Widow's cap, beaded; beads (Job’s tears) strung in bands, gathered at top, remnants of twine tassel at top, beaded tassels around base, each ending in single black nut.
Donor:
Daniel L. Adler
Collection place:
Collingwood Bay, Papua New Guinea
Verbatim coll. place:
New Guinea; Collingwood Bay
Culture or time period:
Maisin people
Collection date:
before 1968
Object type:
ethnography
Function:
3.1 Status Objects and Insignia of Office
Accession date:
1968
Context of use:
According to John Barker (2018), "11-39280 is... a widow's cap used in the first stage of mourning. The only others I know of in museum collections are at the British Museum and the Australian Museum, collected between 1898 and 1910. It looks pristine, which may indicate that it was specially made for a collector (it would be great if there were more information on when and how these pieces were collected). I'm attaching an article I wrote [Barker, John (2014) Fashioning rebirth: On mourning and memory in a Papua New Guinea village. Vestoy: The Journal of Sartorial Matters, issue 5:189-197] about the death customs which includes some early contact photographs. The custom was given up before the Second World War following Christian conversion.
Department:
Oceania
Comment:
According to John Barker (2018), "Job's tears, no feather on top (that's twine), tapa cloth fabric & note the heavy ringlets of Job's Tears in the shirt.
Loans:
S1974-1975 #38: M. H. de Young Memorial Museum (December 11, 1974–June 23, 1977), S1983-1984 #4: City of Palo Alto (August 22, 1983–January 11, 1984), and S1991-1992 #21: SFO Museum (February 1992–February 1, 1993)