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LOT 2395
African Wooden Fertility Figure
LOBI TRIBE, 20TH CENTURY A.D.
14 1/8 in. (425 grams, 35.8 cm).
Carved in a standing pose with a bald head, legs slightly bent, hands resting on the abdomen and an elongated neck supporting a face with bulging eyes. [No Reserve]
ProvenanceFrom Burkina Faso, West Africa.
From a Glasgow ethnographical collection; formed 1940s-1950s.
From the property of a late Lincolnshire, UK, gentleman.
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AUCTIONS:
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African Wooden Ancestor Figure
Fang Tribe, 20th century A.D.Sold for (Inc. bp): £39
A hand-carved standing female figure with hands placed in front of the figure and wearing arm rings. 930 grams, 48 cm
From Equatorial Guinea, West Coast of Central Africa. From an old Bristol, UK, ethnographical collection. From the property of a late Lincolnshire, UK, gentleman.
The people that are called “Fang” in the geographic or ethnographic literature number 800,000 and constitute a vast mosaic of village communities, established in a large zone of Atlantic equatorial Africa comprising Cameroon, continental Equatorial Guinea and nearly the whole north of Gabon, on the right bank of the Ogowe River. The Fang practice a cult devoted to ancestor lineages, the bieri, whose aim is to both protect themselves from the deceased and to recruit their aid in matters of daily life. Bieri are reliquary figures placed by the Fang upon their bark boxes to personify the tribal soul, containing the skulls and skeletons of prominent deceased persons. The bieri also served for therapeutic rituals and, above all, for initiations of young males during the great so festival. The rites included consumption of a plant with stimulant properties, which induced a trance lasting for several hours, and the “resuscitation of the ancestors,” in which figures detached from the reliquaries were moved somewhat playfully from behind a raffia screen as puppets. -
African Wooden Comb Fertility Figure
Asante Tribe, 20th century A.D.Sold for (Inc. bp): £117
Carved in the round with large discoid panel for the head with high-relief facial features; small body with arms spread, resting on a rectangular comb with six tines. 483 grams, 41.7 cm
From Southern Ghana, West Africa. From the property of a late Lincolnshire, UK, gentleman.
Fertility and children are the most frequent themes in the wooden sculptures of the Asante. The most numerous works are akua’ba fertility figures. The are dolls with disk-shaped heads embodying their concept of beauty and carried by women who want to become pregnant and to deliver a beautiful child. -
African Congo Wooden Headrest
Luba Tribe, 20th century A.D.Sold for (Inc. bp): £104
A carved headrest formed as two opposed kneeling figures each with an arm on the other's shoulder; rectangular base. 485 grams, 20.5 cm high
Ex Walter Steinberg collection; acquired London art market, 1960s-1970s.
