In between museums and collectors of art from outside Europe is a long debate, which sometimes gets so turned on to be a disagreement between those who consider it "art" only the sculptures anthropomorphic or zoomorphic forms and rituals, thus excluding all other objects of material culture, considered only in terms of ethnographic and including only "special cases" such as Kuba cups that have a particular abundance of carving, and those who include in terms of aesthetics and artistic production also commodities. In particular, certain restraints, with special sculptural or geometric ornaments, some pulleys to the frame, some locks, some combs were the first to be counted among the works of "art" and only in relatively recent years the objects of everyday use, if provided with objective aesthetic value, have been recognized as aesthetic objects, if not at least art for "design" art.
sticks Africans, unlike those of the art ocean area in which they are a primary manifestation and has long been acclaimed production aesthetic has always been a little 'overlooked: sometimes considered part of the arms, sometimes numbered in the kind of tools for everyday use, have so far failed even to receive the recognition of a specialized publication of absolute scientific reference. Among the a few guys who have done some collecting outcome, there are South Africans Knobkerries, the local Zulu, Swazi and Nguni.
The term "knobkerrie" derives from the 'Afrikaans' knopkierie "resulting from the merger of the word" knop "or" knob "(from Middle Dutch" cnoppe ") which means" knot "with the word" Kieri "(from the Khoikhoin word "Kirri"), which means "stick". In short, the Knobkerrie typical weapon of the people of South Africa, with which the Zulu people stood up to the late nineteenth century to the powerful British army armed with rifles and bayonets, a gnarled stick, balanced to perfection to be handy and lightweight but harmful and even potentially lethal if thrown or slammed violently against the heads of enemies. Not for nothing that these clubs are also known as "splitting heads" ... The first of two that I present here (65 cm.) Is probably very old, almost certainly dates from the late nineteenth century, is Zulu or Swazi bill and has a beautiful patina varied, darker, more intense at a recess, placed on the "head" of the weapon, designed to contain tobacco, probably mixed in some way, better to load the warrior spirit of the soldier who used this wood. I've had from the small gallery of English Adam Prout, specialized in this type of object in South Africa. The second, head to the grain of the typical two-tone wood and decorated with the equally typical Wireworks wire woven objects Zulu, it is also from Great Britain, that due to the Anglo - Zulu above, has a particular concentration of these objects, taken as spoils of war homeland, but came to me with a stop for many years in Germany where I bought from a collector and an ethnographic researcher Dieter Wolf Miersch, is 60 cm long. and is as old almost as the previous one, judging from the beautiful and dense patina of the wood.
The last object that has a bracket is carved, it is also from England, about 80 cm long, with a leopard hunting an antelope on the one hand and a snake spiraling other. E 'bill of Zulu - Nguni and, like other clubs, it is probably quite old.
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Bibliography:
1) Art and ambiguity. Perspectives on the Brenthurst Collection of Southern African Art
AA. VV. - Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg, 1991
2) Ubuntu. Arts et cultures d'Afrique du Sud
AA. VV. - EXH. cat. Musée national des Arts d'Afrique et d'Oceans, Paris, 2002
3) Arts from Southern Africa Collection Conru
Sandra Klopper, Karel Nel, Kevin Conru - 5 Continents , Milan, 2002
4) The Art of Southern Africa. The Terence Pethica collection.
Sandra Klopper, Anitra Nettleton, Terence Pethica - 5 Continents, Milan, 2007
problematic for art / ethnography should be noted:
1) ART / artifact. African Art in Anthropology Collections.
Susan Vogel (ed.) - The Center for African Art / Prestel, New York, 1988
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