(CH 280) West New Britain Scoop.
These large ornamented ladles are kept and used only for the more important occasions. Ladles such as these are common through out West New Britain, predominantly carved from one piece of wood with a shallow scoop area.
Each ladle is used during the feasts for serving a pudding known as Pollom, each one being unique as Tibor Bodrogi noted:
Although only a relatively small number of motifs are used, the forms are so varied that two almost similar specimens are ever encountered.
The pommel is a bird or crocodile head clasps a long ago broken away object in this mouth, the walls of the scoop section are also missing, cut back generations ago and the object has a deep black / red silky patina overall.
The face on the bridge of the scoop may represent Mooro, an ancestral hero of the Kilengi people, the face has long openwork ears to each side.
West New Britain.
19th / early 20th Century.
Height 63Cm.

References:
Astrolabe bay, Huon Gulf & West New Britain. Philip Dark. in Arts of the South Seas: the collections of the Musee Barbier Mueller 1999 Ed. D.Newton. P.209.

Art in North-East New Guinea, Tibor Bodrogi, Budapest 1961. Page 107.