wood ("Alstonia scholaris"), pigment (red, white and black), shell inlay ("Turbo Phetolatus opercula"), long drawn-out helmet-shaped mask (facial plane entirely missing), crowned by a half figure with typical facial features (eyes with shell inlay, broad nose with flared nostrils and hewer-like projections to each side, a broad teeth baring mouth), superstructure in shape of a fish head with wing-like projection preserved only to one side, mask and superstructure supplemented by "malagan"- typical ornamental struts and remarkable fine painting with emblems and fine-hatched areas, handwritten old inscription on the inside: "Parkinson 1901 Neu Mecklenburg", for a second time on the head "Parkinson 01", various missing parts and places of repair, fine cracks, abrasion of paint;
Richard Parkinson (1844-1909) was a South Seas researcher and colonist.
In 1875 he travelled as representative of the Hamburg trading company ?JC Godeffroy & Sohn? first to Samoa and then to the Gazelle Peninsula in New Pomerania (New Britain) to settle. From there he travelled through the Bismarck Archipelago, the Solomon Islands and New Guinea. He tirelessly documented habits and customs, and the language of the native population. During this time, his intensive collecting activities began so that he was already heavily involved in trading ethnographic objects in the 1890s. He cooperated with his former business partner Thomas Farrell and his wife Emma Coe, who was famously known all over the South Seas as "Queen Emma". There is evidence that in 1886/87 Parkinson and Farell sold, among others objects, 132 "malagan" ?carvings to the Australian Museum in Sydney. There is also proof that many of the objects collected by Parkinson were acquired by museums in Dresden and Leipzig. Today there are hardly any ethnological museums in Germany who do not have at least some objects collected by Parkinson.
H: 118 cm, H: 46,5 inch
Provenance:
Richard Parkinson (1901)
K. Brommer, Stuttgart, Germany
Southern German Collection
Continent: Oceania

See description