Kanak Door Jamb from a Great House, New Caledonia

Kanak Door Jamb from a Great House, New Caledonia
jovo/thale
height 73 1/4in (186cm)

Provenance
Christie's, London, 29 June 1983, Lot 32
Richard I.M. Kelton Collection, Marina del Rey, California

Douglas Newton notes, "these elements would have been placed on either side of a door panel that was often adorned with a lintel and a threshold carved with a face. [...] The iconography of the doorjambs follows something of a standard pattern: a face emerges from a geometrical decor, perhaps representing the matting in which a corpse is wrapped at burial." (Art of the South Seas - The Collections of the Museé Barbier-Mueller, Prestel, Munich/New York, 1999, p. 300-301)

Carved in hard wood of slightly curved rectangular form and pierced through at the top for attachment, the face with distinctive Kanak features with wide nose and long mouth, wearing a head band with feathered design, the field below incised with vertical linear pattern; weathered surface with wear indicative of age and use.