Spear

Eighteenth-century European explorers admired the weapons of the Vanuatu people - their clubs, spears, bows, and arrows - but were generally disparaging of the people and their culture, describing them as greatly inferior to those further east. Since then, there has been a growing appreciation of the arts of Vanuatu. Conversely, the obsessive interest in weapons displayed by many nineteenth and early twentieth-century collectors has diminished to the point where the artistic excellence of many weapons is now seriously undervalued.

Details
Weapons in Vanuatu were sometimes decorated with small masterpieces of sculpture, as is this fragment. However, this fragment's pigmentation and elaborate lashing are exceptional compared with other surviving examples.

Fragments
Spear fragments reflect the deplorable tendency of collectors to cut the 'best' bits off larger objects for ease of carrying, storing, and displaying. This practice at least showed that collectors were primarily interested in the sculpture rather than the weapon. However, a fragment alone cannot convey the full power, whether symbolic or functional, of a complete spear.

Acquisition
This spear fragment is one of the many treasures in the Oldman Collection, purchased by the New Zealand Government in 1948 from London dealer and collector W O Oldman and shared amongst New Zealand's museums.