Ethnographica & Tribal Art

Pablo Picasso is revered as a key pioneer of Cubism, the radical approach to representing reality that he spearheaded with Georges Braque in the early 1900s. As with so many art movements, its roots extend further back, however.

South Pacific war clubs continue to strike high prices at auctions, as this Tongan example sold in Stafford this month shows.

Bonhams throw down the gauntlet at Irma Stern Museum after Strauss & Co's China Girl TV stunt

Lady Jane Franklin (1791-1875) gained worldwide admiration for her efforts to trace her husband’s disappearance on his fatal 1845 voyage seeking the North West Passage.

This 17in (43cm) Fang bieri guardian palmwood figure from Gabon in West Africa set a house record at Netherhampton Salerooms in Salisbury when it sold for £88,000.

ALL 49 lots from the Murray Frum collection of Oceanic art found a buyer on September 16 at Sotheby’s (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) in Paris. The hammer total was €6.24m (£5.2m).

As the summer break ends, next month sees a rush of activity in the art world with a flurry of events not least in the Tribal Art category.

Maori boat-shaped feather boxes – or ‘waka huia’ – are infrequent visitors to UK salerooms so it was unusual to see two examples sold in close proximity this summer.

The first stand-alone tribal art sale held by Woolley & Wallis in Salisbury was topped at £44,000 by this 19th or early 20th century Yombe seated figure from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Last October, South Africa House in Trafalgar Square, London hosted an exhibition of artworks in the image of, and inspired by, Nelson Mandela.

In the islands of the Pacific, where hardwood trees were abundant and iron virtually non-existent until the 19th century, the fighting club was elevated to an art form – made in a wider variety of forms and with more lavish decoration than any other weapon.

To great publicity last November Martel Maides of Guernsey sold a collection of Fijian cannibal forks for close to £30,000. They were the property of a local collector, who had bought them privately in the North Midlands three or four decades ago – the same vendor who entered an Aboriginal parrying shield to the auctioneer’s sale last month with hopes of £3000-4000.

He may have conquered much of Europe, but time waits for no man, as Napoleon found out on May 5, 1821.

The multitude of television shows devoted to antiques are rarely popular with the antiques trade as a whole – in a well-worn argument some credit them with the disintegration of the dealing community itself – but auctioneers are ready participants both for the publicity and the prospect of a decent consignment.

Around ten pieces of tribal art consigned from a private collection are to be auctioned in Cuttlestones’ mixed-discipline sale in Penkridge, Staffordshire, on May 25.

Soon after the gallery doors close at the BRUNEAF fair in Brussels on June 10 all eyes turn to Paris where Christie’s and Sotheby’s will hold major African and Oceanic sales on succeeding days.

AUCTIONEER Martin Lawrence of Petersfield firm Jacobs & Hunt was not expecting much when asked to conduct a probate valuation in a top-floor council flat in a rundown part of Southsea.

A KENT auction house has withdrawn a sacred Aboriginal artefact from sale after intervention from cultural experts and the Australian High Commission.

A ROW has erupted after another attempt by South American interests to intervene in a tribal art sale in Paris.

Just days after Sotheby’s announced the sale of a 16th century ivory mask and five other works from the Kingdom of Benin, the auctioneers said they have been withdrawn.