1886.1.1417

Collection type

Object

Description

Headrest. Carved from a single piece of wood.

Long description

Headrest carved from a single piece of wood. The rectangular top is concave, and the legs have a oval profile. The legs at each end are connected by a crossbar. [JU 29/01/2013]

Geographical reference

French Polynesia (Overseas Collectivity of France)

Oceania > Polynesia > French Polynesia (Overseas Collectivity of France)

Society Islands Tahiti

Person

Field collector Johann Reinhold Forster

Field collector Georg Forster

PRM source Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

Date / Period

Date made: Before 04/06/1774?, uncertain

Date collected

Between 17 August and 18 September 1773, or between 22 April and 4 June 1774?

Acquisition information

Transferred: 10/02/1886

Materials and processes

Material Wood Plant, Process Carved

Dimensions

Width: max 130 mm, Length: max 250 mm

Object numbers

Accession number: 1886.1.1417 Other numbers: Forster 30

Research and responses

Reidentified as Tahitian and collected by the Forsters by P. W. Gathercole, 1970. [unsigned, undated]

Associated publications

Listed according to the 'Forster list' numbering system in 'From the Islands of the South Seas 1773-4: An Exhibition of a Collection Made on Capn. Cook's Second Voyage of Discovery by J.R. Forster- -A Short Guide (Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum, no date[1970]). The text from the 'Forster' manuscript is followed by the following notes: '30. an Otaheitee stool. A headrest, long assumed to be part of the Bloxam Collection (1825), but Bloxam never went to Tahiti. Made from the solid wood. Height: 15cm.' Listed as number 5 under ‘Tahiti...Neck Rests’ on page 145 of 'Artificial Curiosities': Being an Exposition of Native Manufactures Collected on the Three Pacific Voyages of Captain James Cook, R.N. at the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, January 18, 1978 - August 31, 1978 on the Occasion of the Bicentennial of the European Discovery of the Hawaiian Islands by Captain Cook - January 18, 1778 (Bernice P. Bishop Museum Special Publication 65), by Adrienne L. Kaeppler (Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 1978): '5. Neck rest, Oxford (30). Height 15 cm. Evidence: Forster collection. Second voyage. Literature: Gathercole, n.d. (1970) [see above]'. [JP 24/7/2002] Listed on page 520 of 'Appendix A: Catalogue of Society Island Objects with Secure Eighteenth-Century Provenance' in 'Shaping the Body Politic: Gender, Status, and Power in the Art of Eighteenth-Century Tahiti and the Society Islands', by Anne Elizabeth D'Alleva (New York: Columbia University, Ph.D. thesis, 1997). She describes it as follows: 'Concave rectangular platform with two loop feet.' [JP 31/7/2002] Illustrated in black and white on page 30 of The Captain Cook Encyclopaedia, edited by John Robson (London: Chatham Publishing / Mechanicsburg, Penn.: Stackpole Books, 2004). Caption (same page) reads: 'A wooden headrest collected in Tahiti on the second voyage. (Forster Collection Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford)'. [JC 25 11 2004] Published as part of the Forster Collection on a dedicated website at www.prm.ox.ac.uk/forster (from February 2001). [JC 7 7 2005] Illustrated in colour as Fig. 229 on page 380 of 'Africa, Oceania and the Americas', by Jeremy Coote, in Arthur MacGregor (ed.), The Cobbe Cabinet of Curiosities: An Anglo-Irish Country House Museum (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2015), pp. 374–403. Caption (same page): 'Tahitian headrest, collected on Cook's second Pacific voyage of 1772–5 by Johann Reinhold and/or George Forster, and given by them to the University of Oxford in 1766; Pitt Rivers Museum, inv. no. 1887.1.382 [sic; 1886.1.1417].' [JC 22 4 2015] For an account of the history of the collection of which this is part, see 'The Cook-Voyage Collections at Oxford, 1772–1775', by Jeremy Coote, in Jeremy Coote (ed.), Cook-Voyage Collections of 'Artificial Curiosities' in Britain and Ireland, 1771–2015 (MEG Occasional Paper No. 5), Oxford: Museum Ethnographers Group (2015), pp. 74–122. (Copy in RDF: Researchers: Jeremy Coote (Cook-Voyage Collections).) [JC 9 6 2016]

Search terms: Furniture Dwelling, Headrest