FEATHER MOSAICS
Bateson (1904–1980) passed through the area
five years later, he was asked by Kirschbaum to
send eighteen of the mosaics to Rome, and until
1962 many of these feather mosaics were exhibited
in a showcase of the Lateran Palace next to
a reconstructed men’s house (Piepke 2012: 561,
fig. 2). The remaining four examples from this
group were given by Kirschbaum to Bateson,
who sent them to the Museum of Archaeology
and Anthropology in Cambridge, where they remain
DECLINE IN PRODUCTION
When Cornelius Crane from the Field Museum
of Natural History in Chicago visited the villages
of Kambaramba, Gorogopa, and Geketen
with Father Kirschbaum in 1929, none of the
feather mosaics that had previously been documented
by Kirschbaum were still in existence.
In 1930, Patrol Officer John Keith McCarthy
witnessed the use of feather mosaics on the up-
107
artifacts. The Kirschbaum Collection at the Ethnological
Museum of the Vatican numbers more
than 850 pieces (Piepke 2012: 561), but many
more were probably sent to local SVD museums
in Holland, Germany, Austria, and the US.
The Missiemuseum in Steyl, Netherlands, still
houses seven feather mosaics that entered the
collection before 1929 and were likely collected
by Kirschbaum. From 1915 to 1916, he collaborated
with Thurnwald on research projects in
Marienberg station, where the latter was being
held under house arrest by the Australians.
In 1925, Kirschbaum purchased twenty-two
feather mosaics in the village of Panyiten (Panyaten)
on the upper Keram River but lacked
the funds to send them to Rome. When Gregory
today.
per Yuat. Unlike the Keram mosaics that were
secured with bast-fiber bands, these cut feathers
were assembled with a tree gum. The finished
boards were then assembled in the men’s house
to a large-scale screen of approximately threeby
two meters. When McCarthy returned to
these villages some years later, he was told by
the local men that missionaries had destroyed
all mosaics, as they considered them to be pagan
(McCarthy 1963: 64–65).
In 1935, the plantation owner and dealer in
curios Ernest John (E. J.) Wauchope (1889–
1969) was requested by the Australian Museum
to purchase artifacts for their collection. The
last five feather mosaics known to have left New
Guinea were shipped to Sydney in 1936 (Aus-
Stockholm. It is not clear if he was in contact
with the Berlin expedition that was collecting on
the Sepik at the same time.
Pater Franz Kirschbaum (1882–1939), a
young missionary from the Roman Catholic
mission of the Society of the Divine Word from
Steyl (Societas Verbi Divini, abbreviated SVD),
arrived in New Guinea in 1907 on the island
of Tumleo, the missionary headquarters of the
SVD (fig. 8). His background as a linguist and
his studies in anthropology made him the ideal
candidate to explore the region looking for
potential locations for new mission stations.
In 1907, he founded the mission station of St.
Gabriel, west of Aitape, and in 1913, the first
inland station of Marienberg on the Sepik (Steffen
2014: 789). Over the years, Kirschbaum
developed a profound knowledge of the local
population, their traditions, and their myths.
On his many exploration trips along the Sepik
and its tributaries, he collected a vast number of