IDNO
P.45532.ACH2
Description
“Wooden Kava Bowls. Fiji” - postcard taken from a ?J.W. Waters photograph and featuring a large number of vesi (Intsia bijuga) wood bowls, mainly but not exclusively yaqona (kava) bowls of kumete or tanoa type. These include two turtle-shaped yaqona bowls, on top of one of the mat-enwrapped bundles. One of the larger tanoa has been fitted with a sau or cord studded with a pair of white bulidina cowries, symbolic of chiefly divinity and authority. The bowls have evidently been made for a major solevu or property presentation, such as one associated with the installation of a chief or the lifting of the mourning for one. From their appearance, most of the people in the background are of mixed Fijian and Tongan or Samoan descent, which is hardly surprising, the production of such bowls in Fiji being dominated by two clans of Samoan extraction, the Lemaki, who removed to Fiji in the mid to late 1700s, and the Tiafau, who arrived in the mid nineteenth century.
Circa 1900? [Fergus Clunie, 26/7/2003]
Place
Oceania Polynesia; Fiji; Lau; ?Lakeba; ?Kabara
Cultural Affliation
Named Person
Photographer
?Waters, J.W.
Collector / Expedition
Haddon, Alfred Cort; Roth, George Kingsley
Date
circa ?1900
Collection Name
Unmounted Haddon Collection
Source
Format
Postcard
Primary Documentation
Other Information
The print was found in an envelope now marked C151/2/2/. This envelope was found in a green cabinet formerly numbered “batch 147” now re-numbered C151/ by the transcriber. The print was in drawer 2 of this cabinet.
P.45504.ACH2 to P.45591.ACH2 were in C151/2/2/.
A note found by Lucie Carreau in her documents while working on the Fijian Art Research Project suggests that this image was made on Lakeba (Southern Lau Archipelago) but that the people are likely to have come from Kabara. There is no source for this information, but it is likely that it was received from Prof. Steven Hooper while preparing the Chiefs and Governors exhibition in 2013. The place field has been amended accordingly [Lucie Carreau, 20/11/2017]
Related Image: This print or negative appears to be a unique image within the MAA Photograph Collections. [JD 14/11/2011]
This catalogue record has been updated with the support of the Getty Grant Program One. [Alex Nadin, 12/02/2003]
FM:180182
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