Context (CMS Context)
Exhibited: On display as part of the billum tree installation in Assembling Bodies: Art, Science & Imagination, Andrews Gallery 10 March 2009 - 6 November 2010.

Event Date 5/10/2015
Author: Rachel Hand

Context (CMS Context)
Professor Dame Marilyn Stathern, William Wyseman Professor of Anthropology, 1993- 2008, Cambridge University, conducted fieldwork in the New Guinea Highlands and in Port Moresby from the 1960s onward.

Purchased by or given to the donor in Mount Hagen during fieldwork, 1972-5.
[Seee Maureen MacKenzie, 1991, Androgynous objects: String bags and gender in Central New Guinea, Chur: Harwood Academic Publishers Ltd.]
"Good billums are expensive (20- 50 Kina in 1995 before inflation i.e., £10- £25 sterling). All these were paid for in some manner or other, even when 'given' (i.e., through return gifts): these are not the kind of things one receive without making recompense. They are regarded as quintessentially 'Papua New Guinean'." [From notes by Prof. Marilyn Strathern, 18/8/2003]

Event Date 5/10/2015
Author: maa

Description (CMS Description)
Striped billum or string bag, made from different coloured wools, as they were bought, and further rolled (spun) but otherwise unmodified. Knitted, not using the usual billum knotting. [From notes by Prof. Marilyn Strathern, 18/8/2003]


Event Date 5/10/2015
Author: maa