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Lot Essay
In 1969 a group of South Pacific artefacts from Warwick Castle was sold at auction in London. The collection had been formed by Charles Greville, son of the Earl of Warwick and a friend of Joseph Banks, the scientist and later president of the Royal Society, who accompanied Cook on his first voyage to the South Pacific. John Hewett's purchases at the sale included the present lot and an unusual Tahitian sennit god which Adrienne Kaeppler (personal communication) has since linked with certainty to Cook's voyages following its identification as the object depicted by John Frederick Miller in a drawing in the British Library (Add.Ms. 15,508.26 left, reproduced by Adrienne Kaeppler (op. cit., p.138, fig.238. Although no documentary evidence has yet been found to link the present club with Cook's voyages such a provenance seems highly probable.