A Fern Tree Grade Post

• Lot Sold $8,000 (Hammer Price)
• $9,600 (Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium)

GAUA, BANKS ISLANDS, VANUATU
cut tree fern
HEIGHT: 173CM

Provenance:  
Carved by Chief Jonathan Worales on Gaua in the Banks Islands in 1968
Collected by Paul Gardissat on Gaua in 1968
Private collection

Cf. Felix Speiser and D.Q. Stephenson, Ethnology of Vanuatu - An early twentieth century study, Bathurst: Crawford House Publishing, 1996, English translation of the original 1923 edition, pp.353-354, for discussion of related Grade Posts and grade-taking rituals and see Alan Wardwell, Oceanic Art from the Masco Collection, Detroit Institute of the Arts Founders Society, Detroit 1994, for an illustration and discussion of another Banks Island Grade figure.
 
Wardell states, 'During his lifetime, a man of Vanuatu might ascend through as many as twenty individually named grades in his society, attaining more status and power with each elevation. On Banks Islands...the society is called Sukwe. The ceremonies connected with the acquisition of each grade were accompanied with dances, initiations, feasts, and pig sacrifices, all of which called attention to the individual's greatness and high religious standing in his community. They required the expenditure of considerable amounts of wealth through the ownership and offering of pigs to be killed.

At each ceremony, the sponsoring individual had the right to wear certain types of ritual paraphernalia and sometimes masks or headdresses. Specific objects were also displayed and specific structures were built for the events. The man also had the right to have a figure made of fernwood, its form dependent on the codes of the particular grade level. These sculptures were displayed on platforms in shelters under which dances were performed. During the ceremonies, it was believed that the figures became inhabited with the spirits of ancestors.' (Wardwell, 1994, p. 140).