Throwing Club, Tonga

Mark Eglinton, New York
Abraham Rosman and Paula Rubel, New York, acquired from the above

The Fijian term kolo was used in Tonga to refer to the throwing clubs that were generally referred to as i ula in Fiji (see lots 4, 5, and 6). This name, which has no meaning in Tongan, is one of several indications that throwing clubs spread from Fiji to Tonga and Samoa, where they were known as ‘olo. Whilst many Tongan kolo are almost, if not wholly, indistinguishable from Fijian i ula, there is a small corpus of distinctly Tongan throwing clubs, such as the present lot, that pursue the greater refinement and symmetry of form, which is characteristic of Tongan art.

Here six shield-like bosses or masks emerge in high relief from a head that is almost spherical. Below each face or boss, a fine rib runs down to the raised collar. The bosses bear an immediate and unmistakable resemblance to the faces of the great Goddess sculptures created in the islands of the Ha‘apai group.

Two very similar clubs from the collection of W. O. Oldman, the great English dealer and collector, are in the collection of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington (reg. nos. OL000518/1 and OL000518/2; the former on loan to the Auckland War Memorial Museum Tamaki Paenga Hira. Both illustrated in Oldman, The Oldman Collection of Polynesian Artifacts, Auckland, 2004, pl. 51, cat. nos. 518a, and 518b). Like the present lot, the second Oldman club has a lug which he describes as being “like those on Samoan clubs […]” (ibid., p. 32).