1924.58.35

Collection type

Object

Description

Dance mask made of wood with designs painted on the face. A large crest of coconut fibre is affixed to the top of the head. [NC 25/11/2015]

Long description

Dance mask made of wood with designs painted on the face. A large crest of coconut fibre is affixed to the top of the head. Seeds have been embedded around the mouth and the eyes are made of shells. [NC 25/11/2015]

Geographical reference

Papua New Guinea

Oceania > Melanesia > Papua New Guinea

New Ireland Bismarck Archipelago

Person

Field collector George Brown

PRM source Trustees of the Bowes Museum

PRM source Bowes Museum

Date / Period

Date made: Before 1908

Date collected

By 1908

Acquisition information

Exchanged: 1924

Materials and processes

Material Wood Plant, Material Pigment, Material Coconut Fibre Plant, Material Shell, Material Plant Seed, Material Plant Fibre, Process Carved, Process Painted, Process Bound

Dimensions

Length: max 410 mm approx

Object numbers

Accession number: 1924.58.35 Other numbers: 156

Research and responses

The Reverend George Brown retired from the missionary service in 1908, so it may be assumed with fair certainty that all the items in his collection were obtained by then. No doubt it would be possible to establish more exact dates of collection for individual objects from the primary and secondary literature relating to him and his collection (see entry on Biographies database for more information). [JC 23 3 2001]

This is a tatanua mask. The following account is taken from Michael Gunn's caption to the reproduction of another tatanua mask from the PRM (1899.62.405) as figure 7 in Transformations: The Art of Recycling, by Jeremy Coote, Chris Morton, and Julia Nicholson (Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, 2000): 'Such crested masks are known as tatanua. According to early accounts, they were representations of the spirit or soul (tanua) of dead people. Today this idea is rejected by New Irelanders, who say that tatanua masks are representations, portraits even, of living individuals. As with many art forms around the world, it seems tatanua were designed to portray the locally conceived criteria of human, in this case, manly beauty. So this mask, like the other tatanua preserved in museum collections, is characterized by an elaborate coiffure, a wide, projecting nose, pierced and distended earlobes, side whiskers, a big mouth, and sound teeth. The tatanua were worn in public dances in which groups or lines of men were disguised by the masks and garlands of leaves and foliage reaching to their knees.' [JC 23 3 2001]

Associated publications

For an account of the New Ireland component of the collections made by George Brown, including this object, see 'New Ireland, Old Objects: Negotiating Colonial Relations through Collections from 1875 to 1885', by Vicky Barnecutt (Oxford: University of Oxford, D.Phil. thesis, 2018). This object is listed on page 385 as number GB276 in Barnecutt's database; see also brief references to it on pages 217 and 218. [JC 24 9 2018]

Search terms: Dance, Mask, Dance Accessory