Panels from Central Borneo
The Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore holds two decorative panels, dated to the late 19th or early 20th century, that were once attached to the back of baby carriers. The museum says they were made by Kayan or Kenyah people of Central Borneo, who are well known for highly ornate beadwork, and that the human face on them stands for a guardian spirit watching over the baby. The Horniman Museum in London holds a whole 20th-century Kenyah-Kayan carrier of woven rattan over a wooden base; its glass-bead panel, which the museum calls an aban, shows a heavily stylised human face among curving tendril motifs, with tassels of animal teeth along the top.
To verify: The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s shell-and-bead aban with a pair of ancestor figures (Kayan, 19th–early 20th century), which we could not open for this check
