Accession Number: Nr.33073

Museum: Dresden Museum of Ethnology

Date Acquired: c.1881

Collector: John Ewen Davidson (1841-1923)

Date Collected: Pre 1881

Where from: Mulgrave River

Description: Wooden shield painted red on the inside incised figures arrows, snakes branches twigs or spears with barbs; on the handle it says “Australia from Baessler”, which may suggest that Davidson had befriended anthropologist and photographer Arthur Baessler (1857-1907) when he toured Australia in 1891-1893.[1]

[1] ‘Interviews with German Anthropologists’, http://www.germananthropology.com/short-portrait/arthur-baessler/303, downloaded 20 November, 2015.

Collected by John Ewen Davidson, who was a Scottish immigrant who is credited with pioneering the sugar industry in north Queensland (Barnard 2014).

See: ‘John Ewen Davidson’ authored by Trish Barnard

http://www.jcucollections.org/?page_id=824