11 Solomon islands pearl scoops. The Melanesian Mission was an Anglican mission active in the Solomon Islands, the organisation acquired substantial collections of artefacts from its local congregations from the late 19th century onwards. These were moved to a museum New Zealand . Eventually many of these items were given or sold to collectors by individual missionaries or by the Mission itself, or came directly or indirectly to the British Museum in the 1920s. These items came up at auction in Britian in the 70s and 80s, where they were obtained by the collector I bought them from.
Scoops such as these were used to scrape small coconuts and were used as spoons. Similar ones in the British Museum collection came from the Santa Cruz Islands. I have included a small coconut from the same collection with the scoops but it is a separate listing. 
Length of longest scoop 9.5cms, smallest scoop is 4.5cms. They are in excellent condition. There are 11 scoops in all.
The similar items in the British Museum were acquired by the Museum from A E Bernays (q.v.) in 1921. Author of 'Santa Cruz and the Reef Islands' (1908).
From the collection of B Harding.