About the Donor

Dale Furnish, '62, grew up in Iowa City, Iowa and became a history major at Grinnell College in 1958. He then went on to specialize in Latin American comparative law. He now holds emeritus status at Arizona State University. Growing up he lived in Texas, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia, giving him a worldly curiosity and an early taste for travel. Over the years his work has led him to Central and South America, particularly the Mexican state of Sonora. A law conference in Kino Bay in the early 1970's gave him his first exposure to Seri ironwood carvings. The first piece he collected was a carving of a shark. Through his interactions with Jim Lindell, a Seri art trader, he expanded his collection to form a representative sampling of carvings, and later to frequent Seriland and meet the carvers themselves.

Mr. Furnish had the following to say about the Seri carvings:

"I think that the carvings attracted me because the wood was so warm and expressive, and I like representational art. Ironwood really is a special medium, with heft and depth of grain and luster and lots of character. The carvings are great to hold. The Seri carvers did the animals that inhabited their world, and captured the essence of those animals in a way that spoke to me."

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