Horn

ClassificationsTools and Equipment-musical instruments-trumpets

Culture Iatmul

Date20th Century

Made AtEast Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea

MediumWood

Dimensions16 5/8 × 2 3/4 × 2 3/4 in. (42.2 × 7 × 7 cm)
In stand: 19 × 4 × 4 in. (48.3 × 10.2 × 10.2 cm)

Credit LineBowers Museum Purchase

Object number2019.10.2

DescriptionThis is a wooden horn made by the Iatmul tribe of Papua New Guinea’s Sepik River. Horns are objects of paramount importance among the Iatmul and other Sepik cultures. They were blown to commemorate a successful war party, and perhaps similar occasions, but they were also used for the traditional function of horns: to create music.
Used in pairs, trumpets with varying apertures produced different notes, and talented performers could use these instruments to great effect, creating such a harmonious sound that it reminded an early German ethnographer of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. Horns could be highly ornate, decorated with geometric, zoomorphic, and anthropomorphic figures. This object’s relative lack of decoration indicates that it comes further from the west.

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