Drum mallet

Reference : 2091

Called mi ras or ga’hei
Wood carved with a human face
Height: 49cm
Woguma population
Papua New Guinea

Source :
– Collected by Douglas Newton in 1967 in the village of Yambunumbu at the mouth of the April River.
– The Jolika collection by John & Marcia Friede. USA

Literature :
Douglas Newton. Crocodile and Cassowary.
Museum of Primitive art, New York. 1971.
Illustrated page 57 n°94

Exhibition:
Ritual art of the Upper Sepik River, New Guinea.
Museum of primitive art, New York. February-May 1969

Price: €1,200

More details

Slotted drums are struck with a mallet.
Among the Woguma people, both the drum and the mallet are particularly sacred objects. They represent the feminine spirit of water.
The drum symbolizes the pirogue and the mallet the paddle. The object was kept out of sight of the women. They weren’t to know who, in the men’s house, was echoing the voice of the ancestors.
Douglas Newton (1920-2001) joined New York’s Museum of Primitive Art in 1960 as assistant curator.
Deputy Director in 1974, he became Chief Curator of the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the America after the transfer of the collections to M.E.T.
He made five trips to Papua New Guinea between 1964 and 1973.

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