breast-ornament
- Museum number
- Oc,St.871
- Description
-
Breast ornament of pearl shell, human hair and fibre cord with two whale ivory attachments on one side.
- Dimensions
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Height: 35 centimetres
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Width: 32 centimetres
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Depth: 5 centimetres
- Curator's comments
-
Registration slip description, written in the 1860s?:
[Printed extract from Steinhauer catalogue]:
[O&VI. Sandwich Islands.
64. A necklace made of a semicircular plate of a shell with a great number of finely plaited strings of human hair and black-dyed grass.
[added in handwriting] breadth of shell 8.5 in. Two flat bone ornaments are attached to one of the upper corners.
Necklace in BM has similar bone ornaments. Similar without locality in the Bath Museum.
In the London Missionary Museum is a similar which was the Royal Breast Plate of Tamatoa King of Raiatea, Society Islands. Presd by G. Bennet [now in BM collection - Oc,LMS.72]
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Slip "St.871", and second Slip "871" (the latter appears to be source of wrong entry in Christy "Four Figure" series Register). Slips provenance "Sandwich Islands" (as Steinhauer Catalogue (1862), p.69, section O,VI, no.64) and "Hervey Group, Mangaia" respectively. (AMD,1/1998).
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1865
- Department
- Africa, Oceania and the Americas
- Registration number
- Oc,St.871
- Additional IDs
-
CDMS number: Oc186?C5.871 (old CDMS no.)
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Previous owner/ex-collection number: Oc.871 (incorrect Christy "Four Figure" Register no.)