Popoi Pounder with Janus Handle, Marquesas Islandske'a tuki popoi height 9in (23cm)ProvenancePresumably Wolfgang PaalenMarian Willard Johnson Collection, New YorkThence by descent to present ownerMarian Willard Johnson was the founder of The Willard Gallery, a contemporary art gallery operating in New York City from 1940 until 1987. She acquired many works from the surrealist Wolfgang Paalen, who lived in South America and sold artifacts to make a living. Cf. Kjellgren, Eric and Carol Ivory, Adorning the World - Art of the Marquesas Islands, The Metropolitan Museum of New York, 2005, fig. 72According to Kjellgren and Ivory (Ibid., p. 106), "The dating of popoi pounders and other stone objects remains problematic. While ke'a tuki popoi were certainly used in the precontact period, few, if any, appear to have been collected before the late nineteenth century. Some scholars suggest that the tiki-head type [seen here] represents a postcontact development, perhaps part of the general trend toward greater surface ornamentation that occurred in the late nineteenth century. The archaeologist Robert Suggs, however, believes the earliest tiki-head pounders may date from the mid-eighteenth century. According to information provided by Marquesans in the 1920s, the unusual bifacial tiki images on the pounders had no symbolic significance but served purely as adornment."