DALLAS, TX.- November 6 marks a banner day for Heritage Auctions, as it presents an extraordinary pair of auctions with items for antiquities collectors and institutions of all levels.

Heritage’s Ethnographic Art: Property From an Important New York Collection Signature® Auction showcases a small but distinguished selection of works, while its Ethnographic Art: American Indian, Pre-Columbian and Tribal Art Signature® Auction celebrates the artistry and cultural legacy of indigenous and ancient peoples from around the world with a bounty of superb baskets, pottery, jewelry, textiles, ceremonial and presentation items.

“Each of these auctions offers a superlative collection of lots representative of the fine craftsmanship and artistic expression displayed by a diverse, millennia-spanning assortment of indigenous people,” says Delia Sullivan, Heritage Auctions’ Ethnographic Art Director.

Among the many standouts in the American Indian, Pre-Columbian and Tribal Art Auction is a finely shaped tumbaga shaman-figure pendant. The figure clasps a baton or rattle in each hand and wears an enormous elaborately designed crest, his face characterized by an intense entranced expression. This exceptional gold alloy piece stands at an impressive 5-3/4 inches height and weighs in at a sturdy 206 grams.

Another beautifully crafted and detailed gold piece, a Colombian Quimbaya pendant depicts a human head in the characteristic style of Quimbaya goldwork. The face wears a bar-shaped septum ornament emblematic of status over its serene expression. With two loops for suspension on the reverse side, this pendant was likely intended to be worn as part of an assemblage of elite regalia.

On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, for the Chokwe people of Angola, wealth and authority would be represented with a Chihongo mask like the example offered here, displaying the narrow face and angular planes, prominent beard and deeply incised features emblematic of its type. Worn with regalia in celebratory performances affirming continuity with the ancestors, it embodies a chief’s generosity, responsibility, seniority and prestige, and this one is in good condition appropriate for its age with natural pigments that remain vivid. Masks were also central to Je and Lo society masquerades, intended to mediate between the ancestors and the living. This Yaure mask depicts an elongated oval face with high “rabbit” ears and is topped with a bifacial Janus head, alluding to a supernatural ability to see in two directions at once.

An Eastern Woodlands pipe tomahawk wonderfully inlaid with a decorative moon on one side and sun on the other from circa 1800 was likely an important presentation piece, Sullivan says.

“It is beautifully done,” she says. “Somebody took their time with it, and they were very skilled — it certainly wasn’t used as a tool or weapon.”

Another example of beautiful inlay work is found in a Tlingit or Tsimshian incised wood feast bowl, finely carved and decorated with abalone and operculum shells.

A three-rod degikup polychrome coiled basket with designs in redbud and bracken fern root by famed Washoe weaver Scees Bryant is an extraordinary high point of the auction. Bryant was the sister-in-law of Louisa Keyser (Dat so la lee).

“California baskets are highly sought after, and Dat so la lee was hands-down the best weaver we know in the business,” Sullivan says. “Her patrons, Abe and Amy Cohn, considered Scees Bryant to be the second finest. What we look for is how tightly woven the basket is, how precise the design is.”

The Scees Bryant basket in the American Indian, Pre-Columbian and Tribal Art Auction is one of three California baskets featured in the November 6 auctions. The single-owner New York collection includes two others.

Yokuts weaver Mary Dick Topino — better known by her nickname, “Mrs. Britches” — was an artist from the late 19th and early 20th centuries renowned for her striking polychrome friendship baskets and spring dance bowls made with traditional materials and techniques. The pristine workmanship of this basket with its graduated rattlesnake bands shows why Mrs. Britches was famed in her day and now considered an icon of American basket weaving.

Louisa (Lasyeh), best known as “Mrs. Dick Francisco,” is another esteemed Yokuts weaver, one whose work has been featured in museums and collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York. The intricate work of this polychrome coiled basket with its zigzagging band and bat motif is a fine example.

The New York single-owner auction has several intriguing African ritual masks as well, including an elongated Dan or Guere/We kaogle mask with an articulated upper part of the crocodile-like snout that would clap during performances; a Makonde helmet mask distinguished by a gentle smile, pronounced chin and human hair implanted on the scalp and eyebrows; a monumental Bwa nwantantay (butterfly) plank mask stretching 114 inches and retaining strong red, white and black pigmentation in the classic palette of Bwa masquerade art; a Bwa dho (hawk) plank mask measuring 57 inches in width; and a superbly executed Wurkun shoulder or yoke mask with a narrow semicircular crested head atop a cylindrical neck, a rich time-darkened patina denoting extensive ritual use.