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1886.1.1637.2.2

Part of a Mourner's Dress. Crescent-shaped wooden breast-plate with large mother-of-pearl shells and dark feather tassels. [MJD DDF Body Arts Project 2010/2011 26/11/2010]

1886.1.1637.2.2

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Collection type
Object
Description
Part of a Mourner's Dress. Crescent-shaped wooden breast-plate with large mother-of-pearl shells and dark feather tassels. [MJD DDF Body Arts Project 2010/2011 26/11/2010]
Long description
Part of a Mourner's Dress. Crescent-shaped wooden breast-plate painted black on the front and natural brown wood on the back. At either end there is a large mother of pearl shell with fringes of plaited fibre and dark feathers hanging from the ends of the breast-plate. There are four mother-of-pearl shells in total, spread equidistantly and secured to the breast-plate by fibre sewn through perforations in the shells and wood. One of the shells is broken, having both local and modern repairs. [NM 2/3/97]
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: 19/04/1886
Materials and processes
Material Wood Plant, Material Mother of Pearl Shell, Material Bird Feather, Material Plant Fibre, Process Carved, Process Perforated, Process Ground, Process Repaired (local)
Dimensions
Length x Width 450 x 880 mm
Object numbers
Accession number: 1886.1.1637.2.2
Associated publications
Referred to (though not explicitly) 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 Collection also contains a second mask, turban and coronet, not listed in the Catalogue. This mask is of turtle and pearl shell and incorporates a piece of red European cloth, which might date from the first [Cook] voyage or another early European visit.' Gathercole does not explicitly mention the breast-plate here, but given that it was displayed attached to the mask, it can be taken as being included in this brief reference. [JC 5 3 2005] Listed on page 641 of 'Appendix B: Catalogue of Society Island Objects with Probable 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): 'Crescent-shaped wood plank, the front painted black and ornamented with pearl shells. PR shoulder shell and PR shell on wood piece with native fiber repairs. Shoulder shells edg[e]d with feathers.' [JP 1/8/2002] 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] 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: Clothing, Ritual and Ceremonial, Death, Armour Weapon, Breast Plate Armour

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