 | Offered in the 'Collection Vérité' on 21 November 2017 at Christie’s in Paris.
Hawaiian figurative sculptures are incredibly rare. Kamehameha I associated himself with the war god Ku-ka’ili-moku — the ‘land snatcher’ or ‘island eater’. This example was made circa 1780-1820 from the Metrosideros, a tree found in the high mountains of Hawaii. The figures that are known are all in museums. The statue made a whooping $7.5m blowing well past it's $3.5m estimate.
 | Also being auctioned is a Uli figure, which is a type of wooden statue carved only in the villages of New Ireland in Papua New Guinea. $ 3.4m
Tribal art is rising in value and has been doing so for many years. The reason is extreme rarity, there are more and more museums, but fewer and fewer pieces. |
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