Aubrey Tigan: "This is a traded shell from before. It might be from Roebuck bay or it might be desert. I don't know."
This is a traded shell design.
Its precise provenance is unclear as there is no story where it appears in the literature. Aubrey thinks the design is similar to patterns used by both the Yawru around Broome especially body painting styles. However he thinks it could also come from the desert.
It is a classic three ramu meander in open field. Although the design does not close, it appears to deliberately partition into an asymmetric structure with the left and lower sections resembling the head and feet of a creature in profile. This raises the possibility that it may be an interpretation of an animal, possibly a dog or a horse. The shell was first recorded by Akerman at Jigalong, which suggests the angular meander style had been adopted by non-Pama Nyungan language groups, fringing the desert and the Pilbara by at least the middle of the 20th century. This shell is done in the heavy closed cross hatched style. Before Aubrey's death in 2013, he took Sebastian on and mentored him in the art of Riji and passed on his stories and designs. Sebastian is now able to continue in his footsteps and keep the stories alive.