A Rapa earns respect selling at £220,000

FOR the Rapa Nui people of Easter Island, wooden dance paddles known simply as Rapa were essential to many ceremonies and dances.

They were usually carried in pairs to emphasise the movements of the dancers, who spun them on their axis, and were also reportedly used during funerary rituals. Whilst other types of Rapa Nui wooden sculpture display detailed facial features, these Rapa showed just an abstract suggestion of a face.

Only around 30 authenticated Rapa are recorded, with most residing in international museums as icons of ethnographic art. There have been a number of fakes on the market in recent years and, while some substantial five-figure sums have been bid for these in regional rooms, few sales have been consummated.

But it appears that the world’s most serious collectors of Oceanic art thought this example, with an old provenance, was the real deal when it was offered for sale on April 13 at the Island Auction Rooms on the Isle of Wight.

The 2ft (60cm) paddle was consigned by a local vendor whose uncle worked for P&O cruise ships in the 1920s as a Purser, during which time he travelled to the Polynesian Islands where he purchased the paddle. When he died in the 1930s, it passed to the family and has been propped against a wall ever since.

Initially estimated at £10,000, it attracted interest from Australia, Belgium, America and London and the estimate was revised to £20,000-40,000. All phone lines were booked and a number of bidders flew in for the sale. After a lengthy phone battle, it sold for £220,000 (plus 10 per cent buyer’s premium) to a London collector against a Belgian underbidder.

Source: Antiques Trade Gazette

Tribal Index online database

Tribal Index is a newly launched online database of the major African art auctions of the last forty years. The service includes an object library, with more than 40,000 illustrated art pieces, a price database and functions to personalize your research. An Oceanic database will be available in 2010.

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I would be curious to get feedback from users about their experience with the database (positive or negative) so please post comments if you have tried the service.

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Southern African Art Auction Records

Sotho horn snuff bottle: Sotheby's Paris December 2007 - Lot 101 Euro 72,000


Even experienced collectors are surprised when I tell them how well southern African art has performed as an investment over the last 15 years. Over the next few weeks I will be posting a few record-setting objects from past auctions.

Collectors should note that most of the great southern African objects are sold privately and thus won't be reflected here. Objects have reached in the $25,000 to $350,000 range and it won't be long before they reach the half million dollar mark - not bad for utilitarian objects seen as nothing more than decorative or ethnographic material until a few years ago.

The growth in value has been driven by a number of factors: the landmark exhibition of the Lowen (now Oppenheimer) collection in the 1990's; the championing of the art by dealers and collectors such as Conru, Guisson and Horstmann; the publication of numerous new books on private collections which have served to educate the collecting public.


Tsonga neckrest: Sotheby's Paris December 2006 - Lot 227 Euro 74,400