Whizzo!!!
Extract from- A.Meyer - Oceanic Art - Konemann. Great book and cheap as these things go-
Indigenous metalwork in New Guinea dates back to the 16th century, when Moluccan Muslim blacksmiths imported the know-how and raw materials, in the form of bronze, silver and iron bars, to the Triton Bay area of the Vogelkop Peninsula. Silver bracelets and iron spearheads were forged by Papuans blacksmiths using the vertical, twin piston type of bellows.
Don Diego de Prado y Tovar attests to this in his captains log of 13 December 1606. Biak Island and Doreh village in Cenderawasih Bay are mentioned in the late 18th and early 19th-century texts as major iron working centers. Dumont d'Urville saw a forge 1827, using the same type of bellows seen 200 years earlier by Don Diego. Small quantities of metal found there way to many parts of New Guinea in pre contact times, either through trade with western tribes and Asian merchants, or acquired by chance from shipwrecks. There were trade links between Micronesia and main land Asia. Spanish galleons bringing gold and silver from the colonies to Manila stopped off in the Marianas from the mid-16th century, and some must have been shipwrecked on there westward route from South America through the northern edge of central Polynesia.
The difference between metal and stone is that the sharp edge of a metal blade lasts longer and cuts quicker, deeper and cleaner than stone or shell. The metal blade gave the artist greater control and allowed him to develop decorative elements that could not be achieved with stone tools: complex surface decorations and intricate openwork forms. Carvers worked faster, which led to decadent forms and a decline in quality. {I would question that statement} The metal cut is usually straight, sharp, deep, clean and > cold<
The of a non metal tool makes a wide, shallow and smooth-sided cut and leaves tiny scratch marks. The bottom of the cut often has a matted appearance, where the blade has only crushed the fibers rather than cut them.
Quite interesting.
My bill seems to have been carved with stone or shell unless the metal tools were heavy and very blunt.
Picture - Blacksmiths Doreh Bay from
Voyage pittoresque autour du monde Paris 1835