1894.26.31

Collection type

Object

Description

Eyeshade, consisting of plant leaves woven into a head covereing with a peak to shade the eyes. [FB 29/08/2014]

Long description

The eyeshade is triangular in shape and is constructed of woven plant fibre which is a light brown in colour. The front shading element is flat, leading back to a more 3D flap element, allowing the shade to sit on the head of the wearer. [SLR 16/12/2014]

Geographical reference

Solomon Islands

Oceania > Melanesia > Solomon Islands

New Georgia

Person

Field collector Henry Boyle Townshend Somerville

Field collector HMS Penguin

PRM source Henry Boyle Townshend Somerville

Date / Period

Date made: Before 1893

Date collected

1893

Acquisition information

Donated: 1894

Materials and processes

Material Plant Leaf, Process Basketry, Process Woven

Dimensions

Width: max 450 mm, Length: max 340 mm

Object numbers

Accession number: 1894.26.31 Other numbers: 11

Research and responses

For an account of Somerville's collection from the Solomon Islands, see 'The H. B. T. Somerville Collection of Artefacts from the Solomon Islands in the Pitt Rivers Museum’, by Deborah Waite, in The General’s Gift: A Celebration of the Pitt Rivers Museum Centenary, 1884–1984 (JASO Occasional Papers, no. 3), edited by B. A. L. Cranstone and Steven Seidenberg (Oxford: JASO, 1884), pp. 41–52. (Copy in RDF: Collectors: Somerville.) [JC 24 2 2007]

For an account of Somerville's collecting in the Solomon Islands, see 'Notes and Queries, Science, and “Curios”: Lieutenant Boyle Somerville’s Ethnographic Collecting in the Solomon Islands, 1893–1895’, by Deborah Waite, in JASO: Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford, Vol. XXXI, no. 3 (Michaelmas 2000), pp. 277-308. (Copy in RDF: Collectors: Somerville.) [JC 24 2 2007]

Search terms: Clothing Headgear, Basketry, Eye-shade