The Great Box Considered is a bent-corner chest carved by Jaalen and Gwaai Edenshaw.  The product of an on-going bentwood box carving and research project, it is a careful study by the artists of a Haida ancestral masterpiece at the Pitt Rivers Museum.  Called the Great Box by museum staff, the masterwork is a large cedar bentwood box crafted with relief panels on two sides and painted panel on the ends.  The box features the Wealthbringer, Whale Eater design front and back which is characterized in Haida stories as a house front coming out of the sea.

Jaalen and Gwaai began their work on the box in a gallery at the Pitt Rivers Museum.  While at Oxford, the pair gave lectures at the Pitt Rivers and Lady Margaret Hall about the intricacies of the art and the box project including matching the original blue green paint made with pigment from a river bottom in Haida Gwaii (this lecture was also delivered as a keynote speech at the Social Change Institute at Hollyhock in BC).  As planned, the box traveled home to Haida Gwaii and Jaalen and Gwaai finished the last details and shared their work with the community. 

The Great Box Considered houses the treasures of K’aalts’ida K’ah, their regalia and masks, and is used ceremonially.  In 2017, the box was one of the treasure chests alongside the Goat Moon Box at the potlatch in Skidegate where Guujaaw became Gidansda, hereditary chief of the Skedans Gakyals KiiGawaay clan.  Since completion, it has been used as a teaching tool and also been exhibited at Xaayda Sahlinda Naay, the Haida Gwaii Museum in Skidegate, the Bill Reid Gallery in Vancouver and in the Haida Now exhibit at the Museum of Vancouver. 

Jaalen and Gwaai continue their box carving and research project and have given lectures on Haida design at the Burke Museum in Seattle and the Haida Gwaii Museum.