Hook For Trolling Lure Called Ipa Or Aipa - Tonga Islands, Polynesia - 19th Century

Hook for trolling lure called Ipa or Aipa
Tonga Islands, Polynesia
19th century
Whalebone, mother-of-pearl, tortoiseshell and natural fibres
H.: 19 ; L.: 6.5 cm

Hook depicting a stylised fish whose body, carved from a section of cetacean bone, refers to the shank of the hook, and whose tail appears as a tuft of plant fibres. The use of a strip of mother-of-pearl on the palette echoes the scales of the marine animal. The tortoiseshell beard has a barb.

According to Ulrich Menter, Senior Curator of the Oceania Department at the Linden Museum in Stuttgart: "These large hooks were used to catch tuna and other large fish.

Bibliography:

A similar specimen collected by Cook is reproduced in Fish Hooks of the Pacific Islands by Daniel Blau and Klaus Maaz, page 198, and a similar one is reproduced on plate 87, page 263. A comparable piece is reproduced in Art and Artefacts of the Pacific, Africa and the Americas, the James Hooper Collection, no. 692, plate 89, page 167. Several similar hooks are in the Weltmuseum Wien (formerly the Museum für Volkerkunde), Vienna, under inventory number 99, in the Linden Museum, Stuttgart, under numbers 118923 and 122184, and in the National Museum of Australia, inventoried as Oz211, Oz213 and Oz216.

Ref: 5530

Text and photos © FCP CORIDON