A Broad Shield, Lower Murray River Early 19th Century

Carved and engraved wood (inner bark of the gum tree), bentwood handle, pipe clay

Private collection, United Kingdom

Cf. Daniel S. Davidson, A Preliminary Consideration of Aboriginal Australian Decorative Art, Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. IX, Philadelphia, 1937, p.43, fig.30C, for a shield of similar form in the collection of the South Australian Museum; Howard Morphy, Aboriginal Art, Phaidon, London, 1998, p.333, for a shield collected before 1874 in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, with a similarly engraved design; Carol Cooper et al., Aboriginal Australia, Australian Gallery Directors Council, 1981, p.87, fig.S42, for a shield of similar form and related engraved designs.