CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Sleeping Mat
vor 1900
About the object
A long sleeping mat woven from pandanus leaves and transversally sewn. A string, dyed red, has been sewn into the borders as a form of ornament. According to the collector, this is a valuable piece due to its elaborate means of production. It is still unclear how this and other similar artefacts from the Caroline Islands were acquired for Antonie Brandeis’s collection. She herself was unlikely to have visited the Caroline Islands. Collectable ethnographic artefacts circulated amongst European traders, missionaries, sailors and civil servants and were both sold and given away as gifts. Antonie Brandeis demonstrably received large swathes of such artefacts from other collectors as gifts. It is not known if this one also belonged to these gifts.