Description (Physical description)
Copy of a 'tamoko’' or large head-hunting canoe (copy is in small scale). Decorated with pearl-shell inlay at bow and stern. Carved humans faces at bow and stern. Cowrie shell decoration at bow and carved shell (?) plaques at stern.
Event Date
Author: maa

Context (Acquisition Details)
Formerly the property of Frederick John Francis Wootton-Isaacson and given to the Museum by Lady Beaumont, his sister.
Event Date
Author: maa

Context (Related Documents)
A letter dated 11/8/1926 from Charles Woodford to Wootton-Isaacson notes, 'The canoe was made at the Rubian Lagoon [...] and as you rightly note a small copy of a tamoko or large head hunting canoe.'
Event Date 11/8/1926
Author: Guey-Mei Hsu

Description (Physical description)
The card notes human heads carved at ends. These may be canoe prow n but there are no longer attached to the canoe on display.
Event Date 1948
Author: rachel hand

Context (Display)
On display in the Maudslay Hall, freestanding, next to the Kayak with the model waka taua suspended above it from 1990 onwards. Display label reads, 'Tamoko - Headhunting Canoe Model / Tamoko, headhunting canoes, from the Western Solomon Islands were used in raids on neighbouring islands.
Raided skulls adorned the canoe-houses, while skulls of ancestors were decorated with black putty and pearl shell and placed on shrines.
This is a copy of a canoe from Roviana Lagoon, New Georgia.
The original was probably destroyed by the Resident Commissioner, Sir Charles Woodford. Protective prow ornaments, would sit above the waterline. Controversially these headhunting figures are now national symbols of the whole island group.'

Printed photograph on the label, with caption that reads, 'Headhunting canoe with toto isu or prow ornament. Roviana, New Georgia, circa 1900. Photograph donated by Charles Woodford. P. 9355.ACHI'
Event Date 1990
Author: rachel hand

Context (References)
'In 1948 Lady Violet Beaumont donated fifteen Solomon Islands objects to the museum (MAA 1948.2625-2634)These had been the property of her brother, Frederick John Francis Wootton-Isaacson, who visited the Solomons in 1903 (Waite (2008:83) names him as a collector for the BM). From these objects I have identified five which were collected by Woodford and sent by him to Wootton-Isaacson. These are a bow from Bougainville (MAA 1948.2625), a food bowl from Makira (MAA 1948.2626) and a model tomoko with two paddles from Roviana (MAA 1948.2628a-c). It is possible that some other objects within this collection were collected by Woodford, but no direct association has yet been established. Wootton-Isaacson would doubtless have collected objects whilst visiting the Solomons, and eight photographs taken by him during the 1903 visit are held in the MAA photographic archive [51]'.

Plate 34: The scale model of a tomoko which was made at Roviana for Frederick Wootton-Isaacson and
sent to him by Woodford. Woodford stated that this model was a faithful representation of the tomoko
captured by him at during a raid on Nusarua, in the Roviana Lagoon in 1900, and used by [Arthur] Mahaffy.
(MAA 1948.2628a-c)

Note 51: 1 MAA photographic collection (P.70199.ACH2 , P.70200.ACH2 , P.70201.ACH2 , P.70202.ACH2 ,
P.70203.ACH2 , P.70204.ACH2 , P.70205.ACH2 , P.70206.ACH2)

O'Brien, Aoife (2011) Collecting the Solomon Islands: Colonial encounters & Indigenous experiences in the Solomon Island collections of Charles Morris Woodford and Arthur Mahaffy (1886-1915). Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia. Available at: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/67067/1/2011OBrienAPhD.pdf
Event Date 2011
Author: rachel hand

Context (References)
'In his 1909 article on the canoes of the Solomon Islands Woodford commented that this model, which measures about twenty-four feet long, took 18 months to complete and that it was a faithful representation of a large
captured war canoe used by the District Officer in Gizo (Woodford 1909a:511). This therefore is a to-scale miniature representation of the tomoko captured by Woodford at Nusarua, near Oneavesi Island, Roviana Lagoon, used by [District Officer Arthur] Mahaffy while resident in Gizo on punitive raids against local communities, and later sold to a [as yet unidentified] museum in Germany'

O'Brien, Aoife (2011) Collecting the Solomon Islands: Colonial encounters & Indigenous experiences in the Solomon Island collections of Charles Morris Woodford and Arthur Mahaffy (1886-1915). Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia

Charles Woodford, (1909) ‘The Canoes of the British Solomon Islands.’ The Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 39:506-516.

Event Date 18/3/2021
Author: rachel hand