Collection: Ron and Barbara Perry. c.1970's

Very hard to find and very rare Male and Female Payback dolls from the Mendi Valley, Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. Finely made Male and Female fibre doll used for ritual purposes. If a person was killed by an enemy, the family of the slain person would make an effigy of them and decorate it with some of the deceased ornaments, the doll would be a reminder that revenge or payback was needed. Provenance: Collected by Ron Perry. Ron Perry is a well-known and respected field collector of New Guinea Art. For similar examples refer to the Stan Moriarty collection at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Tucsonans who know him would agree, Ron Perry has enjoyed one hell of an adventurous live. For more than 40 years he collected what is considered by experts to be the finest museum of quality Papua New Guinea artifacts. Ron Perry's life of adventure began after he graduated from Tucson High School and the University of Arizona. Perry and a friend went to Hawaii to become surfers. But it didn't take long for the Army draft to catch up and he was deployed to Korea.After the Army, Perry returned to Hawaii where friends persuaded him to follow them in Australia, where he caused a bit sensation with his slick Malibu surfboard.

He got married to Barbara and the Perrys spent several years working on her father’s sheep station in Australia before moving to Sydney.On his first artifact collecting trip to the Sepik River in the mid sixties, Perry learned to deal with tough conditions and clouds of malaria-carrying mosquitoes. After being denied assignments to areas where the local people carved good artifacts, Perry quit his job as a surveyor for the government Lands Department.

At one point Perry hiked with an Australian patrol officer for 10 days through New Guinea's rugged Southern Highlands south of Mendi.

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