Hand Weapon (palau papanihomano)circa 1778

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Title: Hand Weapon (palau papanihomano)
Place Made: Hawaiian Islands
Date Made: circa 1778
Medium: Wood, shark teeth, and fiber
Dimensions: 4 x 15 3/4 x 1 1/4 in. (10.16 x 40.01 x 3.18 cm)
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation with additional funding by Jane and Terry Semel, the David Bohnett Foundation, Camilla Chandler Frost, Gayle and Edward P. Roski, and The Ahmanson Foundation
Accession Number: M.2008.66.16
Classification: Arms and Armor
Collecting Area: Art of the Pacific
Curatorial Notes: Gallery Label
Objects like this shark-toothed weapon were thought to possess power and were used exclusively by chiefs and nobles. This and other objects whose sole purpose was to impress, were important in a socially stratified society in which gods, chiefs, and its other members were mutually dependent on one another as well as on elements from the natural world. This rarely seen weapon is carved as a flat club with an elongated handle, the end as a sharpened bludgeon dagger. Triangular shark teeth are drilled and lashed to the sides; curved teeth at the upper curve of the wood are tied with the curve pointing toward the handle for a more effective pulling motion. Such weapons were abandoned almost immediately after Western contact. This example was collected in Hawaii in 1778 on the third and final expedition of Captain James Cook.
Provenance: Collected by Captain James Cook (1728–1779), Hawaii, on the third voyage, in 1778. Leverian Museum, London. Richard Hall Clarke and heirs, Uffculme, England. With James Thomas Hooper (1897–1971), London, in 1932. [sale, Christie’s, London, 21 June 1977, lot 155], sold to; Wayne Heathcote (b. 1943), New York, NY, sold to; Masco Corporation Collection, Livonia, MI, sold 2008 through; [Sotheby’s, New York, to]; LACMA.
Selected Bibliography: Wardwell, Allen. Island Ancestors: Oceanic Art from the Masco Collection. [Seattle]: University of Washington Press, 1994.
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Hand Weapon (palau papanihomano)circa 1778

Not on view

No image

Title: Hand Weapon (palau papanihomano)
Place Made: Hawaiian Islands
Date Made: circa 1778
Medium: Wood, shark teeth, and fiber
Dimensions: 4 x 15 3/4 x 1 1/4 in. (10.16 x 40.01 x 3.18 cm)
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation with additional funding by Jane and Terry Semel, the David Bohnett Foundation, Camilla Chandler Frost, Gayle and Edward P. Roski, and The Ahmanson Foundation
Accession Number: M.2008.66.16
Classification: Arms and Armor
Collecting Area: Art of the Pacific
Curatorial Notes: Gallery Label
Objects like this shark-toothed weapon were thought to possess power and were used exclusively by chiefs and nobles. This and other objects whose sole purpose was to impress, were important in a socially stratified society in which gods, chiefs, and its other members were mutually dependent on one another as well as on elements from the natural world. This rarely seen weapon is carved as a flat club with an elongated handle, the end as a sharpened bludgeon dagger. Triangular shark teeth are drilled and lashed to the sides; curved teeth at the upper curve of the wood are tied with the curve pointing toward the handle for a more effective pulling motion. Such weapons were abandoned almost immediately after Western contact. This example was collected in Hawaii in 1778 on the third and final expedition of Captain James Cook.
Provenance: Collected by Captain James Cook (1728–1779), Hawaii, on the third voyage, in 1778. Leverian Museum, London. Richard Hall Clarke and heirs, Uffculme, England. With James Thomas Hooper (1897–1971), London, in 1932. [sale, Christie’s, London, 21 June 1977, lot 155], sold to; Wayne Heathcote (b. 1943), New York, NY, sold to; Masco Corporation Collection, Livonia, MI, sold 2008 through; [Sotheby’s, New York, to]; LACMA.
Selected Bibliography: Wardwell, Allen. Island Ancestors: Oceanic Art from the Masco Collection. [Seattle]: University of Washington Press, 1994.
Copyright