A Rare Banks Islands War Spear

A Rare Banks Islands War Spear, wood , sennet , bamboo.
A superb spear featuring a carved open-worked spearhead set in a bamboo shaft with three sets of four downward facing barbs culminating in four stylised anthropomorphic faces set in a set of serrated barbs facing both upwards and downwards to the shaft. A beautiful addition are the round carved eyes.
The overall affect is an animated menacing face staring in all directions from the spear. The design is reminiscent to me of some designs found on Suque Society, Banks Islands ( see image ) plus another reference a Grade figure featured at the Metropolitan Museum, Michael C. Rockefeller Wing , Object Number 2019.594.
Ex Nicolai Michoutouchkine, Port Vila, Vanuatu.
Ex private Us Collection
Ex W. Heathcote, UK
€4000 L196cm x 5cm.
Reference Arts of Vanuatu J Bonnemaison, K and C Kaufmann. p269
Fig 341 Musée National des arts d’Afrique et D,Oceanie and now at the Musée Du Quai Branly Jacques Chirac Inventory Number 72.1966.16.13 Collected by Jean Guiart.
Also a similarly carved spearhead is seen at The British Museum , collected by Louis-Joseph Bouge (1878-1960) who was a French colonial administrator and scholar-collector who served in New Caledonia in 1899. Oc 1913,1115.143.
It is of note that Nicolai Michoutouchkine accompanied Jean Guiart on field collection trips Guiart was a French Anthropologist and Ethnologist particularly interested in New Caledonia and Vanuatu. From 1968 to 1973 he was director of studies at the EPHE, and then from 1973 to 1988 director of the ethnology laboratory at the Musée de l'Homme in Paris, a position offering latitude to conduct fieldwork and research. From 1972 to 1982 he was president of the Société des Océanistes, and served as its vice-president from 1961 to 1971 and from 1982 to 1995.
€2500