- Museum number
- Af,+.6190
- Description
-
Standing male naked figure carved from a single piece of wood, wearing a headring to denote married status.
- Production date
- 1891 (before)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 56.50 centimetres
-
Width: 13.50 centimetres
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Depth: 11.90 centimetres
- Curator's comments
-
Giblin & Spring explain that the pair was created for age-related initiation ceremonies, and such figures are usually attributed to Tsonga artists. The best documented are those collected during the late XIXc from the Magwamba, a Tsonga clan of trading middlemen. [On the Magwamba see the Rev. Henri-Alexandre Junod, 'Life of a South African tribe', 1912, I p.19.] In many cases the figures were burned after the initiation ceremonies; in others they were preserved, kept in the possessions of chiefs, and used for the teaching of initiates and at ceremonies where warriors were given their head-rings as a sign of status and bravery (see A Nettleton, ‘History and myth of Zulu sculpture’ in ‘African Arts’, 21 1987/8 p.380).
The two Magwamba figures in the BM were illustrated by the entomologist William Lucas Distant in his book ‘A naturalist in the Transvaal’, of 1892, p.114 (where the loins of the male figure are shown covered by a cloth). Although not mentioned in his text, they are placed after his account of collecting animal specimens and next to illustrations of other objects of local manufacture in 1891 among the Magwamba in the Spelonken district of the Zoutpansberg. The implication is that he had acquired them all there. He must have brought them back to England, and after they had been used to illustrate his book in 1892 (where they are captioned as Magwamba carvings), he sold the figures (though apparently not the other items he had illustrated) to Miss Cutter who passed them on to A W Franks, who in turn gave them to the BM in 1893.
-
Made as a pair with the female figure Af,+.6191. See Giblin, J., & Spring, C., 2016, ‘South Africa: the art of a nation’. London, Thames and Hudson, pp 140-142.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
Exhibited:
1997, Belgium, Royal Museum of Central Africa, Zimbabwe, Past and Present
2016-2017 27 Oct-26 Feb, London, BM, G35, South Africa: the art of a nation
- Condition
- Good - the textile loin cloth which the figure once wore has disappeared at some point in the past.
- Acquisition date
- 1893
- Acquisition notes
- The three figures Af,+.6190 to 6912 were given to the BM by A W Franks on 25 July 1895; he had acquired them from the dealer Miss Cutter.
- Department
- Africa, Oceania and the Americas
- Registration number
- Af,+.6190
- Additional IDs
-
CDMS number: Af1893C2.6190 (old CDMS no.)