The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 24, 2025

Dark brown wood gorget, a neck ornament shaped like a crescent with two smaller abstracted shapes on either side, like crescents tenting up in the center instead of curving in. The crescent shape is outlined on the inside of the gorget as well, a flat shape in the center with the edges arcing up around it.

Gorget (Rei Miro)

1800s

Pacific Islands, Polynesia, Rapa Nui

(Easter Island)
wood
Overall: 30.8 x 69.8 cm (12 1/8 x 27 1/2 in.)
The Mary Spedding Milliken Memorial Collection, Gift of William Mathewson Milliken 1961.406
Location: Not on view

Did You Know?

Chiefly women of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) wore crescent-shaped gorgets like this one.

Description

Elegant, crescent-shaped gorgets or chest ornaments known as rei miro (“necklace of wood”) were generally worn by chiefly women of Rapa Nui (Easter Island). The abstracted forms at the tips of this example replace the human heads that are more typical.
  • Howard Beasley
    -1961
    William Mathewson Milliken
    1961-
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Trevaka Archaeological Outreach, Database Project www.terevaka.net
  • Stories from Storage. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 7-May 16, 2021).
    Year in Review - 1962. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 24-November 25, 1962).
    The Imagination of Primitive Man. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO (organizer) (January 18-February 25, 1962).
  • {{cite web|title=Gorget (Rei Miro)|url=false|author=|year=1800s|access-date=24 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1961.406