Bark Canoes: The Art and Obsession of Tappan Adney

By John Jennings and John Jennings

Book Overview

"This handsomely illustrated work presents a clear and succinct review of the talented, driven, and irascible Adney]... Recommended."
-- Choice

The bark canoe was the method of water travel for centuries, by native people in North America. The canoe made possible hunting, trade, and communication between native groups.

Edwin Tappan Adney singlehandedly preserved the fading history of Indigenous bark canoe construction in North America.

He built 110 historically accurate canoe models, many based on canoes that were the last remaining example of their type. Adney calculated that his canoe models consumed over 20,000 hours of detailed drawing, research and building.

Bark Canoes profiles Adney's life and life's work. Born in the United States in 1868, he lived much of his adult life in Canada. His last years were spent almost penniless in a small bungalow in New Brunswick.

Canoe research and model building were only one of the passions that drove this extraordinary man. Respected by scholars for his work with canoes, ethnography and Native languages, he struggled against enormous odds to create and preserve his models and papers.

Now owned by the Mariners' Museum in Newport News, Virginia, 110 of his beloved canoe models have been photographed and are presented here in splendid color. This book is a great resource for anyone interested in the history of Indigenous people -- and how they lived -- in North America.

The Mariners' Museum holds the largest international collection of maritime artifacts in North America, including ship models, paintings and hundreds of thousands of vintage photographs.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0228105900
• ISBN13: 9780228105909
• Release Date: September 2025
• Publisher: Firefly Books
• Length: 152 Pages
• Weight: 1.63 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 9.1" x 11.0"

Customer Reviews

A lifelong obsession revealed

What a beautiful book this is - I saw it in a museum shop in Calgary while on holiday and I just had to have it. This is a celebration of the canoe-builders' art that almost never materialsed. Adney's notes and models could well have disappeared had it not been for some timely intervention by far-sighted individuals to preserve the collection and organise his notes into this and other books. But surely a canoe is a canoe is a canoe... not after reading this! Such wonderfully crisp photos, taken from all angles with great depth of field, give a complete idea of each craft. The subtleties of design, use of materials and construction techniques leave one in no doubt as to the differences in ethnic origins beween canoes that at first glance look more or less similar. The quality and detail of the notes that Adney made for each drawing is a lesson for all would-be modellers ... nothing seems to have been left out; insets have minute details highlighted; there are cross-sections of ordinary-looking bits of wood; and stages in construction and building techniques are shown. Adney's models are a testament - both to human ingenuity in the use of available materials, and to one man's lifelong devotion to preserving a dying craft (in both senses). His contribution to art, ethnology and archaeology cannot be overstated.