Pacific Arts: The Journal of the Pacific Arts Association

This article first introduces shell ornaments and pottery on the Aitape Islands in New Guinea, discussing the role of women in their production during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It then turns to material culture produced by men—cult houses and canoes—that depended on supplies obtained by trading women’s products like shell valuables. By discussing these two gendered art forms together, this article shows how integral women’s labour was to the larger social and economic structures in New Guinea that have predominantly been associated with men. It concludes by discussing how colonisation, missionisation, and the introduction of a monetary economy impacted the gendered relations of art production in the islands.