waddington's collections stretch into the mid-1970s, 1950-1960 are the vintage years, McLean said.

The auctions are composed of pieces gathered by dentists, school teachers and other southerners who found themselves in the Arctic during that time, he said. The art is coming on the market through estate sales or as collectors downsize their collections.

"Because the sculptures and prints are attaining these price levels, people are starting to notice it who maybe normally wouldn't have," he said.

"It's treated a lot more seriously and with a lot more respect by sheer force of the monies that it's earning."

The next auction at Waddington's is scheduled for the spring.