Probably Kanak, New Caledonia
Wood, encrusted patina
80 cm

Provenance:
Collection Antony Innocent "Père" Moris (1866-1951), Paris
Private collection, France
Pace African and Oceanic Art, New York (2011)
Private collection
Property from a Princely collection

Published:
Raoul Lehuard, La collection du Père Moris, in Arts d'Afrique Noire, No. 46, Summer 1983, p.40 Art Tribal, No. 4, Winter 2003, p. 94

Antony Innocent Moris, nicknamed Père Moris first bought a shop around 1900 at 10 Rue Victor-Massé, mainly to give his wife Marie something to do while he worked as a clerk at a police station. Merely a junkshop, it wouldn't take long for Moris to upgrade the boutique to an antique shop. A fortuitous encounter with the collector W.O. Oldman would change the further course of his life, kindling his interest in primitive art. More than an antique dealer, Père Moris was a collector at heart. In the vicinity of his shop lived at the time an almost famous Pablo Picasso, and Paul Guillaume, and the increasing demand amongst collectors for exotic art - whether it’d be African, Asian, or Polynesian - would push him more in his job as an antique dealer. The word spread quickly, and unwittingly Père Moris would become the first dealer in African and Oceanic art in Paris and in a way the spiritual father of later generations of famous dealers such as Paul Guillaume and Charles Ratton.Sometime after the end of WWII, an aging Père Moris decided to sell his whole collection, and at the time a young Charles Ratton took photographs of the collection. In one of the pictures (fig.1), we can recognize this very rare type of war club hanging from the wall, slightly to the left of the center.