Brooklyn Museum: Arts of Africa and the Pacific Islands: Cord Handle

Want to add this object to a set? Please join the Posse, or log in.

Cord Handle

This decorated cord handle from a coconut shell or gourd container features carved bone toggles depicting important ancestors or deities. These toggles exhibit some of the defining characteristics of Marquesan figurative sculpture, including large, rounded eyes, a wide nose, a broad, thin mouth with a slightly protruding tongue, double scroll ears, and hands placed on a swelling belly.

Medium: Bone, seeds, coir
Place Made: Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia
Dates: 18th or 19th century
Dimensions: 23 1/4 x 1 1/2 x 1 1/4 in. (59.1 x 3.8 x 3.2 cm) For display: 12 x 6 x 1 1/4 in. (30.5 x 15.2 x 3.2 cm)
Collections: Arts of Africa and the Pacific Islands
Museum Location: This item is on view in The Arts of the Pacific, 1st Floor
Accession Number: 38.638
Credit Line: Dick S. Ramsay Fund
Image: Overall, 38.638_SL1.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph

Catalogue Description: Calabash cord with a tiki of human bone and 5 black seeds on each side. Condition: good. Cord of braided sennit used to suspend coconut containers. Ornaments of bone and seeds strung on cord.

Collections: Arts of Africa and the Pacific Islands: Cord Handle