1900.55.475

Collection type

Object

Description

Mask with an elaborate coiffure, a wide, projecting nose, pierced and distended earlobes, side whiskers, a big mouth, and sound teeth.

Geographical reference

Papua New Guinea

Oceania > Melanesia > Papua New Guinea

New Ireland Bismarck Archipelago

Person

Field collector Norman Heywood Hardy

PRM source Robert Francis Wilkins

Date / Period

Date made: Before 1900

Date collected

By 1900

Acquisition information

Donated: 1900

Materials and processes

Material Wood Plant, Material Pigment, Material Bark Cloth Textile Plant, Material Plant Pith, Material Shell, Process Carved, Process Painted

Dimensions

Depth: max 400 mm, Width: max 520 mm, Length: max 760 mm

Object numbers

Accession number: 1900.55.475

Research and responses

This is probably 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]

Search terms: Mask