Post #409545 by Swanky on Tue, Sep 23, 2008 11:26 AM

On 2008-09-23 10:47, bigbrotiki wrote:
...and I bet all this stuffed comes from untouched tribes that have made it solely for ritual purposes, after which it was discovered deep in the jungle by an intrepid explorer who fought off headhunters and warring tribesmen to bring these treasures to civilization...right, Swanky? :wink:

On 2008-09-23 06:16, Swanky wrote:
I don't know about that Sven. Have you been to PNG? Who here has? There is no tourist market in PNG.
There are small pieces done for fun or tourist trade, but for the most part, it is all real. That is the beauty of PNG. It remains relatively untouched and its culture intact.

By the containerful? I never said it was tourist art or for the tourist trade, just that it was made for sale, which means not in a ritual context. Primitive art is an industry there, just like in Africa. Most of the imported art you see for sale in shops nowadays is anywhere between 20 to 2 years old. Which, as I said before, is totally fine by me when it looks as authentic as Rob's find does.

That's pretty cynical, and has some truth.

The guy in Indiana is a anthropologist who is a collector of course. He brought stuff over and sold to museums and other collectors to fund his trips which started in 1969. That's been the case ever since. But the operation is bigger. I have walked through the stuff with him and he says "that's just a fake piece." Like the bat figures. But the majority he says things like "that is from a very remote village we rarely get to. Only a handful of outsiders go there in a year." As was the case when I inquired about a yam mask like Trader Vic's uses in their logo. When I was there last, he had an Oratory table similar to mine from the Korogo Village, but it was all red. Much less ornate. It was much older than mine and mine is 75+ years old. Some things he had pulled out of lakes. Stuff just tossed off over the decades. And there were plenty of things in that group just brought over that he refused to sell. They were for his own collection.

Some of it is just made with the notion someone will buy it. Much of it is discarded items from houses and Men's houses. A good deal of it is 20+ years old.

There are some places with stuff that they bring from villages and store for people to buy. But, a good deal of it is the "real thing". There are far too many objects there that are too large for any tourist. Canoes, house gables, gable masks that are 5 feet tall, slit drums that are so large it takes a tractor to move them, lodge poles 15 feet long.