A davenibürau food bowl or priest's dish. - Lot 128

A davenibürau food bowl or priest's dish. Carved from the sacred wood known as vesi, with incised decoration around the rim, this bowl may have been a food dish, but it was most certainly a davenibürau priest's dish used to hold perfumed coconut oil, as evidenced by a clear mark of ancient impregnation of the wood inside its crucible. In addition to its superb patina, which reveals the veins of this red wood, the bowl has two holes which were used to hang it in the spirit house once it had been used. This bowl, turned upside down, shows a particular curvature, and its shape (not completely circular) clearly evokes the shell of a turtle, a final clue to identify this bowl as a priest's dish for scented coconut oil. Fiji Islands Wood, two old holes, superb old patina. D. 24.5 cm See: p. 220 and 221 for other Fiji priest dishes in Polynesia The Mark and Carolyn Blackburn Collection of Polynesian Art, Adrienne L. Kaeppler, Ed. M. & C. Blackburn 2010. Provenance : Jean Roudillon Collection