Find Lots

• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  The Marc & Elena Pinto Collection
• Sale Date:
  20 May 2015 ~ 6.30pm
• Lot #:
  52
• Lot Description:
  The Mudjon Shield
  Wiluna, Western Australia (mid twentieth century)
  carved hardwood
  74 cm high
• Provenance:
  Private Collection, Western Australia; The Marc and Elena Pinto Collection, Perth
• Notes:
  This shield was purchased in 1977 from Mudjon (also known as Freddie-Freddie), an elder of the Mandildjara people of the Gibson Desert, who, in that year, had led an expedition into the Gibson Desert to find an exiled couple, Warri and Yatungka. The couple had married against Mandildjara kinship laws some thirty years earlier and had fled into the inhospitable desert where they remained in isolation. An extended period of drought in the 1970s lead the Mandildjara, who had been resettled in the communities of Wiluna and Jigalong, to be concerned for the couple's well-being. Mudjon, who was about 70 years old at the time, enlisted the anthropologist and explorer W.J. Peasley, to search the desert for the tribal couple. Peasley had been a doctor with the Flying Doctor Service. The couple had never met Europeans before and they died some years after they were found. Peasley's account of the expedition, The Last of the Nomads, was published by Fremantle Arts Centre Press in 1983. The shield is decorated front and back: the front bears a vertical pattern of adze-like marks; the back bears a rhythmic pattern of horizontal bands distinguished by the alternate direction of the engraved lines, and a carved handle. Wally Caruana
• Estimate:
  A$7,000 - 10,000
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

  Can't see the realised price? Upgrade your subscription now!

• Category:
  Tribal

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