1895.22.165

Collection type

Object

Description

Canoe prow ornament in the form of a scroll with relief decoration including a crocodile carved on one side. [SM 25/11/2008]

Long description

Canoe prow ornament in the form of a scroll with relief decoration including a crocodile carved on one side. The object has traces of red, blue and white pigment. [SM 25/11/2008]

Geographical reference

Solomon Islands

Oceania > Melanesia > Solomon Islands

New Georgia Pondokona District

Person

Field collector Henry Boyle Townshend Somerville

Field collector HMS Penguin

PRM source Henry Boyle Townshend Somerville

Date / Period

Date made: Before 1894

Date collected

1894

Acquisition information

Donated: 09/1895

Materials and processes

Material Wood Plant, Material Pigment, Process Carved, Process Painted

Dimensions

Length x Width x Height: max 750 x 310 x 30 mm

Object numbers

Accession number: 1895.22.165

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 27 2 2003]

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]

Associated publications

Illustrated in black and white as Fig. 15.12 on page 231 of the accompanying catalogue The Art of the Pacific Islands, by Peter Gathercole, Adrienne L. Kaeppler, and Douglas Newton (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1979). NB In the Museum's photograph, which is the one published in The Art of the Pacific Islands, the lower end of the prow looks to have a straight edge. In fact, it has been broken off and has a ragged edge, which the photographer has disguised. [JC 30 6 2000, 23 9 2003, 27 9 2018] Referred to on page 117 of ‘An Artefact/Image Text of Head-Hunting Motifs’, by Deborah Waite, in Journal of the Polynesian Society, Vol. CIX, no. 1 (2000; Special Issue: ‘Essays on Head-Hunting in the Western Solomon Islands’), pp. 115–44. Waite refers to it as one of 'at least four portable canoe carving...[that] display a crocodile image carved in relief'. [JC 3 3 2003] Referred to (with 1895.22.162) on page 56 of 'Canoe Stern Carvings from the Solomon Islands', by Deborah Waite, in Journal of the Polynesian Society, Vol. 94, no. 1 (March 1985), pp. 47-60. Waite writes: 'On New Georgia and neighbouring islands, barava-shaped designs were carved in relief on canoe ornaments (e.g., Gathercole et al. 1979: 231, [figs.] 15.12, 15.13)...'. Printout of article in RDF: Researchers: Waite. [JC 27 9 2018]

Search terms: Navigation, Figure, Canoe Part, Animal Figure