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African and Oceanic Art from the Barbier-Mueller Museum, Geneva: A Legacy of Collecting
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Anthropomorphic Kava Bowl (Daveniyaqona)
Fiji, eastern Viti Levu Island, early 19th century
Wood; H: 14 1/8 in. (35.9 cm)
Provenance: Melbourne Aquarium, Melbourne, Australia, 1900–ca. 1953; private collection, Australia, ca. 1953; Roberta Nochimson; [Lance Entwistle]; George Ortiz, Switzerland; [Lance Entwistle, London, 1986]; Barbier-Mueller collection, since 1986
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A central element of ceremonial life in Fiji is the drinking of kava, a mildly narcotic beverage prepared from the roots of the kava plant. Today kava is served in coconut shell cups filled from a large bowl during communal kava ceremonies. In the past, however, kava drinking was a highly restricted sacred activity typically conducted within spirit houses and limited to priests, chiefs, and high-ranking male elders. During these rites, the participants were possessed by ancestral spirits, who partook of the kava through these human intermediaries. To drink, the participant knelt or lay upon the ground and sipped the kava from a shallow wood vessel or leaf-lined pit using a wooden or reed drinking straw. The kava vessels used in these rites occur in both geometric shapes and naturalistic forms, such as humans, ducks, or turtles. When in use, this rare human-shaped kava bowl would have been laid on its back on the ground and the shallow depression formed by the body filled with the sacred beverage. See a turtle-shaped kava bowl from Fiji in the Met's collection.
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