Massive Boiken Lintel, Sepik River region
A Boiken, Sepik river region, Papua New Guinea, lintel, collected by patrol officer turned field collector Bruce Lawes in the 1970s. This carving would have been suspended on a ceremonial house and is associated with primordial spirits (wala) inhabiting the surrounding forest.
Note the horizontal heads at each end with pierced noses and five spirit faces in between with totemic birds.
For more information see Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin’s “Ceremonial Houses of the Abelam Architecture and Ritual: a Passage to the Ancestors,” 2016, with a rare in situ photo taken by J. Hauser in Kumun village in 1979 (last image in the carousel).
Another example of a Boiken lintel can be seen in the Michael Rockefeller Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the MET commentary reading “Boiken lintel carvings are extremely rare, with only roughly a dozen examples known, many of them fragmentary.”
Circa 1940s.
Length: 116 ¾ in / 296.5 cm
Ex. Bruce Lawes, Australia;
Ex. private collection, Beverly Hills;
Ex. Michael Hamson, Palos Verdes.
A Boiken, Sepik river region, Papua New Guinea, lintel, collected by patrol officer turned field collector Bruce Lawes in the 1970s. This carving would have been suspended on a ceremonial house and is associated with primordial spirits (wala) inhabiting the surrounding forest.
Note the horizontal heads at each end with pierced noses and five spirit faces in between with totemic birds.
For more information see Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin’s “Ceremonial Houses of the Abelam Architecture and Ritual: a Passage to the Ancestors,” 2016, with a rare in situ photo taken by J. Hauser in Kumun village in 1979 (last image in the carousel).
Another example of a Boiken lintel can be seen in the Michael Rockefeller Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the MET commentary reading “Boiken lintel carvings are extremely rare, with only roughly a dozen examples known, many of them fragmentary.”
Circa 1940s.
Length: 116 ¾ in / 296.5 cm
Ex. Bruce Lawes, Australia;
Ex. private collection, Beverly Hills;
Ex. Michael Hamson, Palos Verdes.
A Boiken, Sepik river region, Papua New Guinea, lintel, collected by patrol officer turned field collector Bruce Lawes in the 1970s. This carving would have been suspended on a ceremonial house and is associated with primordial spirits (wala) inhabiting the surrounding forest.
Note the horizontal heads at each end with pierced noses and five spirit faces in between with totemic birds.
For more information see Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin’s “Ceremonial Houses of the Abelam Architecture and Ritual: a Passage to the Ancestors,” 2016, with a rare in situ photo taken by J. Hauser in Kumun village in 1979 (last image in the carousel).
Another example of a Boiken lintel can be seen in the Michael Rockefeller Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the MET commentary reading “Boiken lintel carvings are extremely rare, with only roughly a dozen examples known, many of them fragmentary.”
Circa 1940s.
Length: 116 ¾ in / 296.5 cm
Ex. Bruce Lawes, Australia;
Ex. private collection, Beverly Hills;
Ex. Michael Hamson, Palos Verdes.