forehead-ornament
- Museum number
- Oc1990,09.326
- Description
-
Forehead ornament, of the kind generally made from bailer shell but actually made from plastic, circular in shape, pierced twice at either side for ties, which are of blue acrylic yarn and decorated with tufts of marsupial fur.
- Production date
- 20thC
- Dimensions
-
Width: 13.40 centimetres
- Curator's comments
- Forehead ornament (‘maendumo’ in the Wahgi language) purchased from Kulngolnga, of the Kulaka sub-group Tungeiamb (see also Oc1990,09.273). New Guinea Highlanders utilised non-shell versions of traditional shell ornaments – whether tin can lids, or the china saucers which whites flew into the New Guinea Highlands in the 1930s and traded to indigenes as forehead ornaments equivalent to bailer shells (see e.g. photographs taken by Michael Leahy and reproduced in Connolly and Anderson’s volume ‘First Contact’ (1988)). For an account of the making of the collection of which this is part, see ‘Paradise: portraying the New Guinea Highlands’ by Michael O’Hanlon (British Museum Press, 1993).
Field collection no:231.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1990
- Department
- Africa, Oceania and the Americas
- Registration number
- Oc1990,09.326
- Additional IDs
-
Miscellaneous number: 231 (field collection number)