dala
- Museum number
- Oc1900,1008.1
- Description
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Dala ornament: a disk cut from a wedgewood (willow-pattern) china plate overlaid with a fretwork disk of turtleshell attached at the centre by vegetable fibre, red textile and five discs of shell.
- Dimensions
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Height: 1 centimetres
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Width: 13.50 centimetres
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Depth: 13.50 centimetres
- Curator's comments
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Registration slip reads: Kolokango, Rubiana Lagoon.
Woodford, in a letter to Charles Read of the British Museum dated 4 March 1900, recounts the acquisition of this object and of Oc1900,1008.2 as follows: "I had to punish some natives for head hunting near Rubiana on Jan 21st last and as the village was taken by surprise they had no time to remove their property. The native police took a quantity of loot from which I afterwards made a selection. ........ I will give full descriptions and localities of the various objects. Among them are two very fine examples of the tortoiseshell fretwork on discs ground down from old plates. ...."
In Woodford's original draft of his article in Man 1905 No.20, written as a letter to Read dated 19th December 1904, he writes: "I took them myself from an island in the Rubiana Lagoon when administering punishment for the last, and I hope and think final, head-hunting raid from that locality."
Dala is the most common Solomon Islands name for this ornament (resembling the kapkap of Papua New Guinea) which in former times was always worn on the head.
See Burt (2009) 'Body Ornaments of Malaita'.
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Information from Pacific Art in Detail: A dala is a status object featuring a fine, exacting design. Using a strip of bamboo inserted into drilled holes to saw out small sections, the design was carved out of a circle of turtle shell. The delicate fretwork circle was usually attached to a disc of white clamshell. The maker of this dala used a material that became available in the Solomon Islands from the mid 1800s: British porcelain. The artist was particularly interested in the plate's white underside with its ready-made rim and flat profile, it would have been much harder to work than clamshell.
The plate acquired a new role as a dignified valuable to be worn on the forehead or chest.
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O'Brien (2010:31) states that this dala ornament was of six objects collected on 21st January 1900 on a punitive raid, during Woodford's visit to the Roviana Lagoon.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
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1997-1998 25 Sep-27 Jan, Osaka, National Museum of Ethnology, Images of Other Cultures
1998 11 Feb-12 Apr, Tokyo, Setagaya Art Museum, Images of Other Cultures
2011-2012, 6 Oct-19 Feb, London, The British Museum, 'Grayson Perry: The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman'
- Acquisition date
- 1900
- Acquisition notes
- Register slip reads: Given by C. M. Woodford Esq. / H. B. M. Commr. Solomon Islands / 8 October 1900
Charles Woodford was in Solomon Islands between 1888 and 1914, first as a naturalist, later as British Resident Commissioner.
- Department
- Africa, Oceania and the Americas
- Registration number
- Oc1900,1008.1