Fern tree Grade post I, Gaua, Banks Islands, Vanuatu, cut tree… - Decorative Arts - Webb's

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Description:

Fern tree Grade post I, Gaua, Banks Islands, Vanuatu, cut tree fern, height 250 cm, Collected by Paul Gardissat on Gaua, Vanuatu c.1968. Private Collection, Sydney, These totems, or grade posts were originally in the collection of Paul Gardissat, an important figure in artifact collecting across the Vanuatu island group, having arrived in the then New Hebrides as a teacher in the French school system in the early 1960s, he subsequently became a broadcaster on the colonial Radio New Hebrides, his interest in the culture of the New Hebrides led him to record and transcribe oral histories throughout the island group, many of which were later broadcast or printed in the Nabanga and Le Melanesian newspapers prior to independence in 1980, during his lifetime, a man of Vanuatu might ascend through as many as twenty individually named grades in his society, attaining more status and power with each elevation. On Banks Islands, the society is called Sukwe. The ceremonies connected with the acquisition of each grade were accompanied with dances, initiations, feasts, and pig sacrifices, all of which called attention to the individual's greatness and high religious standing in his community. They required the expenditure of considerable amounts of wealth through the ownership and offering of pigs to be killed, At each ceremony, the sponsoring individual had the right to wear certain types of ritual paraphernalia and sometimes masks or headdresses. Specific objects were also displayed and specific structures were built for the events. The man also had the right to have a figure made of fernwood, its form dependent on the codes of the particular grade level. These sculptures were displayed on platforms in shelters under which dances were performed. During the ceremonies, it was believed that the figures became inhabited with the spirits of ancestors. (Wardwell, 1994, p. 140), References, Aboriginal and Oceanic Art, Sotheby's Melbourne 26 July 2010 for another grade post from the same collection, Felix Speiser and D.Q. Stephenson, Ethnology of Vanuatu ' an early twentieth century study, Bathurst: Crawford house Publishing, 1996, English translation of the original 1923 edition, p.353-354, for discussion of related Grade posts and grade-taking rituals, Alan Wardwell, Oceanic Art from the Masco collection, Detroit Institute of the Arts Founders Society, Detroit 1994, for an illustration and discussion of another Banks Island Grade figure, p. 140

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Unclassified