Fine early aboriginal and oceanic art auction

Place: Tea House, Royal Randwick Racecourse, Alison Road, Randwick, Sydney, Australia
Preview: 27h and 28th August from 11am to 5pm and 29th August from 11am to 4.30pm

Contact: mail@mossgreen.com.au

Catalogue: online catalogue

About Mossgreen Auctions:

Mossgreen Auctions specialises in single owner auctions for collections covering fine art and antiques. Services include auctions held in our stylish multi-level building at 310 Toorak Road South Yarra, to on-site auctions at the owner’s property or staged events in hired premises tailored to suit the collection.

With nearly 25 years auction experience with International and Australian auction houses, Mossgreen Auctions director Paul Sumner is available to advise and personally manage the sale of your collection.

We offer realistic vendor terms and personalised and imaginative marketing strategies that ensure the very best results.

Auction statistics prove that collections often fetch much higher prices when kept together as a collection.

Mossgreen Auctions has handled many of the most significant single-owner collections in recent years including:

The Ray Mitchell and Julian Sterling auction in February 2007 where the sale total was an Australian record for any antiques auction at 4.4 million against a pre-sale estimated total of 2.1 million.

The company holds many individual Australian art auction records, including the highest price for any living Australian artist-John Olsen’s “Love in the kitchen”- 1969, sold for $1.089 million and the auction record for Australia’s most acclaimed artist- Sir Sidney Nolan, when the company sold- Kelly Outlaw 1955 for $1.45 million

Mossgreen Auctions has averaged in excess of 90% sold by lot and well over 120% by value, averaged out over all of its single owner auctions. These statistics are well beyond the accepted market averages of 70-80% for other auctions.

If you are looking to sell a collection,then prior to breaking up the collection elsewhere, consult the name you can trust- Mossgreen.

Mossgreen also holds two important multi-vendor Australian art auctions per year, two Fine antiques and jewellery auctions, and one Important Asian Art auction per year. These auctions offer superbly presented and fully researched catalogues coupled with imaginative marketing and the same personalised approach that is the company’s signature.

‘Interior Decorator’ Auctions are held every two months at the company’s secondary auction location- 94 High street Prahran. These sales encompass the mid- value and collectors markets and cover all fields from antiques to quality contemporary furnishings, as well as Asian art, jewellery and Australian and International art.

The Duduk and its Music

© Samvel Amirkhanyan

An Armenian oboe, the Duduk accompanies popular songs and dances and is played at social events such as weddings, anniversaries and funerals. The Armenian Duduk is distinctive in construction and performance technique and characterized by a warm and soft timbre.
The project aims to safeguard traditional duduk music in the difficult modern social, cultural and political context in Armenia. The main components of the project are: (i) training and transmission of skills and know-how; (ii) documentation and inventorying; and (iii) public awareness-raising. The planned activities include organizing master classes in a number of provincial schools, publishing a Practical manual for players, makers, and students of the duduk, compiling an Inventory of the Armenian Duduk Tradition and organizing open-air concerts. The project is intended to improve the context in which the main bearers of the tradition – the duduk players – evolve, and to give rise to a renewed interest in duduk music among the Armenian public.
Inscribed in 2008 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (originally proclaimed in 2005)
© Text: UNESCO

The Burial of Emperor Haile Selassie - Photographs by Peter Marlow

The Burial of Emperor Haile Selassie: Photographs by Peter Marlow

22 April – 21 November 2010, Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, United Kingdom

©Pitt-Rivers Museum

When Emperor Haile Selassie was finally buried in Addis Ababa in 2000, twenty-five years after his death, only a few European journalists were there to witness it. Renowned Magnum photographer Peter Marlow was among them. The 21 photographs in this exhibition document a remarkable event in recent Ethiopian history, one that provoked fresh debate about both Haile Selassie and Ethiopia’s troubled political history. Marlow’s photographs explore the tensions between royal, state and religious hierarchies that surrounded the ceremony, as well as more personal expressions of loyalty by some of the participants.

Ndome kikuyu dance shield

Name: Ndome dance shield

Origin: Kikuyu people, Muranga, Fort Hall, Kenya, Africa

Date: Collected by J. G. Le Breton, Given to the Museum in 1933

Museum: Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, UK

Comments:

This leaf-shaped, wooden dance shield is known as ndome and is used in boys’ coming-of-age ceremonies among the Kikuyu people of central Kenya. On the reverse (shown here on the right) it has an arm grip carved from the solid and is decorated with carved zigzag designs painted in red, black and white.

The rite of passage into adulthood for both boys and girls is important to Kikuyu culture. The initiations of both sexes are separate affairs but both involve circumcision and the use of shields. For boys, the ceremony is called Irua and takes place between the ages of fifteen and eighteen.

First, there are a number of dances. The boys wear the ndome shields during these dances to symbolise the adult warrior status they are about to acquire. The ring on the back of the shield is worn under the left armpit, so the shield itself stands high above the head of the dancer. After the dancing comes the surgical operation itself, performed at a special ritual location known as theIteri. To preserve their family honour, the boys are expected to undergo the operation in silence, without flinching. Several boys are circumcised at once and each new set of initiates (mwanake) is considered to be a distinct age set (rika). Each rika is given a group name and its members treat each other as brothers for life, and fight together in battle.

Undergoing Irua is attractive to Kikuyu boys for a number of reasons: An uncircumcised male (no matter how old) is prevented from owning possessions, socialising with adults, fighting as a warrior for the clan, marrying, or sleeping in the Thingira - a communal house for initiated young men where initiated young women are permitted to visit.

© Photos and text: Pitt Rivers Museum

Brazilian Feijoada

Feijoada is a stew of beans with beef and pork, which is a typical Portuguese dish, also typical in Brazil, Angola and other former Portuguese colonies. In Brazil, feijoada is considered the national dish, which was brought to South America by the Portuguese, based in ancient Feijoada recipes from the Portuguese regions of Beira, Estremadura, and Trás-os-Montes.

The Brazilian feijoada is prepared with black turtle beans, with a variety of salted pork and beef products, such as salted pork trimmings (ears, tail, feet), bacon, smoked pork ribs, at least two types of smoked sausage and jerked beef (loin and tongue).

This stew is best prepared over slow fire in a thick clay pot. The final dish has the beans and meat pieces barely covered by a dark purplish-brown broth. The taste is strong, moderately salty but not spicy, dominated by the flavours of black bean and meat stew.

A popular myth states that the Brazilian feijoada was a "luxury" dish of African slaves on Brazilian colonial farms (engenhos), as it was prepared with relatively cheap ingredients (beans, rice, collard greens, farofa) and leftovers from salted pork and meat production. Over time, it first became a popular dish among lower classes, and finally the "national dish" of Brazil, offered even by the finest restaurants.

However, historians like Luís da Câmara Cascudo consider that feijoada is a Brazilian version of stews from Southern European countries like France (cassoulet), Spain, Italy and, of course, Portugal. Traditional Portuguese bean-and-pork dishes (cozidos) like those from the regions of Estremadura and Trás-os-Montes are the ancestors of Brazilian feijoada. The earliest printed references to the dish appeared in the mid-19th century, based on menus of upper-class, urban restaurants.

Feijoada Recipe

Ingredients:

• 4 1/4 lbs black beans 
• 1 1/4 lbs dried beef 
• 1 lb salt cured pork 
• 1 lb bacon 
• 1 lb smoked sausage 
• 6 pieces dried sausage 
• 1 piece smoked beef tongue 
• 2 pigs ears 
• 2 pigs tail (or equal amount of ox tail) 
• 2 pigs trotters 
• 1 large chopped onion 
• 1 medium chopped onlion 
• 1 tablespoon olive oil 
• 6 cloves garlic 
• 3 bay leaves 
• oranges 
• hot peppers 
• rice, manioc, couscous or fried, shredded kale

How to cook it

Place beans and salted meats in separate bowls. Cover each with water. Keep covered with water for 24 hours; but change water every 6 hours. Put all of the ingredients into a very large cooking pan and cover with water. Add ½ orange, 3 bay leaves, 1 medium chopped onion and pepper. Cook everything over a low heat and gradually withdraw the meats as they are cooked to prevent them from becoming too soft. In a separate pan heat a tablespoon of soybean oil and fry the 6 cloves of garlic and the large chopped onion. Pour into the beans and mix well. Temporarily remove a cup of the beans and crush with a wooden spoon to thicken the sauce. Serve with white rice, manioc or fried, shredded kale along with hot peppers

© Text and image: Wikipedia / Recipe: www.world-recipes.info  

The Emerald Forest

Title: The Emerald Forest

Director: John Boorman

Writer: Rospo Pallenberg

Year: 1985

Running time: 110 minutes

Unofficial webpage:  The Emerald Forest

Plot summary:

Bill Markham is an engineer who has moved to Brazil with his family to complete the construction of a large hydro-electric dam. The construction requires large areas of forest to be cleared, even more to be flooded. Its completion will bring more people to the areas who will clear the jungle for agriculture and living space.

Markham takes his family to the edge of the forest for a picnic to show them the jungle. It is then that an Indian from one of the indigenous tribes known as the Invisible People notices his son, Tommy, aged seven, has bright green eyes the colour of the forest. The tribesman decides that it is unfair to leave the child with these strange people, who, in his opinion, are destroying the world. He abducts the child. Markham pursues them, but his son is gone.

The story jumps ahead some ten years. The dam is nearing completion. Tommy, or Tommé as he is now called, has become part of the tribe that he lives with, adopting their language, culture and way of life. His father finds him but discovers that he is not the son he once had.

Tommé's tribe is later threatened by another, as well as by the near completion of the dam. Markham decides to help his son so that the way of life he has adopted is not destroyed.

Based on a true story.

The film was screened out of competition at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival.

© Text and image: Wikipedia