CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO ENLARGEThis necklace was bought via eBAY, from USA and it came with with no history or provenance. The owner trades on eBAY, lives in Western Australia and has inquired of some eBAY sellers who have said that "the GIs coming back from the islands WW2, bought back all sorts of shell necklaces with them."
The owner – a professional jeweller and collector of maireener shell necklaces – says that this necklace is dyed and that would make it consistent with the Mary Martin Necklaces circa 1900 to 1920s. Also, it may well be consistent with the necklaces that were exported to Hawaii from Tasmania around the turn of the 20th Century by the Martins.
This necklace may also have been made in Honolulu at the Martin's operation there using shells imported from Tasmania and local labour. The shells are clearly Tasmanian and given the paucity of concrete information and the growing number of options, the necklace is the quinessentual exemplar of the ambiguous maireener shell necklace. Here, Tasmanian Aboriginal production seems highly unlikely however.
Later necklaces were dyed but it seems that with the 'older examples' the dying was more subtle than with those made post WW2 in Tasmania. This example would appear to be older than post WW2 necklaces.
If this stringing is 'original' it is consistent with the kind of way some Hawaiian shell lei are strung and it may have been produced by the Martin family either in Hobart or Honolulu for the Hawaiian market.
1 comment:
It's a pretty piece- with the cowrie clasp it does bear quite the resemblance to the style of clasp in the traditional Hawaiian leis made with local shells.Since the dyeing of these maireener shells is more subtle in this work and thus fits better the description of necklaces made prior to WWII, that still could be possible. If the U.S. GI's were bringing these back on their return from military duty, it seems entirely plausible the shells were processed and strung prior to the war. I'm not a historian, but the war in the Pacific would have caused major shipping interruptions, so the shells got to Hawaii before that. Right?
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