Double-face ornamental comb

Iconography on Papuan combs, and particularly on combs from the Gulf of Papua, is virtually non-existent.
The Pitt Rivers Museum acquisitions inventory (Volume 3 p.1042) shows a comb called Iduari, collected in Kiwai by Edwin Bentley Savage and sold to the Museum in 1894.
Used by men as ornaments, these combs were carved with the faces of ancestors, protecting their wearers.
Our fifteen-tooth model features a triangle-shaped grip, with the tip pointing downwards, engraved with an ancestor’s face.
A second face is also engraved on the body of the comb.
The whole is linked by a zigzag pattern.
A second face is depicted on the other side of the comb.
These faces would have represented the spirit living inside the comb.
In literature, if the term “comb” is used at all, it refers to an ornament worn by men to adorn their hair. Price: €11,500