Description (Physical description)
Woven bag decorated with sun and moon designs, made by Balbina Bam and Vitalia Toporamok. A Christmas 'Esa'
Event Date 10/1/2019
Author: rachel hand

Context (Field collection)
Part of a Crowther Beynon collection by Tom Powell Davies which investigates how Asmat people have recognised the word of God in the journeys of their ancestors, and how they have used ancestral forms of ritual and making to forge their own quintessentially Asmat form of Catholic liturgy

The specific contents of the collection were decided in conjunction with senior female ritual leaders, who wanted to give the MAA a complete set of the weavings used in their church. Powell Davies also requested they make an example of the traditional weaving used in ancestral feasts, as a point of reference so that viewers will be able to see both the weaving’s original ritual form as well as how it has been developed within the Asmat Catholic church. While there are a small number of Asmat weavings in existing museum collections, this is the first collection to be accompanied by any kind of research. It is also the first Asmat-focused museum project to be designed in collaboration with Asmat people.

All the weavings submitted to the MAA are commissioned copies of ‘sacred’ works that are not allowed to be sold or removed from the local church building for which they are made. As such they are completely unique outside of Asmat and exist in no other collection. Just as a feast cannot proceed unless the complete set of sacred tools required for it are present, it was important to the weavers that what they made for the museum was comprehensive, showing in full the sacred arts they have invented within their church. Their makers envisaged the collection as a single, impartible set.


Details taken from Powell Davies' Initial report and object list: Asmat weaving and the foundation of an indigenous Catholicism, based on the Crowther Beynon application, "Gereje, 'Enculturation' and the role of material culture in the foundation of an indigenous Asmat Catholicism"
Event Date 10/1/2019
Author: rachel hand

Context (Production / use)
A bag (ésá) of the type that could be worn by an úmámnák within the feast house during the oration in the jimi pír feast. This type of bag is distinguished from bags a ritual leader may wear at other times by the rattan leaves inserted into it, which again indicated the number of heads he has taken in war, the story of which he will orate at the peak of the feast.

From Asmat sacred arts and the transformation of ancestral ritual: the pír and Christmas feasts. Crowther Beynon interim report, Tom Powell Davies, 21/01/2019
Event Date 7/2/2019
Author: rachel hand

Description (Physical description)
Bag woven from pandanus with sago tassels which retain some of their bright original green colours. Feathers are from sulphur crested cockatoo, but the yellow colour rarely remains once plucked. The thicker feathers are the underfeathers. The birds are then eaten. With tassels of Job's tears (Coix lachrym) seeds and sections of black cassowary quills. Decorated with twice-fired earth pigment/ochre, charcoal and lime pigments.
From observations by Nick Stanley and Gre(Coix lachrymtchen Burau during a visit
Event Date 27/3/2024
Author: rachel hand