When I spotted this one, I immediately saw it as a marriage between Meret Oppenheim's fur lined tea cup and Rene Magritte's Ceci n'est pas une pipe; a very surrealist sort of object, and to my sensibilities quite a wonderful one. But with the fur being seal fur, I would presume it is in fact Inuit/Alaskan Eskimo, and would guess the function of the fur was to make it easier to hold and pack the pipe in the cold, and also to make it personal to the maker, who would have made use of all other parts of the seal from whence it came, perhaps with just a bit left over to allow for this--I want to use the word swaddled--bowl. The bowl I believe is carved of wood, and with hand-stitched seams holding the covering on tight.
6" long overall; bowl 3 1/6" l x 1 3/4" t x 1 5/16" w. Good condition, with some wear to the fur, more on one side than the other and all to the good I think.
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