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• Auction House:
  Theodore Bruce
• Sale Name:
  Timed Online Auction | The Todd Barlin Collection of Oceanic and Asian Art | Day I
• Sale Date:
  08 Aug 2022 ~ 6pm (AEST)
• Lot #:
  9192
• Lot Description:
  Two Extremely Rare Antique Somp Kina Wealth Pendants from the Southern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea
  These very rare old Wood Kina Wealth Pendants are called 'Somp Kina'.
  L 17 - 30 cm
• Provenance:
  Collected by Todd Barlin in Mendi in 1985; The Elizabeth Pryce Collection Sydney; The Todd Barlin Collection of New Guinea Art & Oceanic Art
• Notes:
  In New Guinea the Gold Lipped Pearl Shell or Pinctada maxima is a very highly prized type of traditional wealth. Shells in general were highly valued as traditional wealth but for the people in the interior Highlands of New Guinea they were real treasure where the shells had to travel through trading from the coast where they were collected to hundreds of kilometres through some of the most rugged terrain on the planet. Shell ornaments were used during important traditional ceremonies and also used as a traditional currency to pay bridal dowries paid by young man's family or as compensation to end fighting between clans or other tribes. In pre-European times even a small piece of gold pearl shell was very valuable, these rare type of Somp Kina ornaments are carved from wood in the form of crescent shaped gold lipped pearls and then had only a small piece of real shell set in resin on the wood ornament. The edge of the wood pendant is decorated with jobs tears or Coix lacryma-jobi seeds. This showed how much even a small piece Kina Shell was valued in pre-European contact times. These old Somp Kina pendants are a very rare, in the mid-1980s during months I spent travelling around Mendi Valley and the Southern Highlands I only ever collected 3-4 examples. These two old Somp Kina I field collected in Mendi Valley in 1985 and they were later in the famous Elizabeth Pryce Collection for 30 years.
• Estimate:
  A$600 - 800
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

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• Category:
  Tribal

This Sale has been held and this item is no longer available. Details are provided for information purposes only.