Down from the Shimmering Sky presents some masks that depict animals and supernatural creatures such as Grizzly Bear and Thunderbird, while others are human face masks representing ancestral spirits who descended from the heavens. In this text, Peter Macnair surveys the four dimensions of the cosmos as perceived by the Native peoples of the Northwest Coast and displayed in their masks: the Sky World, the Mortal World, the Undersea World and the Spirit World. Lavishly illustrated with 61 colour and over 100 black-and-white photographs of oustanding masks from major institutions and pivate collections in North America and Europe.