Zulu Headrest and Two Tsonga Headrests from the Headrest Collection

Jacaranda Tribal is pleased to announce a new exhibition of African headrests from across the continent. We have many rare and fine headrests available for viewing at JacarandaTribal.com.

Zulu Headrest from South Africa. We are very fortunate to have this Zulu headrest in the collection. It is a fine example of a double headrest (as you can see, each “criss-cross” is a distinct headrest) carved from a single piece of wood. The piece is carved with alternating dark and light triangles on both the upper and lower portions of the piece. Experts believe that this headrest was created by a renownded master artist and carver from Natal and that other pieces by this artist exist in collections.

Tsonga Headrest from South Africa. This object is exceptionally fine and rare for neckrests with carrying handles are particularly rare and desirable. This one has a handle in the form of a dance staff that is such a length as to allow the end of the handle to rest on the floor surface.

In addition to the carrying handle, this headrest is carved with five parallel rows of fine rots carved in relief. As a male was sleeping, these dots would have formed temporary indentations into his face—indentations that resembled the facial scarification patterns of the Northern Nguni women. This would have caused much amusement.

The piece has developed a very fine patina from many years of use.

Tsonga Headrest from Mozambique.

There are around two dozen headrests with zoomorphic and anthropomorphic features illustrated in the literature on the art of Southeast Africa. But this headrest from Mozambique is the only example that evokes both the human figure and a four-legged animal figure at once. Female genitalia and breasts are carved on the underside. The figure also has a strange tail and wears a flat, circular hat. It is an incredible depiction and most certainly one of the only, if not the only, examples of its kind.

The aesthetic of this headrest is distinctive and unlike others in Southeast African art. It is certainly worth a look at this very fine example of a master carver and artist’s work.

Bonhams African and Oceanic Auction - May 15, 2008

Today I visited Bonhams at their new New York location. Located in the IBM building, the auction house occupies the old Dahesh Museum space. Clearly Bonhams is committed to growing their US operations by taking such a highly visible and expensive space.

The auction consists of 300 lots. A number of pieces are from the Bohlen collection. The Bohlens (Bob Bohlen and his wife Lillian) spent the last few years aggresively building an African collection with the help of Michael Kan. They are now disposing of their collection, largely through Bonhams and Sotheby's. I had the pleasure of visiting the collection a few years ago. Most of their southern African pieces are being sold at Bonhams, including an attractive Zulu meat platter (lot 791), a figurative headrest (described as Zulu but probably Tsonga-Shangaan - lot 797) and a 3-tined snuff container (lot 798). I felt that the estimates are a little ambitious for these items.

Overall, I found the quality better than the previous Bonhams New York auction and it will be interesting to see how the sale does.

African Dream Machines - A Book Review

I recently received a copy of the soft cover book African Dream Machines: Style, Identity and Meaning of African Headrests. The book was written by Anitra Nettleton, a professor of the Wits School of Art in Johannesburg and the author of many influential books on the material culture of southern Africa.

Below is an excerpt from the press release:

African headrests have been moved out of the category of functional objects and into the more rarefied category of ‘art’ objects. Styles in African headrests are usually defined in terms of western art and archaeological discourses, but this book interrogates these definitions of style through a case study of headrests of the ‘Tellem’ of Mali, and demonstrates the shortcomings of defining a single formal style model as exclusive to a single ethnic group.

African Dream Machines questions the assumed one-to-one relationship between formal styles and ethnic identities or classifications by tracing the distribution of a single formal headrest type – those with a single column support and round, conical base. The notion of ‘authenticity’ as a fixed value in relation to African art is de-stabilised, while historical factors are used to demonstrate that ‘authenticity’, in the form sought by collectors of antique African art, is largely a construct, which has no basis in historical reality. The final chapter seeks to understand the significance of African headrests in relation to a number of different perspectives: the western fascination with the headrest as a synecdoche for “otherness”; their iconography in terms of subject matter (human and animal figures); and the ways in which headrests are used as support to the head of a sleeping person.

The book is published by the University of the Witwatersrand Press . It is available now in the U.S. at Transaction Publications and will be available in March, 2008 at Amazon.com

Daniel Rootenberg
JacarandaTribal.com