Safety Harness Does It Have An Expiry Date

Mambila - figure Protection

The art that comes from the style situated on the border between northeastern Nigeria and Cameroon Northwest sees objects, masks and mainly sculptures, especially powerful in times volumetric resolutions comparable with cubism and expressionism, sometimes with more stringent, although it is clear that these categories are designed to European art still wholly inadequate and inappropriate to describe the otherness of this artistic production. One of the best known ethnic groups in this area are the Mambila (or Mambilla) Known mostly for the features zoomorphic masks that reproduce, with very similar features in truth, the crow and the dog, and the figures of ancestors antropormorfe very stylized, made of solid wood but also in softer bone.

The subject presented here has the appearance of one of these forms, namely the one with the raven's head (the dog has teeth ...), but it's not a real mask and its size, less than 12 cm in length, they proclaim it clearly. Instead, it is the end of a wooden object "snake" used as a means of protection against supernatural attacks, whose tail - reduced here to a few inches - was composed of a tube of fabric stuffed substances likely to be "magical."

staining, in natural pigments, takes the classic chromatic objects Mambila: red and black, in this case, which could be added also white, not present here.

of a similar piece of this collection Hecht wrote in 2002 on African Arts Roy Sieber, Barry Hecht: "[...] this sculpture could be the 'head' of a figure of protection. The extended tubular structure on the back could be been a long tube connected to fiber, as illustrated by Nancy Schwartz in his catalog of the collection of art Mambila Gilbert Schneider (1972: 31). These figures with their body of material shaped and snake are security tools are building, which is built on poles, used as a storage room of ritual objects. Suspended with cords, and the waving air. Like most Mambila art is painted with the colors red, white and black. "

The object is currently in my collection was sold in the early '90s New York art dealer from the Collection Sulaiman Diane Noble and Jean Endicott, and later, he joined the gallery of Craig De Lora (New Jersey) from which I recently bought myself.

Bibliography:

1) African Art in the Mambila collection of Gilbert D. Schneider

Gilbert D. Schneider - James Yingpeh Tong (photos) - Publ. James Yingpeh Tong, Athens (USA), 1967

2) Mambilla. Art and material culture

Nancy Beth A. Schwartz - Milwaukee public museum / Publications in Primitive art, Milwaukee (USA), 1972

3) Art of Cameroon

Paul Gebauer - Portland art Museum, Portland (USA), 1979

4) Expressions of Cameroon art. The Franklin Collection.

Tamara Northern - Rembrandt press, Los Angeles - Baltimore - Hanover (USA), 1986
5) Eastern Nigerian art from the Toby and Barry Hecht collection

Roy Sieber, Barry Hecht - in African Arts, Spring 2002, UCLA

6) Mambila Figurines and Masquerades: Problems of Interpretations

David Zeitlyn - in African Arts, Autumn 1994, UCLA

7) The age, power and retorique . The case of the Mambila in Cameroon

David Zeitlyn - in Peoples and Cultures of Adamawa (Cameroon) , Paris, ORSTOM, 1993

8) Mambila avatars & the Ancestor Cult: Problems of History and Interpretations

David

Zeitlyn - e-book ( http://www.era.anthropology.ac.uk/Era_Resources/Era/Ancestors/dzanc.html ), University of Kent 2001/2007

9) Tribal Studies in Northern Nigeria. Vol 1

Charles K. Meek - London, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.Ltd., 1931