J. H. Bond Plaque - The Mystery Deepens!

I was surfing one of my usual haunts not long ago when I spotted a nice looking bronze plaque listed with a very reasonable starting bid. I threw my hat into the ring and happily in due course won it. The listing stated that it was numbered but not signed, which I found to be very odd. I've seen many bronzes that were signed but not numbered, but never one the other way around! I figured the seller had just not found the signature, so I wasn't that concerned. At the same time, perhaps the second or third time I was staring at the pictures and looking for the elusive scrawl, it dawned on me that something in the lines of the art reminded me lot of my J. H. Bond plaque. Even though the two plaques wildly differ in subject matter (outside both being Indian themed), once the idea set in it felt like a certainty. I couldn't explain why I felt the way I did other than intuition however.

Well, today it arrived, and I grabbed my magnifying glass and began looking it over. The plaque is round, roughly seven inches in diameter and made of very heavy solid bronze (though the weight of it, the way it smells and the way it "rings" has me thinking it's bronzed cast iron - more on that later) with a piece of hard wire soldered onto the back as a hanger. I checked the front very carefully - nothing. I flipped it over to the back, where the number and edition are scratched into it. Aside from the numbers (which had obviously been taped over to protect them), the entire back was covered in old glue that had taken on a flower pattern - I figure it had been glued up to a wall over flower print wallpaper, I'll be cleaning that off before too long - so I checked even more carefully. Again, there was nothing that could even be mistaken for a signature. After a moment of quiet perplexity, I took a look at the edge. That's when I got a nice, affirming surprise.

BINGO!!

Right in front of me was the signature that I more than half expected to find but couldn't tell you why I did, the autograph of J. H. Bond, Mystery Artist. So now I own not one, not two, but THREE bronzes by this artist, all purchased separately and from different parts of the country, and I STILL know nothing about them. This is getting frustrating!!

Depicted here on a round bronze plaque in fairly low relief is the profile of an elder Native Indian man who is wearing the upper part of a mountain lion (cougar or igmu) skull as a headdress and a feather hanging from each temple. His long hair and left feather are being blown forward by an unseen wind as he squints his intense gaze at something in front of him. On the rim, at the bottom, it is signed J^ H. Bond followed by the copyright symbol, but no date. On the back, below and to the right of the soldered or brazed on hanger wire, it is numbered 18/2500.

I now have THREE bronzes by this (obviously) reasonably prolific sculptor and still have ZERO info about ANY of them, artist or works. It's like yet ANOTHER bronze has dropped into my growing collection from outer space. If anyone out there knows something about this mystery, please, PLEASE let me know!

Bronze Indian head plaque, signed J. H. Bond, 18/2500, undated, front

Bronze Indian head plaque, signed J. H. Bond, 18/2500, undated, back numbered

Bronze Indian head plaque, signed J. H. Bond, 18/2500, undated, signature