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Collections

Staff Godcirca 1800

Not on view
Carved wooden implement with open lattice blade inlaid with small pale stones or shells, tapering to a fiber-wrapped handle with knotted base
Carved wooden staff with an elaborate openwork lattice of interlocking loops at the top, transitioning to a cylindrical handle wrapped in twisted fiber cord with knotted bands, ending in a fringed fiber base.
Tall, narrow wooden ceremonial object with deeply carved openwork surface featuring rows of repeating human faces in profile, tapering toward a wrapped fiber and plant-material handle at the base.
Title
Staff God
Place Made
Cook Islands, Mangaia
Date Made
circa 1800
Medium
Wood, fiber, human hair, and feathers
Dimensions
Overall: 46 1/2 × 5 1/8 × 3 3/8 in. Length (Feather (max)): 4 in. (10.16 cm) Length (Feather (min)): 2 1/4 in. (5.72 cm)
Credit Line
Gift of the Masco Corporation Foundation
Accession Number
M.2009.126.1
Classification
Sculpture
Collecting Area
Art of the Pacific
Provenance
Collected by Reverend John Williams (1796–1839) and Reverend Platt of the London Missionary Society on Mangaia, in 1823. By inheritance, from at least 1880, to J.F. Keep, London. Anonymous (sale, London, Sotheby’s, 16 June 1980, lot 64). Wayne Heathcote (b. 1943), New York, NY, sold to; Masco Corporation Collection, Livonia, MI; Masco Corporation Foundation, Taylor, MI, gift 2009 to; LACMA.
Selected Bibliography
  • Wardwell, Allen. Island Ancestors: Oceanic Art from the Masco Collection. [Seattle]: University of Washington Press, 1994.