Club, kotiate form

Several wooden examples of the kotiate ‘fiddle-shaped’ club date to the eighteenth century, but only around the turn of the nineteenth century do they appear to have been made in whalebone, perhaps because of the increasing availability of this material as a result of the visits of European Whalers, though other types of club had previously been made in whalebone. The general form of the kotiate resembles a highly stylised human figure and the butt terminal usually takes the form of a head in full profile, with a curving tongue extending from the mouth.

In examples made for exhibition and sale purposes during the last quarter of the nineteenth century this profile head becomes highly ornate and exaggerated and the body of these clubs is also often engraved with large eyes and gaping mouths. This example, of more coarse bone than 185, appears to have been polished or varnished.

Steven Hooper, 1997

Entry taken from Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Collection, Vol. 2: Pacific, African and Native North American Art, edited by Steven Hooper (Yale University Press, 1997) p. 14.