Oceanic Art - Enlargement           Back to Figures

This fine old suspension hook comes from the Iatmul culture of Papua New Guinea's Middle Sepik River. The female figure is well composed with typical inset shell eyes, a pierced nasal septum, hands on the waist and a benevolent smile. The hooks at the base are long and practical with a great patina of wear from decades of traditional use-keeping ritual and personal possessions suspended above the ground away from the prying eyes of the curious and the gnawing teeth of hungry rats. The piece was purchased by the African art historian Herbert Cole from Mark Lissauer in the mid 1960s and certainly dates to thirty or forty years prior. The hook is carved from a dense hardwood, has a lug cut on the reverse for suspension, has a dark, sometimes glossy patina, is 20 ½" in height. sold