1884.98.51

Collection type

Object

Description

Wooden club with elaborately carved head and shaft. [SM 23/03/2007]

Long description

Wooden club with elaborately carved head and shaft. The club has a diamond shaped head and is carved with bands of decoration along the entire head and shaft. The head is primarily decorated with bars, chevrons and triangles but also has carved men, dogs, fish, turtles and birds as well. The shaft is less densely carved. It contains men, bird, turtles and fish, as well as being carved with rows of triangles, diamonds and lines. The handle is almost undecorated with only very faint occasional incised lines around it. There is a hole in the butt for attaching a carrying or hanging strap to. [SM 23/03/2007]

Geographical reference

Tonga

Oceania > Polynesia > Tonga

Unknown

Person

Maker Unknown Maker

Field collector Unknown Collector

PRM source Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers founding collection

Date / Period

Date made: Before 1874

Date collected

By 1874

Acquisition information

Donated: 1884

Materials and processes

Material Wood Plant, Process Carved, Process Incised

Dimensions

Width: max 80 mm, Length: max 970 mm

Object numbers

Accession number: 1884.98.51 PR Cat other PR nos: 2821

Research and responses

The following notes are drawn from research compiled by Andy Mills as part of the DCF Cutting Edge project in 2006-2007.

This is not a lapalapa as asserted on the Display Label, but an apa‘apai. This piece is of particular interest due to the unfinished nature of its surface decoration. This surface decoration was known as tata, and the professional artists who carved it were termed tufunga tata. The decoration was achieved through the use of a graver/gouge tool constructed by hafting the tooth of a mako shark into a short handle, which permitted the tufunga to make a series of shallow cuts and gouges to achieve the decorative scheme. Conventionally, the tata on a Tongan club is complete, and forms a clearly-demarcated Frieze of carving, either entirely or partially covering the weapon’s surface. However, on this example, as on a few others that can be found in museum collections around the world, the tufunga tata has passed the weapon back to its owner, or sold it to the foreigner who introduced it into the ethnographic curiosities market through which Pitt Rivers acquired it, without finishing his commission. As a consequence, we are very fortunate to be able to see the means by which the tufunga tata has undertaken the composition of his work, breaking the weapon’s surface into rectilinear zones, and then columns, before incising these zones and sub-zones with the chosen decorative motifs, or kupesi as they are known. It is unfinished weapons such as this which have substantially permitted me to reconstruct the working practices and thought processes of the tufunga tata over recent years – practices and processes documented in Mills (Mills, A. (2007) Tufunga Tongi ‘Akau: Tongan Club-Carvers & Their Arts. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, University of East Anglia). [El.B 29/02/2008]

Associated publications

Reproduced in black and white in figure 1 on page 144 of 'Tonga', by Adrienne L. Kaeppler, in The Dictionary of Art, edited by Jane Turner (London: Macmillan, 1996), pp. 142-144. [JC 28 11 2000]

Search terms: Weapon, Figure, Club, Fish Figure, Bird Figure