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Korwar amulet (Fanderi) mounted on blade, 19th century
Dugong ivory, iron blade
40 x 7.6 x 2.5 cm (15 3/4 x 3 x 1 in.)
The Marcia and John Friede Collection, a Promised Gift to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco L05.1.266

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Artist Biography: (none) PROVENANCE: "Guy Flandre Collection, Paris; this object was purchased in Madagascar from people who had emigrated there from West Papua. It was later brought to Normandy, where Guy Flandre fount it." (Catalog #540, New Guinea Art: Masterpieces from the Jolika Collection of Marcia and John Friede, 2005, Volume 2, p. 179.) EXHIBITIONS: 1991 - The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1991, "New Guinea Bone Carvings." PUBLICATIONS: 2005 - "An amulet carved out of a dugong tooth is used as a handle for this iron knife. Like the man-arrows from the Torres Strait (pl. 479) and the adote motif from Massim (pl. 398), this carving conveys a double image. From the side, the finial is a man in the mouth of a monster, probably a snake; from the front it is a korwar figure, with his traditional openwork shield before him. There was an iron-forging tradition in Geelvink Bay which was imported from the Moluccas (but had a wide geographical expanse including parts of Southeast Asia and the Phillipines) and predated European contact. The first reports of ironworking on the coast of New Guinea, dating from 1606 by the Spanish explorers Prado and Torres, refer to Triton Bay, on the southwest coast (Kamma and Kooijam, 1973: 9). Iron objects were forged via bellows, a type of apparatus which belongs to the "Indonesian culture area" (ibid., 8; see also figs. 2-4). Headhunters' knives, machetes, spear points, and two- to three-pronged fish spears were produced, among others (ibid., figs. 7-12). Machete were also used as part of the bride price (ibid., fig. 13). There is one comparable piece in the Museo di Antropologia, Firenze (see Salvi, 1992, no. 20), and several comparable handles or amulets carved out of dugong teeth, all collected between 1871-76 at Mansinam Island (ibid., cat. no. 22; see also van Baaren in Greub, 1992, pl. 26, middle). There is also a related dugong tooth carving in the deYoung museum from the Herbert Baker Collection, Los Angeles (Newton and Baker, 1969: 35, cat. no. 168)." (Catalog #540, New Guinea Art: Masterpieces from the Jolika Collection of Marcia and John Friede, 2005, Volume 2, p. 179.)

Related Keywords
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