Indonesian Tau Tau Funerary Wooden Head

Deltoid in plan and with slight midrib, shank with knop finial for attachment. 21 grams, 98 mm



From Côte d'Ivoire, West Africa. From an old Derby, UK, specialist collection. From the property of a late Lincolnshire, UK, gentleman.

Lobi arts also include a wide variety of small human and animal images, implements, and more abstract symbols in copper alloy and iron. Some of these are worn as jewelry and some appear on shrines.

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.

A wooden mask with traces of white facial pigment and a raffia collar. 851 grams, 36.5 cm



From Gabon, West Africa. From an old Norwich, UK, collection. From the property of a late Lincolnshire, UK, gentleman.

Punu masks represent idealised female ancestors' faces. The white colour of the mask is genderless and a symbol for peace, deities, spirits of the dead, and the afterlife. It is the predominating colour in funeral celebrations and memorials. The masks were worn during funerals. They appeared also in the magical rites whose function was to unmask sorcerers. The masks have realistic, mostly white but sometimes black faces with protruding pursed lips, globular protruding eyes incised with a curve, high-domed foreheads, and characteristic rigid high coiffures reflecting the Punu women's hair styles. The masks often have an oriental expression, but no such influence has been established. Many Punu masks can be recognized by raised diamond-shape scarification marks on the foreheads and temples.