Aiya headdress, Yandapu-Enga, Laiagam, Enga Province,... Lot 35

Aiya headdress, Yandapu-Enga, Laiagam, Enga Province, Papua New Guinea Feathers and braided fibers H. 15.2 cm - L. 48.3 cm Provenance : Jolika, Marcia & John Friede Collection, Rye, USA Bibliography : Friede, John, Terence E. Hays, and Christina Hellmich, (Ed. by) 2017. New Guinea Highlands. Art from the Jolika Collection, Munich, London, New York, Fine Arts museums of San-Francisco de Young, Delmonico Books - Prestel, p. 479. The headdress, at all times and on all continents, was not just a simple accessory but, for each civilization, a veritable ornament, transcending the status of the wearer during the ceremony for which it was worn. The ingenuity and creative originality deployed to fashion adornments from a variety of materials, designed to sublimate and transcend the wearer's status, is matched by their great diversity. In Papua, in the province of Eastern Highlands, at Enga, many ornaments are made up of a base of braided plant fibers on which various feathers are fixed in a fan shape; this type of ceremonial headdress is found in the form of a feather crown among the Telefolmin of the West Sepik province (Friede and al., 2017: 84-85, 247 and 504). This aiya headdress, made of a bamboo structure covered with cassowary feathers, forms a remarkably light spiral movement to adapt to the dancer's movement and follow his rhythmic cadence. It stands out for both its composition and its rarity.