MEG agreed to help with comments on identification where
requested and the project co-ordinator, Rachel Heminway Hurst, has just sent
through an excel spreadsheet with details of 36 items they would like help
with. Photographs of these items have also
been sent through by Mail Express file transfer and we are considering how to
share these on the MEG website or Facebook pages. Meanwhile we thought it would
be good to begin by showcasing some items in this blog. Antonia has added her comments (AL), after
those by Len Pole (LP). Any examples of comparative pieces or suggestions of
published references are very welcome and will be credited in the items’ museum
records. Do send your comments to Rachel at, copying
in the MEG chair.
The uniques project is holding a celebration and
end of project event on Friday 20 March at Maidstone and MEG
members are warmly invited.
A pair of West African figure carvings, Bexhill Museum
Standing figures of pale light wood, female and male, the
female with a horned headdress. Both have pokerwork cross marks on their
cheeks, and neckrolls. The female also has vertical triple dash marks three
times on her body.
LP: The exhibition catalogue: Hair in AfricanArt & Culture, Cat.1, and fig 4,
shows a figure with plaiting similar to this, from the Fanti, Southern Ghana.
AL: Older Fanti figures are usually more abstract than this,
for example the one at the Art Institute, Chicago. I wondered about a Nigerian provenance, thinking of the PRM Ibo mask with the
cross keloid design on its cheeks, as shown in the introductory guide. But the eye shapes of this pair are more Akan.
A 1930s Akan female figure here is very similar to the female figure here,
but has a warmer patina and surviving beadwork ornaments.
A Melanesian woman’s
skirt, Bexhill Museum
Described as “Full dress of a woman of New Hebrides” made
of barkcloth, a waistband with attached folded strips of dark barkcloth,
wrapped in thin strips of lighter barkcloth, with an additional three strands
of red patterned printed cotton cloth.
LP:
From Vanuatu. This is not familiar to me, I can’t find anything similar
in Bonnemaison et al “Arts of Vanuatu”,
we should contact Lissant Bolton , at the British Museum says "I have never seen anything like this. Or at least, not from Vanuatu. The only place it can be from is Erromango, and frankly, I doubt that. But there is always something to learn. If you hadn't told me the label I would have suggested that it was possibly from somewhere like Kiribati? But as you know barkcloth isn't a common material for artefacts made in Kiribati. So it remains a mystery. I've looked through quite a lot of books, I'll let you know if I do find anything.
AL: The designs on the barkcloth do ring a bell with designs
on narrow men’s belts from Vanuatu, as illustrated in Fig. 144 of an article on
Vanuatu barkcloth by Huffman, in Bonnemain et al. None of those illustrated is
similar to the above, and none are overwrapped, but stylistically they look
right. I had a quick look on the British Museum Collections
web-pages where there are now over 2000 Vanuatu items, including many of the
35mm slides taken by Dorota Starzecka in 1976, but no similar skirts are shown.
Perhaps this is something to share with the Vanuatu Cultural Centre that the BM
has been working in partnership with for many years.
The casque and bill (or beak) is mounted on an elaborately
carved wooden stand, from China. The
design of the openwork stand includes flowers and leaves whilst the
casque or horny part of the hornbill is carved with a detailed miniature town
scene.
LP: Possibly a temple decoration?
Investigate significance of hornbill in China. This is a good quality
piece which needs extensive conservation and specialist input. How rare is it?
AL: The best Chinese ivory collection in Yorkshire, the
Grice collection at Sheffield has no hornbill ivory. I checked this by looking
through their 2008 exhibition catalogue. Also online is a good summary by Robert E.
Kane, ‘Hornbill Ivory’, in Gems and Gemology, (1981), p96-97,
which says that hornbill ‘ivory’ has been prized by the Chinese for many
centuries. Also see this Specimen of the
Month article at Natural History Museum:
Amy Freeborn, ‘Behind the Scenes: Specimen of the month #9 - a carvedHornbill skull’, at Natural History
Museum.
Antonia Lovelace
MEG Chair and Curator of World Cultures, Leeds Museum
