hair ornament

Man's hair ornament topped by feather.

When asked by Fiona recently to comment on this object I thought that it was probably not from Asmat as I’d not seen red ones being worn. But I’ve recently looked again at Helfrich et al (1995) Asmat: Mythos und Kunst in Leben mit den Ahnen and there on p 215 is a red feather stick so I was wrong. It’s correctly described as a man’s hair ornament. I guess the feather must come from a parakeet.

Collection Information

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