lime-spatula
- Museum number
- Oc1944,02.1901
- Description
-
Carved lime-spatula made of wood.
- Production date
- 1880-1895 (? attribution by Dr Harry Beran)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 28.10 centimetres
-
Width: 6 centimetres
-
Depth: 3.50 centimetres
- Curator's comments
-
Beasley catalogue reads:
"PAPUA. TROBRIANDS. A lime knife having the handle carved as a seated figure beating a drum. The carving picked out with red and white pigment. L 11 ½ ".
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Harry Beran attributes this spatula to the woodcarver/artist Mutuaga (c.1860-c.1920) in his book Mutuaga: A Nineteenth-Century New Guinea Master Carver, Wollongong, Wollongong University Press, 1996, front and back cover and plate 56. This artist lived in Dagodagoisu Village, Suau area, southern Milne Bay Province.
Beran has pointed out that Beasley’s attribution of the spatula being from the Trobriand Islands is incorrect. (2009).
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Dr Harry Beran disagrees with the dating for this spatula provided in Carey's Collecting the 20th Century (p. 4) as 'early 20th century'. He says "On p. 80 of the book on Mutuaga I give stylistic reasons for saying that it was probably carved in the years between the 1880s and the mid-1890s"
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1944
- Acquisition notes
- Bought from the London Missionary Society, 13 September 1933. Beasley catalogue 2011 to 4318.
- Department
- Africa, Oceania and the Americas
- Registration number
- Oc1944,02.1901
- Additional IDs
-
Previous owner/ex-collection number: 3331 (Beasley)
