Stool
date: label: Accession Date
content: 2 Apr 2014
label: Collection Date
content: 1960's
name: label: Collector
content: Harold Fechtner
label: Donor Name
content: Valerie Taylor
notes: label: Notes
content: Stool or headrest (Urunga) for chiefly people. A note glued on the bottom says "Stool made from the trunk of a tree with shells or stone axes, before white people came to Tahiti, Society Islands." The stool is carved from wood with a rectangular, curved seat and four round legs near the corners of the seat. The seat has 5 carved zig-zag lines along the long top edges and on the long sides. Three legs are broken and two of the broken legs have pieces missing. Thre is a small white inclusion on the seat that may be a shell, with a transparent glue-like filler holding the inclusion in. The donor inherited the stool from her father, Harold Fechtner, who received it from a Baptist missionary in the early 1960's. The donor does not know the missionary's name, but reports that he brought the stool back from Tahiti in the early 1960's. According to Adrienne Kaeppler, curator of Oceania ethnology, the object is a very rare stool type, used only by chiefs and high-status individuals: "[although] the stool [is] said to be Tahitian by the donor, [it] is more likely to have been made in the Cook Islands. It is definitely Cook Islands in style. It might have been collected in Tahiti... but it may have been traded there.”
label: Record Last Modified
content: 29 May 2018
label: Specimen Count
content: 1
place: label: Place
content: Tahiti, Society Islands, France / Cook Islands, Polynesia
topic: label: Topic
content: Ethnology
culture: label: Culture
content: Cook Islander
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 2062314
label: USNM Number
content: E435075-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Stool
physicalDescription: label: Depth - Stool
content: 24 cm
label: Length - Stool
content: 69 cm
label: Width - Stool
content: 32 cm