Figure of a goddess

Description

wale tooth ivory, both hands resting aside the bulging belly, rest. (right foot tip), minor missing part (mouth), base;
human figure sculpture in Tonga represented goddesses or ancestors whose uniquely carved images were apparently known only on the Ha´apai group. These female figures in wood or ivory would have been placed as objects of veneration in the god houses. Sometimes they were worn, either as charms or ornaments, by women enyoing the status of a chief.
The figure was inherited to Margheritha Mona Comotto by her Great Aunt, who was an Italian missionary in the Kingdom of Tonga in the early 1900s to the outbreak of World War I., when she returned to Rangoon in Burma, where Margherita and her family lived. She gave the figure to Margherita, because as a child she loved to play with it. Margherita herself had to escape from the approaching japanese troops in march 1942. After a spectacular flight through the burmese jungle she got to India, where she met John Staley, who was a Sergeant in the Royal Air Force. After the war the family moved to Portsmouth, Great Britain with what little had survived as nearly everything they had in Rangoon had even been destroyed by war or stolen. The figure however has survived two World Wars and remained in the family until today. The old photo shows Margherita Mona Camotto and John Staley on their wedding day in India in 1943.