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1895.22.169

Fishing float carved in the form of a bird with anthropomorphic head. Painted with black pigment, and with inlaid shell eyes. [LKG 10/06/2010]

1895.22.169

Digital asset copyright: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford

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Collection type
Object
Description
Fishing float carved in the form of a bird with anthropomorphic head. Painted with black pigment, and with inlaid shell eyes. [LKG 10/06/2010]
Geographical reference
Solomon Islands
Oceania > Melanesia > Solomon Islands
New Georgia Munggeri District
Date / Period
Date made: Before 1894
Date collected
1893 - 1894
Acquisition information
Donated: 1895
Materials and processes
Material Wood Plant, Material Pigment, Material Shell, Process Carved, Process Painted, Process Inlaid, Process Perforated
Dimensions
Length: max 172 mm, Width: max 60 mm, Height: max 92 mm
Object numbers
Accession number: 1895.22.169
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]

Associated publications
Described in Waite, D.B. 1984. 'The H.B.T. Somerville Collection of Artefacts from the Solomon Islands in the Pitt Rivers Museum'. In. B.A.L. Cranstone & S. Seidenberg (eds) The General's Gift. JASO Occasional Paper No. 3, Oxford. (p44) [LM 30/11/99] Illustrated in black-and-white as Figure 5.25 on page 56 of ‘Mon Canoes of the Western Solomon Islands’, by Deborah B. Waite, in Art and Identity in Oceania, edited by Allan Hanson and Louise Hanson, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press (2000), pp. 44–66. Caption (same page) reads: 'Fish net float. Mungeri district, New Georgia Island. Pitt-Rivers Museum, Oxford University, Somerville Collection, 1895.22.169. H. 9.5 cm. Photograph cby Deborah Waite.' (Copy in RDF: Researchers: Waite.) [JC 20 3 2003]

Search terms: Fishing, Figure, Religion, Fishing Accessory, Float, Bird Figure