Bamileke, Cameroon, circa 1900
Fired clay
Length 10 1/2 inches (26.7 cm)
Provenance: Private collection, Albuquerque, New Mexico
The bowl is modeled as a head with the features pushed far out from the mass, the eyes standing proud as domed spheres beneath applied brows worked in relief arcs, and the cheeks swelling to either side of a broad muzzle. A short cylindrical projection carries the mouth opening at the front, and behind the face the form tapers back along its length under a dense field of applied clay nubs, ranged in close rows and framed at the shoulder by a band of incised chevrons and hatching. The clay is fired to a warm red brown with darker fire clouding across the cheeks and the crown, and the darkening is broad and soft edged in the pattern left by uneven oxygen in an open fire rather than by burial.
Bamileke potters and metalworkers of the Cameroon Grassfields supplied the courts of the fondoms, and pipes were rank objects there, carried and displayed as much as smoked. Clay bowls of this size were fitted to a long stem, so a bowl of ten inches implies a pipe considerably longer in use, and the surviving bowl is the part that carried the sculpture. The nubbed field and the projecting eyes belong to the same Grassfields vocabulary that runs through the region's masks and cast work.
We ship free anywhere in the world, fully insured, packed by hand.
Bamileke, Cameroon, circa 1900
Fired clay
Length 10 1/2 inches (26.7 cm)
Provenance: Private collection, Albuquerque, New Mexico
The bowl is modeled as a head with the features pushed far out from the mass, the eyes standing proud as domed spheres beneath applied brows worked in relief arcs, and the cheeks swelling to either side of a broad muzzle. A short cylindrical projection carries the mouth opening at the front, and behind the face the form tapers back along its length under a dense field of applied clay nubs, ranged in close rows and framed at the shoulder by a band of incised chevrons and hatching. The clay is fired to a warm red brown with darker fire clouding across the cheeks and the crown, and the darkening is broad and soft edged in the pattern left by uneven oxygen in an open fire rather than by burial.
Bamileke potters and metalworkers of the Cameroon Grassfields supplied the courts of the fondoms, and pipes were rank objects there, carried and displayed as much as smoked. Clay bowls of this size were fitted to a long stem, so a bowl of ten inches implies a pipe considerably longer in use, and the surviving bowl is the part that carried the sculpture. The nubbed field and the projecting eyes belong to the same Grassfields vocabulary that runs through the region's masks and cast work.
We ship free anywhere in the world, fully insured, packed by hand.
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