IATMUL HOOK, PAPUA NEW GUINEA Wood H. 48 cm Provenance : Philip Goldman (London) Loed Van Bussel (Amsterdam) Philippe Laeremans (Brussels) Superb hook carved in a thin wooden board, decorated at the top with a beautiful and particularly expressive head, the smiling mouth, the arrow-shaped nose with dilated nostrils, the small round eyes with a well-marked pupil, the cheekbones enhanced with two pastilles in relief which seem to form a second look, the pierced ears, the forehead decorated with scarifications and pierced to allow the passage of a suspension cord. The ovoid body, without arms, is adorned with engraved decorations forming flexible lines and scrolls that converge towards the central navel. The body tapers to the hook itself, in the shape of an anchor, materialized by a superb head of a Janus catfish with hallucinated eyes, whose gills rise laterally in an arrow, well drawn nostrils and half-open mouth. The back is decorated with various abstract scarifications. The whole hook is covered with a superb and ancient black material, finely crusted, which reveals on the edges and reliefs the rich tones of the wood that has been manipulated and polished by use.