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African and Oceanic Art from the Barbier-Mueller Museum, Geneva: A Legacy of Collecting
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Forehead Ornament (Kapkap)
Western Solomon Islands, 19th century
Tridacna shell, turtle shell, fiber; Diam: 4 3/4 in. (12 cm)
Provenance: H. Gibson, England, before 1893; Royal United Services Institute Museum, London, 1893; James Hooper, England, before 1979; [Christie's, London 1980], Barbier-Mueller collection, since 1980
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Among the most intricate and widespread forms of jewelry in the southwest Pacific is the kapkap, a disk-shaped ornament fashioned from the shell of a giant clam and overlaid with a delicate openwork filigree of turtle shell. This example is probably from the western Solomon Islands, where kapkap were used as head ornaments. Attached, as here, to a fiber headband, kapkap in this area were typically worn around the head with the disk to one side of the forehead.
The designs on the turtle-shell overlay of this kapkap are unusual in that they include several representational motifs. The bird images, with curved beaks and pronounced tails, depict frigate birds. They were probably associated with spirits who behaved like or manifested themselves in the form of these majestic creatures. The small human heads, their earlobes stretched and adorned with circular ear ornaments, may refer to the former practice of headhunting, which continued in the Solomon Islands until the end of the nineteenth century. See another form of kapkap from the Santa Cruz Islands in the Met's collection.
See the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History to learn more about the Solomon Islands.
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