Fiji Culacula Club with Maori Designs 19th Century

This fine old Culacula  Club from the Fiji Islands part of Melanesia in Southern Pacific Ocean. It is a very rare example of a Fijian Club that was carved by a Maori Artist.

According to Michael Hamson in his catalogue “By Decent; Oceanic Art from old Collections 2019 Paris

” This unusual Fijian Club with Maori designs belongs to a small corpus of objects probably carved by one Maori man living in Fiji in the mid 19th Century. William Oldman illustrates one in his The Oldman Collection of Polynesian Artefacts plate 57. Steven Phelps illustrates four examples from the James Hooper Collection in Art and Artefacts of The Pacific, Africa & the Americas. In the publication Fijian Weapons & Warfare 1977 by Fergus Clunie illustrates a fine Totokia  Club with Maori designs and remarks that he believes it was almost certainly the work of a Maori Sailor shipwrecked of marooned in Fiji in the 19th Century”

With this much information, it might be possible to trace back through old records the name of this Maori Master Carver.

Carved from a single piece of hardwood and the incised designs were done by an artist of great skill.

Provenance:  The Todd Barlin Collection of Oceanic Art & Artefacts

Published Michael Hamson” By Decent; Oceanic Art from old Collections 2019 Paris. Pages 120-121