At the top of this display in its centre are two Upe hats made from woven pandanus leaves. The 44cm crown of the right hand hat is cylindrical with a pattern in cream on a red dye background. The base, about a third the height of the crown, is woven cylindrical zigzag patterns in black and cream. The left hand hat is smaller, (30cm) its crown slightly rounder, with an abstract pattern in cream and red dye. Its narrow base is decorated in a lattice work pattern in red on a cream background.
To the right of the hats is a huge (1.5m tall) mendaska mask. Made of bark from the breadfruit tree, its base colour is white. It has a large, slightly open duckbill-shaped mouth from under which protrudes a triangular flap extending down to cover the wearer’s chest. From the back of the mouth rises a tall flat bark column decorated in a black and pattern, similar in appearance to a white union jack. Attached to the top of the column two enormous conjoined rectangles, curved at their bases and apices, branch out. At the base of each is a large black eye accentuated by two wide white and four narrow red and black concentric circles.
Below the mask to the right sits a chalk figurine called a kulap. This is a seated single figure, its hands clasped, with a flat disc around its neck supporting both a male and female head.
To the left of the Upe hats stands a 1.5m tall, flat wooden funerary post. The carving of a human face, which represents an ancestor figure, with an intricate pattern of fine black lines on its cheeks sits on the top. Around its shoulders a painted cape with a black and white fish design is fastened with a large circular ornament called a paparaha. On its tunic is painted a seated black and brown figure with a large black turban-shaped head piece.
To the right of this post are three wooden neck ornaments, varying in height from 45cm-60cm. They comprise small carved heads and bodies, with ‘skirts’ fashioned from long frigate bird feathers. At the bottom of the case in front of the funerary post lies a shallow 1.3 metre long wooden bowl. It has a series of brown triangular shapes either side of a central brown schematic mask. Spread out to its right are three birdwing butterflies, one blue, one green, and one yellow, green and black, and a red/brown pelt of a Fardoulis’ Blossom Bat.